SINGAPORE: Japan's Minister for Foreign Affairs Fumio Kishida will visit Singapore from Thursday till Friday.
This will be Mr Kishida's first official visit to Singapore in his current capacity.
During his visit, Mr Kishida will call on Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the Istana, and meet with Minister for Foreign Affairs and Law K Shanmugam.
Mr Shanmugam will also host Mr Kishida to lunch.
- CNA/de
As strong reactions by the government and political parties came, Pakistan high commissioner Salman Bashir was summoned by foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai, who conveyed India's "deepest concern and protest" over yesterday's attack in which two Indian soldiers were killed and their bodies subjected to "barbaric and inhuman mutilation".
Pakistan was also asked to immediately investigate these actions that are in contravention of all norms of international conduct and ensure that these do not recur.
India's Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) Lt Gen Vinod Bhatia spoke to his Pakistani counterpart Maj Gen Ashfaq Nadeem to complain about the attack. A Pakistani military official said in Islamabad that Gen Nadeem rejected Indian Army's contention of cross-Line of Control(LoC) firing by Pakistani troops and killing of any Indian soldier.
Referring to last month's Indo-Pak discussions on conventional CBMs, wherein maintaining the sanctity of the LoC, one of the most important CBMs between the two countries, was emphasised, Khurshid said,"therefore violation of (ceasefire) that itself is something which is a matter of great concern. And that would obviously, if not immediately, contained will have adverse impact on what we have been trying to do for such a long time."
In a gruesome attack, Pakistan regular soldiers crossed into Indian territory in Poonch sector of Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday and ambushed an Indian patrol killing two soldiers, one of whom was decapitated.
Khurshid also stressed the need "to make sure that whatever happened should not be escalated. We cannot and must not allow escalation of this very unwholesome event that has taken place."
Enough proof of Pak army's involvement in Indian jawans killing: Antony
Defence minister A K Antony said on Wednesday that there is ample evidence to prove that Pakistani troops were involved in the killing of two Indian Army jawans along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. According to Antony, the act was inhuman.
"I already condemned the incident before leaving Delhi. There is ample evidence of how they treated the two Indian Army soldiers. The act was inhuman and we have already taken up the matter with the Pakistani government. The government of India is taking up the issue with all stakeholders. The Director General (Military Operations) is keeping close watch on the developments and has also taken up the issue with his counterpart in Pakistan," the defence minister said in Kolkata before leaving for Delhi.
Antony was in Kolkata for the 47th Convocation of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI). The defence minister is the chairman of the ISI Council. In his brief address, Antony pointed out how research carried out at the institute has applications in the security sector as well.
"Make use of your skills but ensure that values don't suffer. Society has high hopes from you. Do contribute to society. I would have wanted to spend more time here but I have several important meetings in Delhi and have to rush back. The situation is such that my coming to Kolkata became uncertain at one point of time," Antony said before leaving, midway through the programme.
(With inputs from PTI)
Photograph by Jo Giuliani, European Pressphoto Agency
Smoke from a wildfire mushrooms over a beach in Forcett, Tasmania, on January 4. (See more wildfire pictures.)
Wildfires have engulfed southeastern Australia, including the island state of Tasmania, in recent days, fueled by dry conditions and temperatures as high as 113ºF (45ºC), the Associated Press reported. (Read "Australia's Dry Run" inNational Geographic magazine.)
No deaths have been reported, though a hundred people are unaccounted for in the town of Dunalley, where the blazes destroyed 90 homes.
"You don't get conditions worse than this," New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told the AP.
"We are at the catastrophic level, and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option."
Published January 8, 2013
The wife of a $1 million Chicago lottery winner who died of cyanide poisoning told ABC News that she was shocked to learn the true cause of his death and is cooperating with an ongoing homicide investigation.
"I want the truth to come out in the investigation, the sooner the better," said Shabana Ansari, 32, the wife of Urooj Khan, 46. "Who could be that person who hurt him?
"It has been incredibly hard time," she added. "We went from being the happiest the day we got the check. It was the best sleep I've had. And then the next day, everything was gone."
