KIEV: Ukrainian prosecutors on Friday accused jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko of organising the 1996 murder of a lawmaker, saying she could face life imprisonment if found guilty.
Tymoshenko, serving a seven-year jail term for abuse of power, has been informed by prosecutors she is now a formal suspect in the murder of Yevgen Shcherban, Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka told reporters.
- AFP/de
"Certain fundamentals have to be kept in mind and that is truth, credibility, placing the facts and making efforts to find out the truth," Mukherjee said at a function organised by the Kolkata Press Club and Indian Journalists' Association here.
Eulogizing the first president of IJA Mrinal Kanti Basu, the President said, "He truly believed that comments are free, but facts are sacrosanct and many of the doyens of journalism have strictly adhered to this principle that "yes, I am free to give my views, but facts are to be reported as they are".
"Of course, there has been revolutionary change in information technology. That's why persons belonging to the older generation who developed the habit of reading and sometimes reading in details are not accustomed to give what you describe as byte because to give that short cryptic comment, it takes some time to acquire the mastery over the art of conceptualizing our views and expressions in the most appropriate words," he said.
In an expansive mood, Mukherjee said, "I had very frequent interactions with the friends in media. It is not always correct that I was polite to them or cooperative towards them."
"More than often, I became rude to them. Being an old man perhaps, they accommodated my rudeness," the President, who has been a politician for decades and held several key portfolios in different ministries, said.
"Whatever I received from people I came in contact with, it was more that what I have given them. Journalists are no exception," Mukherjee said.
Nine more children or teens have died of the flu, bringing the nation's total this flu season to 29, health officials reported Friday.
In a typical season, about 100 children die of the flu, so it is not known whether this year will be better or worse than usual.
So far, half of confirmed flu cases are in people 65 and older, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
This year's season is earlier than normal and the dominant flu strain is one that tends to make people sicker. The flu is widespread in all states but Tennessee and Hawaii and is starting to ease in some areas, the CDC said.
Health officials say it's not too late to get a flu shot to help protect against the flu. Vaccinations are recommended for anyone 6 months or older.
Last week, the CDC said the flu again surpassed an "epidemic" threshold, based on monitoring of deaths from flu and a frequent complication, pneumonia. The flu epidemic happens every year and officials say this year's vaccine is a good match for strains that are going around.
The government doesn't keep a running tally of adult deaths from the flu, but estimates that it kills about 24,000 people most years.
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Online:
CDC flu: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm
The al Qaeda-linked terrorists holding Americans and other Westerners hostage at a gas plant in Algeria have now demanded the release of two convicted terrorists held in U.S. prisons, including the "blind sheikh" who helped plan the first attack on New York's World Trade Center, in exchange for the freedom of two American hostages, according to an African news service.
The terror group calling itself the Masked Brigade, which raided the BP joint venture plant in In Amenas early Wednesday, reportedly contacted a Mauritanian news service with the offer. In addition to the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman, who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, they demanded the release of Aifia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist who shot at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2008.
At least three Americans were being held hostage by the militants when the Algerian military mounted a rescue operation at the facility Thursday that reportedly resulted in casualties.
Five other Americans who were at the facility when it was attacked by the terrorists are now safe and believed to have left the country, according to U.S. officials.
Reports that dozens of hostages were killed during the Algerian military's attempt to retake the compound have not been confirmed, though Algeria's information minister has confirmed that there were casualties. It's known by U.S. and foreign officials that multiple British, Japanese and Norwegian hostages were killed.
Mike Nelson/AFP/Getty Images
According to an unconfirmed report by an African news outlet, the militants said seven hostages survived the attack, including two Americans, one Briton, three Belgians and a Japanese national. U.S. officials monitoring the case had no information indicating any Americans have been injured or killed, but said the situation is fluid and casualties cannot be ruled out.
On Friday morning, a U.S. military plane evacuated between 10 and 20 people of unknown nationalities from In Amenas.
British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament today that the terror attack "appears to have been a large, well coordinated and heavily armed assault and it is probable that it had been pre-planned."
"The terrorist group is believed to have been operating under Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a criminal terrorist and smuggler who has been operating in Mali and in the region for a number of years," said Cameron.
Cameron said Algerian security forces are still in action at the facility. On Thursday, he said that the situation was "very bad … A number of British citizens have been taken hostage. Already, we know of one who has died. ... I think we should be prepared for the possibility for further bad news, very difficult news in this extremely difficult situation."
