Protests: Indian PM Urges Calm Over Gang-Rape

The Indian Prime Minister has appealed for calm and vowed to protect women as police struggle to quell outrage over sex crimes following the gang-rape of a student.

As authorities shut down roads in the heart of India's capital, Manmohan Singh said he understood the public anger at the "monstrous crime" but added that "violence will serve no purpose".

"There is genuine and justified anger and anguish at this ghastly incident," he said in a televised address.

"I feel deeply sad at the turn of events leading to clashes between protesters and police forces. I assure you that we will make all possible efforts to ensure security and safety to all women in this country.

"As a father of three daughters myself, I feel as strongly as you. We will ensure justice is delivered," he added.

His pleas for calm were echoed by the victim's father.

"Please pray for my daughter and do not resort to any violent activity. She needs your support and your prayers," the father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the Hindi-language News 24 network.

"My daughter is fighting for her life, but she is very strong and has a strong will to live."

Protests have been taking place across India over the last week to denounce the police and government over the gang-rape of the 23-year-old student in the capital and the surge of violence against women.

Official figures show that 228,650 of the total 256,329 violent crimes recorded last year were against women, with the number of rapes in the capital rising 17 per cent to 661 this year.

The biggest protests were in New Delhi on Saturday, prompting police to cordon off areas around government buildings.

However, fresh clashes erupted on Sunday and police said more than 100 people were injured including 60 policemen.

The clampdown was further tightened on Monday, with commuters having to make lengthy detours to get to work.

Thousands of armed police and paramilitary troops blocked roads in central New Delhi to prevent protesters from marching to the presidential palace. 

A small group of demonstrators gathered at a venue less than a mile away from India's parliament to press the government to ensure the security of women in the city.

The city ground to a halt as commuters found themselves caught in massive traffic jams after most roads in central Delhi were barricaded by police.

A television journalist was shot dead in the Indian town of Imphal on Sunday by police trying to control a protest over the attempted rape of an actress whose attacker remains at large.

Five police have been suspended over the shooting, the Press Trust of India reported.

Police have said some of the Delhi protesters have been intent on causing trouble and the demonstrations have been "hijacked by hooligans".

While many of the protesters have been women carrying placards, the crowds have drawn increasing numbers of young men who have been hurling stones at security forces.

The government has been on the defensive not only over the levels of crimes against women but also over the notoriously slow criminal legal system.

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Syria Bakery Airstrike 'Killed Dozens'

Activists say more than 60 people were killed in a government airstrike on a bakery in a rebel-held town in central Syria.

The strike on the town of Halfaya on Sunday left scattered bodies and debris up and down a street, and more than a dozen dead and wounded were trapped in tangled heaps of dirt and rubble.

The attack appeared to be the government's response to a newly announced rebel offensive seeking to drive the Syrian army from towns north of the central city of Hama.

Halfaya was the first of the area's towns to be "liberated" by rebel fighters, and activists saw Sunday's attack as payback.

"Halfaya was the first and biggest victory in the Hama countryside," said Hama activist Mousab Alhamadee via Skype. "That's why the regime is punishing them in this way."

The exact total number of dead remained unclear, but the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 60 people were killed.

That number is expected to rise, it said, because some 50 of those wounded in the strike are in critical condition.

For the past week, rebels have been launching attacks in the area, most notably in the nearby village of Morek, where they hope to seize control of the country's main north-south highway.

The bakery attack coincided with the start of a two-day visit by Lakhdar Brahimi, who represents the UN and the Arab League, to meet with top Syrian officials.

Mr Brahimi said he held talks with Syrian President Bashar al Assad on Monday.

"I had the honour to meet the president and as usual we exchanged views on the many steps to be taken in the future," he told reporters at his hotel in Damascus.

Meanwhile, Russia said on Monday that it would be "political suicide" for the Syrian government to use chemical weapons against the armed opposition.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview released by the state television channel RT that Mr Assad had given Moscow repeated assurances he had no plans to order such an attack.

"I do not believe Syria would use chemical weapons," Mr Lavrov said in comments translated by the channel into English. "It would be a political suicide for the government if it does."

Anti-regime activists say more than 40,000 people have been killed since Syria's crisis began in March 2011.

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Afghan Policewoman Kills US Adviser In Kabul

An Afghan policewoman has shot dead an American adviser outside the police headquarters in Kabul.

