• 24 killed, 15 bodies found in violence-hit Iraq
• Japan to move clocks ahead by one second
• China paper assails US response to Katrina
• Tigers reject truce talks venue
• Indian cop killed in Kashmir clash
• Toxic floodwaters a concern in New Orleans
• Democrats blame Bush admin Storm in US Congress over late response to Hurricane
• Nine out of 10 US schools offer junk food: Govt report
• Pakistan wants civilian nuclear deal like India's
• UN, member states share blame for mismanagement in oil-for-food probe
• Cuba's offer puts US in uncomfortable position
• Israeli army kills 5 Palestinians
• US military frees Iraqi expatriate
• 900 foreigners unaccounted for in Katrina aftermath
• 10-year exile for Fujimori sought
• Pandemonium in Indian delimitation committee meeting
• Pakistan, India hold talks on gas pipeline from Iran
• Medical records deepen Arafat death mystery: New York Times
• India backs UK’s anti-terrorism bid
• Bomb hoax aboard Saudi aircraft:Woman killed, 62 injured in stampede
• N Korea demands withdrawal of US troops from South
• Taiwan activists raise flag to mark 'Independence Day'
• Saddam did not confess to mass killings: Lawyer

Sept 8: At least twenty-four people were killed and scores injured in different incidents in the violence-hit Iraq.

A car bomb shattered the relative peace of the southern Iraqi city of Basra after dark on Wednesday, killing 16 people and wounding 20 in a district packed with restaurants, officials said.

At least two children were among the dead carried away by rescuers from the popular Sayed restaurant. Police said a pick- up truck had exploded outside it. They found no evidence of a suicide attacker, they added.

Coming at the end of a day on which al Qaeda claimed a bomb attack that killed four U.S. security guards on diplomatic duties in Basra, it was not clear who had brought such violence to the relatively calm and mainly Shi'ite Muslim south.

Twenty miles south of Baghdad, police Thursday reported finding 14 unidentified bodies near the farming town of Mahmoudiya. "All the bodies are in civilian clothes and have no identification documents," said Lt. Adnan Abdullah of the Mahmoudiya police. They had been shot to death, he said.

Two more decomposing bodies, blindfolded and handcuffed, were found on the outskirts of Baghdad, near a sewage plant, police said.

A military statement said Hallums was freed after the military received information from an Iraqi detainee.

In the northern town of Tal Afar, where Iraqi and U.S. troops have battled an insurgency for several days, hospital sources said four civilians were killed and one wounded in a suicide car bomb attack on a checkpoint late on Tuesday.

A further three died in separate security operations in Tal Afar on Tuesday, witnesses said.

Many people have left Tal Afar in the last few days.

In the Kurdish town of Kalar, one protester was killed and 16 wounded in riots over a failure to supply electricity and water, Omar Aziz, a doctor at Kalar's general hospital, said.

Several buildings were set on fire including a children's hospital, a radio station, the fire department and an education ministry building. Seventy protesters were detained.

Meanwhile, US and Iraqi forces have encircled the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar, and Iraqi authorities on Thursday announced the arrest of 200 suspected insurgents there - most of them foreign fighters.

The Iraqi military said 150 of those arrested Wednesday in this town near the Syrian border were Arabs from Syria, Sudan, Yemen and Jordan.

The joint forces have reported heavy battles on the outskirts of the city and several deadly bombings that have mainly killed civilians. Iraqi authorities reported most of the civilian population had fled the city, which is 260 miles north of Baghdad and about 35 miles from the Syrian border.

"Our forces arrested 150 non-Iraqi Arabs yesterday in addition to 50 Iraqi terrorists with fake documents as they were trying to flee the city with the (civilian) families," said Iraqi army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed.

"We ordered the families to evacuate the Sunni neighborhood of Sarai, which is believed to be the main stronghold of the insurgents," Ahmed said

Eight civilians were killed in the city Wednesday by a suicide car bomber at an Iraqi checkpoint, he said.

Tal Afar is 90 percent Turkmen, and 70 percent of them are Sunnis. After the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the United States installed a largely Shiite leadership in the city, including the mayor and much of the police force.

The Sunni majority has complained of oppression by the government and have turned to the insurgents - who are mainly Sunnis - for protection.

Early Thursday, a militant Web site carried a videotape showing the destruction of a U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Tal Afar. The video, emblazoned with the logo of al-Qaida in Iraq, claimed the armored vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb.

The military issued no immediate response to the claim. The militant video did not say if there were casualties, although the force of the blast would suggest there had been. There were several large explosions of ordnance in the tank after the initial blast.

On Wednesday, the U.S. military, acting on a tip, raided an isolated farmhouse outside Baghdad and rescued an American businessman held hostage for 10 months. The kidnappers, who had kept their captive bound and gagged.

Roy Hallums, 57, was "in good condition and is receiving medical care," a military statement said after U.S. forces freed him and an unidentified Iraqi from the farmhouse 15 miles south of Baghdad.

Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman, said the tipster whose information led to Hallums' release was captured just a few hours before the operation.

Hallums, formerly of Newport Beach, Calif., was kidnapped at gunpoint from his office in the Mansour district of Baghdad on Nov. 1, 2004. At the time, he was working for the Saudi Arabian Trading and Construction Co., supplying food to the Iraqi army. The kidnappers also seized a Filipino, a Nepalese and three Iraqis, but later freed them.

"Considering what he's been through, I understand he's in good condition," said Hallums' ex-wife, Susan Hallums, 53, of Corona, Calif.

The family Web site was topped with a headline: Roy IS FREE!!!!!! 9/7/05.

More than 200 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq since the war began in March 2003; more than 30 have been killed.