Ansari, Khan's second wife, told the Chicago Sun-Times that she prepared what would be her husband's last meal the night before Khan died unexpectedly on July 20. It was a traditional beef-curry dinner attended by the married couple and their family, including Khan's 17-year-old daughter from a prior marriage, Jasmeen, and Ansari's father. Not feeling well, Khan retired early, Ansari told the paper, falling asleep in a chair, waking up in agony, then collapsing in the middle of the night. She called 911.
Khan, an immigrant from India who owned three dry-cleaning businesses in Chicago, won $1 million in a scratch-off Illinois Lottery game in June and said he planned to use the money to pay off his bills and mortgage, and make a contribution to St. Jude Children's Research Center.
"Him winning the lottery was just his luck," Ansari told ABC News. "He had already worked hard to be a millionaire before it."
Illinois Lottery/AP Photo
Jimmy Goreel, who worked at the 7-Eleven store where Khan bought the winning ticket, described him to The Associated Press as a "regular customer ... very friendly, good sense of humor, working type of guy."
In Photos: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners
Khan's unexpected death the month after his lottery win raised the suspicions of the Cook County medical examiner. There were no signs of foul play or trauma so the death initially was attributed to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, which covers heart attacks, stroke or ruptured aneurysms. The medical examiner based the conclusion on an external exam -- not an autopsy -- and toxicology reports that indicated no presence of drugs or carbon monoxide.
Khan was buried at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago.
However, several days after a death certificate was issued, a family member requested that the medical examiner's office look further into Khan's death, Cook County Medical Examiner Stephen Cina said. The office did so by retesting fluid samples that had been taken from Khan's body, including tests for cyanide and strychnine.
When the final toxicology results came back in late November, they showed a lethal level of cyanide, which led to the homicide investigation, Cina said. His office planned to exhume Khan's body within the next two weeks as part of the investigation.
Melissa Stratton, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Police Department, confirmed it has been working closely with the medical examiner's office. The police have not said whether or not they believe Khan's lottery winnings played a part in the homicide.
Khan had elected to receive the lump sum payout of $425,000, but had not yet received it when he died, Ansari told the AP, adding that the winnings now are tied up as a probate matter.
"I am cooperating with the investigation," Ansari told ABC News. "I want the truth to come out."
Authorities also have not revealed the identity of the relative who suggested the deeper look into Khan's death. Ansari said it was not her, though she told the AP she has subsequently spoken with investigators.
"This is been a shock for me," she told ABC News. "This has been an utter shock for me, and my husband was such a goodhearted person who would do anything for anyone. Who would do something like this to him?
"We were married 12 years [and] he treated me like a princess," she said. "He showered his love on me and now it's gone."
WASHINGTON: President Hamid Karzai will begin a four-day US visit on Tuesday as President Barack Obama weighs how fast to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and whether to leave a "residual force" behind after 2014.
Foreign combat soldiers are due to exit Afghanistan by the end of next year, more than a decade after a US-led invasion brought down the Taliban regime in 2001, but the country remains wracked by Islamist violence.
US officials have reportedly prepared plans for between 3,000 and 9,000 troops to remain to prevent Al-Qaeda militants from re-establishing themselves and to ensure Taliban fighters cannot take the capital Kabul.
But pressure is growing on Obama to end the war rapidly due to deep war weariness in the United States, tightening military budgets and anger over "insider attacks" by Afghan troops on the NATO-led soldiers.
"If Mr. Obama cannot find a way to go to zero troops, he should approve only the minimum number needed," The New York Times said in an editorial this week that called Karzai's government "profoundly corrupt".
Obama will host talks with Karzai at the White House on Friday, the day after the Afghan president meets Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
US officials have said a decision could be made during Karzai's visit on how many troops stay on in Afghanistan after 2014 - a figure that could determine whether the country tips into a widely-feared civil war.
The talks will also include equipping and strengthening Afghan forces, efforts to negotiate peace with Taliban-led insurgents and a long-term security agreement with the United States, Karzai's office said.
The number of foreign soldiers battling the insurgency in Afghanistan has already fallen to 100,000 from about 150,000. Of those, 66,000 are US troops, down from a maximum of about 100,000.