The circumstances of the killing were not immediately clear, however the shooting could be another insider attack by Afghans against their foreign allies.

A NATO command spokesman, US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Lester T. Carroll, said the shooter was taken into Afghan custody shortly after the incident.

"We can confirm that a civilian police adviser was shot and killed this morning by a suspected member of the Afghan uniform. The suspected shooter is in Afghan custody," Mr Carroll said.

The slain adviser was a contractor but the name and nationality of the deceased were being withheld.

Kabul's Deputy Police Chief Mohammad Daoud Amin said an investigation is under way to determine whether the killing was intentional or accidental.

It is not known whether the victim was a military or civilian adviser.

The adviser died at the Kabul police headquarters in the Afghan capital

The killing came just hours after an Afghan policeman shot five of his colleagues at a checkpoint in northern Afghanistan late on Monday.

The attacker then stole his colleague's weapons and fled to join the Taliban, said deputy provincial governor in Jawzjan province, Faqir Mohammad Jawzjani.

More than 60 international allies, including troops and civilian advisers, have been killed by Afghan soldiers or police this year, and a number of other assaults are still under investigation.

NATO forces, due to withdraw from the country by 2014, have speeded up efforts to train and advise Afghan military and police units before the pullout.

But the surge in insider attacks is throwing doubt on the capability of the Afghan security forces to take over from international troops and has further undermined public support for the 11-year war in NATO countries.

More than 50 Afghan members of the government's security forces have also died this year in attacks by their own colleagues.

Taliban militants claim such attacks reflect a growing popular opposition to both foreign military presence and the Kabul government.

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Navy Seal Commander Dies In Afghan 'Suicide'

US military officials have launched an investigation after the apparent suicide of a Navy Seal commander in Afghanistan.

Commander Job W Price, 42, of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, died on Saturday from a non combat-related injury while supporting stability operations in Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan.

An official said the death "appears to be the result of suicide".

Captain Robert Smith, Commander of Naval Special Warfare Group Two, said: "The Naval Special Warfare family is deeply saddened by the loss of our teammate.

"We extend our condolences, thoughts and prayers to the family, friends, and NSW community during this time of grieving.

"As we mourn the loss and honour the memory of our fallen teammate, those he served with will continue to carry out the mission."

Commander Price was a member of Seal Team Four, based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The team is part of the mission to train Afghan local police to hold off the Taliban in remote parts of Afghanistan.

He is survived by a wife and daughter.

Seal Team Four centres its operations on Latin America.

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Nelson Mandela To Spend Christmas In Hospital

Nelson Mandela will spend Christmas Day in hospital, the South African government has said, continuing what is already his longest stay in care since he was released from prison in 1990.

"Former president Nelson Mandela will spend Christmas Day in hospital, his doctors have confirmed today, on 24 December 2012," the presidency said in a statement.

South African President Jacob Zuma said in a statement that the anti-apartheid hero, "will recover from this episode with all our support".

"Knowledge of the love and support of his people keeps him strong," he said. "Therefore, we urge all South Africans to keep Tata uppermost in their thoughts at every place of worship or entertainment tomorrow on Christmas Day, and throughout the festive season.

"We also humbly invite all freedom loving people around the world to pray for him. He is an ardent fighter and will recover from this episode with all our support".

One Military Hospital, Pretoria, where Mr Mandela is staying

The 94-year-old has been receiving treatment following an operation to have gallstones removed, in the country's capital Pretoria.

In January 2011, he was admitted to a Johannesburg hospital for what officials initially described as tests but turned out to be an acute respiratory infection.

Only limited details of his condition have been made public by the South African government, which has repeatedly called on the public to respect the former president's privacy.

Mr Mandela, often known by his clan name Madiba in South Africa, spent 27 years in apartheid prisons, including 18 years on the windswept Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town.

He was released in 1990 and went on to use his unparalleled prestige to push for reconciliation between black and white people as the bedrock of the post-apartheid "Rainbow Nation".

He stepped down in 1999 after one term in office and has been largely removed from public life for the last decade.

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North Korean Missile 'Could Have Reached US'

The long-range rocket fired by North Korea could have reached the US and eastern Europe, according to the South Korean defence ministry.

