Libyan Al-Qaeda suspect in US: attorney
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Radiation experts confirm polonium on Arafat clothing
Arafat died in France on November 11 2004 at the age of 75, but doctors were unable to specify the cause of death
PARIS: Swiss radiation experts have confirmed they found traces of polonium on clothing used by Yasser Arafat which “support the possibility” the veteran Palestinian leader was poisoned.
In a report published by The Lancet at the weekend, the team provide scientific details to media statements made in 2012 that they had found polonium on Arafat’s belongings.
Arafat died in France on November 11 2004 at the age of 75, but doctors were unable to specify the cause of death. No autopsy was carried out at the time, in line with his widow’s request.
His remains were exhumed in November 2012 and samples taken, partly to investigate whether he had been poisoned – a suspicion that grew after the assassination of Russian ex-spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
That investigation is ongoing, conducted separately by teams in France, Switzerland and Russia.
In the Lancet report, eight scientists working at the Institute of Radiation Physics and University Centre of Legal Medicine in Lausanne said they had carried out radiological tests on 75 samples.
Thirty-eight samples came from Arafat’s belongings, including underwear, a shapka hat, toothbrush, a hospital cap and sportswear, that were provided by the Palestinian leader’s widow Suha Arafat.
These were checked against 37 “reference” samples of cotton clothing that had been kept in an attic for 10 years and protected from dust.
“Several samples containing body fluid stains (blood and urine) contained higher unexplained polonium 210 activities than the reference samples,” says the case report.
“These findings support the possibility of Arafat’s poisoning with polonium 210.”
The polonium samples were measured at “several mBq,” or millibecquerels, a unit of radioactivity.
Computer modelling, which calculates polonium’s very fast decay, found that these levels “are compatible with a lethal ingestion of several GBq,” or several billion becquerels, in 2004, they said.
Beatrice Schaad, head of communications at the Vaudois University Hospital Centre which is in charge of the institute, said the Lancet case report was the “scientific version” of what was given to the media.
“There is nothing new compared with what was said” in 2012, she told AFP. “There is still no conclusion that he was poisoned.”
India temple stampede in Madhya Pradesh 'kills 89'
Eyewitness Atul Chaudhary: "We saw people jumping into the river"
Some 89 pilgrims, mostly women and children, have been killed in a stampede at a Hindu festival in central India, local officials have said.
Many were crushed after panic broke out on a bridge near the Ratangarh temple in Madhya Pradesh state. Others died when they jumped from the bridge.
Officials said the stampede may have been sparked by a rumour that the bridge was about to collapse.
Hundreds of thousands had gathered near the town of Datia for the festival.
Local devotee Atul Chaudhary, who survived the crush, told BBC Hindi there had been a couple of thousand people on the bridge.
He heard screams, and people began rushing to get off the bridge.
"Several people could be seen flattened to the ground in the midst of the melee," he said.
"Some of the youngsters panicked and jumped into the swollen river.
"I and my friends were close to the exit point and along with several others ran for safety. Scores of others were not so lucky."
The narrow bridge is about 500m long, and had only recently been rebuilt following another stampede in 2007.
Madhya Pradesh health minister Narottam Mishra said 89 people were confirmed to have died.
"The cause of the stampede is a matter of judicial inquiry. Information from locals suggests that rumours of the bridge giving way could have led to the stampede," he said.
Other reports suggested that police sparked panic by using batons to control the crowd.
Officials said the dead included 42 women, 30 children and 17 men.
Emergency crews and specialist divers were still searching the river for bodies.
BBC Map
Local official Sanket Bhondve said the immediate priority was to provide relief to those injured.
The accident happened at about 09:00 (03:30 GMT), but information was slow to emerge because the temple is in a remote area with erratic mobile-phone coverage.
Hindu festivals in India are notorious for deadly stampedes.
In the past year, dozens have died in three similar tragedies.
In 2011 more than 100 died at a festival in the southern state of Kerala.
Inside Jodhpur's Mehrangarh Fort, more than 220 people were killed in 2008 in a stampede at the Chamunda Devi Hindu temple.
Higgs, Englert get Physics Nobel for God particle research
Chairman Gunnar Ingelman, left, permanent secretary Staffan Normark, centre, and board member Olga Botner of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announce award of 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics to Briton Peter Higgs and Belgian Francois Englert, during a press conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Tuesday.
The Nobel Prize for physics in 2013 has been awarded to Peter Higgs and Francois Englert, a Briton and a Belgian, "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider".
