Iraqi soldier guns down two US troops in Mosul drill

15 January 2011 Last updated at 16:07 GMT

The US officially ended combat operations in Iraq last August

Two US soldiers have been killed when an Iraqi soldier opened fire on them during a training exercise in northern Iraq, US and Iraqi officials say.

The officials - speaking on condition of anonymity - said the incident happened at al-Ghazlani training camp in the city of Mosul.

It was the final drill to showcase US efforts in training Iraqis before next week's visit by US and Iraqi generals.

The Iraqi soldier who opened fire was arrested, US military officials said.

Separately, a US soldier was killed in central Iraq.

The US military gave no further details of the circumstances of that incident.

Motive unclear

"According to available information, two American soldiers were killed today (Saturday) during a training session inside al-Ghazlani," an Iraqi colonel in Mosul was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Another US soldier was injured in the incident.

This was confirmed by a US military official in the city.

In a statement later on Saturday, the US military said that two US soldiers were killed and one was wounded while conducting operations in northern Iraq, without providing further details.

The US soldiers were from the 4th Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, based at Ft Hood, Texas, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Attacks by Iraqi soldiers or police against US troops in northern Iraq are rare but not unprecedented.

In 2009, two Iraqi police officers opened fire on US soldiers and Iraqi police in Mosul. One US soldier was killed in the attack.

An Iraqi army soldier shot dead two US troops and injured another six in the city.

Washington officially ended combat operations in Iraq last August, leaving fewer than 50,000 US troops in Iraq.

The soldiers' role is to advise and assist Iraq's security forces in fighting insurgents.

Sri Lanka floods: UN calls for emergency aid

15 January 2011 Last updated at 14:58 GMT

Some people have now begun returning from to their homes

The UN is to launch an appeal for emergency flood aid for Sri Lanka, where at least 32 people have died and more than 300,000 have been displaced.

"I urge donors to generously support priority needs such as mosquito nets, clean water and food," UN humanitarian co-ordinator Neil Buhne said.

Flood waters are now receding in the worst-hit areas in eastern and central Sri Lanka.

But aid agencies are warning of the danger of water-borne diseases.

Mr Buhne said in a statement that the UN's aid appeal would be issued in the coming days.

He said that funds were urgently needed to help replant flooded rice fields and also compensate people affected.

The floods have inflicted terrible destruction on the rice crop which was soon to be harvested, the BBC's Charles Haviland in Sri Lanka reports.

Much of the land in the worst-affected areas is still flooded, with crops and vegetation just peeping out, our correspondent says.

But he adds that the weather is getting warmer and dryer, bringing water levels down after weeks of heavy rain.

Some people have now begun returning from specially set-up displacement centres to their homes.

Envoys in Iran for nuclear tour

Foreign diplomats set to kick off a "confidence-building tour" of country's nuclear sites. Last Modified: 15 Jan 2011 10:32 GMT

The rare tour to Iran's nuclear sites has been dubbed as a confidence-building measure [EPA] A group of international delegates have arrived in Tehran for a two-day tour of Iran's nuclear sites. The group, which arrived in the Iranian capital on Saturday, consists of members of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors that include ambassadors from Egypt, Venezuela, Cuba and Syria. The rare tour to Iran's main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and the heavy water installation in Arak was apparently snubbed by China and Russia, Iran's principal allies, as well as the European Union. While Iran has pitched the trip as a confidence-building measure, the EU said the IAEA "are the people who have to inspect the Iranian nuclear facilities". The Iranian move came in the run-up to talks with six world powers next week in Turkey chaired by Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief. In another development, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's envoy to the IAEA, said Iran would reveal new achievements on Saturday during the visit to the Arak facility. "Today, at the heavy water installation in Arak, we will unveil several new nuclear achievements in the field of medicine," Salehi said. "This achievement will be unveiled in the presence of guests who we have invited from different countries and international organisations." Such visits to Iran's atomic sites are infrequent. The last trip that Tehran arranged for members of the IAEA was in February 2007. Western powers suspect Iran wants to use its uranium enrichment activities to build a nuclear bomb. Tehran denies the charge, insisting its programme is a peaceful effort to produce nuclear energy. Iran is under four sets of UN sanctions over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, one of the most sensitive parts of its atomic programme because enriched uranium can be used not only to make nuclear fuel, but also the fissile material for a bomb.

