Indonesian sailors 'taken hostage by militants'

Ten Indonesian sailors have been kidnapped in Philippine waters by Islamist militants who have demanded a ransom for their release, an official said on Tuesday. 

The crew were travelling on two boats that were transporting coal from Borneo island to the Philippines when they were hijacked, said Indonesia’s foreign ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir.

It is not clear when the vessels—a tugboat and a barge—were hijacked but the boats’ owners received a ransom call from someone claiming to be from the Abu Sayyaf militant group on Saturday, Nasir said.

Abu Sayyaf is a Philippines-based Islamist group notorious for bombings and kidnappings, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

“The hijackers demanded a ransom from the owners of the boat. Since March 26, the hijackers have contacted the owners twice,” Nasir told reporters, without elaborating on how much had been demanded for the crew’s release.

It is unclear where the barge Anand 12 and the crew are being held by the kidnappers but the tugboat Brahma 12 had been released to the Philippine authorities, he added.

The Indonesian foreign ministry is working with the Philippines foreign ministry on the case, Nasir said.

“Our current priority is the safety of the 10 citizens who were taken hostage,” he said, adding their families had been informed.

There was no immediate confirmation from authorities in the Philippines.

But the Philippine military chief, General Hernando Iriberri, flew to the main army base in the south of the country to check on the situation and discuss what steps should be taken, his spokesman Brigadier General Restituto Padilla told AFP.

The Philippine government has repeatedly said it has a “no-ransom policy”. But parties linked to foreigners held hostage by the Abu Sayyaf often pay to win their release.

Pakistan detains more than 200 after Easter attack in Lahore

Pakistan has detained more than 200 people since the Easter Sunday park bombing which killed 73 people including many children, officials said Tuesday, as the militants behind the attack taunted the prime minister. 

The raids across the eastern province of Punjab were announced as parks reopened under tight security in the teeming provincial capital Lahore.

But Gulshan-i-Iqbal, where explosives packed with ball bearings ripped through crowds near a children's play area, remained closed.

Hundreds were injured in the suicide bombingclaimed by the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Pakistani Taliban, whose official name is the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

A spokesman for the group said it had targeted Christians, a minority community in overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan.

"More than 5,000 people were searched and interrogated and most of them were allowed to go, but some 216 have been apprehended for further investigations," Punjab provincial law minister Rana Sanaullah told reporters Tuesday.

Sanaullah said police, paramilitary troops and intelligence agents had launched 56 intelligence operations in the last 24 hours in Punjab.

More were being undertaken in all districts of the province "against sectarian militants and extremists", he said.

Security for hundreds of churches was increased.

Many of the victims were children and anguished families spent Easter Monday burying their dead.

On Tuesday the death toll climbed to 73 after a 16-year-old boy succumbed to his injuries, doctors said.

"The boy had lost his father and sister in the blast while his mother is being treated for critical injuries," Dr Tariq Mohsin told AFP.

Taliban taunts

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his powerful military chief have both vowed to bring those behind the attack to justice.

"Terrorists cannot dent our resolve. Our struggle will continue until the complete elimination of the menace of terrorism," the premier said Monday after visiting victims in the provincial capital, a stronghold of his ruling Pakistan Muslim League.

But on Tuesday Ehansullah Ehsan, spokesman for the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction, derided the prime minister on Twitter.

"After the Lahore attack, Nawaz Sharif repeated old words to give himself false assurances," he wrote.

"Nawaz Sharif should know that war has reached his doorstep, and God willing the mujahideen will be the winners in this war."

Kashir Nawab, a 32-year-old Christian from the Youhanabad district of Lahore, said a "pall of gloom" hung over the area as mourners visited the homes of those lost in the blast.

Nawab said he was working to help arrange funeral services.

"Everybody is frightened and the Christians particularly feel unprotected," he said.

The attack was the worst so far this year in a country grimly accustomed to atrocities, and will further fray inter-religious ties.