The rescue coincided with two deadly bombings detonated around the southern city of Basra. A roadside bomb killed four private American security agents working for the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security. And an Interior Ministry official said 16 people were killed and 21 were injured in a car bombing at a restaurant in a central market.

Reuters, JERUSALEM

Sept 8: An Israeli rights watchdog accused Israeli soldiers on Wednesday of killing five unarmed Palestinians in a recent raid, and said the assassination of West Bank Arabs had become routine.

An army spokesman dismissed the findings of the B'tselem rights group, which said that three of the five killed in the August 24 raid were unarmed 17-year-olds while the other two were civilian supporters of militant groups.

B'tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli said the army's actions showed Israeli soldiers exercised little restraint with their weapons in arrest raids. "Our research raises a grave suspicion that execution of Palestinians in so-called 'arrest operations' has become a norm among the security forces," she said.

The killings in Tulkarm refugee camp marked one of Israel's deadliest raids in the occupied territory in weeks. The army said it was aimed at arresting armed militants suspected of involvement in suicide bombings in Israel and the West Bank.

The Israeli army stood by its version of events that said four of the five men were armed, wanted militants and that troops tried to arrest them but drew fire and fired back.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the raid as counterproductive to efforts to preserve a fragile ceasefire with Israel. The truce smoothed Israel's pullout of settlers from occupied Gaza last month and could help revive peace talks.

The report, published in the left-wing daily Haaretz, quoted witnesses as saying they heard soldiers calling out to the men -- some of whom were in a courtyard -- to stop, then firing without waiting for them to surrender.

It said that shortly before the start of the raid, witnesses reported seeing a senior Hamas militant, Ribhi Amara, and other wanted militants at the scene but that they escaped down a side alley before the troops arrived.

Israel's army chief, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, told legislators on Wednesday that the raid was designed as an arrest operation but things changed after soldiers came under fire.

"Troops came to make an arrest but they were shot at and they then returned fire...," Halutz told parliament's Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee. "We did not get the senior man we were looking for, but we did get other wanted men."

But the army spokesman said an inquiry had been ordered into the shooting of the fifth Palestinian, who was wounded at the scene and later died in an Israeli hospital.

Halutz also said the raid was ill-timed as it came a day after settler evacuations were completed. "There was a misjudgment in the timing as it created a negative effect which could have spurred (fresh) attacks at a time of calm."

Human-rights groups say Israeli troops have used excessive force against Palestinians and that very few cases in which Palestinian civilians have been killed have led to convictions.

The army says troops do their utmost to avoid causing civilian casualties and are much more reticent in using live fire during raids as actions are carefully scrutinized but that militants often use densely populated neighborhoods as cover.

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Sept 8: French medical records show it is highly unlikely that poisoning or AIDS caused the death of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in a Paris hospital last year, The New York Times reported on Thursday. The newspaper, in a report from Jerusalem, said it obtained the records and they showed Arafat died of a stroke that resulted from a bleeding disorder caused by an unknown ailment. An independent review of the records, The New York Times said, showed that despite extensive testing, Arafat's doctors could not determine the underlying disease that killed him. Arafat died on Nov. 11 at the age of 75 after being rushed from his West Bank compound to a French military hospital. Arafat's gaunt appearance as he emerged from his headquarters and was taken to a helicopter on the start of his final journey to France led to speculation he was suffering from AIDS.

But The New York Times said independent experts who reviewed the medical records at its request determined that the course of Arafat's illness and pattern of his symptoms made AIDS highly unlikely. "They also suggest that poisoning was highly unlikely,", the newspaper added, although senior Palestinian officials continue to allege he was indeed poisoned. According to the New York Times, a senior Palestinian official, who it did not name, gave the medical records to two Israeli journalists who agreed to share them in collaboration with the U.S. newspaper, which did its own investigation. The newspaper said Arafat did not receive antibiotics until 15 days after the onset of his illness, which was originally diagnosed as a flu.

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Sept 8: Britain won India's support on Thursday for its bid to crack down on incitement of terrorism as UK corporate chiefs pushed for new business in the emerging market powerhouse.

Prime Minister Tony Blair also discussed migration and United Nations reform with his Indian counterpart at a luxury lakeside spa resort overlooking the historic city of Udaipur in Rajasthan.

The talks, held at the opulent Udaivilas, a palace-like hotel of turrets and domes on the banks of Lake Pichola, marked the end of a four-day Asian tour by Blair to promote trade and cooperation at EU and UK levels.

Britain holds the rotating EU presidency.

As Blair met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, chiefs of British beermakers, mobile phone companies and airlines sought out new deals in a country that is projected to be the world's third-largest economy by mid-century. Britain is the third-largest investor in India, and business leaders say trade has great growth potential.

"The energy and vitality that there is...has the most enormous possibilities for both our countries," Blair told Indian business chiefs before flying to Udaipur.

Blair has called on India to further open its markets to foreign goods, banks and service providers and has sent a stern message to European leaders who think protectionism and trade barriers can spare them from competition from India.

During Blair's trip, India criticised the EU for erecting unfair trade barriers to its products. Many countries fear the emergence of a vast economic power with cheap labour. India's economy, the third largest in Asia, is set to grow a robust 7 percent in the fiscal year ending in March 2006.

At the talks at Udaivilas -- overlooking a 16th century white palace that sits in the centre of the lake -- Singh offered backing for a United Nations resolution Britain has submitted.

The resolution, to be discussed by leaders of nations on the global body's Security Council on Sept. 14, calls on countries to crack down on those who incite or encourage terrorism.

"They are supportive of it," Blair's spokesman said.