Afghan army and police are due to take over complete security responsibility from NATO troops by the end of 2014, but there are major concerns they will not be able to face down the country's many warring factions.
More than 60 foreign soldiers were killed in 2012 in "insider attacks" that have bred bitter mistrust and threatened to derail the training of Afghan security forces.
Karzai has expressed support for keeping some US troops in Afghanistan after 2014 but sensitive details - including immunity for American soldiers and the transfer of detainees into Afghan custody - are still under negotiation.
Washington scrapped plans for some troops to remain in Iraq after Baghdad refused to grant US soldiers immunity from prosecution.
Karzai's relationship with Washington has been troubled in recent years and there are fears that attention on his country, heavily dependent on international aid, could plummet after the NATO withdrawal.
A White House statement ahead of the visit said that Obama envisioned "an enduring partnership between the United States and Afghanistan".
Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has stressed that any residual force would focus on Al-Qaeda, which was sheltered by the Taliban government that was ousted after the 9/11 attacks.
Friday's talks will come just days after Obama put the finishing touches to his security team, having named his picks to head up the State Department, Pentagon and CIA.
Karzai is expected to visit Asadullah Khalid, his spy chief who was wounded in an attack in Kabul last month, at an American hospital on Tuesday.
- AFP/de
It’d be hard to think of a mammal that’s weirder than the long-beaked, egg-laying echidna. Or harder to find.
Scientists long thought the animal, which has a spine-covered body, a four-headed penis, and a single hole for reproducing, laying eggs, and excreting waste, lived only in New Guinea. The population of about 10,000 is critically endangered. Now there is tantalizing evidence that the echidna, thought to have gone extinct in Australia some 10,000 years ago, lived and reproduced there as recently as the early 1900s and may still be alive on Aussie soil.
The new echidna information comes from zoologist Kristofer Helgen, a National Geographic emerging explorer and curator of mammals at the Smithsonian Institution. Helgen has published a key finding in ZooKeys confirming that a skin and skull collected in 1901 by naturalist John T. Tunney in Australia is in fact the western long-beaked echidna, Zaglossus bruijnii. The specimen, found in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia, was misidentified for many years.
(More about echidnas: Get to know this living link between mammals and reptiles.)
Helgen has long been fascinated by echidnas. He has seen only three in the wild. “Long-beaked echidnas are hard to get your hands on, period,” he said. “They are shy and secretive by nature. You’re lucky if you can find one. And if you do, it will be by chance.” Indeed, chance played a role in his identification of the Australian specimen. In 2009, he visited the Natural History Museum of London, where he wanted to see all of the echidnas he could. He took a good look in the bottom drawer of the echidna cabinet, where the specimens with less identifying information are often stored. From among about a dozen specimens squeezed into the drawer, he grabbed the one at the very bottom.
(Related from National Geographic magazine: “Discovery in the Foja Mountains.”)
“As I pulled it out, I saw a tag that I had seen before,” Helgen said. “I was immediately excited about this label. As a zoologist working in museums you get used to certain tags: It’s a collector’s calling card. I instantly recognized John Tunney’s tag and his handwriting.”
John Tunney was a well-known naturalist in the early 20th century who went on collecting expeditions for museums. During an Australian expedition in 1901 for Lord L. Walter Rothschild’s private museum collection, he found the long-beaked echidna specimen. Though he reported the locality on his tag as “Mt Anderson (W Kimberley)” and marked it as “Rare,” Tunney left the species identification field blank. When he returned home, the specimen was sent to the museum in Perth for identification. It came back to Rothschild’s museum identified as a short-beaked echidna.
With the specimen’s long snout, large size, and three-clawed feet, Helgen knew that it must be a long-beaked echidna. The short-beaked echidna, still alive and thriving in Australia today, has five claws, a smaller beak, and is half the size of the long-beaked echidna, which can weigh up to 36 pounds (16 kilograms).
As Helgen began tracing the history and journey of the specimen over the last century, he crossed the path of another fascinating mind who had also encountered the specimen. Oldfield Thomas was arguably the most brilliant mammalogical taxonomist ever. He named approximately one out of every six mammals known today.
