Israelis 'seize Iran arms ship'

The vessel was taken to Ashdod for further inspection

Israel's navy has intercepted a ship carrying hundreds of tonnes of weapons 160km (100 miles) off its coast, the military says.

The cache included rockets and missiles, the military said, adding that they originated in Iran and were destined for Hezbollah militants.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the arms were "destined to strike Israel's cities".

The Antiguan-flagged vessel has been towed to the port of Ashdod.

In recent months Israel has stepped up efforts to combat the smuggling of arms to Hamas and Hezbollah militants.

'Numerous weapons'

The Israeli military said marines had boarded the ship after its captain agreed to the search and that no force was used.

The country's deputy defence minister, Matan Vilmai, said the ship's crew were not thought to have been aware of the smuggling operation.

A spokesperson for the military said there were "dozens of shipping containers, carrying numerous weapons, disguised as civilian cargo among hundreds of other containers on board".

The spokesperson added: "The weapons originate from Iran and were intended to reach the Hezbollah terror organisation for use against the state of Israel and its citizens."

The Associated Press news agency reported that the vessel was operated by the shipping company United Feeder Services and that it had said the cargo was picked up in Damietta in Egypt.

Mr Netanyahu congratulated the army, navy and security forces on a successful action to prevent the supply of weapons.

Since Israel's offensive in Gaza last December and January, the Israeli navy and air force have been have conducting intense searches in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea for ships smuggling weapons either to Hezbollah or to Hamas in Gaza.

In February, Israel said a vessel detained off Cyprus was carrying Iranian weapons to Hamas in Gaza. Iran denied the claim.

In 2002 the Israeli navy captured the Karin-A, which was carrying some 50 tonnes of arms thought to be destined for Gaza.

112 yr old man marries 17 yr old girl

Old groom, teen bride...Dore said he had waited for Safia to grow up before proposing to her

Hundreds of people attended a wedding between a man who says he is 112 years old and his bride who is only 17.

The BBC reported Thursday that Ahmed Muhamed Dore - who already has 13 children by five wives - would like to have more with his latest, Safia Abdulleh.

"Today God helped me realise my dream," Dore was said, after the wedding in the region of Galguduud.

The bride's family said she was "happy with her new husband".

Dore said he and his bride - who is young enough to be his great-great-grand-daughter - were from the same village in Somalia and that he had waited for her to grow up to propose.

"I didn't force her but used my experience to convince her of my love and then we agreed to marry," he said.

The marriage, in the town of Guriceel, is being described by Somali historians as the first of its kind in the Horn of Africa nation for more than a century.

The reaction to news of the marriage has been mixed.

Some people said while it was allowed under Islamic law, they were concerned about the age gap, but others were happy that age was not a barrier to love.

Dore told the BBC he was born in Dhusamareeb in central Somalia in 1897 - and has a traditional birth certificate, written on goat skin by his father.

He joined the British colonial forces in 1941 and served as a soldier for 10 years. He later became a police officer after Somalia won independence in 1960.

Dore has a total of 114 children and grandchildren. His oldest son is 80 years old and three of his wives have died.

He hopes his new bride will give him more children.

"It is a blessing to have someone you love to take care of you," he said.

91 killed in Baghdad bombings

BAGHDAD —Two powerful car bombs exploded in downtown Baghdad Sunday, killing at least 91 people in an apparent attempt to target the fragile city’s government offices, Iraqi medical officials and authorities said.

While violence has dropped dramatically in the country since the height of the sectarian tensions, such bombings like Sunday’s demonstrate the precarious nature of the security gains and the insurgency’s abilities to still pull off devastating attacks in the heart of what is supposed to be one of Baghdad’s most secure areas.

The explosions come as Iraq is preparing for elections scheduled this January, and many Iraqi officials have warned that violence by insurgents intent on making the country appear unstable could rise.

The blasts, which rivaled coordinated blasts against two government ministries in August that killed more than 100 people, also appeared to be a blow to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who has staked his reputation and re-election hopes on returning security to the country.

The area is just a few hundred yards from the heavily protected Green Zone that houses the U.S. Embassy as well as the prime minister’s offices. The street where the blasts occurred was just reopened to vehicle traffic a few months ago, in what was supposed to be a sign that safety was returning to the once devastated city.

