Gunman kills 7in US church
FORT WORTH, (Texas), Sept 16 — The police was today trying to identify a gunman dressed in black who opened fire at a Baptist Church last evening, killing seven before taking his own life.

PPP leader expelled
ISLAMABAD, Sept 16 — The Pakistan People’s Party has expelled one its seniormost leaders, Mr Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, from the primary membership of the party

Jakarta breaks military ties with Canberra

DILI, (East Timor), Sept 16 (Agencies) — Governments round the world today promised soldiers for an Australian-led international peacekeeping force of 7,000 men that is set to arrive in East Timor on Sunday or Monday and terminate Indonesia’s 24-year occupation of the former Portuguese colony.

Jakarta severed military ties with Australia in protest at Canberra’s attitude in spearheading the intervention. Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he was “not too worried” by the rupture, announced by Political Affairs Minister Faisal Tanjung.

The defence cooperation agreement was signed in 1995 by former Indonesian President Suharto and then Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating.

The government of President B.J. Habibie has been caught by a nationalist backlash against his decision to allow Australia to lead the force into the violence-wracked province.

Tanjung said Indonesia had decided to “review some aspects of Indonesia-Australia bilateral ties”.

“As a result of this review, Indonesia has decided to abrogate the agreement with Australia on maintaining security, signed in December 18, 1995,” he said.

A report from Darwin said Australian defence force chief Admiral Chris Barrie warned that the UN force about to leave for East Timor would conduct a “tough military operation” if Indonesian troops failed to cooperate.

Indonesia’s military commander in East Timor today said that his troops would begin pulling out from the territory once U.N. forces arrived.

“Once they get in I will pull out. I hope the process will take not more than one week,” Major-Gen Kiki Syahnakri told Reuters, adding that he expected an advance team to arrive on Saturday, followed by 2,500 troops on Monday.

The U.N. troops would arrive in Dili and Baucau, added Gen Syahnakri, the head of a special martial law command in East Timor.

Dili has been largely reduced to ruins by the violence, while thousands of people have fled to the surrounding mountains or to neighbouring west Timor.

Militiamen blamed for most of the violence have been pulling out of Dili in recent days ahead of the arrival of the force.

Meanwhile the United Nations World Food Programme has said it was preparing to air drop emergency food supplies in East Timor as part of the UN’s humanitarian effort to reach the large number of people displaced by violence in the territory.

A report from Beijing said China would participate in the proposed multinational force to restore peace in East Timor.

“China supports the role played by the United Nations in resolving the East Timor issue and at the invitation of the UN, the Chinese side has decided to send civilian police to join the ad hoc commission in East Timor,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said.

STRASBOURG (France): The European Parliament today urged European Union governments to recognise East Timor as an independent state, and backed proposals for an international tribunal on atrocities committed in the territory.

The assembly overwhelmingly supported a resolution calling for the 15-member EU to establish diplomatic relations with the former Portuguese colony.

It urged the United Nations to draw up an inventory of atrocities committed by anti-independence militias with the participation of the police and army of Indonesia and to begin identifying those responsible.

The resolution also called on the international community to suspend military cooperation, arms supplies and economic aid to Jakarta, except for humanitarian assistance.

3.5 million flee from hurricane Floyd
9 die as typhoon hits Japan

MIAMI, (USA) Sept,16 (DPA) — Millions of Americans fled inland ahead of Hurricane Floyd, one of the mightiest storms ever recorded in the North Atlantic, as forecasters warned it could rake the eastern US coast from the Carolinas to Maryland.

Floyd weakened slightly to a Category 3 storm, but packed the potential to strengthen again as it crossed the warm waters of the Gulf stream before landfall. The storm caused one death in the Bahamas and officials on the US mainland warned of “significant loss of life” from potential flooding.

Roads along the US south-eastern seaboard yesterday were reported jammed with slow moving traffic heading inland as a reported 3.5 million people fled Floyd’s path. Less vulnerable communities, meanwhile, set up emergency shelters in stadiums and schools for their own residents and others.

