Cairo protesters clash with troops: witnesses

CAIRO: Egyptian soldiers charged at protesters outside the cabinet’s offices on Friday, breaking up a sit-in after the demonstrators threw petrol bombs and set fire to furniture in front of the nearby parliament.

Several people were wounded, and soldiers arrested at least one protester in the worst violence in Cairo since five days of bloody protests in November killed more than 40 people.

The clashes, which had raged since dawn, started after a bloodied protester said he had been arrested by soldiers and beaten up, infuriating his comrades who began throwing stones at the soldiers, witnesses said.

The troops responded by firing shots in the air and using water cannon, before throwing stones back at the protesters from the roof of the nearby parliament building, he added. Protesters threw petrol bombs as the clashes continued and torched furniture outside parliament, AFP correspondents reported.

Military police later moved in to disperse the protesters, who had been holding a sit-in outside the cabinets offices since November 25.

Soldiers arrested at least one protester, a woman, as they pushed back the demonstrators from the cabinet building, an AFP correspondent said.

Mona Seif, an activist against military trials of civilians, said soldiers also threw chairs at the protesters from parliament’s roof.

She said she accompanied injured demonstrators to a nearby hospital, where at least one received treatment for a birdshot wound.

Seif, a leading dissident, later wrote on her Twitter account that she was being arrested. Her mobile phone was then switched off.

The protesters have been camped outside the cabinet’s offices since November 25, when they branched off from larger demonstrations in nearby Tahrir Square.

They objected to the military’s appointment of a new prime minister, calling on the ruling generals to fully transfer power to a civilian government.

The military, in charge since president Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow in February, has said it will step down once a president is elected by the end of June next year.

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Death toll from India toxic liquor rises to 155

KOLKATA: The death toll from a mass poisoning in eastern India caused by toxic home-brewed alcohol rose to 155 on Friday, as police made more arrests in the case.

“We now have 155 confirmed dead,” Shyamapada Basak, health services director of West Bengal state told AFP. Another 160 people were critically ill in local hospitals.

Police said they had arrested another two people, taking the number detained to 12 over the past two days.

“We are now looking for the kingpin of the racket involving the sale of illicit, spurious liquor in the district,” West Bengal police additional director general, Surojit Kar Purokayastha said.

The victims are from 10 villages in an area near West Bengal’s border with Bangladesh.

Many were labourers and rickshaw drivers too poor to afford branded alcohol who stopped for a drink at illegal bars or bought from bootleggers after work on Tuesday.

Local hospitals have been overwhelmed by victims arriving either unconscious or complaining of abdominal pains and burning in their chests.

District magistrate Narayan Swarup Nigam told AFP that methanol had been detected in at least 20 victims.

Methanol is a highly toxic form of alcohol sometimes used as an anti-freeze or fuel, but also added by producers of “moonshine” or home-brew liquor to increase the alcoholic content of the drink.

If ingested, it can cause blindness and liver damage and it kills in larger concentrations.

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US Senate passes defence bill, targets Pakistan aid

WASHINGTON: The US Senate passed a $662 billion defence bill Thursday that also freezes some Pakistan aid, imposes sanctions on Iran’s central bank, and approves the indefinite imprisonment of suspected terrorists.

The Democrat-led Senate voted 86-13 for the Defence Authorisation bill, which was passed Wednesday by the House. President Barack Obama was expected to sign it as early as this weekend after dropping a veto threat.

The measure, which also sets high hurdles for closing Guantanamo Bay, had drawn fire from civil liberties groups that strongly criticised its de facto embrace of holding alleged extremists without charge until the end of the “war on terrorism,” which was declared after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Obama, who had threatened to veto earlier versions of the yearly measure, will sign it despite lingering misgivings, his spokesman Jay Carney said before the House vote on Wednesday.

The legislation, a compromise blend of rival House and Senate versions, requires that al Qaeda fighters who plot or carry out attacks on US targets be held in military, not civilian, custody, subject to a presidential waiver.

The bill exempts US citizens from that fate, but leaves it to the US Supreme Court or future presidents to decide whether US nationals who sign on with al Qaeda or affiliated groups may be held indefinitely without trial.

The bill also freezes roughly $700 million in aid to Pakistan, pending assurances that Islamabad has taken steps to thwart militants who use improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against US-led forces in Afghanistan.

Earlier Thursday, Pakistan angrily criticized US moves to freeze the aid money —the latest rifts in a fraying alliance that has been in deep crisis since air strikes by US-led forces killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last month.

“We believe that the move in the US Congress is not based on facts and takes a narrow vision of the overall situation; hence, wrong conclusions are unavoidable,” said foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit.

The legislation also brings tough new sanctions to Iran, with the aim to cut off Tehran’s central bank from the global financial system in a bid to force the Islamic republic to freeze its suspect nuclear program.

The goal is to force financial institutions to choose between doing business with the central bank — Iran’s conduit for selling its oil to earn much-needed foreign cash — or doing business with US banks.

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