“This is a political struggle, the price of which we are paying,” said a Shiite member of the Baghdad Provincial Council, Mohammed al-Rubaiey. He said at least 25 members of the provincial council staff were killed in the blasts and that the wounded were still being taken to the hospital. “Every politician is responsible and even the government is responsible, as well as security leaders.”

Sunday’s explosions, which also injured at least 250 people, went off less than a minute apart near two prominent government institutions — the Ministry of Justice and the headquarters of the Baghdad provincial administration — in a neighborhood that houses a number of government institutions.

Video images captured on a cell phone showed the second blast going off in a massive ball of flames, followed by a burst of machine gun fire.

Two American security contractors were injured in the blasts, but no American embassy personnel were killed, said Philip Frayne, an embassy spokesman in Baghdad. Frayne could not provide details about who the contractors worked for, or the nature of their injuries.

U.S. security contractors could be seen at the site of the explosions helping the wounded before they were transported for treatment to six different hospitals around the capital.

Iraqi hospital officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, gave the death toll.

The explosions were caused by car bombs aimed at government institutions, said Maj Gen Qassim al-Mousawi, spokesman for the city’s operations command center. He added that it was not known whether they were suicide attacks.

The explosive-laden vehicles were parked in car parks next to the two government building, police said.

“They are targeting the government and the political process in the country,” al-Mousawi told The Associated Press.

Yasmeen Afdhal, a 24-year-old employee at the Baghdad provincial administration, said that after the first blast, dozens of employees began fleeing the building.

“The walls collapsed and we had to run out,” said Afdhal, who was not injured in the explosion. “There are many wounded, and I saw them being taken away. They were taking victims out of the rubble, and rushing them to ambulances.”

Black smoke could be seen billowing from the area where the blasts occurred, as emergency service vehicles sped to the scene. Even civilian cars were being used to transport the wounded to hospitals, al-Mousawi said.

The explosions were just a few hundred yards from Iraq’s Foreign Ministry which is still rebuilding after massive bombings there in August killed about 100 people. The bombings were a devastating blow for a country that has seen a dramatic drop in violence since the height of the sectarian fighting in 2006 and 2007.

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Associated Press Writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this story.

Google goes global with Apps

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 19 — Google Inc said more than two million businesses now use its online office software, and the web search leader is going global today with an advertising campaign to lure customers away from Microsoft Corp and IBM products.

The campaign, which starts today in countries including France, Japan and Britain, represents a rare foray by Google into mass-market advertising and underscores increasing competition to provide businesses with email and other office software.

While Microsoft and International Business Machines Corp dominate the market for enterprise email, Google is trying to convince businesses to switch to its so-called cloud-based services, in which software is accessed over the Internet and maintained at Google's data centres instead of on a company's computers.

A 'translator gadget' powered by Google Translate

Cloud-based services can provide cost and maintenance savings over traditional software, though recent high-profile outages — including an outage of Google's Gmail last month — have raised questions about the reliability of online software for business users.

Gartner analyst Tom Austin said most businesses will eventually switch to cloud-based email, but the process may take years. He noted IBM and Microsoft have introduced cloud products recently, and that Cisco Systems Inc appears to be preparing to offer its own cloud-based software.

On Thursday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told investors during the company's quarterly earnings conference call he intended to boost investments in new business initiatives.

Google's Apps business — which the company has said is profitable and generates hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue a year — is a tiny portion of Google's overall business, which yielded almost US$22 billion (RM77 billion) revenue last year.

I enjoy kissing each inch of you

According to spokesman Andrew Kovacs, its Apps team has doubled over the past year to more than 1,000 employees.

Google said Apps is used by two million businesses, up from 1.75 million in June. Those include both larger businesses that pay US$50 a year per user for Apps, as well as firms with fewer than 50 employees that get the software for free.

The company also said there are now 20 million active users of Google Apps, up from 15 million in June, although that number included students who use the free version Google provides to universities.

Google's marketing campaign, which it first rolled out in the United States in August, will feature ads in publications such as The New York Times, Forbes and The Economist, as well as on billboards at airports and train stations in various cities.