Source: Agencies

Brisbane clean-up drive under way

Volunteers supplement military's effort to clear Australian city of sludge and muck deposited by flood waters. Last Modified: 15 Jan 2011 07:00 GMT

Complete clean-up of Brisbane could take months, and reconstruction up to two years, according to the mayor [AFP] A volunteer army is wading through stinking mud and drenched homes in Brisbane in a massive clean-up operation as floodwaters recede in Australia's third-largest city. About 7,000 residents joined 600 military personnel in what was dubbed Salvation Saturday to shovel the muck and clean houses and businesses inundated by the Brisbane river earlier this week, another casualty of weeks of flooding across Queensland. Armed with mops, brooms, garbage bags and cleaning supplies, the volunteers were transported to the areas of Queensland state's capital most in need. "Water has pretty much receded in many parts across Brisbane and there are thousands of volunteers offering their help by bringing out piles of furniture soiled by the silt that has been left behind," Al Jazeera's Wayne Hay, reporting from the city, said. "Members of the Australian military are lending a major helping hand." Campbell Newman, Brisbane's mayor, praised the overwhelming turnout. "Everybody rolls up their sleeves in this town," he said. He cautioned, however, that the complete clean-up of the city would take months, and that reconstruction could take up to two years. The floodwaters that swamped entire neighbourhoods in Brisbane have left behind a thick layer of putrid sludge that covered streets and thousands of houses. Homes badly damaged More than 30,000 homes and businesses were flooded with muddy water. Officials say that some homes have been so badly damaged, they will need to be destroyed. Weeks of relentless rains and flooding across Australia's northeast have left 26 people dead, with 28 others still missing. Most of the people unaccounted for are from the Lockyer Valley and the nearby city of Toowoomba, where a sudden downpour on Monday caused a flash flood likened to an inland tsunami. Some parts of the electricity network in southeastern Queensland were washed away in the flooding, and energy supplier Energex said more than 28,650 properties were still without power. It planned to restore power to more properties on Saturday as floodwaters receded, allowing greater access to infrastructure. The overflowing rivers and continued rain in some parts of Australia led to flood alerts in four other states on Saturday. The multibillion-dollar toll includes losses from flooded mines and formerly fertile farmland, now a boggy mess of rotting vegetation. Mining companies have announced they will not be able to meet contracts for coal, Australia's biggest export, due to the flooding in Queensland, while farmers there are counting crop losses that could push up world food prices. Blow to farmers The flooding is a particularly cruel blow to farmers, many of whom had hoped for bumper crops after much of Australia emerged from its worst drought in more than a century. The overall cost to Australia's 1.3tn Australian dollar ($1.29tn) economy from the Queensland floods could amount to as much as $13bn, or one per cent of gross domestic product, if infrastructure damage is severe, Stephen Walters, a JPMorgan economist, wrote in a research report. Some economists are already trimming the forecasts for economic growth this year. Bank of America Merrill Lynch has cut its forecast to three per cent from 3.3 per cent. JP Morgan Securities cut its prediction to 3.3 per cent from 3.7 per cent. Julia Gillard, Australia's prime minister, doubled on Friday the number of soldiers involved in the country's flood-recovery effort to 1,200. The deployment of troops to the country's northeast marks Australia's largest for a natural disaster since Cyclone Tracy destroyed the northern city of Darwin in 1974. "Now is the right time to dramatically increase the number of defence personnel who are working in Queensland to assist with the Queensland floods," Gillard said.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

BP and Russia sign Arctic oil deal

Concern from environmentalists and US politicians as UK firm agrees to explore area with state-run energy giant Rosneft. Last Modified: 15 Jan 2011 14:48 GMT

