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Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia have stepped up security in the Strait of Malacca after receiving warnings of terror attacks against oil tankers in the busy waterway, reports The Straits Times.

The Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) has pushed out extra ships to patrol the Strait, while the Police Coast Guard has also beefed up security in Singapore waters to prevent an attack on the island.

The Straits Times understands that police vessels have been tasked to look out for, and inspect, small boats that come close to large vessels that are berthed at anchorages here.

The beefed-up security is the result of a warning sent out by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) to the three countries after it received a tip-off.

The Reuters news agency quoted a naval attache from Thailand, Captain Sutheepong Kaewtab, as saying that the tip-off came from Japan.

After the IMB warning, the RSN sent an advisory to the Singapore Shipping Association, which represents 380 firms, including BW Maritime, which operates more than 30 oil tankers, and container carriers like Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) and AP Moller-Maersk. The association then relayed the warning to its members.

In fact, the head of antiterror from the Coordinating Ministry for Politics, Law and Security, Ansyaad Mbai, says in an interview with Kompas.com:

“I estimate that there’s an even bigger potential target. For instance, accessing and terrorizing crucial areas like the Strait of Malacca, which is a critical sea route for international trade. As we know, since the US assaulted Iraq, a lot of terrorists aim for and attack oil installations. From that point on, the world has been worried that the Strait of Malacca will become a new terrorist target.

No wonder advanced countries such as the US and Japan have stated their willingness to be involved in securing the Strait of Malacca. However, the idea has been rejected by three littoral countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.”

The Palestinian Authority has said indirect talks with Israel will be “very difficult” if more homes are built on occupied land as planned, says the PNN.

Israel announced the plan for 1,600 more homes in occupied East Jerusalem shortly before a peace process visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said they had “demanded that the Americans help us revoke this order.”

The indirect talks were to be the first steps in resuming stalled peace talks.

Mr Erakat, speaking to the BBC, emphasised that “it is very difficult for us to engage in any negotiations unless the order [to build the homes] is revoked”.

President Mahmoud Abbas had notified the Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa and Mr Biden of his difficulties with the talks and settlements, Mr Erakat said.

According to Mr Erakat: “He told Moussa, ‘I am waiting for [US Middle East envoy George] Mitchell to come back next week to give us the answer that the [settlements] decision has been cancelled’.”

Mr Biden has condemned the Israeli move as undermining trust.

Israel and the Palestinians had earlier agreed to hold indirect “proximity talks” in a bid to restart the peace process, which has been stalled for 17 months.

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An Athens prosecutor yesterday asked police to arrest dozens of former employees of Olympic Air, who have been causing congestion in central Athens for the past week by barring the entrance to the General Accounting Office, as labor unions geared up for the second 24-hour strike in the past month.

The general strike, called by the country’s main labor unions to protest the government’s new austerity measures, will ground planes and disrupt public services and transport in the capital.

Today’s main protest rally, by labor union GSEE and the civil servants’ union ADEDY, is to start at the Pedio tou Areos park at 11 a.m. while another, organized by the Communist-affiliated labor union PAME, is to start in Omonia Square at the same time.

To avoid additional disruption on the streets, the prosecutor is asking police to forcibly remove about 150 former OA employees whose weeklong protest over their termination settlements has effectively shut off central Panepistimiou Street and suspended the operation of the General Accounting Office, which dispenses state salaries and pensions.

Those visiting the city center today are advised to do so on foot, as many roads will be closed.

There will be no services on the metro, buses, trolley buses, tram, railway and suburban railway. Only the Kifissia-Piraeus electric railway (ISAP) will be operating between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

All flights will be postponed as air-traffic controllers walk off the job and ferries will remain moored at ports as seamen join the action.

Schools and tax offices will close and hospitals will operate on emergency staff. Courts will also be closed as lawyers and clerks stay at home. Meanwhile, trash is expected to continue piling up on the streets as landfill staff press on with protest action.

Striking workers object to the government’s new austerity measures, comprising tax hikes and slashed holiday pay for civil servants.

Read more here.

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A Dutch healthcare union has kicked off a campaign to brace nurses and other caretakers against sexual requests made by patients. Its motto: “I draw the line here”.

The campaign instigated by the union named Nu’91 comes as a reaction to a recent incident between a 42-year old man and his new 24-year-old home caretaker. A muscle disorder has left the man unable to move anything but his mouth and eyes. The man asked his new caretaker, a student, to relief him of his natural urges, saying that his other seven caretakers did the same for him. The young women saw two of her colleagues do so indeed. When she refused, her patient called her unfit for healthcare.

The union was most shocked by the reaction of a care dependents interest group, Per Saldo. When the incident became public last weekend, Aline Saers, the group’s managing director, expressed sympathy for the man. “They are free to ask,” she said. “You are free to refuse.”

Saers has since said she had not meant to condone the man’s request. “Sexual services are not part of a caretaker’s tasks,” she explained to NRC Handelsblad.

