International News

Indian Sate Governor Resigns after Sex Scandal 
HYDERABAD (India), Dec 27: A senior Congress leader and governor of a southern Indian state resigned after an alleged sex scandal in another blow to the ruling Congress party which is facing protests over statehood demands there.
Governor N.D. Tiwari, a top representative of India’s president in Andhra Pradesh state, resigned late on Saturday after a local television channel aired a video of the 86-yearold Congress leader allegedly in bed with three young women.
Tiwari said the footage was doctored, but an embarrassed Congress party asked the governor to resign.
The Congress faces a mid-term poll in the state if political parties continue to protest and lawmakers resign en masse over demands for a new Telangana state, “This incident adds to the problems of the Congress party and the government will now have to look for a replacement who they will hope can control the political turmoil and keep the house in order in Andhra Pradesh,” said N. Bhaskara Rao of the Centre for Media studies.
The Congress party, which has won several key state polls recently and has 33 lawmakers in parliament from Andhra Pradesh state which it also rules, does not want any further trouble in the key state, experts said.
The political developments in Andhra Pradesh have made politicians and investors jittery, especially in the state’s main city of Hyderabad, which houses firms like Microsoft, Google and Mahindra Satyam, among others.
The regional Telangana Rashtra Samiti party, which is spearheading the statehood demand has given the government time until Monday to decide on Telangana or face wider protests.
Tiwari’s office said the veteran politician, who has held positions of Congress chief minister in the past resigned on health grounds.
“Whatever the reasons, this comes at a very bad time for the Congress party in Andhra Pradesh,” said Ganguli.
The three-and-half minute footage was the most watched video on YouTube on Saturday in India and newspapers splashed front page stories on the sex scandal on Sunday that has sparked online debates on the conduct of politicians in India.
The Congress party, which has been criticised by the opposition for distancing itself from a move to carve the Telangana state after initially announcing its support, welcomed Tiwari’s resignation and said it might take more action.—Reuters
Two Hamas men among three killed in Beirut blast 
BEIRUT, Dec 27: Three people were killed in a mysterious blast in Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut, security officials said on Sunday, including two members of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
“The death toll from Saturday night’s explosion has risen to three, after one of the wounded died of his injuries,” a Lebanese security official said.
Hamas said the explosion killed two of its members.
The group’s Beirut representative Osama Hamdan identified the pair as “senior bodyguards.” “Hassan Saeed al-Haddad, 21, and Bassel Ahmed Jomaa, 26, were mar tyred in Saturday night’s explosion,” Hamdan said, adding that the blast occurred in a Hamas office that also has sleeping quarters for bodyguards.
But he refused to speculate on the reasons behind the blast or who was behind it, echoing remarks made earlier by Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television. Taha also said three people were wounded.
“The circumstances of the explosion are unclear and it is too early to name the party” responsible, Taha said.
Hamas and Hezbollah — which are both backed by Iran and Syria — are close allies and archfoes of Israel, and members of the Palestinian movement are based in the Lebanese capital.
Attacks are rare in the Beirut stronghold of the Shiite Hezbollah — a militant group now part of the Lebanese government of Western-backed Prime Minister Saad Hariri — as the group maintains tight security.
Lebanese President Michel Sleiman denounced the blast, blaming it on the “enemies” of Lebanon, as military prosecutor Rahif Ramadan toured the blast site.
“This is a subversive act through which the enemies of the nation want to destabilise the country,” Sleiman said in a statement, in which he also instructed the security services to bring the guilty parties to justice.
The prosecutor said: “We have started the investigation to determine the cause of the explosion.” The explosion came on the eve of the Ashura.Witnesses said that local Hamas official Ali Baraka has an office in the area where the blast occurred.
The blast came just hours before the first anniversary of Israel’s 22-day offensive on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip during which some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.—AFP

 Shadow govt in place, says Nato official Taliban have ‘governors’ in 33 Afghan provinces

KABUL, Dec 27: Foreign forces have only a year to turn the tide of the war in Afghanistan and the Taliban have a shadow government in place that could run the country if the West fails, a senior Nato intelligence official said on Sunday.
The Afghan Taliban had expanded their influence across Afghanistan and were now running a “full-fledged insurgency” with their own “governors” in all but one of the country’s provinces.
“Time is running out. We’ve got about a year to prove that our strategy can actually work. The Taliban has shadow governors in 33 out of the 34 provinces,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told a small group of reporters.
“So he (the Taliban) has got a government-in-waiting. He has got ministers.” Violence in Afghanistan has reached some of its highest levels in the eight-year war and US President Barack Obama is sending in 30,000 extra troops as part of his new war strategy, to try to turn the tide. Other Nato countries are sending some 7,000 more.
But Washington’s plan also calls for US troop levels to be scaled down from 2,011 and the White House has said the United States will not be in Afghanistan in eight or nine years’ time. The Taliban were willing to wait, the official said.
“The insurgency is confident and are looking towards a post-Isaf Afghanistan,” he said, referring to the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force.
“If we are going to be successful, this has to be perceived as an international effort, almost a struggle, and it is a struggle, to stop or deter this notion of Islamic extremism.” There are already around 110,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan but despite the numbers, they are locked in a stalemate with the Taliban, unable to stem the rising tide of suicide and roadside bomb attacks.
With the improvised explosive device (IED) or roadside bomb, the Taliban had found their weapon of choice against the foreign troops, the official said, adding ‘kinetic’ events had risen by 300 per cent since 2007.
In 2003, foreign forces dealt with 81 IEDs, that figure rose to over 7,200 for 2009, the official said. This included IEDs that had exploded and those that were found and cleared.
“This is not meant to be a joke, but whoever is their logistics chief, you know, we ought to be taking lessons from them,” the official said.—Reuters
Courtesy to DWAN...For further news visit http://epaper.dawn.com