Although India is not a signatory to the Kyoto treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the spokesman said India had agreed that climate change had to be tackled. Nuclear energy was also on the agenda.

Blair and other world leaders are keen to enlist the support of India and China on global warming, concerned that their own efforts to stem pollution will be offset by the emerging giants.

Blair also got a taste of India's underdevelopment en route to Udaipur, whose lakeside palace was used as the backdrop to the 1983 James Bond film "Octopussy" and where the descendant of a maharaja who once ruled the fiefdom still lives.

Several hundred local people stood behind police cordons of bamboo, outside dilapidated buildings or atop old bits of farm machinery, some waving as the prime minister's convoy passed.

The convoy was forced to slow several times as small herds of thin cattle meandered across the road.

The shacks and old buildings stood in stark contrast to the marble elephants and glistening fountains of Udaivilas in what is a prime tourist destination but which has suffered in past years from a lack of rain.

Monsoons rains that fell several months ago after a six-year drought filled the dry lake overnight, locals said.

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Sept 8: A woman was killed and 62 passengers were wounded in a stampede following a bomb hoax aboard a Saudi Arabian Airlines jumbo jet which was about to take off from Sri Lanka's Colombo airport, officials said.

Six people, including four women, were taken to the nearby Negombo Base hospital where one of the women, a Sri Lankan national, died from her injuries, a hospital spokesman said Thursday.

"One woman died after admission to the hospital," the spokesman said.

The Jeddah-bound Boeing 747-300 aircraft, with more than 400 passengers, was not scheduled to take off after the incident Thursday and the airline said it was making arrangements to send passengers to nearby hotels.

Airport chief Tiran Alles said 18 more people were taken to another hospital in the capital Colombo, 35 kilometres (21 miles) to the south, while others had minor injuries which did not require hospitalisation.

"A call had come to the airport switchboard warning of a bomb," Alles told AFP. "The control tower in turn had informed the pilots (of the Saudi Arabian flight SV 781) who were preparing to take off.

"The pilots opened the emergency exits and passengers panicked and jumped off. Most of them were injured in a stampede."

Alles said a search of the aircraft confirmed that the call was a hoax and there was no disruption to other flights at the island's only international airport.

The incident came a day after peacebroker Norway announced it had suggested the airport, named after President Chandrika Kumaratunga's late father and former prime minister Solomon Bandaranaike, as a neutral venue for talks with Tamil Tiger rebels.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rejected the site in a notice posted on their website Thursday after the bomb hoax.

Aviation Minister Mangala Samaraweera could not comment on whether there was a link between the suggestion of the airport as a venue and the bomb hoax.

"I don't have enough information yet to make a connection and at the moment we can only speculate," Samaraweera told AFP. "We are currently investigating and I am told the situation at the airport is normal."

Thursday's incident was the worst at Bandaranaike international airport since a July 24, 2001 suicide bomb attack by Tamil rebels that destroyed six aircraft of the national carrier Sri Lankan Airlines.

A total of 14 suspected Tamil Tiger rebels and seven security personnel were killed in that attack while no civilians were hurt.

However the rebels destroyed more than a dozen military aircraft parked in the adjoining military airbase.

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Sept 8: North Korea demanded on Thursday that the United States withdraw its troops from South Korea to prove Washington doesn't plan to attack the North - a perceived threat the communist state has used to justify its nuclear weapons program.

The North's demand is not new, but comes just a week before six-nation talks on its nuclear ambitions are scheduled to resume. North Korea has repeatedly said it can't dismantle its nuclear program unless the United States drops its "hostile" policy.

On Thursday, the Rodong Sinmun, the North's main newspaper, claimed the United States is driving a "fire cloud of war" over the Korean Peninsula by positioning state-of-the-art military hardware in the South and preparing for a pre-emptive nuclear attack against the North.

"If the United States truly has no intention of northward invasion ... it must substantiate that with a brave decision to withdraw the U.S. troops," the newspaper said in a commentary carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

About 32,500 American troops are stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against threats from the North. The United States has said repeatedly it has no intention of invading.

But North Korea said a recent U.S.-South Korean military exercise proved Washington was planning an invasion. The 12-day drill that ended this month was largely a computer-simulated war game that U.S. and South Korean officials say is purely defensive.

North Korea cited the exercise as a reason to delay the resumption of the international arms talks in Beijing until next week, two weeks later than previously agreed.

The latest stumbling block at the talks is how to reconcile North Korea's demand that it has a right to a civilian nuclear program with the U.S. position that the communist state shouldn't be allowed any nuclear program at all because of its record of broken promises.

U.S. Reps. Tom Lantos and James Leach, who returned to Washington this week from a trip to the North, said they expressed impatience to officials there about their complaints of perceived hostility, including the recent military exercise and the appointment of an American envoy on human rights for North Korea.

"There is no hostility on the part of the United States," Rep. Tom Lantos said Wednesday. "We are getting tired of listening to these old, tired and meaningless cliches, and they have to move on."

The lawmakers also warned the North that the United States, focused on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is running out of patience with North Korea's continued refusal to scrap its nuclear weapons.

"Both the American people and the Congress will be singularly impatient with diplomatic dilatory tactics from North Korea" when talks resume, Lantos said. "If an agreement can be reached on principles, the climate will begin to change; it will become more constructive and more positive."

The nuclear row broke out in late 2002 after U.S. officials said the North admitted having a secret nuclear program in violation of an earlier deal to abandon its weapons ambitions. The two Koreas technically remain in a state of war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

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Sept 8: Supporters of formal independence for Taiwan gathered by the Presidential Office on Thursday to raise a flag and mark what they call the island's day of independence from Japan and rival China.