The kidnappers had earlier released a statement saying there are "more than 40 crusaders" held "including 7 Americans."
U.S. officials had previously confirmed to ABC News that there were at least three Americans held hostage at the natural gas facility jointly owned by BP, the Algerian national oil company and a Norwegian firm at In Amenas, Algeria.
"I want to assure the American people that the United States will take all necessary and proper steps that are required to deal with this situation," said Panetta. "I don't think there's any question that [this was] a terrorist act and that the terrorists have affiliation with al Qaeda."
He said the precise motivation of the kidnappers was unknown.
"They are terrorists, and they will do terrorist acts," he said.
ALGIERS (Reuters) - Twenty-five foreign hostages escaped and six were killed on Thursday when Algerian forces launched an operation to free them at a remote desert gas plant, Algerian sources said, as one of the biggest international hostage crises in decades unfolded.
The standoff began when gunmen calling themselves the Battalion of Blood stormed the gas facility on Wednesday morning. They said they were holding 41 foreigners and demanded a halt to a French military operation against fellow al Qaeda-linked Islamist militants in neighboring Mali.
The raid increased fears that jihadist militants could launch further attacks in Algeria, a vast desert country with large oil and gas reserves that is only just recovering from a protracted conflict with Islamist rebels during the 1990s which cost an estimated 200,000 lives.
Fast-moving details of the military operation to free the hostages from the gas plant were difficult to confirm. Algeria's official APS news agency said about half the foreign hostages had been freed.
A local source told Reuters six foreign hostages were killed along with eight captors when the Algerian military fired on a vehicle being used by the gunmen.
Mauritania's ANI news agency, which has been in constant contact with the kidnappers, said seven hostages were still being held: two Americans, three Belgians, one Japanese and one British citizen.
It quoted one of the kidnappers as saying that Algerian ground forces were trying to fight their way into the complex.
ANI and Qatar-based Al Jazeera reported that 34 of the captives and 15 of their captors had been killed when government forces fired from helicopters at a vehicle. Those death tolls, far higher than confirmed by the local source, would contradict the reports that large numbers of foreigners escaped alive.
Britain and Norway, whose oil firms BP and Statoil run the plant jointly with the Algerian state oil company, said they had been informed by the Algerian authorities that a military operation was under way but did not provide details.
As many as 600 Algerian workers at the site managed to flee, the official Algerian news agency said.
RAISING THE STAKES
The incident dramatically raises the stakes in the French military campaign in neighboring Mali, where hundreds of French paratroopers and marines are launching a ground offensive against rebels after air strikes began last week.
Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia said the kidnappers were led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran Islamist guerrilla who fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s and had set up his own group in the Sahara after falling out with other local al Qaeda leaders.
A holy warrior-cum-smuggler dubbed "The Uncatchable" by French intelligence and "Mister Marlboro" by some locals for his illicit cigarette-running business, Belmokhtar's links to those who seized towns across northern Mali last year are unclear.
The hostage takers earlier allowed some prisoners to speak to the media, apparently to put pressure on Algerian forces not to storm the compound. An unidentified hostage who spoke to France 24 television said prisoners were forced to wear explosive belts and captors had threatened to blow up the plant.
A local source told Reuters the hostage takers had blown up a petrol filling station at the plant.
Two hostages, identified as British and Irish, spoke to Al Jazeera television and called on the Algerian army to withdraw from the area to avoid casualties.
"We are receiving care and good treatment from the kidnappers. The (Algerian) army did not withdraw and they are firing at the camp," the British man said. "There are around 150 Algerian hostages. We say to everybody that negotiations is a sign of strength and will spare many any loss of life."
Ireland said later that the Irish hostage was among those freed.
NUMBERS UNCONFIRMED
The precise number and nationalities of foreign hostages could not be confirmed, with some countries reluctant to release information that could be useful to the captors.
Britain said one of its citizens was killed in the initial storming on Wednesday and "a number" of others were held.
The militants said seven Americans were among their hostages, a figure U.S. officials said they could not confirm.
Norwegian oil company Statoil said nine of its Norwegian staff and three Algerian employees were captive. Britain's BP, which operates the plant with Statoil and Algerian state oil company Sonatrach, said some of its staff were held but would not say how many or their nationalities.
Japanese media said five workers from Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp. were held, a number the company did not confirm. Paris has not said whether any hostages were French. Vienna said one hostage was Austrian, Dublin said one was Irish and Bucharest said an unspecified number were Romanian.
Spanish oil company Cepsa said it had begun to evacuate personnel from elsewhere in Algeria, an OPEC member.
