Magnitude 7.0 earthquake hits Papua New Guinea, no tsunami alert

A 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the north coast of Papua New Guinea on Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

The quake struck at a depth of 125.5 miles and was centered 137 km north of Lae, Papua New Guinea's second-largest city,

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said no destructive Pacific-wide tsunami was expected.

Papua New Guinea is on the geologically active Pacific Ring of Fire and suffers many earthquakes but often avoids major damage and casualties because most of its people live in light and flexible housing.

However, more than 2,000 people were killed in 1998 when a 7.0 magnitude quake struck off Papua New Guinea's north coast, causing a tsunami that smashed into isolated villages.

(Reporting y Maggie Lu YueYang; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
Reuters

Clinton: 'Burden' on Iran to Show Seriousness in Nuclear Talks

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has dismissed Iran's offer to resolve international concerns about its nuclear program if the West starts lifting sanctions, saying the "burden of action" is on Tehran to make the first move.

Speaking Monday on a visit to Brasilia, Clinton said Iran must demonstrate "seriousness" in upcoming nuclear negotiations with six world powers, due to be held in Iraq in late May. She said the United States will keep sanctions in place and maintain pressure on Iran as it considers what to offer at the talks and will "respond accordingly" to any Iranian proposal.

Earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told Iran's ISNA news agency that his government always will assert its right to enrich uranium, but also will be open to negotiations about the degree of enrichment that it pursues. Western powers suspect Iran is trying to enrich uranium to a weapons-grade level to enable it to assemble an atomic bomb. Iran says its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes.

Salehi urged Western nations to begin easing sanctions against Iran if they want to resolve the dispute at the next round of nuclear talks, which will follow a meeting held by all the parties in Istanbul last Saturday. He welcomed those talks with diplomats from the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia) plus Germany as constructive.

Meanwhile, Reuters news agency reports Denmark's foreign minister as saying there is no room for easing sanctions on Iran until it takes steps to comply with demands on its nuclear program. Denmark holds the European Union's rotating presidency.

On Sunday, U.S. President Barack Obama insisted that his administration did not "give away anything" to Iranian negotiators in Istanbul. Speaking to reporters in Cartagena, Colombia, where he attended the Summit of the Americas, he defended Washington's decision to continue to push for a diplomatic resolution of the dispute about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Obama said that while he refused to let the negotiations turn into a "stalling process," he was willing to give diplomacy one last chance. The president was responding to remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said earlier Sunday that the United States and world powers gave Tehran a "freebie" by agreeing to hold another round of talks next month in Baghdad.

International pressure on Iran has been increasing. New U.S. and European Union economic sanctions are due to go into effect July 1, while Israel has warned it may take military action to stop what it believes is a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program bent on destroying the Jewish state.

VOA News

Smirking Norway killer Breivik pleads not guilty

The Norwegian far-right militant who massacred 77 people last summer gave a clenched-fist salute, smirked at the court and pleaded not guilty on the first day of a trial that threatens to turn into a "circus" showcasing his anti-Islamic views.

Anders Behring Breivik, 33, has said he acted in defense of his country by setting off a car bomb that killed eight people at government headquarters in Oslo last July, then killing another 69 people in a shooting spree at a summer youth camp organized by the ruling Labour Party.

The real question of the trial will be whether Breivik will be declared insane or guilty. While he risks being kept behind bars for the rest of his life, the high school dropout has said being labeled insane would be a "fate worse than death".

Listening impassively for hours as prosecutors read out an indictment detailing how he massacred teenagers trapped on a holiday island outside Oslo, he only shed tears when the court later showed one of his propaganda videos.

Wearing a suit and loosely knotted tie, Breivik entered the court in handcuffs, which were taken off just before he was seated. He smirked several times as the cuffs were removed, put his right fist on his heart then extended his hand in salute.

"I do not recognize the Norwegian courts. You have received your mandate from political parties which support multiculturalism," Breivik told the Oslo court after refusing to stand when judges entered.

"I acknowledge the acts but not criminal guilt as I claim self defense," he added, seated in front of a bullet-proof glass wall.

Occasionally suppressing a yawn and sipping water, he stared down at the indictment papers, following without visible emotion the list of his killings as the prosecutor read out each one. Some details were so graphic that Norwegian television bleeped out descriptions of the massacres.

Breivik wiped away tears several times while watching a movie of still pictures accompanied by text of his vision of the evils of "multiculturalism" and "Islamic demographic warfare".

