USA pays $ 4.5m to China for bombing
BEIJING, Aug 31 — The USA has paid $ 4.5 million in compensation for the three persons killed and 27 wounded when NATO bombs destroyed Beijing’s Embassy in Belgrade in May, a US Embassy official said today.

UN stand-off with militia resolved

DILI (East Timor), Aug 31 (Reuters) — The United Nations today said that a stand-off in the East Timor town of Gleno had been resolved and a UN convoy was on its way to Dili.

UN spokesman David Wimhurst was speaking after reports that three UN Workers had been killed in the stand-off with pro-Jakarta militias. Mr Wimhurst said he could not confirm those reports.

The UN Had said around 150 of its staff were being prevented from leaving the town by pro-Indonesian militia.

Australia’s former Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer, an observer in East Timor, earlier said three UN staff had been killed overnight since polling stations closed.

The police in Ermera, near Gleno, said that no one had been killed in today’s stand-off and the UN convoy was about to head for Dili.

“They are ready to leave,’’ said a police officer.

Earlier Mr Fischer told ABC Radio: “I’m advised by UNAMET that three confirmed UNAMET local staff have been killed in that vicinity.”

Mr Fischer said the staff members were killed near the village of Gleno.

“A second attempt is being made to extract ballot boxes and people from the area,” he said, adding that the deaths had occurred after the polls closed late yesterday.

Both UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and US State Department spokesman James Foley hailed the massive turnout as “extraordinary”.

After months of turmoil in which hundreds died as armed loyalists tried to frighten pro-independence voters, fears of widespread violence on polling day were not realised.

But Mr Foley said that “we remain concerned about the potential for violence” both during and after the week or so of vote counting. The result is widely expected to favour independence from Indonesia.

In Portugal, East Timor’s colonial ruler before Indonesia’s 1975 conquest, Prime Minister Antonio Guterres told reporters “there are days that make a life worthwhile. Many Timorese gave the best of their lives to make this day possible.”

Mr Annan expressed dismay at the murder of an East Timorese member of the UN mission and said he was waiting for a full report.

In a possible acknowledgement of the inevitable, Eurico Guterres, who heads one pro-integration militia group, gave his support to jailed independence leader Xanana Gusmao, the man many see as the first leader of an independent East Timor.

But Guterres also said he planned to shut exit points from the territory today to prevent its political elite from leaving.

The mainly Catholic territory’s spiritual leader Bishop Carlos Belo, appealed for calm and for both pro- and anti-independence camps to work together for peace.

“My appeal to the leaders is that they are able to convince their bases to accept the verdict of the people and to lay down arms and help to make political compromise to...work for peace and reconciliation,” he told Reuters.

“If they are Timorese they have to work together. If they are not, they leave the territory.”

Israel, Palestine ‘closer to agreement’

JERUSALEM, Aug 31 (AP) — With pressure mounting for a peace deal before this week’s arrival of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators said they were on the verge of agreement.

For the first time in months, the two sides spoke optimistically of carrying out the long-delayed Wye river peace accord, although negotiators cautioned against making last-minute threats that could jeopardise a deal.

Gains were made on two issues that have deadlocked the sides until now: a timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, and the release of Palestinians jailed for anti-Israel acts.

“I imagine within two or three days we will reach a conclusion,” Prime Minister Ehud Barak said yesterday.

Ms Albright is due in the region on Thursday and said yesterday that she expected an agreement before her arrival. Egypt, another broker in the talks, hopes to host a signing ceremony in her presence to relaunch the Wye agreement.

The deal, signed last October, called for three Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank in return for security measures by Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian government.

The sides were still working out small differences on the timing of the West Bank withdrawal. Israel was sticking to a January 20 deadline for completing the pullbacks, while the Palestinians want them carried out by December 31.

Negotiators also appeared to be approaching agreement on the sensitive issue of releasing Palestinians jailed for killing Israelis.

Israel, which previously had banned release of any prisoners “with blood on their hands,” appeared to be softening its stance.

Officials said Israel was now considering the release of members of Arafat’s Fatah faction involved in attacks before the breakthrough of Oslo peace accords of 1993.

The two sides would still have to agree on numbers. Palestinians want 650 prisoners freed Israelis have said about 300 Palestinians would qualify.

Mr Barak had given the Palestinians until yesterday, to reach an agreement on Wye. He extended that deadline until Thursday, hinting that otherwise Israel would carry out the deal as it saw fit.

AMMAN (AFP): The Jordanian police arrested a dozen members of the hardline Palestinian Hamas organisation and authorities issued warrants against four of the group’s leaders, officials said. The arrests followed a police raid on offices on Monday which were being used illegally by the group in Amman, an official of the Interior Ministry said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters): The United States of America kept its distance from Israeli-Palestinian talks in the hope the negotiators will reach agreement before Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrives in the region this week. Even if the negotiations do not bear fruit in time, the State Department declined to give a commitment that Ms Albright would aim to patch up a deal during her tour, which starts in Morocco on Wednesday and ends in Jordan on Sunday.

USA stealing ‘N-knowhow’

BEIJING, Aug 31 (PTI) — While refuting allegations of Chinese theft of US nuclear weapon secrets as totally groundless, a senior Chinese official has, in turn, charged the USA with stealing Chinese nuclear technology.

