At least seven people, mostly policemen, have been killed by a suicide car bomb in north-west Pakistan, reports say.

Police said they died in a bomb attack on the outskirts of Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province.

Violence in Pakistan has surged in recent months amid a wave of attacks blamed on Islamist militants.
The attack comes after gunmen fired on a bus carrying Sri Lanka’s cricket team in the eastern city of Lahore.

Seven Pakistanis, including six Police officers, died in that attack, and several cricketers were injured.
There have also been regular battles with rebels elsewhere in the north-west in recent months, particularly in the Swat valley and in the tribal region of Bajaur.

Saturday’s suspected car bomb exploded as a police van approached it, one police officer told news agencies.

The bombing reportedly happened at a roadblock where police were checking vehicles travelling from the Khyber tribal agency into the city of Peshawar, although exact details were unclear.

The Associated Press said a car refused to stop at a roadblock when asked to stop by security personnel.
The Khyber agency is a semi-autonomous tribal region of North-West Frontier Province and has long operated largely beyond the reach of Pakistani law.

Set in mountainous terrain close to the border with Afghanistan, the area is widely thought to be a haven for Taleban militants and al-Qaeda operatives.

The Khyber Pass route through the region towards the Afghan frontier is a key supply route for international forces in Afghanistan, but has itself become a target for rebels and was closed by Pakistan late in 2008.
(BBC News)

NEW DELHI (AFP) – India has said neighbouring Pakistan could become a “failed state”, with doubts emerging about who is in control of the country, a report said Saturday.

The government also warned no part of the world would be safe from what Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee called the “flames being ignited there,” the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported.
The government’s assessment came from Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram and Mukherjee at two separate events on Friday.

“It (Pakistan) is not a failed state, but it’s threatening to become one,” Chidambaram told a seminar in India’s financial hub Mumbai.

“A great concern is weighing on our our minds. In Pakistan, with regret, I would say we don’t know who is in control there,” he said.
“Whether it is the army or the president or the government... We are in a difficult situation (as Pakistan’s neighbours).”

His statements come after a brazen commando attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team earlier in the week in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, near the Indian border.
Eight Pakistanis were killed and seven Sri Lankan players and an assistant coach, as well as a Pakistani umpire, were wounded when they were ambushed by gunmen firing automatic weapons, grenades and a rocket launcher.

The attack has subjected nuclear-armed Pakistan, teetering on political and economic crisis, to mounting international concern about its ability to combat Taliban- and Al-Qaeda-linked militants holed up in its tribal areas.

New Delhi has blamed the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba for the Mumbai attacks last November in which 165 people died and has said Pakistan must step up efforts to clamp down on extremist activity on its soil.

Lashkar has denied involvement in the carnage in Mumbai.
Chidambaram told Pakistan it must fully dismantle “the terror infrastructure” in the country, saying large swathes of Pakistan were under Taliban control.

Mukherjee meanwhile appealed to the world community to ensure the threat emanating from Pakistan was “eliminated on an urgent basis.”
“Otherwise, no part of the world will remain immune to the flames being ignited there,” Mukherjee told a conference in New Delhi on Friday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama will Monday wipe out another contentious aspect of his predecessor George W. Bush’s legacy by removing curbs on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research.

The President will sign an executive order reversing a policy that critics say has hampered the fight into finding treatments for grave diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes, a senior administration official said.

The official would not divulge the exact wording of the order, but confirmed, on condition of anonymity, that it would be in line with Obama’s campaign vow to restore funding to embryonic stem-cell research.

The move will spark delight among scientists who have long campaigned for the Bush policy to be overturned, but was already running into fire from social conservatives and right-to-life groups.
Obama spelled out his campaign policy on stem-cell research last August in a list of answers to the Science Debate 2008 scientific lobby group.

“I strongly support expanding research on stem cells,” Obama wrote.
“I believe that the restrictions that President Bush has placed on funding of human embryonic stem-cell research have handcuffed our scientists and hindered our ability to compete with other nations.

“As President, I will lift the current administration’s ban on federal funding of research on embryonic stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001 through executive order, and I will ensure that all research on stem cells is conducted ethically and with rigorous oversight.”

Reports about Obama’s plans for Monday were immediately condemned by Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

“Today’s news that President Obama will open the door to direct taxpayer funds for embryonic stem-cell research that encourages the destruction of human embryos is a slap in the face to Americans who believe in the dignity of all human life,” Perkins said.

John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives said government money should be used to fund alternative stem-cell research that does not involve destroying an embryo.
“Republicans enthusiastically support adult, cord blood, and pluripotent stem cell research that have shown so much promise in recent years,” Boehner said.

“The question is whether taxpayer dollars should be used to subsidize the destruction of precious human life.