Almost 50 years ago in 1964, Englert and Robert Brout, who died in 2011, and Peter Higgs independently published their work in the span of a few days. They had described a mechanism making use of what was known about particle physics at that time to try to answer a perplexing problem. How do particles acquire mass?
Higgs and Englert hypothesised a quantum field, which is a distribution of some energy, throughout the universe. When the field is disturbed, waves travel through it. The dimmest possible wave is called a particle. In this field, since called a Higgs field, the associated particle is called the Higgs boson.
For physicists, finding the Higgs boson meant that the Higgs field exists. And because of the Higgs field and its properties, any fundamental particles that wade through it cause Higgs bosons to clump around the particles. This clumping causes the particle to acquire energy and, therefore, mass.
The existence of the Higgs boson was confirmed at the Large Hadron Collider, near Geneva, Switzerland, over the last year. On July 4, 2012, first hints of the boson's existence were spotted at the collider. Ever since, a series of tests on the particle have yielded confirmation.
Apart from Peter Higgs, Francois Englert and Robert Brout, other people who contributed significantly to the concept of a Higgs mechanism include Tom Kibble from the UK and Robert Guralnick from the USA.
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Syrian chemical arms drive is to Assad's ' credit', says Kerry
NUSA DUA: US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday said Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad could take "credit" for quickly starting the process of destroying his regime's chemical weapons arsenal and thanked Russia for its help.
"The process has begun in record time and we are appreciative for the
Russian cooperation and obviously for the Syrian compliance," he told reporters alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after talks in Indonesia.
"I think it's extremely significant that yesterday, Sunday, within a week of the (UN) resolution being passed, some chemical weapons were being destroyed," Kerry said.
"I think it's a credit to the Assad regime, frankly. It's a good beginning and we welcome a good beginning."
Experts destroyed missile warheads, aerial bombs and chemical mixing
equipment Sunday on the first day of the campaign to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons, the UN said, after an alleged attack on civilians by pro-Assad forces brought the threat of US-led intervention.
The operation, performed by Syrian personnel under the supervision of
international disarmament experts, took place under the terms of a UN Security Council resolution that will see Damascus relinquish the banned arms.
Russia pushed the UN disarmament drive as an alternative to US-led strikes on Syria, whose civil war had expected to feature in bilateral talks between presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin on the margins of a regional summit in Indonesia.
But Obama scrapped trips to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
summit in Bali and the subsequent East Asia summit in Brunei because of the federal budget crisis gripping the United States, sending Kerry in his stead.
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Pentagon recalls most furloughed civilians
WASHINGTON: Most of the estimated 350,000 civilian employees furloughed by the Defense Department during the US government shutdown will be recalled to work, the Pentagon said Saturday.
In a conference call with reporters, Department of Defense officials roughly estimated some 90 percent or more of civilian employees would be allowed to return to their jobs, and aimed to bring many back as soon as Monday.
“These people want to get back to work, and we want them back at work,” Undersecretary of Defense and Comptroller Robert Hale told reporters.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Pentagon lawyers had concluded the Pay Our Military Act, signed by US President Obama earlier in the week, allows employees “whose responsibilities contribute to the morale, well-being, capabilities and readiness of service members” to be exempted from the shutdown.
“I expect us to be able to significantly reduce — but not eliminate — civilian furloughs under this process,” he said.
“My guess is that we’ll bring most of them back, that no more than a few tens of thousands will remain on furlough and it may be substantially less than that,” Hale told reporters.
Much of the Defense Department’s civilian workforce is employed at bases across the country, and the military relies on them to keep equipment running and logistical networks humming.
Officials had lowered the estimated number of furloughed civilian defense employees from 400,000 to 350,000.
The move came on the fifth day of a government shutdown caused by a budget impasse between the Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-held Senate.
The Defense Department accounts for roughly half of the 800,000 government workers sent home at the start of the shutdown.
“Each of these measures that’s passed helps make it a little less painful, and hopefully paves the way for a negotiation where we can sit down and work on the bigger issues that are at stake here,” Senator John Thune told AFP.
“Though I do not believe the law required these hundreds of thousands of workers to be furloughed in the first place, it is welcome news,” Howard McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.
Earlier Saturday, the House unanimously approved a measure to pay furloughed government workers retroactively, in a another move to ease the pressure.
But there were no overt signs of negotiations to end the crisis, as leaders of both camps blamed each other.
ME: Italian centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi pulled his ministers out of the cabinet on Saturday, effectively bringing down the government of Prime Minister Enrico Letta and leaving the euro-zone's third-largest economy in chaos.
