Australians advised to flee town near burning Hazelwood Coal mine

Residents of Morwell, a town of 14,000 in the Latrobe Valley east of Melbourne, have complained of chest ailments and headaches caused by the acrid smoke.

The elderly, young children and pregnant women were advised on Friday to evacuate an Australian town that has been shrouded by smoke and ash from a burning coal mine for almost three weeks.

Victoria state Chief Health Officer Rosemary Lester said vulnerable residents were advised to leave the town of Morwell as a precaution because the fire in the nearby Hazelwood coal mine is expected to spew smoke for at least 10 more days.

Residents of Morwell, a town of 14,000 in the Latrobe Valley east of Melbourne, have complained of chest ailments and headaches caused by the acrid smoke.

Ms. Lester said that health workers had not yet seen serious health effects from the smoke, and that there had not been a sharp increase in ambulance calls or hospital admissions.

“But we do know that the longer the vulnerable people spend in the fine particles from the smoke, that that’s a continuing risk to them,” she said.

In addition to people aged over 65 years, under school-age children and pregnant women, Ms. Lester advised people with pre-existing heart and lung problems to temporarily leave town.

Graeme Middlemiss, a Morwell resident and elected member of the local council, said some people had already left town because of the smoke and that authorities should have been quicker to respond.

“The town has been choked with smoke. For the first two weeks it was appalling and a constant rain of ash,” Mr. Middlemiss told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Police suspect an arsonist started the blaze in the open-cut coal mine with three brush fires lit on Feb. 9. No one has been arrested. The fire has since burned deep into the coal seam.

Fire Service Commissioner Craig Lapsley said it could take another 10 days to bring the blaze under control so that it wouldn’t send significant smoke or ash over Morwell.

China bus fire was arson: Police

Chinese authorities said on Friday that they have identified a person suspected of setting a fire aboard a bus that killed six people and injured 35 others this week in the south-western city of Guiyang.

Guiyang police did not name the person in a one-line announcement posted on their official microblog. The police did not say whether the suspect was on the bus at the time of the fire, or anything about a possible motive.

The bus caught fire near an elementary school on Thursday. Media reports said about 50 people were inside the vehicle.

One witness said the bus was no more than 20 meters (yards) from him when he heard an explosion.

“After some sparks gleamed in the middle of the bus, it all of sudden got engulfed in a sea of flames,” Zeng Xi said. “I couldn’t see how many passengers were on the bus because of the dark smoke, but noticed a middle-aged man jump out a window. It only took a few minutes for the inferno to destroy the whole bus.”

Photos circulating online showed the bright blue and green vehicle enveloped in flames and black smoke. Later, photos showed the bus burned to its frame.

Last year, a Chinese man set fire to a commuter bus in the southeastern port city of Xiamen, killing himself and 46 others. A deadly bus fire in 2009 killed 27 people, including the arsonist, in the central city of Chengdu. Both men were believed to be settling scores with society in China, where tensions have been on the rise because of growing gaps in wealth and a lack of social security.

Tokyo bitcoin exchange files for bankruptcy

The Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange in Tokyo filed for bankruptcy protection, acknowledging that a significant amount of the virtual currency had gone missing.

The exchange’s CEO Mark Karpeles appeared before Japanese TV news cameras on Friday, bowing deeply for several minutes.

Speaking in Japanese at a Tokyo court, he apologized for the troubles he had caused to so many people.

Kyodo News said debts at Mt. Gox totalled more than 6.5 billion yen ($65 million), surpassing its assets.

The exchange’s unplugging this week drew renewed regulatory attention to a currency created in 2009 as a way to make transactions across borders without third parties such as banks.

HRW backs international inquiry into Sri Lanka’s war crimes

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) has backed UN rights chief’s recommendation for an international inquiry into alleged war crimes committed in Sri Lanka during the final phase of battle with the LTTE.

“The United Nations Human Rights Council should adopt the recommendation of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHRC) Navi Pillay to create an independent international inquiry into war crimes and other serious abuses committed in Sri Lanka armed conflict,” the New York-based HRW said.

“The Sri Lankan government has refused to address its role in the deaths of tens of thousands at the end of the country’s brutal civil war,” Brad Adams, Asia director of the HRW, said.

The report by Ms. Pillay, a South African of Indian Tamil origin, has concluded the Sri Lankan government has taken no significant steps to implement the recommendations on accountability of its own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission.

“National mechanisms have consistently failed to establish the truth and achieve justice.”

“The High Commissioner believes this can no longer be explained as a function of time or technical capacity, but that it is fundamentally a question of political will,” the report stated.

“The bottom line is that Sri Lanka has repeatedly refused to undertake investigations into crimes committed by its own forces, so it will be up to members of the UN Human Rights Council to take decisive action at the coming March session,” Mr. Adams said.

