Taliban bomb kills 14 at Pakistan rally

A BOMB tore through a Pakistan political rally Monday, killing 14 people and wounding 56 in one of the deadliest attacks on the campaign for Pakistan's historic elections.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, saying its target had been a lawmaker elected as an independent but allied to the outgoing government. Officials said the lawmaker escaped unhurt.

The killings bring to 83 the number of people killed in attacks on politicians and political parties since April 11, according to an AFP tally.

The device hit a rally by the right-wing Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), a religious party in the outgoing government coalition. It exploded in Kurram, part of Pakistan's Taliban-infested tribal belt on the Afghan border.

"At least 14 people have been confirmed dead and 56 injured," Riaz Khan, the top administrative official in Kurram, told AFP.

"I fear the death toll could rise further because several of the injured are in a critical condition," he added.

Khan said the bomb was planted at a rally by two national assembly candidates representing the JUI faction led by cleric Fazul-ur-Rehman.

The apparent target, Munir Orakzai, escaped unhurt while Khan said the other, Ain u Din Shakir, was slightly injured.

It was the first deadly attack on a political party in the tribal belt since campaigning began for what will be the country's first democratic transition of power after a civilian government has completed a full term in office.

Interim Prime Minister Mir Hazar Khan Khoso strongly condemned the attack and said another national assembly candidate had been injured.

Repeated calls for candidates to be granted more security have failed to stop a wave of attacks, most of them claimed by the Pakistani Taliban.

"Basically it was an attack on Munir Orakzai, who was a part of the past government for five years," Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The Pakistani Taliban have condemned the elections as unIslamic and directly threatened the main parties in the outgoing coalition, the Pakistan People's Party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Awami National Party (ANP).

"He supported the People's Party and ANP government which launched several operations against us," Ehsan told AFP.

Rehman and his JUI faction -- known as JUI-F -- have been a mediator between the authorities and the Taliban, blamed for killing thousands of Pakistanis in a domestic insurgency over the last six years.

Orakzai is a senior tribal politician who is standing for JUI-F for the first time. The Taliban denied that JUI-F itself was the target.

Elections have been postponed in three constituencies, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, in Pakistan's biggest city of Karachi and in the southern city of Hyderabad, where candidates have been killed.

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Going to Mars 'destiny', says NASA

SETTING foot on Mars by the 2030s is human destiny and a US priority, and every dollar available must be spent on bridging gaps in knowledge on how to get there, NASA's chief says.

Addressing a conference of space experts at George Washington University, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said that despite hard economic times the United States is committed to breaking new boundaries in space exploration.

"A human mission to Mars is today the ultimate destination in our solar system for humanity, and it is a priority for NASA. Our entire exploration program is aligned to support this goal," Bolden said.

President Barack Obama has proposed a $17.7 billion dollar budget for NASA in 2014, and he supports a "vibrant and coordinated strategy for Mars exploration," Bolden said.

Among the first steps to sending astronauts to Mars are NASA's plans to capture and relocate an asteroid by 2025, a process that should inform future efforts to send humans into deep space, the former astronaut said.

Also, US astronaut Scott Kelly has volunteered to spend one year at the International Space Station in 2015 to allow doctors to assess how long-duration zero gravity exposure affects bone density, muscle mass and vision.

Currently, a rotating cast of global astronauts each spend a maximum of six months aboard the orbiting outpost.

But despite increasing interest in landing on Mars, and a newly diverse space race that involves many countries instead just of old Cold War foes the United States and Russia, there is plenty that experts just do not know about how to reach Mars.

For instance, there is no existing space vehicle to carry people on the seven-month or longer journey there, not to mention no plan for returning people to Earth.

Medical experts are unsure what the physical ramifications would be for people who attempt to travel in high-radiation environments for such extended periods.

And just how people would survive, breathe, eat and drink on the dry, red planet are significant obstacles that have yet to be overcome.

"The US has demonstrated that we know how to get to the Moon," Bolden said.

"What we have not demonstrated and what I think everyone in this room -- well most people in this room will concede, is that there are technological gaps to sending humans to an asteroid and to Mars," he added.

"And so every single moment of our time and every single dollar of our assets must be dedicated to developing those technologies that allow us to go beyond low Earth orbit, beyond the Moon."

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EU sets out post-horsemeat food standards

THE European Commission has set out what it says will be a revolution in food safety from farm to fork, drawn up in response to the scandal of horsemeat sold as beef.