Talks will now start to find a parliamentary majority to back a new cabinet and avoid going back to an election just seven months after the last one.
The relentless political jockeying that has defined Letta's five-month tenure has already thwarted efforts to push through important reforms Italy needs to emerge from a two-year recession, a decade-long economic lethargy, a 2-trillion-euro public debt and youth unemployment of around 40 percent.
The resignations will delay those reforms even further.
"So many measures we were working on now risk being set back," Italian Labour Minister Enrico Giovannini told Rai state television. "On Monday our borrowing costs are going to rise by many points."
Berlusconi's move comes a day after Letta challenged the centre-right party to support him in a confidence vote in parliament.
Late on Friday, the cabinet failed to agree vital fiscal measures to bring the budget deficit within European Union limits, leaving the fragile coalition of traditional rivals from the left and right near total breakdown.
Tensions between the two sides had been rising for weeks following moves to expel Berlusconi from parliament after his conviction for tax fraud last month.
The Friday cabinet meeting had been intended to find funding to avert an increase in sales tax from 21 percent to 22 percent. That increase, which has been fiercely opposed by Berlusconi's party, will now kick in from Tuesday.
"The decision taken by Prime Minister Enrico Letta to freeze government activities, and therefore setting off an increase in sales tax, is a serious violation of the pacts on which this government was formed," Berlusconi said in a statement on Saturday.
Letta shot back later in the evening, accusing the former prime minister of telling a "huge lie" and of using the sales tax issue as an alibi for an action motivated by his legal problems.
Lawmakers from Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party this week threatened to walk out of parliament if a Senate committee meeting on Oct. 4 voted to begin proceedings to expel their leader, who turns 77 on Sunday, under legislation that bars convicted criminals from parliament.
Some opposition politicians called for early elections, but Deputy Economy Minister Stefano Fassina, from Letta's Democratic Party, said he expected a new coalition could be formed.
"I don't see elections. We won't go to them, we will find a solution in parliament," Fassina told La7 television. "I am sure there is a majority in parliament able to avoid elections."
NEW GROUPING
Letta has a commanding majority in the lower house, and if he can gain support from a few dozen Senators among the PDL or opposition groupings such as the anti-establishment 5-Star movement, he could form a new government.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, who has to either call new elections or oversee the creation of a new coalition and subsequent government, gave renewed signals on Saturday that he did not want the country to return to the polls.
"We need a parliament that discusses and works, not that breaks up every now and then," Napolitano said during a visit to Naples.
"We do not need continuous election campaigns, we need continuity of the government's actions, decisions and its measures to resolve the problems of this country," he said.
The political convulsions have increasingly worried investors, although with the European Central Bank guaranteeing stability in the markets, there has so far been less panic than seen during previous crises.
The ECB's next board meeting is on Wednesday.
Italy's borrowing costs hit a three-month high at an auction of 10-year bonds on Friday, while the premium investors demand to hold Italian government debt rather than German paper widened to about 267 basis points from under 250 at the start of the week.
"We are paying for our political instability," Labour Minister Giovannini told Rai.
NUSA DUA: US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday said Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad could take "credit" for quickly starting the process of destroying his regime's chemical weapons arsenal and thanked Russia for its help.
"The process has begun in record time and we are appreciative for the
Russian cooperation and obviously for the Syrian compliance," he told reporters alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after talks in Indonesia.
"I think it's extremely significant that yesterday, Sunday, within a week of the (UN) resolution being passed, some chemical weapons were being destroyed," Kerry said.
"I think it's a credit to the Assad regime, frankly. It's a good beginning and we welcome a good beginning."
Experts destroyed missile warheads, aerial bombs and chemical mixing
equipment Sunday on the first day of the campaign to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons, the UN said, after an alleged attack on civilians by pro-Assad forces brought the threat of US-led intervention.
The operation, performed by Syrian personnel under the supervision of
international disarmament experts, took place under the terms of a UN Security Council resolution that will see Damascus relinquish the banned arms.
Russia pushed the UN disarmament drive as an alternative to US-led strikes on Syria, whose civil war had expected to feature in bilateral talks between presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin on the margins of a regional summit in Indonesia.
But Obama scrapped trips to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
summit in Bali and the subsequent East Asia summit in Brunei because of the federal budget crisis gripping the United States, sending Kerry in his stead.
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Pentagon recalls most furloughed civilians
WASHINGTON: Most of the estimated 350,000 civilian employees furloughed by the Defense Department during the US government shutdown will be recalled to work, the Pentagon said Saturday.