Meanwhile, the Amnesty International also said that the Sri Lankan government’s targeting of critics persists at alarming levels, with more surveillance and harassment reported ahead of next month’s UNHRC.

Mr. Chaudhry Nisar says No military operation in FATA says Nisar

Pakistan Interior Minister on Friday told the National Assembly that there was no military operation in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and a decision of this sort would not be a secret.

He reiterated that there were only precision strikes and the impact on people was not much. Earlier while tabling the new National Internal Security Policy, he had said that the precision strikes would hit the homes and hideouts of terrorists. The Prime Minister will convene a meeting of the chief ministers of the four provinces to discuss the policy. He said that there were 1017 terrorist attacks in Pakistan in the last six months, killing 878 people including 232 security forces personnel.

Mr. Chaudhry Nisar also said that there was no decision to carry out a military operation and it would be taken only after due consultation. On the question of people moving to Bannu and other areas after the military strikes in North Waziristan, he said that the numbers were not that high and efforts were being made to ensure the collateral damage was zero.

Meanwhile military sources said on Friday that three terrorists were killed and three injured in an exchange of fire early morning in Achni Bala area of Khyber agency. Two soldiers of the Frontier Corps were also injured.

U.S. officials :Al-Qaeda threat in Afghanistan

Al-Qaeda’s Afghanistan leader is laying the groundwork to re-launch his war-shattered organisation once the United States and international forces withdraw from the country, as they have warned they will do without a security agreement from the Afghan government, U.S. officials say.

Farouq al-Qahtani al-Qatari has been cementing local ties and bringing in small numbers of experienced militants to train a new generation of fighters, and U.S. military and intelligence officials say they have stepped up drone and jet missile strikes against him and his followers in the mountainous eastern provinces of Kunar and Nuristan. The objective is to keep him from restarting the large training camps that once drew hundreds of followers before the U.S.-led war began.

The officials say the counterterrorism campaign — a key reason the Obama administration agreed to keep any troops in Afghanistan after 2014 — could be jeopardised by the possibility of a total pullout.

“I think most are waiting for the U.S. to fully pull out by 2014,” he said.

The administration would like to leave up to 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after combat operations end on December 31, to continue training Afghan forces and conduct counterterrorism missions. But without the agreement that would authorise international forces to stay in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama has threatened to pull all troops out, and NATO forces would follow suit. After talking to Afghan President Hamid Karzai this week, Mr. Obama ordered the Pentagon to begin planning for the so-called zero option.

U.S. military and intelligence officials say unless they can continue to fly drones and jets from at least one air base in Afghanistan either Bagram in the north or Jalalabad in the east al-Qahtani and his followers could eventually plan new attacks against U.S. targets, although experts do not consider him one of the most dangerous al-Qaeda leaders.

Syrian jets strike areas in Lebanon

Syrian jets launched air strikes on Friday on mountainous areas in Lebanon, activists and the Lebanese National Agency reported.

The jets struck areas in the hills of Kherbet Younine near Lebanon’s north-eastern town of Arsal.

A Lebanese security source in the area said the raid targeted what is believed to be hideouts of Syrian rebels.

“The Syrian aerial attacks which took place in the area of Younine also are aimed at cutting off any possible supply route to the area of Qalamoun which is adjacent to the Lebanese border,” the source said.

The Syrian government forces launched air strikes early Friday on the Syrian town of Yabroud, Syrian activist Abu Mohammed reported.

Syrian troops backed by fighters from their ally, the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, launched a wide-scale attack on the Qalamoun area, he added. Rebel fighters returned fire.

In retaliation, at least two rockets from the Syrian rebel-side of the border fell on the Lebanese eastern Shiite town of Brital which is a Hezbollah stronghold. Three people were slightly wounded, according to a Lebanese security.

In recent weeks, government troops have been trying to score advances in the Qalamoun area in a bid to secure the border area against rebel movement from and into Lebanon. In February, they started a major assault on Yabroud, the last major rebel-held town in the strategic region.

A Hezbollah source in Beirut said that the land attack on Yabroud has started.

The Shiite movement, which has been fighting alongside the Syrian forces of Bashar al-Assad for the past two years, has taken “extra security measures in its areas across the capital Beirut and its strongholds near the Syrian border in anticipation for any suicide attacks,” he added.

The opposition al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front has threatened to attack Shiite areas across Lebanon if the movement continues to fight inside Syria.

Thousands of Syrians have fled Yabroud since the military launched its offensive, mostly heading towards Arsal.

The strike is the latest in a series of cross-border fire against Arsal, which has become home to thousands of Syrian refugees. In January, shells hit the town, killing several people.