But the EU executive was careful to underline that the new rules would not in and of themselves prevent willful future mis-selling.

The agri-food industry is the European Union's second biggest, in the world's largest tariff-free market of half a billion consumers.

It is worth, the Commission says, some 750 billion euros per year and employs nearly 50 million people across Europe.

If passed by EU member governments and the European Parliament, the proposed revamp, boiling down existing legislation and sharpening testing regimes, will introduce:

-- financial penalties directly related to profits from "fraud";

-- and mandatory spot-check testing, as opposed to the power only to recommend inspections, as now.

In a departure, national authorities will be encouraged to publish league tables where consumers can check food data from everything from big-brand producers to individual restaurants, the Commission's proposals said.

But the changes will not affect, in the main, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or "micro-businesses," a large part of the post-industrial food chain.

Neither will stipulations governing the important seed sector be applied to "private gardeners," who will still be able to buy seeds "in small quantities" on open markets.

"The recent horsemeat scandal has shown that there is room for improvement," said EU Health and Consumer Commissioner Tonio Borg, in announcing the rulebook rewrite.

He said the changes "take on board" some of the lessons of a scandal that stunned consumers in large part due to links to organised crime.

Borg's office spelled out that the labelling of food, as seen in the horsemeat scandal, is a problem of fraud, not origin -- already covered in legislation due to take effect from December 2014.

"This fraud could have occurred, even if there was mandatory origin labelling in place," it said of the equine scandal.

The Commission is to report to the European Parliament by December on whether or not it is desirable or feasible to extend origin labelling to meat provenance, it added.

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Hollande marks unhappy victory anniversary

BELEAGUERED French President Francois Hollande marked the first anniversary of his election win with a promise to launch a major investment programme that will transform the country.

Under fire from right and left, Hollande outlined what amounts to a comeback strategy constructed around a ten-year programme of investment in digital and other new technologies, alternative energy, health and infrastructure.

"We have achieved a lot in a year, but there remains a considerable amount to do," Hollande told his ministers, asserting that "the coming year will be a year of results."

"The reforms undertaken will change the face of France - profoundly."

Hollande marked the anniversary of his May 6, 2012 win over right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy as the most unpopular president in modern French history.

The Socialist leader has paid a heavy political price for his failure to revive a flagging economy and prevent unemployment rising to a 16-year high.

Newspapers marked Monday's anniversary with harsh criticism, with even the left-wing daily Liberation's front-page headline depicting the president as "A Man Alone".

"A year after the election of Francois Hollande, France is in crisis -- political, economic, social and moral," Liberation wrote, saying Hollande "has not been able, for the moment, to win the confidence of his countrymen."

Right-wing daily Le Figaro said: "The Socialist Party is in hiding for the first anniversary".

With criticism of the government mounting, some are predicting a cabinet reshuffle before the summer. Polls suggest voters would support the widening of the government to include some prominent centrist figures.

But that is unlikely to go down well with the left, both inside and outside of the Socialist Party.

Tens of thousands of left-wing protesters took to the streets of Paris on Sunday to accuse Hollande of turning his back on Socialist principles, while thousands more demonstrated across the country against a government bill legalising gay marriage.

Hollande's opponents rounded on him again on Monday, with the head of the right-wing UMP's parliamentary faction, Christian Jacob, telling France Info radio: "Simply put, right now the boat is sinking and we have a president who is incapable of taking action."

Since his election, Hollande's approval rating has fallen faster and further than any other president's since the founding of France's Fifth Republic in 1958.

His popularity has been especially dented by two recent crises -- a tax-fraud scandal involving his ex-budget minister Jerome Cahuzac and the deeply divisive debate on gay marriage.

A new TNS Sofres poll for i-Tele released Monday showed more than 76 of respondents saying they were disappointed with Hollande's performance and 56 percent of those who voted for him considering his record negative.

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Bangladesh building collapse murder probe

BANGLADESHI police are considering murder charges against the owner of a shoddily built factory that collapsed nearly two weeks ago, after the wife of a garment worker crushed in the accident filed a complaint.

The development comes as officials said on Monday that the death toll from the country's worst industrial disaster had reached 675.

Sheuli Akter, the wife of Jahangir Alam, filed the complaint with Dhaka magistrate Wasim Sheikh, saying her husband and other workers were "pushed toward death" by building owner Mohammed Sohel Rana and two others.