Paris said the Algeria attack demonstrated it was right to intervene in Mali: "We have the flagrant proof that this problem goes beyond just the north of Mali," French ambassador to Mali Christian Rouyer told France Inter radio.
President Francois Hollande has received public backing from Western and African allies who fear that al Qaeda, flush with men and arms from the defeated forces of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, is building a desert haven in Mali, a poor country helpless to combat fighters who seized its north last year.
However, there is also some concern in Washington and other capitals that the French action in Mali could provoke a backlash worse than the initial threat by militants in the remote Sahara.
The militants, communicating through established contacts with media in neighboring Mauritania, said they had dozens of men armed with mortars and anti-aircraft missiles in the compound and had rigged it with explosives.
"We hold the Algerian government and the French government and the countries of the hostages fully responsible if our demands are not met, and it is up to them to stop the brutal aggression against our people in Mali," read one statement carried by Mauritanian media.
They condemned Algeria's secularist government for letting French warplanes fly over its territory to Mali and shutting its border to Malian refugees.
PRESSING ON
The attack in Algeria did not stop France from pressing on with its campaign in Mali. It said on Thursday it now had 1,400 troops on the ground in Mali, and combat was underway against the rebels that it first began targeting from the air last week.
"There was combat yesterday, on the ground and in the air. It happened overnight and is under way now," said Le Drian. Residents said a column of about 30 French Sagaie armored vehicles set off on Wednesday toward rebel positions from the town of Niono, 300 km (190 miles) from the capital, Bamako.
The French action last week came as a surprise but received widespread international support in public. Neighboring African countries planning to provide ground troops for a U.N. force by September have said they will move faster to deploy them.
Nigeria, the strongest regional power, sent 162 soldiers on Thursday, the first of an anticipated 906.
"The whole world clearly needs to unite and do much more than is presently being done to contain terrorism, with its very negative impact on global peace and security," President Goodluck Jonathan said.
Germany, Britain and the Netherlands have offered transport aircraft to help ferry in African troops. Washington has said it is considering what support it can offer.
Many inhabitants of northern Mali have welcomed the French action, though some also fear being caught in the cross-fire. The Mali rebels who seized Timbuktu and other oasis towns in northern Mali last year imposed Islamic law, including public amputations and beheadings that angered many locals.
A day after launching the campaign in Mali, Hollande also ordered a failed rescue in Somalia on Saturday to free a French hostage held by al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militants since 2009. Al Shabaab said on Thursday it had executed hostage Denis Allex. France said it believed he died in the rescue.
(Reporting by Lamine Chikhi; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Giles Elgood)
LONDON: Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers on Thursday said that his controversial striker Luis Suarez could face punishment from the club after admitting that he dived to try to win a penalty in a league game with Stoke City.
In an interview with Fox Sports Argentina, Suarez admitted "falling" during October's 0-0 draw between the clubs at Anfield, prompting Rodgers, who had defended him from criticism at the time, to hit out.
"I think it is wrong. It is unacceptable. I have spoken to Luis and it will be dealt with internally," said Rodgers. "(Diving) is not something we advocate. Our ethics are correct."
Rodgers spoke to Suarez on Thursday and said he had been "totally understanding on where I am coming from as manager of the club.
"What was said was wrong. He takes that and we move on," he added.
Suarez hit the headlines for a theatrical fall in the Stoke game after he went to ground under a challenge from Marc Wilson in an unsuccessful attempt to win a second-half penalty.
FIFA vice-president Jim Boyce was moved to describe Suarez's tumble as "cheating", adding that the tendency for players to easily fall to the ground was a "cancer" in the game.
Suarez has been accused of diving at regular intervals during his time in England and he admitted in the interview that he had gone down on purpose.
"I was criticised for trying to win a penalty by falling in a match against Stoke," said the Uruguay international. "It's true I fell because we were drawing against Stoke at home and we needed to do something.
"But afterwards, the coaches of Stoke, Everton, all of them, came forward. I came to realise that the name of Suarez was a (newspaper) seller."
Suarez sparked controversy again earlier this month when he handled the ball prior to scoring Liverpool's winning goal in their 2-1 victory at non-league Mansfield Town in the FA Cup.
"The other day, a ball hit my hand without me meaning it to," he said. "I kissed my wrist (in celebration) and everyone started rounding on me."
Suarez also claimed that foreign players are treated differently to home-grown players in the Premier League.