"I think he feels sorry for himself," said Mette Yvonne Larsen, one of the main lawyers representing victims. "His project didn't work out, that's why he's crying. He's not crying for the victims ... he's crying over his extremely childish film."

The trial is scheduled to last 10 weeks and has raised fears that it could reopen wounds in Norway, a country that prides itself on its tolerant and peaceful society.

The "lone wolf" killer intends to say he was defending Norway against multiculturalism and Islam. He says the attacks were intended as punishment of "traitors" whose pro-immigration policies were adulterating Norwegian blood.

More than 200 people took seats in the specially built courtroom while about 700 attack survivors and family members of victims watched on closed-circuit video around the country.

"Today the trial starts, and it will be a tough time for many," survivor Vegard Groeslie Wennesland, 28, said outside the courtroom. "Last time I saw him in person he was shooting my friends."

"PANIC AND MORTAL FEAR"

Some Norwegians fear Breivik will succeed in making the trial, with about 800 journalists on hand, a platform for his anti-immigrant ideas. His defense team has called 29 witnesses to shed light on his world view. Norway's legal system gives defendants wide leeway to defend themselves as they wish, but judges can trim the witness list.

His proposed witnesses include Mullah Krekar, the Kurdish founder of Islamist group Ansar al-Islam, who was recently jailed in Norway for making death threats, and "Fjordman", a right-wing blogger who influenced Breivik. He is scheduled to testify for about a week, starting on Tuesday.

Breivik had been living with his mother in Oslo preparing for the attacks before renting a farm in order to make a fertilizer bomb.

Last July 22, he set off the bomb in the centre of Oslo before heading to the youth camp on Utoeya island in a lake 40 km (25 miles) outside the capital, gunning down his victims while police took more than an hour to get to the massacre site in the chaos following the blast.

Disguised as a police officer, Breivik managed to lure some of his victims out of hiding, saying help had arrived. Other victims jumped into the lake, where he shot them in the water.

Reading out the indictment, prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh spoke of the "panic and mortal fear in children, youths and adults" trapped on the island.

Prosecutors painted an image of a Breivik obsessed with the "World of Warcraft" computer game, prompting the judge to ask whether the game was violent. Breivik broke into a smile when the image of his online character was displayed.

"Your arrest will mark the initiation of the propaganda phase," Breivik wrote in a manual for future attackers, part of a 1,500-page manifesto he posted online. "Your trial offers you a stage to the world."

In a recent letter seen by the Norwegian newspaper VG, Breivik said: "The court case looks like it will be a circus ... it is an absolutely unique opportunity to explain the idea of (the manifesto) to the world."

An initial psychiatric evaluation concluded that Breivik was criminally insane while a second, completed in the past week, found no evidence of psychosis. Resolving this conflict could be the five-judge panel's major decision.

If found guilty and sane, Breivik faces a maximum 21-year sentence but could be held indefinitely if he is considered a continuing danger. If declared insane, he would be held in a psychiatric institution indefinitely with periodic reviews.

Accessible through airport-style security, the courthouse was barricaded by TV trucks as 200 media organizations have descended on Oslo, home of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The courtroom, the country's biggest, can seat just over a tenth of the journalists, victims and relatives wishing to attend, so closed-circuit viewing rooms have been set up nearby and in 17 other courthouses around Norway.

The trial will also examine Breivik's initial claim that he was part of an organization of "Knights Templar" with similar views. Police said evidence now points to solitary attacks by Breivik after years of radicalization.

(Additional reporting by Victoria Klesty and Terje Solsvik: Writing by Alistair Scrutton, Editing by Giles Elgood)
Reuters

Arrested Gaddafi spy chief is sick: Mauritania

Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, who was arrested in Mauritania last month and is sought by Libya, France and the International Criminal Court (ICC), is ill, Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz said on Sunday.

Libyan authorities are seeking the extradition of Gaddafi's former right-hand man, vying with Paris and the Hague-based ICC which also have legal cases against him.

Abdel Aziz said in an interview with the French TV5 station that Senussi, 62, already had health problems when he flew into Mauritania's capital Nouakchott in March using a false passport.

"His situation is stationary, it's not worrying," the Mauritanian president said. "We've had him examined by doctors, as soon as the justice system has finished with him, we'll take a decision," he added.

He did not say what ailment Senussi was suffering from, but sources familiar with Senussi's case told Reuters in Nouakchott he was believed to have cancer.