Christians make up an estimated 1.6 percent of Pakistan's 200 million people and have long faced discrimination.

Twin suicide attacks against churches in Lahore killed 17 people in March last year, sparking two days of rioting by thousands of Christians.

The country is still scarred by a Taliban assault on a Peshawar school in 2014 that killed 150 people, mostly children.

A military operation targeting insurgents was stepped up in response. Last year the death toll from militant attacks was the lowest since the TTP umbrella grouping was formed in 2007.

But analysts have warned the group is still able to carry out major attacks.

old joint exercises as North threatens 'all-out' attack

South Korea said the exercises would be the largest ever following North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch last month that triggered a U.N. Security Council resolution and tough new sanctions.

Isolated North Korea has rejected criticism of is nuclear and rocket programmes, even from old ally China, and last week leader Kim Jong Un ordered his country to be ready to use nuclear weapons in the face of what he sees as growing threats from enemies.

The joint U.S. and South Korean military command said it had notified North Korea of “the non-provocative nature of this training” involving about 17,000 American troops and more than 300,000 South Koreans.

South Korea’s Defence Ministry said it had seen no sign of any unusual military activity by the North. North Korea’s National Defence Commission said the North Korean army and people would “realize the greatest desire of the Korean nation through a sacred war of justice for reunification”, in response to any attack by U.S. and South Korean forces.

“The army and people of the DPRK will launch an all-out offensive to decisively counter the U.S. and its followers’ hysterical nuclear war moves,” the North Korean commission said in a statement carried by the North’s KCNA news agency.

The North, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), as it is officially known, routinely issues threats of military action in response to the annual exercises that it sees as preparation for war against it.

The threat on Monday was in line with the usual rhetoric it uses to denounce the drills.

The latest U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea were drafted by the United States and China as punishment for its nuclear test and satellite launch, which the United States and others say was really a test of ballistic missile technology.

South Korea and the U.S. militaries began talks on Friday on the deployment of an advanced anti-missile Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in South Korea.

(REUTERS)

North Korea says it has miniaturised nuclear warhead

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un says his scientists have successfully miniaturised nuclear warheads to place on a ballistic missile and create a “true” deterrent, state media said Wednesday. 

While Pyongyang has talked of success in mastering miniaturisation before, this is the first time Kim has so explicitly claimed a breakthrough that experts see as a game-changing step for the North’s nuclear capabilities.

“The nuclear warheads have been standardised to be fit for ballistic missiles by miniaturising them,” Kim noted during a meeting with nuclear technicians, the North’s official KCNA news agency said.

“This can be called a true nuclear deterrent,” he added.

His comments came a day after the North’s powerful National Defence Commission threatened pre-emptive nuclear attacks on South Korea and the US mainland, as Seoul and Washington kicked off large-scale joint military exercises.

Kim echoed the threat, warning that North Koreawould “never hesitate to make a pre-emptive nuclear strike” in the event of any effort by the US and its allies to undermine its national sovereignty as a nuclear state.

Military tensions have surged on the divided Korean peninsula since the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch last month.

The UN Security Council responded by imposing tough new sanction last week, which Pyongyang has condemned and labelled as part of a US-led conspiracy to bring down Kim’s regime by force.

“The stronger our nuclear strike capability gets, the more powerful our deterrent to aggression and nuclear war grows,” Kim said.

Experts have been divided on just how far North Korea may have gone in its ability to miniaturise nuclear warheads, although several top US military officials have briefed on its likely success.

The issue is key as, while North Korea is known to have a small stockpile of nuclear weapons, its ability to deliver them accurately to a chosen target has been in doubt.

Kim’s confirmation still leaves a question mark over the North’s ballistic missile capabilities, with many experts believing it is years from developing a working inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could strike the continental United States.

(AFP)

First Zika epidemic 'went unnoticed' in French Polynesia

Some scientists say that French authorities did not do enough to stop the spread of the Zika virus after a significant outbreak of the disease in French Polynesia in 2013-2014.