The activists chose Sep. 8 because it is the anniversary of the 1951 San Francisco Treaty, in which Japan gave up its territorial claim over Taiwan.

Japan ruled the island from 1895 to 1945. China's Nationalists then took over, and retreated from mainland China to Taiwan in 1949 as they were losing a brutal civil war with the Communists.

The Communist government in Beijing still claims sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan. In March, China's legislature passed a law authorizing an attack against the island if it moved toward formal independence.

More than a thousand independence supporters chanted songs and prayed as the blue, white and green flag slowly rose above a stage erected on the main road leading to Taipei's Presidential Office building.

The flag has a red sun in the middle with the Chinese characters for "Taiwan Nation."

The activists want the next president to introduce a constitution for an independent Taiwan after taking office in 2008.

Opinion polls regularly indicate that only about 15 percent of Taiwanese favor a formal declaration of independence.

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Sept 8: Saddam Hussein's chief attorney denied on Thursday that the ousted leader had confessed to ordering executions and waging a campaign against Kurds in which thousands of people are said to have been killed. "There was no confession by the president and all the investigations in this case do not implicate him at all," Khalil Dulaimi said in a statement sent to Reuters.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told state television on Tuesday that an investigator who questioned Saddam told him he had extracted important confessions from him and that the ousted leader had signed them.

But Talabani did not say if Saddam had actually admitted to committing any crimes or merely acknowledged that he was head of state and commander in chief of the army at the time of various military operations.

Dulaimi last saw Saddam on Monday, only days after the government said the former leader's trial on a single charge of mass killings in reprisal for a 1982 assassination attempt would begin on Oct. 19.

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Sept 8: Terror suspects could be fitted with tracking devices under tough new laws which would also increase detention powers, make inciting violence a crime and tighten citizenship rules, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Thursday.

The moves were prompted by the London bombings and the perception that Australia was at risk of a similar attack, he told a news conference. Howard called a meeting of leaders of Australia's 300,000-strong Islamic community last month to enlist their help in fighting extremism, and will present the planned new legislation to a follow-up summit with state government premiers on September 27.

Asked whether radical Muslim clerics could be deported under the new legislation, Howard said he believed "that people who are dual citizens do run the risk of being deprived of their Australian citizenship if they break a relevant Australian law".

The period of waiting for citizenship approval would be increased from two to three years, with extended security checks "so that citizenship applications can be refused on security grounds," he said.

Anyone identified as posing "a terrorist risk to the community" could be subject to 12-month "control orders" under which they could be fitted with tracking devices and have their movements and contacts with others restricted, Howard said.

The government would also create new offences including inciting violence against the community or Australian troops abroad. Australia has troops in Iraq as part of the US-led coalition, and their deployment has been strongly criticised by local Muslims, among others. Howard said, however, that the new law would not restrict normal criticism of the government or freedom of speech.

"It won't stop legitimate political comment. People will still be able to attack the government for having sent troops to Iraq or Afghanistan... but there is a difference between saying the troops should come home and actually encouraging people to attack them," he said.

Australian states would also be urged to introduce longer periods of preventative detention, allowing people to be held without charge for up to 14 days.

Describing the changes as "significant", Howard said the intelligence agency's right to monitor people's movements and conversations would be extended while police would be given greater powers to stop, question and search people.

The government was trying to balance the rights of individuals against the needs of the community, he said.

"We are very conscious that in all of these things a balance has to be struck between the liberty of the subject and the right of the community to be protected.

"We are, unfortunately, living in an era and time when unusual but necessary measures are needed to cope with an unusual and threatening situation."

The attacks on the London transport system in July showed the need for the detention of those acting in concert with terrorists, he said. "Nobody likes the fact that we have to do these things

Sept 8: Wanting to be as punctual as possible, Japan will next year move its clocks ahead-by one second.

Japan will head one second into the future on January 1, 2006 when it adjusts the high-precision atomic clock, which keeps Japan Standard Time using advanced physics.

The "leap-second" is being added onto the clock in line with a global effort to make official time in synch with the Earth's orbit, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology said.

The institute said that standard time should not be 0.9 of a second faster or slower than the actual astronomic time. The last time the atomic clock had a second added on was seven years ago.

Japan is not used to adjusting clocks, being the only major industrialized nation that does not practice daylight savings.

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Sept 8: China's main Communist Party newspaper, the People's Daily, assailed the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina, saying Washington had been negligent and looters showed the dark side of American life.

"In the face of the hurricane, Americans accepted the challenge but failed to beat it off," the newspaper said in an editorial on its English-language Web site this week. "This is really a shame on the United States," it said. "New Orleans has become Baghdad."

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Sept 8: Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger guerrillas have rejected peace broker Norway's call to hold talks on salvaging their fragile truce with the Colombo government at the island's only international airport.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said they turned down the venue as they did not think it was suitable to conduct "serious political discussions". Norway on Wednesday annouced plans to hold the talks at Bandaranaike International Airport and the Colombo government immediately agreed to the venue. The latest LTTE announcement has restored the deadlock over the talks.

Sept 8: A Kashmiri militant and an Indian policeman were killed, and three security personnel wounded, in a gun and grenade battle in Indian Kashmir on Thursday, police said.

The militant had been hiding in a Srinigar house since launching an attack the previous day that also left one police officer and one insurgent dead, near the city's central secretariat. "We traced him this morning and asked him to surrender," a police officer said. "He instead opened fire and hurled grenades that left a policeman dead and three other security force personnel injured."

