Quick Look

Indian combat plane tests missile

India’s domestically built light combat aircraft successfully test fired on Thursday an air-to-air missile in what the defence ministry called a “significant milestone.”

The combat jet, named Tejas the Hindi word for radiance fired a Russian-made short-range R-73 missile off India’s west coast in Goa state.

“The historic event marks the beginning of weaponisation of the... (Tejas) programme,” the defence ministry said in a statement. Built by state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL), the Tejas is billed as the world’s smallest, light-weight, multi-role combat plane. The missile test paves the way for the introduction of the aircraft into the Indian air force. “The Tejas will be inducted into service by 2011-12,” a defence ministry official said. - AFP

‘Toxic’ ship caught in India legal tangle

India’s Supreme Court will next month decide the fate of a French-made cruise liner waiting to be dismantled that activists say is lined with toxins, environmental campaigners said Thursday.

The court had last month given permission to the owners of the Blue Lady to break up the vessel for scrap off India’s west coast based on a report by an expert panel it had appointed.

But activists said that decision contradicted a ruling given a few days earlier by the top court, which said all ships must be decontaminated before being taken apart.

“We are puzzled by the court’s (later) order,” said Gopal Krishna, spokesman for the Indian Platform on Shipbreaking, an umbrella group that includes Greenpeace and the Ban Asbestos Network.

The group has asked for a review of the ruling.

“The court will now hear the matter in four weeks,” he said.

Originally launched in 1960 as the SS France, the ship has been known as the SS Norway and finally the Blue Lady.

Environmentalists say the vessel contains some 1,200 tonnes of cancer-causing materials such as asbestos, and radioactive elements, which endanger the health of shipbreakers who work with little protection. - AFP

‘Bikini Killer’ to face fresh murder trial in Nepal

French serial killer Charles Sobhraj, who has appealed a conviction for the murder of an US woman in Nepal, faces another charge for killing a Canadian man, prosecutors said Thursday.

“Sobhraj will be tried in a pending case of the murder of a Canadian after the Supreme Court’s verdict on his appeal on November 4,” Nepal government prosecutor Bishwalal Shrestha told AFP.

Known as the “Bikini Killer,” Sobhraj was convicted in 2004 in Kathmandu for a murder of Connie Jo Bronzich of the United States in 1975, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He is now appealing that sentence before the Supreme Court, arguing that he was not in Kathmandu at the time Bronzich was murdered.

“A separate case is pending in Bhaktapur District Court on charges of murdering Canadian Laurent Carriere,” said Shrestha, a lawyer who was the police officer in charge of investigating the grisly murders in the 1970s. The bodies of Bronzich and Carriere, both repeatedly stabbed and burnt beyond recognition, were found two days apart in two different areas of Kathmandu.

Police then had filed separate cases against Sobhraj one in Kathmandu District Court for the murder of Bronzich and another in Bhaktapur District Court for the murder of Carriere. “The file about Carriere’s murder was misplaced during investigation when Sobhraj was arrested in 2003 but a year later it was retrieved,” said Shrestha. - AFP

Canada creates world’s biggest water reserve

Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Thursday announced the creation of the largest freshwater marine protected area in the world, spanning more than one million hectares of Lake Superior.

The new Lake Superior National Marine Conservation Area will include the lakebed, islands and north shorelands within its 10,000-square kilometer (3,860-mile) boundaries, Harper said in a statement.

Supporters of the new park include Britain’s Duke of Edinburgh, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and former Canadian astronaut Roberta Bondar. - AFP