Thomas was working at the Natural History Museum in London when the Tunney echidna specimen arrived, still misidentified as a short-beaked echidna. Thomas realized the specimen was actually a long-beaked echidna and removed the skull and some of the leg bones from the skin to prove that it was an Australian record of a long-beaked echidna, something just as unexpected then as it is now.
No one knows why Thomas did not publish that information. And the echidna went back into the drawer until Helgen came along 80 years later.
As Helgen became convinced that Tunney’s long-beaked echidna specimen indeed came from Australia, he confided in fellow scientist Mark Eldridge of the Australian Museum about the possibility. Eldridge replied, “You’re not the first person who’s told me that there might be long-beaked echidnas in the Kimberley.” (That’s the Kimberley region of northern Australia.) Scientist James Kohen, a co-author on Helgen’s ZooKeys paper, had been conducting fieldwork in the area in 2001 and spoke to an Aboriginal woman who told him how “her grandmothers used to hunt” large echidnas.
This is “the first evidence of the survival into modern times of any long-beaked echidna in Australia,” said Tim Flannery, professor at Macquarie University in Sydney. “This is a truly significant finding that should spark a re-evaluation of echidna identifications from across northern Australia.”
Helgen has “a small optimism” about finding a long-beaked echidna in the wild in Australia and hopes to undertake an expedition and to interview Aboriginal communities, with their intimate knowledge of the Australian bush.
Though the chances may be small, Helgen says, finding one in the wild “would be the beautiful end to the story.”
After she was gravely wounded by gunfire two years ago in Tucson, Ariz., former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, imagined a life out of the public eye, where she would continue therapy surrounded by the friends, family and the Arizona desert she loves so much.
Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly Speak Exclusively to Diane Sawyer
But after the slaughter of 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last month, Giffords and Kelly knew they couldn't stay silent.
"Enough," Giffords said.
The couple marked the second anniversary of the Tucson shooting by sitting down with Diane Sawyer to discuss their recent visit to Newtown and their new initiative to curb gun violence, "Americans for Responsible Solutions."
"After the shooting in Tucson, there was talk about addressing some of these issues, [and] again after [a movie theater massacre in] Aurora," Colo., Kelly said. "I'm hopeful that this time is different, and I think it is. Twenty first-graders' being murdered in their classrooms is a very personal thing for everybody."
Full Coverage: Gabrielle Giffords
During their trip to Newtown, Giffords and Kelly met with families directly affected by the tragedy.
"[The] first couple that we spoke to, the dad took out his cell phone and showed us a picture of his daughter and I just about lost it, just by looking at the picture," Kelly said. "It was just very tough and it brought back a lot of memories about what that was like for us some two years ago."
Full Coverage: Tragedy in Newtown
"Strength," Giffords said she told the families in Newtown.
"Gabby often told them, 'You got to have strength. You got to fight for something,'" Kelly said.
The innocent faces of the children whose lives were abruptly taken reminded the couple, they said, of 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, the youngest victim to die in the Tucson shooting at a Giffords constituent event.
"I think we all need to try to do something about [gun violence]," Kelly said. "It's obvious to everybody we have a problem. And problems can be solved."
Giffords, Kelly Call for 'Common Sense' Solutions
Giffords, 42, and Kelly, 48, are both gun owners and supporters of the 2nd Amendment, but Kelly had strong words for the National Rifle Association after the group suggested the only way to stop gun violence is to have a "good guy with a gun."
There was a good guy with a gun, Kelly said, the day Jared Loughner shot Giffords and 18 other people, six fatally, at her "Congress on Your Corner" event.
"[A man came out] of the store next door and nearly shot the man who took down Jared Loughner," Kelly said. "The one who eventually wrestled [Loughner] to the ground was almost killed himself by a good guy with a gun, so I don't really buy that argument."
Instead, Giffords and Kelly are proposing "common sense" changes through "Americans for Responsible Solutions."
AUCKLAND: Jerzy Janowicz's fairy tale rise through the tennis ranks was dealt a blow at the Heineken Open in Auckland on Monday when the Polish fifth seed lost in the opening round to US journeyman Brian Baker.