Google Enterprise product marketing director Tom Oliveri would not say how much Google is spending on the campaign, which runs through 2009. He said the creative part of the campaign was designed in-house by the Google Creative Lab team led by former Ogilvy & Mather executive Andy Berndt. — Reuters

News in Pictures on Thursday

Tourists file past terracotta warriors at the excavation site located on the outskirts of the Chinese city of Xian. The famous warriors date from over 2,000 years ago, and were first unearthed in 1974 and are considered to be one of the most important archaeological finds of recent times. -- PHOTO: REUTERS


2- Children wait for leaf-shaped paper with an open and closed eyes decoration to fall from the air as a white cylinder with an internal fan creates a breeze to blow the leaves, at the concouse of Tokyo's Haneda Airport, as a public art installation "Blinking Leaves" on Oct 15, 2009. -- PHOTO: AFP


3- Children look as a turtle arrives at a beach at the natural reserve La Flor in San Juan, 150km (93 miles) south of Managua. La Flor is one of only seven places in the world where turtles of the Palasma species lay their eggs every year. -- PHOTO: REUTERS


4- 250cc rider Marco Simoncelli of Italy feeds an albino kangaroo at a wildlife park near Phillip Island some 100km south-east of Melbourne. -- PHOTO: AFP


5- Chilean supporters cheer for their team before their Fifa World Cup South Africa-2010 qualifier football match against Ecuador at the Monumental Stadium in Santiago. -- PHOTO: AFP


6- A general view shows the illuminated Charlottenburg castle during the Festival of Lights in Berlin. Several landmarks of the German capital, including boulevards, squares, towers, historical and modern buildings, will be illuminated during the festival. -- PHOTO: REUTERS


7- Anthony Jackson and Joan Myrthue (left) show off their horses as the 'World Famous' Lipizzaner Stallions perform in front of Madison Square Garden in New York to promote their upcoming show at the Garden on Oct 17. -- PHOTO: AFP


8- A man walks by figures of Japan's popular TV animation Neon Genesis Evangelion characters, Asuka Langley, left, and Evangelion first model, during a Japan Anime-Collaboration Market 2009 in Tokyo, Japan, Thursday, Oct. 15. 2009. -- PHOTO: AP


9- Performers from an outdoor movement entitled Willi Dorner's Bodies in Urban Spaces are pictured as they make 'body sculptures' in central London, on Oct 14. Austrian artist Willi Dorner aims to guide volunteers on a run throughout central London for three days from Oct 16, where they will be invited to take part in body sculptures. -- PHOTO: AFP


10- An excavator piles up salt at the Uyuni Salt Flats in Bolivia. The Uyuni Salt flats has one of the biggest reserves of lithium in the world, estimated in 100,000 metric tonnes. Companies Bollore (France), Sumitomo (Japan) and Korea Resource (Korea) are interested in taking part in the exploitation of the reserve. -- PHOTO: AFP


11- Israeli and international activists from Greenpeace and World March for Peace stage a die-in to protest worldwide nuclear armament, at Megiddo mountain, northern Israel. Mount Megiddo was chosen for its link with the book of Revelations' depiction of the apocalypse, according to tradition, set to take place at Armageddon. -- PHOTO: AP


12- A scientist sorts out fruit fly pupae at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) laboratories in Seibersdorf, some 50km southeast of Vienna. Scientists working for the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) there are sterilising fruit flies with radiation in order to decrease their population.-- PHOTO: REUTERS


13- A woman stands amongst a grove of a Giant Sequoia trees in the Sequoia National Park in Central California. The Redwood trees which are native to California's Sierra Nevada Mountains are the world's largest by volume reaching heights 84.2m and a ground level girth of 33m. The oldest known Giant Sequoia based on it's ring count is 3,500 years old. -- PHOTO: AFP


14- Renault F1 Spanish driver Fernando Alonso stands amid children as they wish him good luck and protection in the Brazilian GP, during a visit to Oscar Romero school, a Non-Governmental Organisation linked to Unicef in Brazil. Alonso is in the country for the upcoming Brazilian F1 GP on Oct 18 at the Interlagos racetrack. -- PHOTO: AFP


15- US soccer fans hold up signs for Charlie Davies who was injured in a car accident on Wednesday during the first half of a match against Costa Rica in the Fifa 2010 World Cup Qualifier at RFK stadium on Oct 14, in Washington DC. -- PHOTO: AFP

Pirates seize S'pore ship

Somali pirates on Thursday seized a Singapore-flagged container ship in the Indian Ocean near the Seychelles. -- PHOTO: AFP

NAIROBI (Kenya) - SOMALI pirates on Thursday seized a Singapore-flagged container ship in the Indian Ocean near the Seychelles, maritime sources told AFP.

