JERUSALEM :Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has ordered the army to seal off the West Bank for 48 hours until midnight on Saturday, an army spokesman said.

The action was taken “for security reasons” including a risk of attacks, the spokesman said Friday. The area was sealed off at midnight on Thursday.

Israeli police have also said they would bar Muslim men under the age of 50 from prayers on Friday at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, one of Islam’s holiest sites, fearing unrest.

The moves come after violent clashes at the site, which is also holy to Jews, during last week’s Muslim prayers, and fresh tensions over Israeli plans to build 1,600 homes for Jewish settlers in mostly Arab east Jerusalem.

The army said some medical and religious workers, teachers, journalists and others would be exempted from the West Bank closure.

Since the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, Israel has usually sealed off the West Bank ahead of major holidays, saying the move is necessary to prevent attacks, but only rarely on other occasions.

“The IDF (armed forces) will continue to operate in order to protect the citizens of Israel while maintaining the quality of life of the Palestinian population in the area,” the military said in a statement.

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Israel Orders Army To Seal Off West Bank For 48 Hours

JAKARTA: A Red Cross official says a rain-triggered landslide has killed at least seven villagers and left three missing on Indonesia’s main Java island.

Rudi Syahriar says at least 10 people were buried under tons of mud from Thursday’s landslide in a village in West Java province.

He said Friday rescuers have dug up seven bodies.

Last month, a mudslide that hit a tea plantation in a neighboring district killed 45 people.

Landslides are becoming increasingly common in Indonesia during the late monsoon season as large-scale forest clearing destabilizes hillsides.

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Seven dead Indonesia landslide

China lashed out at the Dalai Lama on Thursday after the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader gave a speech in which he said Buddhists were living in prison-like conditions and expressed sympathy with the people of Xinjiang.
The speech, given to mark the 51st anniversary of his flight from Tibet to India, drew official Chinese ire at a regular Foreign Ministry news briefing in Beijing.
“The Dalai Lama made another statement yesterday, this is nothing new. In the past few years, year on year, the Dalai Lama has distorted the true situation in Tibet, and attacked and insulted the central government’s policies in Tibet, to trumpet his separatist claims of independence or semi-independence,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told journalists. China calls the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner a dangerous separatist, pointing to his speech in which he referred to Xinjiang as “East Turkestan”, the name given to it by pro-independence exiles. The region is populated by the ethnic minority Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking largely Muslim people. Ethnic violence in Xinjiang last year between Uighurs and Han led to at least 200 deaths.
“Regarding his mentioning of his sympathy with East Turkestan, this exposes and proves his intent on splitting up China and wrecking ethnic unity,” Qin said. In his speech the Dalai Lama also said Beijing had put monks and nuns “in prison-like conditions”, making “monasteries function more like museums … to deliberately annihilate Buddhism”.

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China Blasts Dalai Lama’s Speech

Angry public and private sector workers in Greece walked off the job on Thursday, grounding flights, shutting schools and freezing public transport in the second nationwide strike in as many weeks against austerity plans.
Police estimate some 20,000 demonstrators joined a protest march through Athens as opinion polls showed increasing opposition to many of the measures. But the 24-hour strike is unlikely to halt government plans to slash spending and hike taxes to rein in a yawning deficit that has shaken the euro.
Greeks largely see the plan as unfair and not hitting the right people, in a country where corruption and tax evasion are widespread.
The major public and private sector unions – representing about half of the country’s five million workforce – organised the march and say the EU-backed austerity plan will only hurt the poor and aggravate the recession-hit country’s economic problems.

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Biggest Strike Paralyses Greece

Chile Earthquake March 11, VALPARAISO: The largest aftershock since Chile’s devastating earthquake rocked the South American country Thursday minutes before the inauguration of President Sebastian Pinera.

The 7.2-magnitude aftershock was stronger than the Jan. 12 quake that devastated the Haitian capital. It happened along the same fault zone as Chile’s magnitude-8.8 quake on Feb. 27, said geophysicist Don Blakeman at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado.

“When we get quakes in the 8 range, we would expect to see maybe a couple of aftershocks in the 7 range,” he said.

Blakeman said Chile now can expect to feel “aftershocks of the aftershock.”

“It’s not a sign of anything different happening. But what does occur when you get these large aftershocks, typically we have a whole series of aftershocks again,” Blakeman said.