“I cannot think of another evacuation that’s on the scale of this one,” a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency said.

President Bill Clinton, returning early from his visit to New Zealand, declared emergencies for South and North Carolina, adding to the declarations he issued on Tuesday for Florida and Georgia. The declarations allow state governments to position federal resources for emergency aid.

As of 9 p.m GMT, Floyd was packing sustained winds of 185 kmph. Its eye was expected to make landfall during the night between Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina.

TOKYO: As many as nine people may have been killed and three others missing after a typhoon pelted central Japan with torrential rain yesterday, the police and Japanese media reported today.

The typhoon, which had already weakened into a tropical storm by late yesterday, killed at least seven, the National Police Agency said. The mass-circulation daily Yomiuri Shimbun put the figure at nine dead.

The storm caused a mudslide in Kamikochi, a popular tourist spot in the mountains of central Japan, blocking a road and temporarily leaving about 1,300 visitors stranded. They later safely descended the mountain by foot, the paper said.

The police agency said there were at least 85 cases of mudslides caused by the typhoon.

By early today, another typhoon had developed in the East China sea, threatening southwestern and western Japan with heavy rain, the meteorological agency said.

HONG KONG (AP): Typhoon York pounded Hong Kong with a direct hit today, flooding parts of the territory while blocking roads with fallen trees, blowing the glass out of downtown skyscrapers and stirring fears of landslides.

One man died and at least 115 more were hospitalised with injuries from the worst storm to hit Hong Kong in 16 years, a government spokesman said.

The typhoon, packing winds up to150 kmph, forced the closure of schools, financial markets and most businesses. Ferry services to outlying islands and to the neighbouring Portuguese enclave of Macau were suspended, as fishing boats scurried for cover.

Marine police were searching for a man reported missing after his “sampan” (boat) capsized, but a source said the man may have survived by swimming ashore.

Officials opened 29 temporary emergency shelters and said 131 people had sought refuge by mid-morning. There were reports of scattered power outages, with dozens of people trapped in the elevators that are common in Hong Kong’s many high-rise apartment houses.

UNGA session
Sharif stays at home to avoid coup?
By Cecil Victor

IT appears that Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s decision not to attend the UN General Assembly (UNGA) session in New York is dictated by fears of a replacement likely to be organised by a humiliated military brass.

If he attends the UNGA session, the Pakistan Prime Minister will have to face the mortification of having to explain to his US hosts why he is trying to link the signing of the CTBT with the withdrawal of sanctions imposed after the serial nuclear tests in the Chagai Hills of Baluchistan at a juncture when Washington is preparing to impose fresh embargoes for the import of ready-to-use Chinese M-11 missiles in violation of the zero-exchange clause of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).

The military establishment in Pakistan is worried that Mr Sharif will have to make more strategic concessions vis-a-vis Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme and the means of delivery of nuclear warheads. This paranoia has increased with the recent reported rapprochement with North Korea under which Pongyang had agreed not to test its new long-range missiles. Pakistan’s Ghauri medium-range missile, according to US Intelligence sources, has come from the North Korean arsenal.

After the Kargil imbroglio and the withdrawal of Pakistani troops from the Dras-Kargil sector under pressure from the G-8 nations, the whole nation appears to be up in arms against the decision and there are calls to replace Mr Sharif.

The Pakistan army does not intend to stage a coup given the likely disastrous fallout of international reaction (particularly of the International Monetary Fund) such a move would attract, but given the groundswell of public opinion spearheaded by the Islamists to replace Mr Sharif with another civilian (and some names have been bandied about) the military appears to be in a mood to support such a move as it would absolve it of the opprobrium of having staged a coup. It would also be in keeping with the concept of “guided democracy” which, ironically, Mr Sharif’s mentor Zia-ul-Haq had tried to impose in Pakistan.