“Millions of Americans strongly oppose that, and rightfully so.”
Bush barred federal funding from supporting work on new lines of stem cells derived from human embryos in 2001, allowing research only on a small number of embryonic stem-cell lines which existed at that time.
He also several times vetoed legislation passed by Congress backing the research.

Obama reportedly told Democratic lawmakers shortly after his inauguration in January that he would guarantee lifting Bush-era restrictions on federal funding of stem-cell research.
He also co-sponsored legislation while a senator that would have permitted using federal funding for stem-cell research.

“Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that we owe it to the American public to explore the potential of stem cells to treat the millions of people suffering from debilitating and life-threatening diseases,” his campaign said in a statement last year.

Bush argued that using human embryos for scientific research -- which often involves their destruction -- crossed a moral barrier and urged scientists to consider other alternatives.

BERLIN (AFP) – A German lawmaker under investigation for possession of child pornography said he resigned from key political offices Friday to avoid damage to his party six months before a national election.
Joerg Tauss, whose homes and offices were raided Thursday in a search for illicit material, quit parliament’s education, research and media affairs committee, he said on his website, although he intends for now to hold on to his seat in the Bundestag lower house.

The 55-year-old will also stand down as general secretary of the Social Democrats (SPD) in his home state of Baden-Wuerttemberg “in order to avert damage to my party and my parliamentary group.”

The SPD is the junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s grand coalition government. The scandal broke six months before a general election, with the SPD trailing far behind Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats.

The leader of his state chapter of the SPD, Ute Vogt, welcomed Tauss’ resignation.
“In the interest of all involved, these allegations must be cleared up as soon as possible,” she said.
The Bundestag stripped Tauss of his immunity Thursday.

Tauss has denied any wrongdoing, saying he helped draft child-protection laws including measures against child pornography as part of his work on the parliamentary committee.

“I am absolutely sure I can be quickly cleared of the accusations against me,” he said.
The state prosecutor’s office in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe, which launched the probe against him, has not ruled out a “plausible” explanation for the evidence against him.

Tauss said in the statement on his website that he would fully cooperate with investigators and insisted that he had devoted much of his political career to protecting children.

HARARE (AFP) – More than 4,000 people have died in a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe that has hit at least 85,000 people, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said Thursday, warning the figures were likely an underestimate.

Tsvangirai told an emergency meeting of health workers that the epidemic that has swept the country since August was a sign of the collapse of Zimbabwe’s health system.

“We have had a clear warning of this in the national trauma of over 85,000 reported cases of cholera, and over 4,000 reported cholera deaths by the end of February 2009,” he said.

“This is most likely a dramatic underestimate of the real figures given the unreported cases and deaths in communities,” he added.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday put the official death toll at 3,955, citing figures collated the previous day.

“Those figures are certainly underestimated since we do not have access to many places,” a spokeswoman at its Geneva headquarters said. The WHO are expected to issue updated figures on Friday.

Zimbabwe’s health system was once the envy of Africa, but nearly a decade of economic collapse has left hospitals and clinics in a shambles.
Doctors and nurses went on strike for months to protest their salaries, which had been reduced to pittances by world-record inflation.

Health workers began returning to their jobs after Tsvangirai joined a unity government three weeks ago, but they remain without medicine or basic supplies to treat their patients.
Zimbabwe is relying largely on international aid to rein in the cholera epidemic, which has compounded the health crisis in a country where 1.3 million people have HIV.

Improvements in health would follow political stability and economic progress, Tsvangirai said.
“For this new inclusive government, making improvements in people’s health will be one of the most important indicators of whether we are making the right choices politically and implementing them effectively.”

MOMBASA (AFP) – Suspected Somali pirates opened fire on a merchant vessel in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Kenya during a failed hijacking attempt, a maritime official said Saturday.

“One skiff with six men onboard came within 100 metres of the merchant vessel and fired what was believed to be a rocket-propelled grenade,” Andrew Mwangura, of the East African Seafarers Assistance Programme, said in a statement.

Mwangura did not identify the ship but said the attack took place on Friday, around 265 nautical miles (490 kilometres) east of the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
“The alert merchant mariners took appropriate anti-piracy measures and escaped with no damage to the vessel, crew or cargo,” he added.

Mwangura said the attack was the eighth incident in which shots were fired at merchant vessels in the Indian Ocean south of the equator since October.

Since the surge in hijackings by ransom-hunting Somali pirates in 2007, most attacks have been carried out in the Gulf of Aden, where thousands of ships bottle-neck into the Red Sea each year.

Increased navy presence in the area however has encouraged some pirate groups to hunt ships further out at sea.
Despite a slight drop in attacks in recent weeks, Somali pirates still hold 10 ships for ransom.