In a conference call with reporters, Department of Defense officials roughly estimated some 90 percent or more of civilian employees would be allowed to return to their jobs, and aimed to bring many back as soon as Monday.
“These people want to get back to work, and we want them back at work,” Undersecretary of Defense and Comptroller Robert Hale told reporters.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Pentagon lawyers had concluded the Pay Our Military Act, signed by US President Obama earlier in the week, allows employees “whose responsibilities contribute to the morale, well-being, capabilities and readiness of service members” to be exempted from the shutdown.
“I expect us to be able to significantly reduce — but not eliminate — civilian furloughs under this process,” he said.
“My guess is that we’ll bring most of them back, that no more than a few tens of thousands will remain on furlough and it may be substantially less than that,” Hale told reporters.
Much of the Defense Department’s civilian workforce is employed at bases across the country, and the military relies on them to keep equipment running and logistical networks humming.
Officials had lowered the estimated number of furloughed civilian defense employees from 400,000 to 350,000.
The move came on the fifth day of a government shutdown caused by a budget impasse between the Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-held Senate.
The Defense Department accounts for roughly half of the 800,000 government workers sent home at the start of the shutdown.
“Each of these measures that’s passed helps make it a little less painful, and hopefully paves the way for a negotiation where we can sit down and work on the bigger issues that are at stake here,” Senator John Thune told AFP.
“Though I do not believe the law required these hundreds of thousands of workers to be furloughed in the first place, it is welcome news,” Howard McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.
Earlier Saturday, the House unanimously approved a measure to pay furloughed government workers retroactively, in a another move to ease the pressure.
But there were no overt signs of negotiations to end the crisis, as leaders of both camps blamed each other.
ME: Italian centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi pulled his ministers out of the cabinet on Saturday, effectively bringing down the government of Prime Minister Enrico Letta and leaving the euro-zone's third-largest economy in chaos.
Iran nuclear: Rivals rally as Rouhani returns from UN
Both supporters and opponents met Mr Rouhani on his return to Tehran
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been met by hardline protesters chanting "Death to America" on his return from the UN forum in New York.
During his trip, President Rouhani had suggested a shift in tone on Iran's controversial nuclear programme.
This culminated in a phone call with US President Barack Obama - the first such top-level conversation in 30 years.
Hundreds of people gathered at Tehran airport, with supporters hailing the trip and opponents throwing shoes.
'US initiative'
An Agence France-Presse journalist said some 200-300 supporters gathered outside the airport to thank Mr Rouhani for his efforts.
US President Barack Obama: "The test will be meaningful, transparent and verifiable actions"
But opposite them were about 60 people shouting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel".
Mr Rouhani raised his hand to the crowds as he was driven off.
A New York Times reporter described the scene as chaotic, with dozens of hardliners hurling eggs and shoes at the president's convoy.
The Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA), said: "A crowd of young people and students gathered at Mehrabad airport to show support for the president's remarks and his stance during the trip to New York."
It said Ali Akbar Velayati, senior adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a number of cabinet members also welcomed the president.
The call with Mr Obama was made just before Mr Rouhani left New York.
Mr Rouhani, quoted by the Fars news agency, said it was the US that had initiated the call, contradicting some reports in the US.
"Yesterday, as we were getting ready to head to the airport, the White House called and expressed willingness to set up a phone call between the American president and me," Fars quoted Mr Rouhani as saying upon arrival in Tehran.
The opponents were outnumbered by Mr Rouhani's supporters
Reporters described the scene as chaotic
"On our way a call was made to our ambassador's cell phone. The conversation mostly focused on the nuclear issue," he was quoted as saying.
After the call, Mr Obama said: "While there will surely be important obstacles to moving forward and success is by no means guaranteed, I believe we can reach a comprehensive solution."
Mr Rouhani, who is regarded as a moderate and was elected in June, has said he wants to reach a deal over the nuclear issue in three to six months.
He has also asserted that Iran does not seek a nuclear bomb, as Western powers have long suspected.
Mr Rouhani said initial discussions had taken place in an environment that was "quite different" from the past.
The US and China have said they expect Iran to respond to an existing offer by the US, Russia, Britain, France, China and Germany, who form a negotiating group known as the P5+1.
The group has asked Iran to halt production and stockpiling of uranium enriched to 20% - a step away from achieving a nuclear weapons capability.
It also demanded Iran shut down the Fordo underground enrichment facility, near Qom.
Substantive negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 are due to take place on 15 October, and Mr Rouhani said Iran would bring a plan to that meeting, though he did not give details.
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