The temblor rocked buildings and shook windows in the capital, and provoked nervous smiles among dignitaries arriving for the ceremony at the congressional building in coastal Valparaiso. Bolivian President Evo Morales seemed briefly disoriented and Peru’s Alan Garcia joked that it gave them “a moment to dance.”

Buildings emptied and streets crowded with people seeking higher ground in coastal Constitucion, a city wiped out by the tsunami that followed the quake. Pinera planned to visit the city shortly after his swearing-in.

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Chile Earthquake March 11

Forbes magazine revealed the annual list of the Richest People. Bill Gates is no longer the richest person, Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecommunications billionaire with a net worth of $53.5bn, has been crowned the world’s richest person.
Recovering financial markets and commodities and strong economic growth from some Asian-Pacific and Latin American economies helped to increase the collective wealth of the world’s richest by $2.4 trillion to $3.6 trillion and the number of billionaires increased from 793 to 1,011. Average net worthrose $500m to $3.5bn.
Mukesh Ambani, chief executive of Reliance Industries, landed the number four spot with $29bn, up from seventh. Lakshmi Mittal, owner of ArcelorMittal, secured the fifth spot with $28.7bn. For the first time, China, with 64 billionaires, is the region with the most members outside of the US, which has 403, followed by Russia with 62.

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Carlos Slim Is World’s Richest Man

The Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s State of Law Coalition is widely expected to win the most seats according to preliminary results from the election. The Iraqi National Alliance opponents have also admitted Mr Maliki’s State of Law Coalition had done well, especially in Baghdad and in the Shia south of Iraq.
But it is unlikely one party will form a government alone and there may be months of negotiations on a coalition. Mr Maliki faces competition from the Shia-dominated Iraq National Alliance and the secular coalition of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. An official with Mr Allawi’s Iraqiya alliance said the bloc was leading in the northern and western provinces.
The final official results will not be declared until the end of March, though preliminary results are expected in two or three days. The voter turnout in Iraq’s general elections was 62%.

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Election turn out 62%:Iraq

American Defense Secretary Robert Gates was keeping up the pressure on Iran, in the latest move Gates went to Saudi Arabia for consulting about how to respond to Tehran’s disputed nuclear program. U.S. official said Gates would discuss shared concerns over Iran’s nuclear intentions during meetings with Saudi King Abdullah and senior leaders.
Saudi Arabia has long warned of the potential for a nuclear arms race in the Gulf region if Iran gained the bomb but does not openly support tougher sanctions. Saudi Arabia see Iran’s expanding missile capability as an even more immediate threat.
Gates would also discuss on improving defense ties with Saudi Arabia.

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Gates In Riyadh To Discuss Curbs On Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband urged Afghans on Wednesday to push energetically for a peace settlement with Taliban insurgents and said Afghanistan’s neighbours must support such an agreement.
Miliband’s conciliatory comments, in a speech to be given in the United States later on Wednesday, reflect growing acceptance in the West that Taliban fighters who break ties to al Qaeda have a role to play in the country’s future.
“Now is the time for the Afghans to pursue a political settlement with as much vigor and energy as we are pursuing the military and civilian effort,” Miliband said in excerpts published in advance of a speech he is to give at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In a separate appearance in Boston on Tuesday night, Miliband said there was no longer a military solution for Afghanistan. “The truth about an insurgency and a counterinsurgency is that it’s never ended militarily, it’s only ended politically,” he said at a Kennedy Library foreign affairs forum.
Eight years after the US-led invasion, it is not enough to explain to people why the war started, Miliband will say in Wednesday’s speech.
“We need to set out how it will be ended,” he will say. “Afghanistan will never achieve a sustainable peace unless many more Afghans are inside the political system, and the neighbors are onside with the political settlement.”

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Miliband Urges Push For Afghan Peace Deal

KABUL: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Kabul on Wednesday to hold talks with his Afghan counterpart, a spokesman in Hamid Karzai’s office said.

It is Ahmadinejad’s first visit to Iran’s eastern neighbour since Karzai was re-elected following a deeply controversial election in Afghanistan in August.

“President Ahmadinejad arrived,” Siamak Hirawi, a deputy spokesman for Karzai, told media.

“They will discuss bilateral relations between the two countries and expansion of economic relations between the two countries,” Hirawi said.

The two presidents were also scheduled to discuss economic projects that benefit both countries, including a railway line from Tajikistan through Afghanistan to Iran, transport and similar projects, he said.

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Ahmadinejad Plans Afghan Visit Wednesday