"It's difficult," he said. "It's what Carlitos (Tevez) said, it's what Kun (Sergio Aguero) said: foreigners, and especially the South Americans, are treated differently to local players."
Suarez added that his run-in with Manchester United defender Patrice Evra, which saw him hit with a 40,000 fine pounds and an eight-match ban for racial abuse, was long forgotten.
"When people come and insult me, saying I'm South American, I don't start crying. It's something that stays on the pitch, part of football. My conscience is clear," he said, before claiming that Manchester United control the British press.
"They've got a lot of power and they'll always help them."
- AFP/fa
The report was released by the minister of human resource development, M M Pallam Raju on Thursday.
Releasing the report, Raju said that the focus of the current 12th five-year plan is on quality of education imparted in schools and emphasised on the need to improve the quality of the teachers in schools and infrastructure needs to be strengthened.
According to the report, the proportion of the children in the age group of 6-14 who are not enrolled in schools has gone up slightly from 3.3% in 2011 to 3.5% in 2012.
While appreciating the improvement of infrastructure in schools including sanitation and mid-day meals, the minister expressed his concern that the girls enrolment is going down.
Raju said: "After the enactment of RTE Act some states are doing well in primary and elementary education but states from north-east regions have to catch up." Stating that aspiration level of the parents and the child is going up, Raju added, "We have to take steps to make our future generation a well-rounded personality."
The increase in enrolment is largest in Rajasthan and UP. The report also says that learning outcomes were low but steady in the years leading to 2010. But across the country, children's ability to read simple text and do basic arithmetic has declined since then.
Nationally, private schools enrolment has increased (6-14 age group). In next five years, the country may have half of the children attending private schools even in the rural areas
NEW YORK (AP) — A new study shows New York City is doing better than Los Angeles in the battle against childhood obesity, at least for low-income children.
From 2003 to 2011, obesity rates for poor children dropped in New York to around 16 percent. But they rose in Los Angeles and ended at about 20 percent.
The researchers focused on children ages 3 and 4 enrolled in a government program that provides food and other services to women and their young children.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the study Thursday.
The authors noted that the Los Angeles program has many more Mexican-American kids. Obesity is more common in Mexican-American boys than in white or black kids.
Notre Dame's star linebackerManti Te'o faces a problem bigger than any running back he's had to bring down.
As the elaborate hoax about his dead "girlfriend" unravels, many questions remain to be answered, chief among them whether he was complicit in promoting the dramatic story of his girlfriend's death from leukemia. Te'o may soon be forced to tackle those questions himself.
"A lot of people are very suspicious when Te'o says he had no idea and he was just a sucker in this," Deadspin writer Timothy Burke said on "Good Morning America" today. "Why would somebody go to such great lengths to hoax him like that?"
Click here for 'Catfish' stars' advice on online dating.
Burke's Deadspin story broke the scandal, forcing Te'o and Notre Dame to admit the girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, never existed. Notre Dame claims that Te'o is the victim of a "cruel hoax."
"[Notre Dame is] sticking to his story and they're going to, I think, fight and make every sort of attempt they can to prove he had no idea this was going on and that he was the unfortunate victim of a year-long prank," Burke said.
But it won't be easy.
Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
"I think that there are some questions about when he became aware of it, simply because Notre Dame and Te'o's statement have indicated that he found out about it in late December, but he chose not to correct or identify when he was asked before the BCS Championship game about his girlfriend," he said. The championship game was played on Jan. 7.
Burke said he is particularly eager for answers about the story Te'o told of meeting his girlfriend in 2009 and his father Brian Te'o's statements about how the purported girlfriend used to visit Manti in Hawaii.
The university's athletic director Jack Swarbrick said at a Wednesday night news conference that the school was not speaking for Te'o.
"At the end of the day, this is Manti's story to tell and we believe he should have the right to tell it, which he is going to do," Swarbrick said.
Swarbrick said that Te'o and his family came to the university last month with concerns that Te'o had been the victim of a hoax.
"The university immediately initiated an investigation to assist Manti and his family in discovering the motive for and nature of this hoax," he said. "While the proper authorities will continue to investigate this troubling matter, this appears to be, at a minimum, a sad and very cruel deception to entertain its perpetrators."
The school's investigators monitored online chatter by the alleged perpetrators, Swarbrick said, adding that he was shocked by the "casual cruelty" it revealed.
"They enjoyed the joke," Swarbrick said, comparing the ruse to the popular film "Catfish," in which filmmakers revealed a person at the other end of an online relationship was not who she said she was.