In March, a senior Libyan government official said after talks with Mauritania's Abdel Aziz that the latter had given his consent for Senussi's extradition to Libya. But Mauritanian officials have denied any such commitment was given.

"His case is being studied. We have a number of questions to put to him and we haven't finished with him yet. We haven't taken our decision yet," Abdel Aziz told TV5.

Senussi is suspected of playing a central role in the killing of more than 1,200 inmates at Tripoli's Abu Salim prison in 1996. It was the arrest of a lawyer acting for relatives of the victims that sparked Libya's revolt in February last year.

France wants Senussi in connection with a 1989 airliner bombing over Niger in which 54 of its nationals died.

Senussi has also been linked to the 1988 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland of a Pan Am jet that killed 270 people. Diplomatic sources have said the United States was keen to question him about that attack.

(Reporting by Laurent Prieur, Editing by Pascal Fletcher)
Reuters

Syrian forces pound Homs as first UN monitors set to arrive

Syria's four-day-old ceasefire was sorely tested on Sunday as the army repeatedly shelled the central city of Homs and rebels attacked a police station near Aleppo, compounding the job of a group of six UN observers en route for the country.

The advance party of a 30-strong mission of unarmed observers was set to arrive late on Sunday night and deploy on Monday. But William Hague, the foreign secretary, said there were limits to what the group could achieve given the fragility of the truce established last week.

"This number of people cannot possibly effectively monitor what is happening in the whole country," Hague told Sky News. "The plan will be for a much larger [team], more in the hundreds, of monitors to follow them provided the [ceasefire] plan is being implemented by all concerned," he said.

The observers will have much to inspect. In Homs on Sunday, Walid al-Fares, an activist living in Khalidiya, one of the neighbourhoods where mortar bombs have landed, said: "Early this morning we saw a helicopter and a spotter plane fly overhead. Ten minutes later, there was heavy shelling."

Another resident said that government loyalists were using heavy machine guns to shoot into the area. Rami Abdelrahman, head of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said shells were being fired at a rate of one a minute.

Abdelrahman said there had also been overnight clashes in Aleppo: "People said they heard explosions and shooting after rebels attacked a police station and then clashed with police."

The fresh violence came after the fragile ceasefire had already been rocked by fighting in Homs on Saturday, when regime forces shelled rebel-held neighbourhoods. Rebel fighters were also reported to have fired rocket-propelled grenades at an area held by regime loyalists.

On Saturday in Aleppo, Syria's largest city, regime forces opened fire on mourners at a funeral, while rebel gunmen ambushed a car carrying soldiers in the southern province of Deraa.

The two sides have traded allegations of truce violations since it took effect formally last Thursday. However, Saturday's reports of the use of heavier weapons suggested the ceasefire was in jeopardy.

A video, shot in a destroyed part of what the cameraman says is the Homs area of al-Qarabis, showed two tanks rushing through the streets to the sound of heavy gunfire and explosions. "Look with your own eyes. Look, world. Watch what they are doing," the man making the video screams as a tank raises its turret.

The Syrian state news agency Sana said "armed terrorists" killed five people in ambushes around the country on Saturday and kidnapped a parliamentary candidate from the north.

Since the truce brokered by Arab League and UN envoy Kofi Annan came into effect, fewer deaths have been reported. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the shelling on Saturday in Homs lasted for about an hour and there were no reports of casualties.

The UN has warned it will "consider further steps" against the Assad regime if Syria does not end the violence and comply with Annan's ceasefire and six-point peace plan.

Troops for the peacekeeping mission will be drawn from existing UN military observer missions in the Golan Heights, Lebanon and Sudan; sources said they were ready to fly to Damascus within hours.

The resolution on Saturday is the first to be passed by the security council since the Syrian crisis – which has pushed the country to the brink of civil war – began more than a year ago. Significantly, it won the support of Russia and China, which had controversially vetoed a previous resolution aimed at bringing to an end violence that has claimed 9,000 lives in the past 13 months.

Russia's UN ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said Moscow was satisfied with the latest western-Arab resolution authorising the deployment of the first batch of unarmed UN observers to Syria to monitor its fragile truce. Speaking after the vote, however, Churkin warned against "destructive attempts of external interference" in Syria.

Welcoming the deployment, Hague had said: "This mission is a vital step in supporting the fragile ceasefire in Syria. It is essential that it begins its work urgently and without impediment. I urge all parties to maintain the ceasefire to allow the monitoring mission to deploy and complete its task."

The Guardian