A client can discuss his sexual needs with a caretaking agency, Saers said, so that it can call upon a specialised escort agency – legal in the Nehterlands – for instance. “Sexual help can be so soothing. Some municipalities arrange it,” Saers added.

Detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is unhappy with the election law recently issued by Burma’s ruling military regime, according to her lawyer, Nyan Win, who met her on Thursday.

“She said she did not think the regime would release such a terrible law,” Nyan Win said after meeting with Suu Kyi at her home in Rangoon on Thursday evening.

Nyan Win and another lawyer for Suu Kyi, Kyi Wynn, met with the detained democracy leader from 2 to 4 p.m. today to discuss the election law, her appeal against her current term of house arrest, and a legal dispute with her brother over repairs to their family home.

Nyan Win, who is also a spokesperson for the National League for Democracy (NLD), said Suu Kyi described the law that excluded her and other political prisoners as unfair.

Most political prisoners were sentenced for serving their political parties, Suu Kyi said. “Forcing them out of their parties and banning them from voting because of their imprisonment is therefore a double punishment,” she was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, the state-run media reported on Thursday that the Burmese regime has appointed a 17-member election commission. All of the members were selected by the regime.

Read more here.

Terrorism and militancy are being fanned to destabilise the economy of the country which is at the threshold of a double digit growth, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said.

He said hostile forces seek to undermine the security and stability of our nation.

“Even while they (hostile forces) challenge our borders and our boundaries, they make attempts to destabilize our economy. Terrorism and militancy are being fanned to hinder the growth of our country,” Chidambaram said in his address at the CISF Raising Day Parade here.

He said since the 1980’s, India has emerged as one of the most happening economies of the world. “The past decade has seen good growth and our economy is on the threshold of a double digit growth,” Chidambaram said.

He said the country’s growth depends on infrastructure and the CISF, which guards some of the most critical installations, is securing India’s future.

Read more here.

The gala crowd in Los Angeles cheered as “The Cove” won the best documentary Oscar with its grisly portrayal of dolphin slaughter. But residents of this small port shown in the film abhorred the attention and said it will not end their centuries-old tradition, reports The Japan Times.

Residents of Taiji gathered in whale eateries with names like Tail and rolled their eyes Monday when told of Oscar laurels for the film, which they see as yet another biased foreign take on their culture.

The village of 3,500 has been hunting dolphins and whales near its shores since the early 1600s. It calls itself “Whale Town” and has a massive pair of whale statues looming over the main street. “The Cove” refers to Taiji and its dolphin cull as “a little town with a really big secret,” but local assembly member Hisato Ryono said there is nothing to hide.

“Everyone around here knows about it. The water nearby turns red during the hunt. The actual killing is done in a concealed area because it is unpleasant to look at, as is true of killing cows or pigs or any other animal,” said Ryono, who says he was tricked into appearing in the film.

“This is a close-knit group of fishermen. The more they feel squeezed, the more they will close off to outsiders. They won’t stop this hunt because of such pressure,” Ryono said.

The central government allows about 19,000 dolphins to be killed each year. Taiji hunts about 2,000 dolphins every year for meat — less than other places — but is singled out in part because of its “oikomi” method of herding and killing them near the shore.

Dolphins, in addition to being food, are also recognized in Taiji as crowd pleasers with their playful nature, leading to odd contrasts. Taiji fishermen capture some to sell to aquariums, and the area is dotted with ocean cages offering dolphin bonding sessions. Dolphin Base charges ¥2,000 for a 20-minute session less than 1 km from the cove where hundreds of the mammals are stabbed and dragged ashore in the annual hunt.

Like most residents of Taiji, the dolphin trainers repeatedly avoided talking to a foreign reporter — one young woman ran away when asked her opinion. At the nearby Dolphin Resort, a modern hotel complex with its own dolphin pool, manager Kiyo Ikeda agreed to be interviewed, as long as there were no questions about dolphins.

“We really don’t get many foreign guests at this hotel,” she said.

Many Taiji residents said they will no longer speak to foreign visitors on the record, after years of what they felt were one-sided articles and gory pictures shown out of context.

Read more here.

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U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday the Palestinians deserve a viable independent state with contiguous territory, in an effort to reassure them of U.S. support after Israel announced plans to expand a Jewish neighborhood in disputed East Jerusalem.

The Israeli move has overshadowed Biden’s visit, meant to promote a new round of U.S.-led negotiations, and drawn Palestinian accusations that Israel is not serious about peace.

Israel apologized for embarrassing Biden with the timing of its announcement, but made clear it has no intention of reversing its plan.

Capping a day of meetings with Palestinian leaders, Biden told his hosts that the U.S. is committed to brokering a final peace deal – something that has eluded U.S. leaders for decades.

“The United States pledges to play an active as well as a sustainable role in these talks,” Biden said. He stressed the Palestinians deserve an independent state that is viable and contiguous, meaning the territory should not be broken up by Israeli settlement enclaves.

“Yesterday the decision by the Israeli government to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem undermines that very trust, the trust that we need right now in order to begin … profitable negotiations,” Biden said.