"While we still don't know all of the dimensions of this ... there are certain things that I feel confident we do know," Swarbrick said. "The first is that this was a very elaborate, very sophisticated hoax, perpetrated for reasons we don't understand."
Click here for more scandalous public confessions.
Swarbrick also said that he believed Te'o's representatives were planning to disclose the truth next week until Wednesday's story broke.
Te'o, who led the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship game this year and finished second for the Heisman Trophy, has only issued a written statement so far.
ALGIERS (Reuters) - Islamist militants attacked a gas field in Algeria on Wednesday, claiming to have kidnapped up to 41 foreigners including seven Americans in a dawn raid in retaliation for France's intervention in Mali, according to regional media reports.
The raiders were also reported to have killed three people, including a Briton and a French national.
An al Qaeda affiliated group said the raid had been carried out because of Algeria's decision to allow France to use its air space for attacks against Islamists in Mali, where French forces have been in action against al Qaeda-linked militants since last week.
The attack in southern Algeria also raised fears that the French action in Mali could prompt further Islamist revenge attacks on Western targets in Africa, where al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) operates across borders in the Sahara desert, and in Europe.
AQIM said it had carried out Wednesday's raid on the In Amenas gas facility in Algeria, Mauritania's ANI news agency reported.
The Algerian interior ministry said: "A terrorist group, heavily armed and using three vehicles, launched an attack this Wednesday at 5 a.m. against a Sonatrach base in Tigantourine, near In Amenas, about 100 km (60 miles) from the Algerian and Libyan border."
The gas field is operated by a joint venture including BP, Norwegian oil firm Statoil and Algerian state company Sonatrach.
ARMED MEN
BP said armed men were still occupying facilities at the gas field.
"The site was attacked and occupied by a group of unidentified armed people at about 0500 UK time. Contact with the site is extremely difficult, but we understand that armed individuals are still occupying the In Amenas operations site," it said.
Algeria's official APS news agency said a Briton and an Algerian security guard had been killed and seven people were injured. A French national was also killed in the attack, a local source said.
Also among those reported kidnapped by various sources were five Japanese nationals working for the Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp, a French national, an Irishman, a Norwegian and a number of Britons.
A member of an Islamist group styling itself the "Blood Battalion" was quoted by Mauritanian media as saying that five of the hostages were being held at the gas facility and 36 were in a housing area. APS said the Islamist raiders had freed Algerians working at the gas facility.
"The operation was in response to the blatant interference by Algeria and the opening of its air space to French aircraft to bomb northern Mali," the Islamist spokesman told Mauritania's ANI news agency.
ANI, which has regular direct contact with Islamists, said that fighters under the command of Mokhtar Belmokhtar were holding the foreigners.
Belmokhtar for years commanded al Qaeda fighters in the Sahara before setting up his own armed Islamist group late last year after an apparent fallout with other militant leaders.
The Algerian army was in the area of the gas facility, according to French and Algerian sources.
SECURITY IMPLICATIONS
The attack was the first time in years that Islamist militants are known to have launched an attack on an Algerian energy facility.
The attack could have implications for security across the whole of Algeria's energy sector, which supplies about a quarter of Europe's natural gas imports and exports millions of barrels of crude oil each year.
Such an attack would require a large and heavily-armed insurgent force with a degree of freedom to move around -- all elements that al Qaeda has not previously had.
However, the conflict in neighboring Libya in 2011 changed the balance of force. Security experts say al Qaeda was able to obtain arms, including heavy weapons, from the looted arsenals of former leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Statoil, a minority shareholder in the gas venture, said it had 17 employees at the plant and four of them had been evacuated. The company declined to comment on the other 13.
The five Japanese work for the engineering firm JGC Corporation, Jiji news agency reported, quoting company officials. JGC has a deal with Sonatrach-BP-Statoil Association for work in gas production at In Amenas.
A reporter for Japan's NHK television managed to call a JGC worker in Algeria.
The worker said he got a phone call from a colleague at the gas field. "It was around 6 a.m. this morning. He said that he had been hearing gunshots for about 20 minutes. I wasn't able to get through to him since."
French troops launched their first ground operation against Islamist rebels in Mali on Wednesday in an action to dislodge from a strategic town al Qaeda-linked fighters who have resisted six days of air strikes.
(Additional reporting by Catherine Bremer and John Irish in Paris, Laurent Prieur in Nouakchott, Andrew Osborn in London, Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Antoni Slodkowski in Tokyo, Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi and Christian Lowe in Warsaw; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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