“We don’t believe in stealing technologies from others. My concern is how much technology the USA has stolen from China,” Director-General of China’s Department of Arms Control and Disarmament, Sha Zukang said. Sha, however, did not elaborate his charge.

He described the Cox Committee report accusing China of engaging in a 20-year effort to steal information on US nuclear warheads and the neutron bomb as sheer fabrication and totally groundless.

Its purpose is to damage China’s image and undermine the China-US relations, Sha told PTI here.

Sha’s remarks assume significance as the controversy over the alleged Chinese espionage of America’s nuclear secrets has refused to die down in Washington complicating Sino-US relations.

It rekindled this week with former Energy Department investigator Notra Trulock, who headed the initial probe into China’s alleged theft of US nuclear secrets, saying that he was blocked from briefing the US Congress by a Clinton Administra-tion appointee out of political concerns.

However, Sha, China’s top nuclear and disarmament official, asserted that his country did nothing wrong. He noted Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji had already said those Americans who were alleging Chinese espionage on US nuclear facilities have underestimated the US ability to keep a secret, and had also underestimated the ability of China in research and development of military technology.

“Chinese people are intelligent and diligent. China is now fully capable of developing any kind of military technology and it is only a matter of time,” Sha quoted Zhu as saying. Sha criticised the enhanced US restrictions of hi-tech exports to China after the release of the Cox Committee report.

USA pays $ 4.5m to China for bombing

BEIJING, Aug 31 (Reuters) — The USA has paid $ 4.5 million in compensation for the three persons killed and 27 wounded when NATO bombs destroyed Beijing’s Embassy in Belgrade in May, a US Embassy official said today.

Washington last week “transferred $ 4.5 million for the people who were injured and the families of those killed in the mistaken bombing of the Chinese Embassy”, the official said.

The US State Department Legal Adviser, Mr David Andrews, began a second day of talks with the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing today over compensation for damage to each other’s diplomatic missions, the official said.

Showing bra straps is fashion

LOS ANGELES, Aug 31 (DPA) — Their mothers burnt their bras as a sign of independence, but the young American women of the late 1990’s have found a different way to display their free spirits. They are proudly displaying their bra straps in what some observers are identifying as a new fashion wave.

The new trend received a tremendous lift when the US women’s soccer team won the World Cup last month. After blasting home the winning penalty shot in the final against China, defender Brandy Chastain mimicked the exuberant celebratory tradition of some of her male colleagues.

As a capacity crowd looked on in the stadium and millions more watched on television, she ripped off her soccer shirt to reveal her black sports bra in all its glory.

The picture of the jubilant soccer player made the front page of the country’s newspapers and magazines. It prompted a wide-ranging media debate on the transformation of underwear into outerwear with CNN and other major networks all devoting lengthy reports to the issue.

But it’s not only sportswomen who are uncovering their underwear.

According to The Los Angeles Times, the trend started several years ago when pop-star Madonna, perhaps America’s most famous exhibitionist of modern times, took to appearing on stage in elaborate bras designed by controversial French designer Jean Paul Gaultier.

American designer Calvin Klein further popularised the fashion when he launched a series of much-copied advertisements featuring male and female models in their undergarments.

But the real boost to the bra-flaunting fraternity has come from changing attitudes deep in society itself, and an increasing readiness to let everything show, experts say.

“A previous generation might have been embarrassed, but today having your bra strap exposed is a badge, a sexual signal that’s flaunted,’’ says fashion historian Peter Dervis. “The sexual charge gets neutralised. We’re immunised because it’s all around us. It’s been sanitised so all-American teenage girls can wear this and parents are not going ballistic.’’

Beatles Week
LIVERPOOL: Thousands of fans gathered in the Beatles’ home city of Liverpool on Monday to celebrate the re-issue of “Yellow Submarine”, that 1968 cinematic landmark of Beatlemania. A screening of the feature-length cartoon musical, digitally enhanced and including previously unused footage, is the highlight of International Beatles Week in Liverpool. — AP

Vintage car
SAN FRANCISCO: A rare Alfa Romeo dating to 1937 fetched over $ 4 million at a vintage car auction in one of the highest prices ever paid for a motor vehicle. The grey sportster, a two-seater 8C 2900B Cabriolet, raced in the prestigious ‘mille miglia’ Italian road race in 1938, and is regarded by many car buffs as possibly the best car ever manufactured. — DPA

Nagging women
CANBERRA: An Australian judge drew outrage by claiming that women provoke men into wife beating by nagging, Australia’s Daily Telegraph newspaper said. In a report to be published later in the day, magistrate on Monday said women invited assault by “nagging, bitching and emotionally hurting men”. — Reuters

CJs’ meeting
SEOUL: The chief justices from 26 nations in the Asia-Pacific region will assemble in Seoul to discuss judicial cooperation from September 7 to 10, an official at the Supreme Court has said. The top agenda at the eighth Asia-Pacific chief justices meeting will include cooperation to tackle mounting civic and commercial disputes among their nations and ethics of justices, the official said on Monday. — Oana-Yonhap

‘Lift’ sanctions
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani President Muhammad Rafiq Tarar on Monday called for an end to the eight-year-old United Nations sanctions on Iraq, saying the plight of its people must be eased. Tarar told a visiting Iraqi parliamentary delegation that the Pakistani government and people were “deeply distressed at the magnitude of humanitarian sufferings caused by the UN sanctions”, an official statement said. — AFP