Dudley, left, held talks on Friday with Putin, right, at the Russian PM's Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow [AFP] BP has signed a joint venture with Russia's state-controlled energy giant Rosneft to explore for offshore oil and gas and in a deal that gives the UK company access to areas of the Arctic previously reserved for Russian companies. The British energy giant will swap five per cent of its shares, valued at $7.8bn, for 9.5 per cent of Rosneft in an agreement that immediately raised concerns about US economic security from US politicians and criticism from environmentalists. The deal covers huge areas of the South Kara Sea in the Arctic that BP, which is still recovering from the financial impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, said could contain billions of barrels of oil and gas. The companies will explore three areas, known as EPNZ 1, 2 and 3, located on the Russian Arctic continental shelf and covering an area of 125,000 square kilometres. Skills gap BP is seen as filling a skills and technology gap for Rosneft as it seeks to develop the region. "Rosneft is well aware that its ability to do deepwater Arctic work alone is very limited," Cliff Kupchan, a director at Eurasia Group, a global political risk consultancy based in Washington, said. "They have been looking for ways to bring in companies with the technology and especially management skills needed to pull off deepwater Arctic work." Edward Markey, a US congressman who is the senior Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, immediately called for a review of the deal by US regulators to see whether it affects the national and economic security of the US. He noted that in 2009 BP was the top petroleum supplier to the US military. Michael Burgess, a Republican congressman who is on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, also said the deal "deserves some analysis and scrutiny" by the government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the US given BP's ownership of critical oil assets in the US. The US Treasury said it is forbidden by law to comment on investigations, planned or under way, by the committee. Environmental concerns Environmentalists also raised concerns about the deal. ""It seems the company learned nothing last year in the Gulf of Mexico." Charlie Kronick, Greenpeace "Now BP has bought its way into the Arctic by the back door," Charlie Kronick of Greenpeace said. "It seems the company learned nothing last year in the Gulf of Mexico." However, Chris Huhne, the UK secretary of state for energy and climate change, welcomed the "groundbreaking" deal and called it "good news for Europe, for the UK's energy security and worldwide." The venture underscores Europe's dependence on Russia for a rising share of its energy needs - particularly for clean-burning natural gas. Russia holds one-fifth of the world's reserves of natural gas. Friday's deal highlights a rebound in relations with Moscow both for BP and Bob Dudley, its chief executive, who was forced to leave Russia in 2008 after heading BP's Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, which is half-owned by BP. 'Fistfight to lovefest' Dudley said the deal, announced late on Friday, was the first significant cross-shareholding between a nationally owned oil company and an international oil company and called it "a new template for how business can be done in our industry". Dudley had been the boss for TNK-BP's formation in 2003 and was forced to leave due to what he described as a campaign of harassment by BP-TNK's billionaire oligarch co-owners. The issue has since been resolved and Dudley returned to Moscow for the first time this summer, following his appointment as CEO of BP. "It has turned from a fistfight into a lovefest," Kupchan said. The government of Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, has pledged to ease investors' access into Russia as it looks to foreigners to play a key role in helping to modernise the economy - including through taking part in a big privatisation drive starting this year. BP has a market capitalisation of $150bn, while Rosneft is valued at about $83bn.

Source: Agencies

Sudan poll draws to close

Huge turnout in south Sudan referendum expected to back secession from the north of the country. Last Modified: 15 Jan 2011 14:34 GMT

The UN says 180,000 southerners have returned from the north since November last year [AFP] A handful of South Sudanese have been voting on the final day of a week-long referendum on whether to split from the north of the country. There were few people left to vote on Saturday after the 60 per cent voter turnout threshold set for the referendum to be valid was achieved on Wednesday after just four days of polling. Mohammed Ibrahim Khalil, the chairman of the organising commission, said that by the close of polling on Friday, 3,135,000 ballots had been cast in the south, which represents 83 per cent of registered voters. He added that 53 per cent of southerners registered in the north had voted, while 91 per cent had done so in the diaspora. "This a good result by any international standards," he said. "I have watched a number of elections in this country and this has been the most peaceful, the most orderly, the quietest." Overseas voting from Brisbane, Australia, has been extended for several days as a result of flooding in that region. Secession expected Referendum organisers are now faced with the massive task of collating the results of the poll. UN helicopter crews will assist organisers in picking up ballot papers from the remote countryside of a vast, underdeveloped region which has just 40km (25 miles) of paved road for an area the size of France and Belgium combined. "Preliminary results will be announced on January 31st. Those figures will then have to be verified in Khartoum. If there are no appeals, officials say a final result will be announced on February 6," reported Al Jazeera's Haru Mutasa from Juba. Observers have said that they are confident that the result will favour secession from the north. If the planned timeline is adhered to, south Sudan could secede by July. "They have technically until the 9th of July, [which is] when the comprehensive peace agreement expires," reported Mutasa. Jimmy Carter, a former US president who is in the country to observe the poll, said he expected that the north would "recognise the results immediately". The referendum marks the culmination of the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement, which ended a civil war in the country. Emotional referendum Georg Charpentier, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Sudan, said a total of 180,000 southerners had returned from the north since November, with more than 15,000 arriving in the week-long polling period alone. He said the UN was expecting between 500,000 and 600,000 people to arrive by August. "Obviously the emotions around the referendum have prompted many southerners to come home," he said, speaking at Juba's river port on the White Nile where many of the returnees arrive. On the streets of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, there was a sense of rueful resignation that the nearly nine million people of the south were poised to break away - and take with them some 80 per cent of Sudan's oil reserves - leaving the north's 32 million people to go it alone. "I feel sad," Mustafa Mohammed, a young tax officer, said. "I am not for secession." Rally in north Meanwhile, thousands of Sudanese demonstrated in the Nuba mountains in the north, demanding free and fair elections ahead of a planned move toward greater autonomy. Kauda, a remote mountain town, is a stronghold of the Sudan's People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the biggest political party in the south, but falls in the northern state of South Kordofan. Large crowds gathered in the town, chanting anti-government slogans and waving SPLM flags. The protesters claimed that the election process was not going as planned in their area. "The government wants to use the old list of voters. But the list does not include all the population here. Many people can't find their names on the list," Sadiq Said, one of the demonstrators, said. The election is part a "popular consultation" process that many in the area believe will help them achieve independence from the north..