Alam was employed in New Wave Styles Ltd, one of the five garment factories housed in the eight-story Rana Plaza that collapsed on April 24 as workers started their morning shift even though cracks had developed in the building.

New Wave Styles owner Bazlul Adnan and local government engineer Imtemam Hossain were the two others accused in the case.

Magistrate Sheikh has ordered police to investigate the complaints, and local police chief Mohammed Asaduzzman said on Monday that they would now investigate possible murder charges.

A conviction for murder can result in a death sentence in Bangladesh.

Nine people, including Rana and Adanan, have already been arrested on other charges. Rana faces charges such as negligence and illegal construction, which are punishable by a maximum of seven years in jail.

By Monday evening, the death toll had reached 675, according to the police control room at the scene. It is not known how many people are still missing, as workers use heavy equipment to search through the rubble. There is a stench around the collapse site from decomposing bodies.

An architect whose firm designed the initial floors of the building said on Sunday it had not been designed for heavy industrial work. Masood Reza, an architect with Vastukalpa Consultants, said they designed the building in 2004 as a shopping mall and not for industrial purposes.

Officials say Rana illegally added three floors and allowed the garment factories to install generators. Vibrations from garment machines and from the generators are thought to have contributed to the collapse.

The disaster is the worst ever in the garment sector, surpassing the 1911 garment disaster in New York's Triangle Shirtwaist factory, which killed 146 workers, and more recent tragedies such as a 2012 fire that killed about 260 people in Pakistan and one in Bangladesh that killed 112, also in 2012.

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Germany arrests 'Auschwitz guard'

GERMAN authorities have arrested a 93-year-old alleged former guard at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz on charges of complicity in the mass murder of prisoners.

Prosecutors in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said the man was believed to have worked at the camp between autumn 1941 and its closure in 1945.

Authorities declined to release the suspect's name but media reports indicated it was Hans Lipschis, who figures among the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most-wanted Nazis and is said to have served in the SS "Death's Head" battalion.

The man, who was detained at his home, "appeared before a judge and was taken into custody", the prosecutor's office in the state capital Stuttgart said in a statement.

"The indictment against him is currently being prepared."

Stuttgart prosecutors confirmed to AFP last month that they were working on a probe launched late last year against a suspect who had worked at Auschwitz.

Lipschis has been living in the Baden-Wuerttemberg town of Aalen and reportedly told the authorities that he worked as a cook, not a guard, in the camp in occupied Poland.

However prosecutors said the evidence pointed to the fact that the suspect in question had broader responsibilities.

"He took on supervisory duties although he did not only work as a guard," a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office told AFP.

"We will try to determined concretely when and what he did at Auschwitz."

She said the suspect was not believed to have killed prisoners himself but rather "that he abetted the actions of the perpetrators".

Despite his advanced age, the suspect underwent a medical examination and was determined fit to be taken into custody.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, in its 2013 report, lists Lipschis as its fourth most-wanted Nazi, saying he served in the SS-Totenkopf Sturmbann (Death's Head Battalion) from 1941 until 1945 at Auschwitz and "participated in the mass murder and persecution of innocent civilians, primarily Jews".

Lithuanian-born Lipschis was granted "ethnic German" status by the Nazis. He moved to the United States in 1956 but was deported to Germany in 1983, Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported last month.

More than one million people, mostly European Jews, perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1940 until it was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1945.

Germany has broadened the scope of its pursuit of Nazi war criminals since the 2011 conviction of Ukraine-born John Demjanjuk, a former guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.

In that case, the court ruled that any role at a death camp amounted to accessory to murder, widening culpability from those found to have personally ordered or committed murders and atrocities.

Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years' prison for complicity in some 28,000 murders. He died at a nursing home last year while free awaiting an appeal.

Lipschis is among 50 surviving Auschwitz staff who are being investigated in Germany under the broadened culpability rules.

Renowned French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld said he had mixed feelings about the news from Germany.

"I am torn between my idea of justice and the necessity to chase down war criminals until they take their last breath," he told AFP.

"You need evidence and documents to incriminate them and I think there won't be any more eyewitnesses to implicate them."

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European stocks close lower

EUROPE'S leading stock markets closed with small losses on Monday, with London shut for a bank holiday.

In Frankfurt the DAX 30 index of leading German shares eased back from a new record on Friday, giving up 0.13 percent to 8,112.08 points, while in Paris the CAC 40 was 0.15 percent lower at 3,907.04 points.

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