In his first outing since a breakthrough run to reach the final of the Paris Masters last November, Janowicz was defeated 4-6, 7-6 (7/5), 6-4 after an erratic display in the tournament, a warm-up event for the Australian Open.
While he showed glimpses of the giant-killing form that downed five top 20 players in Paris, including Andy Murray, Janowicz committed 51 unforced errors and 10 double faults to hand the match to Baker.
He took the first set comfortably but lost concentration early in the second, finally rallying at 5-1 down in the third, when it was too late to stop Baker.
"It seemed like he flicked a switch," the American said. "I don't know how many points he won in a row but it seemed like about 15. "Luckily I was able to close it out at the end."
Last year's beaten finalist Olivier Rochus of Belgium defeated Spain's Albert Ramos 6-2, 5-7, 6-2 in blustery conditions that he described as the toughest he had ever played in.
"It was very windy and the ball was going all over the place and it was very tricky but I kept my mind very focused and that's why I won," he said.
Elsewhere, Rochus' compatriot Xavier Malisse overcame some early resistance from Slovak seventh seed Martin Klizan to notch a 7-6 (7/4), 3-6 win.
David Goffin, the third Belgian on centre court during the opening day's play, was not so fortunate, going down 7-6 (7/5), 6-2 to eighth seed Thomaz Bellucci of Brazil.
Austria's Jurgen Melzer will be the only seeded player (sixth) in action when the bottom half of the draw is played on Tuesday, although there will be interest as French wildcard Gael Monfils continues his comeback from a knee injury.
Defending champion and top seed David Ferrer of Spain has a bye into the second round, as do Germans Philipp Kohlschreiber and Tommy Haas, seeded two and three respectively, and American fourth seed Sam Querrey.
- AFP/de
NEW DELHI: Ajmal Kasab, the face of the dastardly 26/11 terror strike on Mumbai who was hanged on November 21, had begged for "daya" (mercy) from the President through his four-line clemency plea written in elementary Urdu, which was rejected.
The hand written petition dated September 12, 2012, which has been made public more than a month after Kasab was hanged, shows glaring Urdu language errors.
The application has been provided to Lucknow-based activist Urvashi Sharma under the Right to Information Act.
In his brief application, Kasab pleaded, "Sir, mujhe fansi ki saza Supreme Court ho gayi hai. Fansi ki saza se mujhe chorr diya jaye. Mere upar daya karo aur muje fansi ki se riha kar de. Apka Ajmal Kasab (sic)."
It was translated by the jail authorities as, "Sir, I have been sentenced by Supreme Court for capital punishment (Hanged till death). It is most humbly and respectfully pleaded to spare me from death sentence and also get me released from the gallows. It is my humble request. Yours"
Pakistani citizen Kasab, the sole surviving terrorist from the 26/11 terror attack, was hanged to death at the Yerawada Jail in Pune on November 21, 2012. He was among the ten terrorists who had entered Mumbai through sea route on November 26, 2008 and launched a three-day mayhem which killed 166 people.
25-year-old Kasab had been lodged in the Arthur Jail Road here ever since he was arrested immediately after the attack in 2008. He was convicted and given capital punishment by the trial court on May 6, 2010 which was upheld by the Bombay High Court on February 21, 2011. The Supreme Court subsequently upheld the sentence on August 29 last year.
His mercy petition was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee on November 5, 2012.
Photograph by Nenad Saljic
A full moon illuminates the Matterhorn peak near Zermatt, Switzerland, in the winning image in the contest's Places category.
Full moons occur every 29.5 days or so as the moon moves to the side of Earth directly opposite the sun, reflecting the sun's rays off its full face and appearing as a brilliant, perfectly circular disk.
(Read more about full moons.)
Published January 4, 2013
Photograph by Micah Albert
A picture of women scavenging refuse from a landfill in Dandora, Kenya, is the winning image in the People category of the National Geographic Photo Contest.
The Dandora landfill, located in eastern Nairobi, is one of the largest in Africa.
Published January 4, 2013
Photograph by Jason Ching
Published January 4, 2013
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