'The Singapore flagged and owned boxship Kota Wajar was seized around 300 nautical miles north the Seychelles,' said Mr Andrew Mwangura, who heads the Kenyan chapter of East African Seafarers Assistance Programme.

Other maritime sources in the region confirmed the information.

A maritime source in the area, who did not wish to be identified, said that the attack took place early Thursday, 24 nautical miles from the site of recent attacks on French tuna-fishing boats.

He also said that the attack was only 180 nautical miles from the Seychelles, inside the archipelago's exclusive economic zone.

The maritime security centre of the European Union, which has an anti-piracy naval force patrolling waters affected by Somali piracy, also confirmed the hijacking. -- AFP

3 opposed Obama prize

The committee honoured Mr Obama for 'for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.' -- PHOTO: AP

OSLO - THREE of the five members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee had objections to the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to US President Barack Obama, the Norwegian tabloid Verdens Gang (VG) reported on Thursday.

'VG has spoken to a number of sources who confirmed the impression that a majority of the Nobel committee, at first, had not decided to give the peace prize to Barack Obama,' the newspaper said.

The committee, appointed by the Norwegian parliament, honoured Mr Obama for 'for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.' 'The committee was unanimous,' said its influential secretary Geir Lundestad.

But Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, who represented the right-wing populist Progress Party on the committee, led the way in objecting to the choice of Mr Obama because she questioned his ability to keep his promises, the newspaper said, adding that the representative of the Conservative Party, Kaci Kullmann Five, and Aagot Valle, the representative of the Socialist Left, had objections.

The choice for Mr Obama was however strongly supported by committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland and Sissel Roenbeck, both representatives of the Labour Party. The members of the committee represent their parties but do not sit in Norway's parliament.

Mr Obama himself said he was 'surprised' and 'deeply humbled' by the prize. -- AFP

MP paid his own firm $226k

LONDON - A CONSERVATIVE MP has referred himself to parliament's sleaze watchdog after the Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday that he had used expenses to pay 100,000 pounds (S$225,516) to a firm he owned.

David Wilshire, MP for Spelthorne in Surrey, paid Moorlands Research Services, which he owns with his partner, up to 3,250 pounds a month for office assistance, the paper said.

In total, the firm was paid 105,000 pounds out of the MP's parliamentary expenses.

Mr Wilshire told the paper the arrangement had been approved by parliamentary officials and that he had not personally profited.

'I am deeply hurt by the way in which the Daily Telegraph has reported on my expenses and disappointed that it has not published all of my response to their enquiries,' he said in a statement.

'My constituents are rightly entitled to the truth about these allegations. I have therefore written to the commissioner for standards asking him to conduct an enquiry.' The details come as the scandal over parliamentary expenses continues to rumble on. -- REUTERS

Beauty queen slammed

Miss Qori (right) getting her crown adjusted by last year's winner Zivanna Letisha Siregar. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

JAKARTA - SHE represented Aceh in Indonesia's high-profile beauty pageant, and beat 37 others to win the coveted Miss Indonesia Universe crown last Friday.

But instead of praise, Miss Qori Sandioriva, 18, who is part Acehnese, has been denounced by clerics and community leaders in Indonesia's strict Islamic province for bringing shame to Aceh.

The furore centres on her taking part in the contest without wearing a jilbab, the Islamic headdress.

The head of the Aceh Customs and Traditions Council, Mr Usman Budiman, said the teenage beauty should not claim to represent the province if she breaks Aceh's tradition and syariah law.

Aceh's Daya Ulema Association secretary-general Teungku Faisal Ali added: 'We are not bothered by the Puteri Indonesia contest. What bothers us is why she represented Aceh, but did not reflect the values and culture of the Acehnese people, who are well known for their Islamic faith.'

Mr Mursyid Yahya, head of the Islamic syariah office in Aceh's Lhokseumawe district, said it was customary for Acehnese Muslim women to dress modestly, in full-length dresses with long sleeves and a jilbab, or headscarf that covers the hair, leaving only the face exposed.

Emirates Convicts American on Terror

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – The United Arab Emirates' highest court convicted an American citizen Monday on terrorism-related charges amid claims that torture was used to extract a confession.

The court sentenced Naji Hamdan to 18 months in prison, but he should be freed soon because the sentence counts time served and he was detained last year. There are no appeals to verdicts by the UAE's Federal Supreme Court.

Hamdan, an American of Lebanese origin, faced three terrorism-related charges, including having ties with an al-Qaida group in Iraq. He had denied the accusations.