The launch was effectively the test of a ballistic missile capable of flying more than 10,000km (6,200) miles with a half-tonne payload, according to their scientists' analysis of the rocket's wreckage.

Its range covers the whole of Asia, eastern Europe, western Africa, Alaska and a large part of the US west coast including San Fransisco.

The estimates have been based on analysis of a container recovered from the rocket's first-stage splashdown site.

"Based on our analysis and simulation, the missile is capable of flying more than 10,000km with a warhead of 500-600 kilograms," a defence ministry official said.

Rocket debris recovered by the South Korean defence ministry

However, without any debris from the second and third stages to analyse, the official said it could not be determined if the rocket had re-entry capability, which is a key element of inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) technology.

North Korea maintains the launch of the Unha-3 was not a missile test but simply designed to put the country's first satellite in space.

However, most of the rest of the world saw the launch as a disguised ballistic missile test in contravention of the UN resolutions imposed after Pyongyang conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

South Korea is now analysing further wreckage from the rocket, including a fuel tank, a combustion chamber and an engine connection rod.

Kim Jong-un speaks to officials at mission control after the launch

"As additional pieces have been salvaged, we will be able to look deeper into the function and structure of North Korea's long-range rocket," said the defence ministry official.

The read-out from the South Koreans comes after North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un made his first explicit call for the advancement of his country's long-range rocket programme.

On Friday, he gathered his rocket scientists together for a banquet in Pyongyang to urge them to build more powerful rockets.

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Spuds Help Improve Boeing's In-Flight Wi-Fi

Boeing engineers have been using an unusual mix of high-tech and low-tech to improve the wireless internet connection on flights.

Sacks of the humble potato were used as stand-ins for passengers while the aircraft maker's experts worked to eliminate weak spots in in-flight wireless signals.

The Chicago-based engineers needed full planes to get accurate results during signal testing, but they could not ask people to sit motionless for days while data was gathered.

"That's where potatoes come into the picture," says Boeing's Adam Tischler.

Researchers dubbed the project Synthetic Personnel Using Dialectic Substitution, or SPUDS.

But there was a serious purpose to their work as in-flight Wi-Fi on many flights can have patchy signal strength.

Airlines and aircraft makers have been striving to improve this with the growing use of wireless devices 35,000 feet (10,700m) up.

It turns out that potatoes - because of their water content and chemistry - absorb and reflect radio wave signals much the same way as the human body does, making them suitable substitutes for airline passengers.

"It's a testament to the ingenuity of these engineers. They didn't go in with potatoes as the plan," Mr Tischler said.

A member of the research team stumbled across an article in the Journal of Food Science describing research in which 15 vegetables and fruits were evaluated for their dielectric properties, or the way they transmit electric force without conduction.

Its conclusions led the Boeing researchers to wonder if potatoes might serve just as well as humans during their own signal testing, said Mr Tischler.

Despite some doubts, they ended up buying 20,000lbs (9,000kg) of them.

Video and photos of the work, which started in 2006, show a decommissioned plane loaded with row upon row of potato sacks that look like large, lumpy passengers.

The sacks sit eerily still in the seats as the engineers collect data on the strength of wireless signals in various spots.

The Boeing engineers added some complicated statistical analysis and the result was a proprietary system for fine tuning Internet signals so they would be strong and reliable wherever a laptop was used on a plane.

Boeing says the system also ensures Wi-Fi signals won't interfere with the plane's sensitive navigation and communications equipment.

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India Rape Protests: Reporter 'Shot Dead'

A journalist has been killed in violent demonstrations against sex attacks in India as police failed to contain fresh violence.

A television reporter, 36, was reportedly shot dead when officers opened fire on a protest in Imphal, the capital of Manipur state, over an attack on a film actress.

The star, known as Momoko, was dragged from stage in full public view last week by an armed militant who tried to rape her. She managed to fight him off and fled.

Momoko, also a popular model, has waived her right to anonymity to make a public appeal for her attacker's arrest.

Crowds in Manipur pelted police with stones on Saturday, prompting a curfew to be imposed for parts of the state.

This was relaxed on Sunday but soon a huge crowd assembled again to confront police who opened fire in retaliation, according to police spokesman A. Singh.

A women's rights activist Bala Bedi said: "We want a strong message to be sent that perpetrators of such crimes have no place in our society."