AP, NEW ORLEANS

Sept 8: Soldiers toting M-16s strengthened their grip on this swamped city as concerns grew about the risks posed by the toxic floodwaters and officials braced for what could be a staggering death toll by readying 25,000 body bags.

Across miles of ravaged neighborhoods of clapboard houses, grand estates and housing projects, workers struggled to find corpses and convince the city's last stubborn residents to leave.

Searchers were armed with proof of what many holdouts had long feared: The floodwaters are thick with sewage-related bacteria that are at least 10 times higher than acceptable safety limits. The muck contains E. coli, certain viruses and a type of cholera-like bacteria.

"If you haven't left the city yet, you must do so," Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday. She urged anyone coming into contact with the water to scrub with soap and water.

The danger of infection wasn't limited to the New Orleans area. The bacteria is feared to have migrated to crowded shelters outside the state, where many evacuees are staying.

Four deaths - one a storm victim sent to Texas, the other three in Mississippi - have been attributed to wound infections, said Tom Skinner, spokesman for the CDC.

Officials readied for the potential of a horrendous death toll. Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Hospitals, said officials have 25,000 body bags on hand in Louisiana. Asked if authorities expected that many bodies, he said: "We don't know what to expect."

Mayor C. Ray Nagin had earlier said New Orleans' death toll could reach 10,000. Already, a temporary warehouse morgue in rural St. Gabriel that had been prepared to take 1,000 bodies was being readied to handle 5,000. The official death toll in Mississippi climbed to 201 Wednesday, but more than 1,000 are feared dead there, too.

That grim news was tempered somewhat by indications that Katrina victims could soon get federal money in their pockets - and even in the mail.

The Federal Emergency Manage-ment Agency, stung by criticism that it failed to act fast enough when Katrina hit, was prepared to hand out $2,000 debit cards for each household affected by the storm. At the Houston Astrodome where many New Orleans evacuees are being housed, long lines formed to register.

"The concept is to get them some cash in hand which allows them, empowers them, to make their own decisions about what do they need to have to start rebuilding," said Michael Brown, FEMA's head.

In addition, the US Postal Office has delivered some 15,000 Social Security cheques to collection points in areas affected by Katrina.

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Sept 8: Hurricane Katrina has blown up a storm in the US Congress with Democrats piling the pressure on President George W. Bush's administration over the handling of the catastrophe.

With one inquiry already launched by the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the chamber's Health Committee was to wade into the debate on Thursday with a hearing on how to rebuild the communities devastated by last week's storm, feared to have left thousands dead.

Democrats are demanding an independent inquiry into the government response to the Gulf Coast storm and have started a petition seeking the sacking of the much-criticised head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Michael Brown.

Bush's majority Republicans only agreed Wednesday to a joint Senate-House of Representatives investigation to look into the actions of "all levels of government."

Bush, who has also promised to lead his own inquiry, would not say whether any aides would be fired over the slow response that he has admitted was unacceptable.

With the bodies not yet collected from the streets of New Orleans and hundreds of thousands of people in emergency shelters, their livelihoods ruined, Democrats have quickly broken off the political unity that followed the storm. Congress is expected to give the administration another 51.8 billion dollars this week to further fund the relief and reconstruction effort. But Democrat attacks have rained down on the administration over the hurricane errors.

Senator Hillary Clinton, a possible presidential candidate in 2008, has led the charge, calling for an inquiry like the one, at first resisted by Bush, that looked into the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"I don't think either the president or the Congress can conduct the kind of objective, independent investigation that we need," the New York senator said Wednesday in one of many US television interviews that all took aim at Bush.

The president and other top administration members have insisted that the federal government cannot be blamed alone for the errors of judgment and action.

They have suggested that any inquiry will have to look at the links between federal and local authorities in handling such disasters-hinting that the federal authorities should take a stronger hand.

The Democratic mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, and governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, have both accused Washington of holding up the rescue. But a USA Today survey released Wednesday said 25 percent of Americans criticised local authorities and 18 percent the Louisiana state for the chaos.

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Sept 8: Nine out of 10 U.S schools offer snack food or soda to students in direct competition with school lunches, the U.S. General Accountability Office reported on Wednesday.

Some, but not all, of the snacks are "junk" food. Consumer groups and some politicians have called for immediate legislation to regulate the nutritional content of what foods schools can offer-even those in vending machines.

The GAO report found that 83 percent of elementary schools, 97 percent of middle schools, and 99 percent of high schools offered "competitive" foods for sale-meaning food outside the National School Lunch or School Breakfast Programmes.

The report, based on two nationally representative surveys, found that even though several states had enacted policies on offering junk food, it was still widely available. "Nearly 9 out of 10 schools sold competitive foods to students in school year 2003-2004, and the availability of competitive foods sold in middle schools and through a la carte lines has increased over the last five years," the GAO report reads.

"Schools often sold these foods in or near the cafeteria and during lunch, and the competitive foods available ranged from nutritious items such as fruit and milk to less nutritious items such as soda and candy," it added.

The reason the competitive foods are offered is usually money, the GAO said. "Many schools, particularly high schools and middle schools, generated substantial revenues through competitive food sales in 2003-2004," the report reads.

"Specifically, the nearly 30 percent of high schools generating the most revenue from these sales raised more than $125,000 per school."

The GAO noted that the nutritional value of such foods is "largely unregulated".

Many are sugary or fatty snacks that contribute to obesity.

"This study should be a wake up call to all Americans, and specifically to those of us in Congress who have stood idly by as more and more junk food inundates our schools," said Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, who requested the report.

"If we are serious about combating the childhood obesity epidemic and improving child nutrition, then everyone must chip in-parents, schools, and yes even Congress."

The American Beverage Association issued a statement saying it had new guidelines that would stop the sale of soft drinks in elementary schools and restrict sales in middle schools to "nutritious" or lower-calorie beverages such as sports drinks, no-calorie soft drinks, and low-calorie juice drinks during the school day.

Sept 8: Pakistan should have the same access to US civilian nuclear technology that President George W. Bush has proposed for India, the Pakistani ambassador to the United States said.

Jehangir Karamat, Pakistan's former army chief, also warned that "the balance of power in South Asia should not become so tilted in India's favor, as a result of the US relationship with India, that Pakistan has to start taking extraordinary measures to ensure a capability for deterrence and defense."

The Bush administration is working to persuade Congress to approve a deal that would ship civilian nuclear technology to India in return for New Delhi's placing its civilian facilities under safeguards of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency. On Thursday, two undersecretaries of state, Nicholas Burns and Robert Joseph, were to testify before a House International Relations Committee hearing on the India-US nuclear agreement.

"Whatever legislation is made shouldn't be a specific, one-time affair just for India," Karamat told The Associated Press, "but should leave the door open for other countries that meet the same criteria and show good responsibility and satisfy the United States' concerns."

Critics, however, contend that Pakistan's is a different case from India's. A.Q. Khan, a national hero known as the father of Pakistan's bomb, ran a network smuggling nuclear weapons technology.

Doubts also have arisen about Pakistan's commitment to democracy. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf seized power in a bloodless military coup in 1999 and has failed to resign as the army chief, as he promised to do.

Neither Pakistan nor India is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the cornerstone of global efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons. Before nuclear technology can be shared with India, Congress must approve an exception to a US law that bans civilian nuclear cooperation with countries that have not submitted to the treaty's full nuclear inspections.

Michael Krepon, a South Asia analyst at the Henry L. Stimson Center, said that with India and Pakistan locked in a nuclear arms race, both are sensitive to perceived special treatment from the United States. The neighbors have fought three wars since 1947, when they left the British Empire, and came close to another in 2002.

"This is a very serious competition," Krepon said. "If present trends continue, India and Pakistan could very well have greater nuclear capabilities than France and Great Britain, looking down the road."

Ambassador Karamat said Pakistani officials have yet to approach the Bush administration about civilian nuclear energy cooperation, but Pakistan plans eventually to broach the subject.

He mentioned the strong military ties between the two countries, which include US training Pakistani soldiers and selling weapons to Pakistan. Musharraf was a vital US ally in the war in neighboring Afghanistan in late 2001 that ousted the that country's Taliban militia rulers and the al-Qaida fighters they sheltered.

Pakistan has requested between 75 and 100 US F-16 fighter jets, Karamat said, although the two sides haven't yet settled the specific number or cost. Two of the jets will be shipped in December, he said, but a price has not been determined.

The ambassador acknowledged widespread criticism of Pakistan's nuclear program, especially "concerns on proliferation" – a reference to Khan's activities.

"I think that those concerns have been largely met and satisfied," Karamat said. "The whole structure on the ground for physical security and control of those (nuclear) assets and the various steps that have been taken to prevent accidents and illegal transfers - those are now foolproof, and the US is aware of that."

Karamat served as army chief from 1996 to 1998. When asked if he knew of Khan's nuclear network then, he said: "There was no question of ever even thinking that such a thing could be happening. ... Indulging this activity would have been totally counterproductive to everything we were trying to do."

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Sept 8: Secretary-General Kofi Annan, his deputy and the UN Security Council all share blame for mismanagement of the oil-for-food programme that allowed Saddam Hussein to rake in more than $10 billion, investigators said on Wednesday.

A yearlong probe of the $64 humanitarian programme for Iraq castigated top UN officials for tolerating corruption and faulted the 15-member Security Council for turning a blind eye to oil smuggling and other illicit earnings outside of the programme, a violation of UN trade sanctions.

The now-defunct operation, which allowed Saddam, the ousted Iraqi president, to sell oil to buy food and medicine, "was a compact with the devil an

d a devil had means for manipulating the programme to his ends," said Paul Volcker, a former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, who chaired the inquiry.

Annan himself addressed the Security Council, saying, "The report is critical of me personally and I accept its criticism." He said the findings were "deeply embarrassing to us all" but that he had no intention of resigning.

At a news conference, Volcker said his Independent Inquiry Committee "found no corruption by the secretary general."

But he said that Annan's "behavior has not been exonerated by any stretch of the imagination."

The report called for sweeping reforms, a week before world leaders gather for a UN summit to consider a host of Annan's proposals, including management and financial controls. But many of the initiatives are deadlocked because of sharp divisions among the 191 countries.

The oil-for-food programme, which began late in 1996 and ended in 2003, was aimed at easing the impact of the sanctions, imposed in 1990 after Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait and achieved considerable success in feeding Iraqis.

But illicit oil sale surcharges, kickbacks and smuggling schemes "provided Saddam Hussein and his regime with access to hard currency outside of the control" of the programme, said the report which ran to more than 1,000 pages in five volumes.

The panel said there had been a lack of supervision of the programme.

It was headed by Cypriot Benon Sevan, who was accused earlier of fraud, by Annan and by his deputy, Louise Frechette.

"No one seemed in command," Volcker said. Iraq, the report said, set aside $15 million in 1995 to bribe former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who set up the programme before he left office in 1996.

The intermediaries, now being prosecuted by U.S. federal authorities, were said to be Iraqi-American businessman Samir Vincent and Tongson Park, a South Korean lobbyist and center of a bribery scandal in Washington in the 1970s.

At one point Vincent passed some $60,000 in cash to Park in a shopping bag, the report said. But it said there was no evidence Boutros-Ghali, a friend of Park, had received money.

The report detailed the extent to which Kojo Annan, the 31-year old son of the secretary-general by his first wife, lobbied at the United Nations for a lucrative contract for the Swiss firm Cotecna, which inspected goods coming into Iraq.

Among other actions, Kojo was said to have made a string of phone calls to a UN procurement official and his father's personal assistant at key moments in the Cotecna bidding process. Both were friends of the family.

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Sept 8: The hundreds of Cuban doctors Fidel Castro has offered the United States to help Hurricane Katrina victims have practised medicine in crises worldwide: last year's tsunami in Asia, cholera outbreaks in Africa, devastating flooding in Haiti.

But their biggest challenge now is enduring the wait for an answer from the US government to Castro's proposal to send them to care for some of the thousands of sick and injured people whose lost homes and loved ones last week in the surging storm waters.

"We are anxiously waiting, every moment, for a positive response," said Dr. Jesus Satorre, a 33-year-old cardiologist with wide overseas experience who was part of an international team sent to Guinea Bissau to tackle a cholera crisis in 2002.

"It would be marvelous to be elbow-to-elbow with the American doctors, helping these people, saving lives for the love of humanity," Satorre said Wednesday at Havana's Latin American Medical School.

, where the more than 1,500 physicians are living in dormitories and brushing up on their English with awaiting word.

The offer places Havana's old foe, the US government, in an uncomfortable situation-to either accept help from a nation it has characterized as an "outpost of tyranny" or risk being accused of putting politics before the lives of its own people.

Cuba's original offer of 1,100 doctors - reportedly first made in a private meeting with American diplomats here on Aug. 30, then reiterated twice publicly by Castro over the weekend - has grown to 1,586 as physicians moved by the images of human suffering in New Orleans signed up.

The US State Department has said it is undecided about the offer from Cuba, which has not had diplomatic relations with the United States for more than four decades.

While the US government has not flatly rejected the offer, "it hasn't accepted it, either," noted Phil Peters, a Cuba specialist at the Lexington Institute, a study institute outside Washington D.C.

"If we accept Cuban doctors, a public "thank you" would be in order," Peters added. "There would be an outcry among the president's strongest supporters in Miami ... Given all that it's a safe bet that we will quietly thank Cuba for the offer but the doctors will stay in Havana."

"We will wait as many days as necessary," Castro said Sunday when he gathered the doctors, equipped with new white smocks and olive green backpacks stuffed with medical supplies, to thank them for volunteering their services to save American lives.

"If the answer is 'no,' it could be the first time that Cuba has prepared an emergency medical team only to be rejected," said Dr. Jorge Delegado Bustillo, a 55-year-old epidemiologist who recently headed a Cuban medical team in South Africa.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack suggested that the Cuban doctors wouldn't be needed because a government appeal for help "has seen a robust response from the American medical community." But he said all options would be considered.

"In the event there are needs, we will look for every available source," McCormack said Tuesday. "We haven't ruled anyone out. This is going to be a long, long process."

General practitioner Dr. Daniel Posada, who worked on the Indonesian island of Sumatra after last year's devastating tsunami, said the team could help in any way needed, including retrieval of cadavers.

An air charter company, Gulfstream International, has even offered to fly the doctors for free to Florida, company chairman Tom Cooper said. The company is among those charter operators allowed by both governments to fly between Cuba and the United States.

Meanwhile, Cuba, which has been careful not to criticize the lack of a response, gets to draw attention to its increasingly important overseas medical services and show a compassionate face to the American people.

Currently there are tens of thousands of Cuban doctors working on goodwill missions in developing nations, especially in Venezuela and Haiti, as well as in Africa.

Castro, however, has routinely turned down offers of US humanitarian relief for hurricanes and other disasters.

After Hurricane Dennis pummeled the island in July, he expressed gratitude but nevertheless roundly rejected the US government's offer of $50,000 (euro41,440) in aid.

In fact, Castro said Cuba would accept no American assistance while the US trade embargo of more than 40 years remains in place. "We would never accept," he said then. "If they offered $1 billion (euro824 million) we would say no."

"It was unfortunate that Cuba brushed off the American offer of aid last summer after Dennis," Peters said. "And it would be unfortunate if political factors keep medical aid from people who need it here today."

Sept 8: A former Michigan restaurant owner who had been held by the US military in Iraq since April was released this week, two months after he was cleared of any wrongdoing and a week after the American Civil Liberties Union sued.

Numan Adnan Al Kaby, 38, an Iraqi who received political asylum in the United States after the 1991 Gulf War, was taken into custody after he called in sick the day mortars were fired on a base where he was working for a US company.

He denied any knowledge of the attack, and on July 4 a military review board concluded he was innocent.

Al Kaby was released Tuesday, a week after the ACLU sued arguing that his continuing detention violated the US Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and international law.

A Pentagon representative who declined to be named was quoted in the Los Angeles Times Wednesday as saying the delay was necessary and involved making sure the military was not releasing someone who was a threat to the security of Iraq or the Iraqi people. The effort to free Al Kaby was led by Los Angeles filmmaker Cyrus Kar, who had met him during the nearly two months Kar was imprisoned in Iraq this year.

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Sept 8: Nearly 900 foreign nationals, many of them French and British, are still missing in the areas devastated last week by Hurricane Katrina, The Washington Times said Thursday.

While consular officials consulted by the daily reported some 160 French citizens and 96 Britons missing, Mexicans, especially illegal immigrants, were expected to outnumber all other nationalities, the daily said.

