Maldives President rejects possibility of early polls

MALE: Maldives President, Mohammad Waheed on Saturday categorically rejected any possibility of early polls. Rejecting former president Mohammad Nasheed’s demands, who resigned on Tuesday in what he said was a cop, calling for early elections, Waheed said that the current situation in the island nation was not conducive to holding “free and fair elections”. Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts are on to bring some resolution to the political stand-off in the country. The US Assistant Secretary for South Asian Affairs, Robert Blake, meanwhile, is expected to arrive in Male on Saturday to meet President Waheed. Nasheed rallied hundreds of people outside a mosque here in the capital, Male, in open defiance of an arrest warrant...

Read more »

Posted in: INTERNATIONAL

India says missile shield test a success

BHUBANESWAR: India successfully tested on Friday an interceptor defence shield developed to detect and destroy incoming ballistic missiles, a government official said. Officials from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) said an indigenously developed interceptor missile locked on to the targets, two nuclear-capable missiles, and destroyed them in a test in eastern India. DRDO spokesman Ravi Gupta said radars following the two destroyed missiles detected fragments falling into the Bay of Bengal off the state of Orissa. “India is the fifth nation to have these ballistic missile defence capabilities in the world,” Gupta said in a statement. The test was carried out at a missile launch site located 200 kilometres (120...

Read more »

Posted in: INTERNATIONAL

Two held in death of Afghan peace broker: officials

KABUL: Pakistan has arrested two people in connection with last year’s assassination of a former Afghan president who was trying to broker peace with the Taliban, two Afghan government officials said Friday. The officials told The Associated Press that the two were detained in the Pakistani city of Quetta, the alleged base of the Taliban insurgency. The police chief in Quetta and the spokesman for the region’s paramilitary Frontier Corps said they had not heard of the alleged arrests. Officials with Pakistan’s foreign and interior ministries did not immediately answer phone calls seeking comment. Relations with Pakistan soured after the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, Afghanistan’s former president and head of the government-appointed...

Read more »

Posted in: INTERNATIONAL