Water cannon were fired on the crowds

The death of the reporter, who worked for the Doordarshan network, came as separate angry protests over the brutal rape of a young woman were staged in New Delhi for a second day.

Police had tried to ban demonstrations in certain parts of the city after violence on Saturday.

On Sunday, all the routes leading to landmark government buildings were cordoned off and metro stations in the vicinity were closed to the public.

But several hundred protesters managed to breach the cordon around India Gate and braved tear gas and water cannons for the second day in a row.

The case of a 23-year-old student who was gang-raped by six drunk men last week has sparked a public outcry.

Promises by the Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde to consider demands for the six suspects to face the death penalty have failed to quell the anger.

Mr Shinde had also vowed on Saturday night that the government would take further steps to keep women safe.

A group of protesters met Sonia Gandhi, the governing Congress party chief, on Sunday to demand a speedy trial of the suspects.

The 23-year-old woman, a physiotherapy student, was attacked by six drunk men when she was travelling on a bus with a male friend.

They took it in turns to rape her and attack her with an iron rod, causing serious internal injuries. She is still fighting for her life in hospital.

Campaigners want tougher sentences for sex attackers

Her case has caught the public mood amid dismay at a massive rise in the number of sexual attacks in India.

Government figures show a woman is now raped in the country every 20 minutes after a major rise in assaults.

National crime records show that 228,650 of the total 256,329 violent crimes recorded last year were against women.

Delhi has been dubbed the rape capital of India with government figures showing the number of rapes in the city rising 17% to 661 this year.

One of Delhi's most senior police officers has pleaded for an end to the unrest, saying the protests were being "hijacked by hooligans" and insisting that the case against the six suspects was being fast-tracked.

"We have met all the demands of the protesters," Special Commissioner Dharmendra Kumar said.

Sushma Swaraj, a leader of the main opposition Bhartiya Janata Party, called for an all-party meeting to end the violence between protesters and the police.

"Please do not resort to violence. That is not the solution," she wrote on Twitter.

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Kabul Fire Rips Through Cloth Market

A huge fire has swept through a market in Kabul, destroying hundreds of shops.

The early morning blaze burned through a cloth market in the Afghan capital and forced the evacuation of the nearby money exchange.

A fire department official told the AFP news agency that an electrical short circuit was probably to blame.

The fire was so severe that Nato and Afghan army fire squads were called in to help but no-one was injured.

A Kabul police official said the currency exchange, which is the largest in the country, had to be emptied as the fire neared its walls.

"Police helped the money market evacuate and remove their money from the market to safe places," the official said.

Traders reportedly took hundreds of thousands of dollars into police vans and gold was apparently also moved out.

The Afghan capital, home to around five million people, has a poor fire safety reputation.

This is despite the fire department being upgraded with international help following the allied invasion in late 2001 and after the fall of the Taliban regime.

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Syria: Air Strike 'Kills Dozens' At Bakery

Dozens of people have been killed by an air strike on a bakery in Hama province in Syria, according to activists.

Some reports claimed up to 200 people had died in the attack in the town of Halfaya.

Activist Samer al-Hamawi said: "There is no way to really know yet how many people were killed. When I got there, I could see piles of bodies all over the ground.

"There were women and children. There are also dozens of wounded people"

Halfaya was seized by rebels last week as part of a campaign to push into new territories in the 21-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad,

Another activist said residents picking through the bodies were still determining which were wounded and which were dead.

Hamawi, who spoke via Skype, uploaded a video of the scene, which showed dozens of dust-coated bodies lined up near a pile of rubble by a concrete building, its walls blackened.

The sounds of people screaming could be heard in the video, as some men rushed to the scene on motorcycles and other residents limped away from the area.

The authenticity of the video could not be immediately verified. The government restricts media access in Syria.

Activists said more than a thousand people had been queuing at the bakery.

Shortages of fuel and flour have made bread production erratic across the country, and people often wait for hours to buy bread.

New York-based Human Rights Watch condemned army air strikes on bakeries earlier this year, arguing that in some incidents the military was not using enough precision to target rebel sites and in other instances may have intentionally hit civilians.

"We hadn't received flour in around three days so everyone was going to the bakery today, and lots of them were women and children," Hamawi said.

"I still don't know yet if my relatives are among the dead."

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