The US State Department Wednes-day afternoon told the newspaper that, based on numbers provided by various embassies, 883 foreign nationals were still unaccounted for in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

A spokesman for the British Embassy here said 50 Britons were located in the New Orleans' Superdome, but that 96 other nationals were still missing. At the French Embassy, a spokeswoman said 50 French had been located and that information on an additional 10 nationals had been received, but that 160 Frenchmen were yet to be found.

A Mexican consular official in Houston, Texas, told The Washington Times that it was difficult to provide a number of Mexicans still missing since many of them were undocumented.

Consular officials, who were prevented from entering the flooded streets of New Orleans until Wednesday, were now navigating and walking the inundated streets looking for their missing nationals, the daily said.

Other nationals listed as missing included five Swedes and a handful of Germans, the daily added.

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Sept 8: If prosecutor Lidia Vega has her way, Peru will win its battle to extradite ex-President Alberto Fujimori from Japan, sentence him to 20 years in prison and then throw him out of the country for another decade, local media reported.

Vega is seeking a 20-year sentence against Fujimori for seizing dictatorial power in 1992 when he commanded Peru's military to shut down Congress and the courts, the newspaper El Comercio said. Fujimori, who fled Peru in November 2000 amid a corruption scandal that toppled his decade-long authoritarian government, has denied any wrongdoing.

Fujimori and his former ministers also face kidnapping charges for the illegal detention of scores of people during a crackdown against leftist rebels, opposition politicians and journalists. He has lived in Japan, where he is protected from extradition by citizenship extended to him because he had Japanese parents.

The prosecutor also requested that Fujimori, along with 13 of his former Cabinet ministers for whom she sought sentences of 12 to 18 years, be banished from the country for 10 years following their release from prison.

A spokeswoman for Vega said the prosecutor did not want to comment on the issue but confirmed that the El Comercio report was correct.

On April 5, 1992, Fujimori sent tanks to shut down Congress and Peru's judiciary - a move he argued was necessary to fight leftist rebels and end economic chaos.

Under international pressure, Fujimori convoked a Constitutional assembly, creating the unicameral Congress and in November 1992 held new congressional elections. He was re-elected to a second term in a landslide victory three years later.

Fujimori has pledged to return from Japan to seek re-election in next year's presidential ballot, despite a standing act of Congress prohibiting him from holding public office until 2010.

Luis Delgado, secretary general of Fujimori's political party, Si Cumple, which translates roughly to "Yes, he delivers," said Wednesday that Vega's sentence recommendation was politically motivated to undermine Fujimori's campaign.

Prosecutors have filed nearly two dozen criminal charges against Fujimori, including treason, illegal wiretapping, corruption, abandoning office and authorizing a paramilitary death squad.

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Sept 8: Following total pandemonium and uproarious scene the final hearings of the Indian Delimitation Commission in Kolkata was postponed. This was the third occasion after Siliguri and Durgapur when the chairman of the Commission Justice (Retd) Kuldip Singh announced the postponement of the public hearings and said that the alternate date would be announced after consultation with the Election Commission.

Today’s hearing was arranged at the Mahajati Sadan, but noisy demonstration organised by the Congress and Trinamul Congress in and around the Commission’s rostrum created total pandemonium and chaos. The Commission was empowered to redraw both the parliamentary and assembly constituencies in West Bengal.

The modus operandi adopted by the opposition parties earlier at Siliguri and Durgapur to stall the hearings was repeated in Kolkata too. As soon as the hearings started under unprecedented security arrangement, pandemonium broke out at the Mahajati Sadan, forcing the Delimitation Commission’s chairman to cancel the hearings.

The Commission’s Kolkata hearings were scheduled to cover both Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies in Kolkata, Howrah, North and South 24-Parganas, Murshidabad and Nadia districts. Without naming any political party for today’s pandemonium, the Commission’s secretary Shangara Rao alleged that because of anti-delimitation activities of a political party, today’s programme was stalled.

The Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee alleged that people did not get any facilities to register their views on delimitation of Assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies. She blamed the state government for the administrative failure for the impasse.

The CPIM state secretary Anil Biswas accused the Congress as the first culprit for stalling the Commission’s proceedings at Mahajati Sadan. Later, Trinamul Congress activists joined the fray forcing the Commission’s chairman to suspend the public hearings.

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Sept 8: Senior government officials from Pakistan and India met yesterday (Thursday) in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad to review progress on the two countries’ plans for a pipeline that would supply gas from Iran, a government statement said.

The South Asian rivals have tentatively agreed to start building the US$4 billion (euro3.35 billion) pipeline late next year amid a thaw in relations.

After the first of two days of meetings, Sushil Chandra Tripathy, India’s petroleum secretary, expressed the hope that the pipeline project "would prove to be a milestone for prevailing mutual understanding on regional issues," according to a Pakistani Ministry of Petroleum statement.

The two sides "discussed in detail technical, commercial, financial and legal aspects," and stressed they would "work closely for commencing the project as quickly as possible," the statement said.

Iran proposed the pipeline in 1996 but the project failed to get off the ground, mainly because of Indian concerns over the pipeline’s security in Pakistan.

India and Pakistan have a history of hostile relations centered on their dispute over the Himalayan region of Kashmir. They have fought two wars over the divided region since their independence from British rule in 1947.

In early 2004, they began wide-ranging peace talks on Kashmir and other issues.

The 2,800-kilometer (1,750 mile) gas pipeline from Iran, if built, would feed the energy needs of India, which has one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

Pakistan would have access to gas from the pipeline and would earn a transit fee for gas passing through its territory.

Pakistan and India have vowed to go ahead with building the pipeline despite U.S. opposition to the project resulting from concerns over Iran’s nuclear program.

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