Dr. Didier Musso, who co-authored several papers about the dangers of Zika during the 2013-2014 outbreak, says that French authorities did not take findings by doctors in the French overseas territory seriously enough.

“In 2014 and 2013, the outbreak of Zika [in French Polynesia] went unnoticed in mainland France,” Musso told Le Point in February. “We managed on our own to isolate the virus, update the diagnostic tests, treat the patients and deal with the first severe medical complications, which no one expected.”

The current Zika epidemic in Latin America, where more than 1.5 million people have been infected, is thought to have been transmitted by international travelers from French Polynesia, a French overseas territory in the South Pacific made up of 118 islands, including Tahiti and Bora Bora.

Scientists say the virus sequences of the strains in Brazil and the Pacific are nearly identical.

No longer a benign disease

The Zika outbreak in French Polynesia was the most widespread up to that point. It affected up to 28,000 people, and more than 10 percent of the local population reported symptoms. Zika then spread from French Polynesia to New Caledonia (France), the Cook Islands (New Zealand) and Easter Island (Chile).

Musso, along with Sophie Ioos, Henri Pierre Mallet, Van-Mai Cao-Lormeau and other doctors at the Institut Louis Malardé and the Institut de Veille Sanitaire in Tahiti, were some of the first to report that Zika was not a “benign” disease as previously thought. In late 2013 they linked Zika to Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can cause paralysis and, in some cases, death.

They were also the first medical team to report a possible case of sexual transmission of the disease in early 2015.

‘Heads in the sand’

Musso says authorities ignored the seriousness of the situation in French Polynesia because it was so far away from mainland France. “When you live at the far end of the world, you get used to coping,” he told Le Point.

Musso also said that when the French High Council on Public Health did finally issue recommendations about Zika in 2015, he was not consulted.

“To be frank, French authorities never ask the opinion of people who have actually experienced these problems,” Musso added.

Others point out that the world health community, and not just the French government, shares the responsibility for ignoring Zika in the Pacific. In 2007, an outbreak of Zika in the Yap Islands, east of the Philippines, affected approximately 50 people. It was the first time Zika was detected outside of Africa.

“I think there was not enough attention given to either the Yap or the French Polynesian epidemics by any of us working in infectious diseases,” said Duane Gubler, who studies infectious diseases for Duke University. “We all had our heads in the sand.”

China, US 'make progress' on UN sanctions for N. Korea

The United States and China made progress Tuesday toward a draft UN sanctions resolution to punish North Korea for its recent nuclear tests and push it to the negotiating table.

After talks in Washington, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State John Kerry said the draft was still being “evaluated” by officials before being submitted to the UN Security Council.

But both powers vowed that they would not accept a nuclear-armed North Korea and expressed confidence the resolution would be strong enough to force Kim Jong-Un’s isolated regime to reconsider its strategy.

China wants its neighbour to halt its weapons program — most recently shown by the January 6 test of an atomic bomb Pyongyang claims was a new thermonuclear device — and return to six-party international talks.

But Beijing has been more cautious than Washington in its approach, fearing that too severe a response could trigger the collapse of the pariah regime and a political and humanitarian crisis on its border.

Nevertheless, Wang said his talks with Kerry had made progress in agreeing on a draft sanctions resolution to be presented to the full UN Security Council.

“We do not accept the DPRK’s nuclear missile program and we do not recognise the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state,” he said, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s official name.

“Important progress has been made in the consultations and we are looking at the possibility of reaching agreement on a draft resolution and passing it in the near future.”

Both men said the goal of the resolution is not to worsen the standoff with Kim Jong-un’s isolated regime, but to persuade it to resume talks on ending his nuclear program.

“We have made significant progress, it has been very constructive in the last days,” Kerry said.

“And there is no question that if the resolution is approved, it will go beyond anything that we have previously passed,” he added. “I believe that what we are considering is significant but, as I say, it is in the appropriate evaluative stages and we both hope that this can move forward very soon.”