It was a clear message to Israel that the U.S. expects a broad withdrawal from the West Bank as part of a deal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has given only conditional support for Palestinian independence and signaled that he wants to retain control of key parts of the West Bank, including Jewish settlements. The U.S., along with the Palestinians, consider settlements built on lands claimed by the Palestinians to be obstacles to peace.

The Israeli plan to build 1,600 new homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo was an embarrassing setback for Biden, who arrived Monday hoping to build on an agreement by both sides to resume indirect negotiations through the mediation of U.S. envoy George Mitchell.

Read more here.

For those longing for a moderate Islamic voice vociferating against the perils of fundamentalism and the evils of terrorism, Islamic scholar Dr. Tahir ul Qadri has published his fatwa against terrorism in Abu Dhabi’s The National:

“I have been compelled to issue a fatwa – a comprehensive theological refutation of Islamist terrorism – because of what has been happening in Pakistan over the past year. Terrorists are bombing mosques during Friday prayers, they are burning schools, killing women. They are digging bodies out of graves, cutting off their heads and hanging the bodies from trees.

My 600-page fatwa is based on all four schools of jurisprudence: Hanafi, Shafii, Hanbali and Maliki, and the Shia school of Jafari. I have consulted hundreds of classical Islamic texts, the scholars, fiqh and the Hadith. The main theme is this: any act of terrorism such as suicide bombing cannot be justified in any way. There are no conditions, no pretexts or exemptions. It is condemned by the Quran and the Sunna.

Killing Muslims and non-Muslims through terrorist activities and using violent aggression to impose their mistaken and misplaced ideology is a fundamental rejection of faith. Such acts make the people carrying out the attacks unbelievers, or kufr.

Some scholars have said to me that we know suicide bombing is forbidden but to say that this is an act of an unbeliever is going far. I am not saying anyone who kills is an unbeliever. I say one who is committing acts of terrorism on the basis that it is sanctioned and lawful by Islam is an unbeliever.

The Quran says those who kill in mosques, burn people, blow them up, they will suffer the torments of hellfire. This is one aspect.

A second aspect I have examined is the justification that Muslim rulers in Arab countries or non-Muslims are not enforcing Islamic law so there is an obligation to fight against them. This is absolutely wrong. In no context is any organisation allowed to take up arms on their own and say we are defending Muslim land or we are avenging the aggression of non-Muslim powers. This is a matter for a state and its government.

The holy Prophet Mohammed told his companions that bad rulers would come and the people would curse them and the rulers would curse their people. The companions asked should they not fight them with swords if this time comes? And the holy Prophet said that no, they were not allowed as far as they were Muslims.

As for adopting the defence that the attacks are against foreign aggression, this is the privilege and responsibility of the state to stand up and to fight according to international law. If groups and individuals start taking revenge it will create global anarchy and there will be no rule of law, there will be just killing of mankind.

There is a prophecy of the Prophet Mohammed. He mentioned that the Kharijites would emerge continuously in Islamic history. The Kharijites believed that whoever did not agree with their philosophy was an unbeliever and should be killed. They wanted to resolve everything through the sword and through power. They rose up in the time of the rightly guided Caliphs, Usman and Ali, and fought against them.

This hadith, which appears in dozens of books, says the holy Prophet Mohammed said they would emerge again and again in different centuries until the final time of the anti-Christ. They would arrive more than 20 times. They would keep changing names and appear for the last time as part of the anti-Christ’s army. They would slaughter people.

Al Qa’eda is an old evil with a new name. They are the Kharijites with a new name. They are misguided today like the Khawarij youth were misguided at that time. They were brainwashed although they were religious people who prayed and fasted.

Those who have already decided to become suicide bombers are totally brainwashed. I exclude them from this discussion because they are blind. I am trying to reach the majority who have not reached that stage but have extremist tendencies and are proceeding in that direction…”

Read more here.

Chinese women working full-time are not only longing for economic independence, they are also working for a sense of job satisfaction and fulfillment, a recent survey has found.

It shows that despite their steadily improving social status, 66 percent of working women believe men are favored for promotions and raises, even when they are capable of the same work.

Meanwhile, about 70 percent of respondents are working for companies in which women account for 30 percent or less of the senior executives and managers.

Launched by the Sun Media Group before International Women’s Day, the survey interviewed more than 5,000 women through online polls, telephone calls and face-to-face talks.
“Women have come to a career bottleneck,” Yang Lan, a CPPCC member and popular TV presenter, said in an interview with cnr.cn.

“The number of women decision-makers in companies is far from enough. It is not because they don’t have opportunities or they are unqualified.”

Yang said the current retirement rules have created a glass ceiling for women. For instance, both men and women reach the peak of their careers in their late 40s. Women, however, are less favored for promotions since they retire at the age of 55, five years earlier than men.

“We hope society can provide an equal opportunity for women to enter senior management levels,” she said.

Now the question remains: Is China making its first steps towards recognizing human rights?

Read more here.