Having rubbed shoulders with the military brass, Mr Sharif must have studied some of the proclivities of disgruntled military men. One marked tendency enshrined in the encyclopaedia of coup d’etats is that if a leader happens to leave the country he could, bloodlessly, be replaced. For example, it happened to Mr Kwame Nkrumah of Nigeria who went to China and was toppled.

It seems Mr Sharif does not want to tempt fate.

— Asia Defence News International (ADNI)

Gunman kills 7in US church
Shoots himself

FORT WORTH, (Texas), Sept 16 (DPA) — The police was today trying to identify a gunman dressed in black who opened fire at a Baptist Church last evening, killing seven before taking his own life.

About 150 worshippers were at the Wedgwood Baptist Church for the evening service and a youth rally when the shooting occurred. A total of 15 people were wounded, seven were shifted to hospital, where four victims were in a critical condition.

The police and fire officials said six victims were shot dead in the church and one person later died of gunshot wounds at hospital. The gunman took his own life, but his identity or possible connection to the church was not known.

Officials said the victims in the church were two teenage girls, a teenage boy and three adults.

The authorities said that the gunman also detonated a pipe bomb, or another explosive device as he entered the church. Special police teams were searching on the gunman’s body for a possible second explosive device.

Acting police chief Ralph Mendoza said the gunman was a white male between 20 and 30 years old. He said inspectors say three spent ammunition clips on the floor of the church and he believed a semi-automatic weapon was used in the assault.

He shot himself in the head at the end of his shooting spree.

“A gunman entered the church and started firing,’’ said Fire Depart-ment spokesman Steve Kerr. “It is a mystery about the gunman. We don’t know what connection he may have had to the church community,’’ he added.

Several teenagers told Dallas television station, WFAA, that as many as 40 shots may have been fired, CNN television reported.

The police said the gunman shouting anti-religious curses while firing teenage worshippers. The tall gunman sat down in a pew after gunning the worshippers and shot himself in the head as policemen closed in.

It was the latest in the string of gun rampages in the USA over the last six months that began in April when two teenage students killed 15 people including themselves in an attack on their high school in Colorado.

PPP leader expelled

ISLAMABAD, Sept 16 (UNI) — The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has expelled one its seniormost leaders, Mr Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, from the primary membership of the party on charges of indiscipline, thus opening a way for the formation of a rival unit of the party in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Mr Sherpao was dropped as the party’s vice-chairman a few months ago by Ms Benazir Bhutto for his independent tendencies in his home province, the NWFP, of which he has been the Chief Minister twice.

Castro mocks US claim
HAVANA: President Fidel Castro has poured scorn on claims in US media that one of his senior officials led a small Cuban security unit responsible for torturing American soldiers captured in the Vietnam war. In comments shown on state television on Wednesday, Mr Castro mocked the accusation against Higher Education Minister Fernando Vecino Alegret as a ridiculous lie, saying he had never even set foot in Vietnam. — Reuters

Diabetes therapy
BOSTON: Help for the 14 million Americans suffering from diabetes may be as close as the nearest hot tub. A small pilot study reported in today’s New England Journal of Medicine suggests that soaking in a hot tub for 30 minutes a day for a three-week period can reduce blood sugar levels by 13 per cent. The treatment worked so well for one of the eight volunteers, he had to reduce the amount of insulin he was taking by 18 per cent to avoid having his blood sugar level fall too far. — Reuters

Faeces as fuel
PARIS: Spaceships of the future could be powered by astronauts’ faeces, the British magazine New Scientist reports in this week’s addition. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has signed up a Connecticut firm, Advanced Fuel Research, in a new 600,000-dollar project to turn faeces and urine into a source of power for spaceships, it says. — AFP

“Lost” supernova
LONDON: Evidence of a “lost’’ supernova that exploded some 700 years ago has turned up in the snows of Antarctica, the New Scientist magazine has said. X-rays from the German-US orbiting Rosat satellite have shown a glowing supernova remnant just 640 light years away, suggesting the star’s explosion lit up our skies at the beginning of the 14th century, making it by far the closest supernova in our past. — Reuters