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Flood-hit Brazil faces more rain

Death toll likely to rise above 545 bodies already found as rescue teams are still to reach isolated areas. Last Modified: 15 Jan 2011 14:38 GMT

The renewed rains will make the task of finding survivors increasingly difficult [EPA] Further catastrophic landslides are feared in Brazil after forecasters warned of several more days of wet weather in an area where nearly 550 people were killed when muddy waters tore through their homes earlier in the week. As rescue teams and residents combed the wreckage of hillside communities near the city of Rio de Janiero, forecasters said that the rain in the mountainous Serrana region could contine until Wednesday. "We are predicting a light but steady rain, which is not good because it could lay the conditions for more landslides," Luiz Cavalcanti, the head of the national weather institute, said on Friday. He said such conditions were particularly dangerous because there is nowhere for it to flow away and "it accumulates until the earth gives way under its weight and swallows up the hillside". Isolated areas Rivers of mud tore through towns in the region on Thursday, levelling houses, throwing cars atop buildings and leaving thousands of people seeking shelter. Flood deaths The total death toll in Serrana region has reached 537, with the following towns hardest hit: Teresopolis: 223 deaths Nova Friburgo: 246 Petropolis: 39 Soumidouro: 19 The renewed rainfall threatened to further complicate efforts by rescue teams to reach survivors trapped in isolated areas. Groups of rescue workers made their way on foot as a difficult terrain and washed out roads prevented the use of vehicles. "The rain did not stop at dawn and is continuing in the morning, which is making the rescue efforts more difficult," Lieutenant Rubens Placido, a fireman in the hard-hit town of Nova Friburgo, said. "The number of deaths is going to rise quite a bit. There are still a lot of people buried." Sergio Cabral, the governor of Rio state, repeated his call for residents to abandon their homes in the disaster zones and move to safer ground. "The forecast of more rains is not reassuring," he said. Marise Ventura told the AFP news agency that said she and others had no choice but to leave Nova Friburgo, where at least 246 people had been killed. "I'm going because there's no electricity anywhere, no water, no food... So I'm going to a relative's place," she said. Looting reported Meanwhile, Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from Teresopolis, one of the worst affected towns, said there had been reports of looting on Friday. "The security situation is deteriorating," he said. "There are reports of looting; according to local officials here they are calling the city of Rio de Janeiro asking for more police officers to be sent here." At least 223 people are believed to have died in Teresopolis, where hundreds more are feared buried under the rubble of their homes after the equivalent of a month's rain fell in less than 24 hours. An abandoned building was being used as a morgue to house the hundreds of bodies being brought there. The military said on Friday that it was sending 11 helicopters and 500 personnel to help approximately 800 rescuers from fire departments and the state civil defence agency. The army and navy also pledged heavy digging machinery, ambulances and generators. Heavy rains, common during Brazil's summer wet season, were intensified this week by a cold front which doubled the usual precipitation.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies