AKCAKALE: Turkey stepped up retaliatory artillery strikes on a Syrian border town on Thursday, killing several Syrian soldiers, while its parliament debated authorizing further military action in the event of another spillover of the Syrian conflict.

Syria’s staunch ally Russia said it had received assurances from Damascus that the mortar strike had been a tragic accident and would not happen again and Syria’s Information Minister conveyed his condolences to the Turkish people.

But Turkey’s government said “aggressive action” against its territory by Syria’s military had become a serious threat to its national security and sought parliamentary approval for the deployment of Turkish troops beyond its borders.

“Turkey has no interest in a war with Syria. But Turkey is capable of protecting its borders and will retaliate when necessary,” Ibrahim Kalin, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, said on his Twitter account.

“Political, diplomatic initiatives will continue,” he said.

In the most serious cross-border escalation of the 18-month uprising in Syria, Turkey hit back after what it called “the last straw” when the mortar hit Akcakale, killing a mother, her three children and a female relative.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said several Syrian soldiers were killed in the Turkish bombardment of a military post near the Syrian town of Tel Abyad, a few miles across the frontier from Akcakale. It did not say how many soldiers died.

“We know that they have suffered losses,” a Turkish security source told Reuters, without giving further details.

The observatory also reported clashes between Syrian rebels and the Syrian army at the military post, and said the rebels had killed 21 elite Republican Guards on Thursday in an ambush on an army minibus in a suburb northwest of Damascus.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used force of arms to try to crush a peaceful pro-democracy movement when it erupted in March 2011. (Reuters)

Islamabad: Russia on Thursday ruled out playing a role in resolving the Kashmir problem, saying India and Pakistan are capable of settling their outstanding issues themselves.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who is here on a two-day visit, said India and Pakistan are capable of resolving their issues though bilateral discussions without outside help.

India and Pakistan were in touch and talking to each other, Lavrov noted while speaking through an interpreter during a joint news conference with his Pakistani counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar.

“We discussed this issue. We welcome steps Pakistan and India have taken on confidence-building measures. Both countries are capable of settling their issues on their own without any foreign assistance,” Lavrov said.

The two countries have “established diplomatic traditions” and the ongoing contacts between India and Pakistan are a “good” development, he said.

The two Foreign Ministers, who addressed the media after delegation-level talks, said there was convergence of views on regional and international issues, including the situation in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya and the Iranian nuclear programme.

Lavrov backed Khar’s contention that US drone strikes were a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Responding to a question related to the US drone campaign targeting Taliban and al-Qaeda elements in Pakistan’s tribal areas, Khar said her government’s position in private and public dealings with the US on this issue were the same.

“If the objective of drone strikes is to end terrorism, then Pakistan ascribes to that objective… However, the ways and means that we use to achieve those objectives must be legal, lawful and not counter-productive,” she said.

The drone strikes are “illegal, unlawful and counter-productive,” Khar said.

The world community has to work according to UN Charter and find legal ways of handling counter-terrorism efforts, she added.

“Drone strikes are against Pakistan’s sovereignty and we have to make sure that… our eyes are on winning the war and not only the battle,” Khar said.

The killing of one or two terrorists at the cost of civilian casualties and collateral damage would help win a battle but “we will certainly lose the war,” she contended. Backing Khar’s stance, Lavrov remarked: “It is not acceptable to violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of any state and this approach has been voiced by our colleague and we fully support it.”

Lavrov said all proposals to settle the conflict in Afghanistan “should come from the territory of Afghanistan and foreign partners should only encourage these proposals.”

He said “lot of remedies were imposed from outside but none of them worked in Afghanistan.” (PTI)

ADEN: Four al Qaeda-linked militants were killed in an apparent U.S. drone strike on Thursday in a remote part of the south of Yemen, a security official and residents said.

The security official and residents said the militants were killed in an air strike on their vehicles in the isolated area of Maqbala in Shabwa province. They said it was a drone strike.

The militants were heavily armed, carrying weapons and explosives, said the official, who declined to be named. Two militants were wounded and another fled the scene after the strike, the official added. Yemen, a U.S. ally, has been in upheaval since a popular uprising ousted veteran president Ali Abdullah Saleh in February. Overlooking one of the world’s busiest oil shipping routes, Yemen is plagued by poverty and lawlessness that the toppling of Saleh has done little to change.

Washington, which has pursued a campaign of assassination by drone and missile against suspected al Qaeda members, backed a military offensive in May to recapture areas of Abyan province – which borders Shabwa province – from Islamist insurgents.

But militants have struck back with a series of bombings and killings.

Earlier on Thursday, the Defense Ministry said two bombs went off at the gate of the local council headquarters in Yemen’s southern city of Ma’ala, wounding two soldiers. The attackers, whose affiliation was not immediately clear, fled the scene and security forces defused a third bomb found at the building, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

Islamist militants frequently attack government facilities and officials as part of a campaign against the state, and tribesmen also frequently bomb gas and oil pipelines and attack government buildings as a way to press their demands. (Reuters)

Washington: Several online fraud schemes, mainly operating from India, that duped people in countries like the US, UK and Canada into paying to clean their computers of bogus virus infections, have been shut down by US authorities in a crackdown on so-called tech support scams.

At the request of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a US District Court Judge ordered a halt to six alleged tech support scams pending further hearings, and has frozen their assets.

The FTC charged that the operations – mostly based in India – target English-speaking consumers in the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and Britain.

According to the FTC, five of the six used telemarketing boiler rooms to call consumers.

The sixth lured consumers by placing ads with Google which appeared when consumers searched for their computer company’s tech support telephone number.

The FTC cases targeted 14 corporate defendants and 17 individual defendants in 6 legal filings, Pecon Software Ltd, Finmaestros LLC, Zeal IT Solutions Pvt Ltd, Virtual PC Solutions, Lakshmi Infosoul Services Pvt Ltd, and PCCare247, Inc, and individual defendants in each of the cases; majority of whom are Indians and based in India.

“In these outrageous and disturbing cons you get a call from someone pretending to be from a major computer company who dupes you into thinking you have a virus on your computer.

“At one level, it’s like a bad Bollywood movie, but at another level it’s a ripoff of consumers,” the FTC Chairman, Jon Leibowitz, said during a conference call.

According to the FTC, after getting the consumers on the phone, the telemarketers allegedly claimed they were affiliated with legitimate companies, including Dell, Microsoft, McAfee, and Norton, and told consumers they had detected malware that posed an imminent threat to their computers.

To demonstrate the need for immediate help, the scammers directed consumers to a utility area of their computer and falsely claimed that it demonstrated that the computer was infected.

The scammers then offered to rid the computer of malware for fees ranging from USD 49 to USD 450, FTC said.

When consumers agreed to pay the fee for fixing the “problems,” the telemarketers directed them to a website to enter a code or download a software programme that allowed the scammers remote access to the consumers’ computers.

Once the telemarketers took control of the consumers’ computers, they “removed” the non-existent malware and downloaded otherwise free programmes, it said.

FTC papers filed with the court alleged that the scammers hoped to avoid detection by consumers and law enforcers by using virtual offices that were actually just mail-forwarding facilities, and by using 80 different domain names and 130 different phone numbers. (PTI)

Paris: Global food prices rose by 1.4 per cent in September after holding steady for two months as cereals, meat and dairy prices climbed, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation said on Thursday.

The FAO’s Food Price Index, a monthly measure of changes in a basket of food commodities, edged up three points to 216 points in September.

“Following two months of stability, the Index rose slightly, mostly on strengthening dairy and meat prices and more contained increases for cereals,” a FAO statement said. Prices of sugar and oils fell, it added.

The overall index remains far off the record 238 points reached in February 2011, and is four percent lower than in September 2011.

The cereals sub-index also rose, by one percent or three points from August to 263 points in September, as gains in wheat and rice offset a decline in maize.

While gains in maize, or corn, prices had been behind most of the increases in recent months, the FAO said tightening wheat suppliers were also becoming a concern.

The FAO said the Cereal Price Index is seven percent higher than in the corresponding period last year but still four percent below the peak of 274 points registered in April 2008. The meat price index rose 2.1 per cent, with pork and chicken prices seeing the biggest gains. The dairy index jumped by seven percent from August, registering its sharpest monthly gain since January 2011, said the FAO. (AFP)

MELBOURNE/NEW DELHI: Australia has decided to close down three vocational colleges for non-compliance of training standards, a move that will impact more than 500 Indian students enrolled in these institutes.

However, Australian high commissioner to India Peter Varghese on Wednesday assured that Indian students affected by closures will be protected.

He was commenting on the move by Australia’s vocational education regulator, the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA), to shut down two non-compliant vocational education and training colleges in Victoria and one in New South Wales (NSW).

Following comprehensive compliance assessments, including multiple site visits by ASQA officers, the ASQA audits concluded that the colleges were non-compliant with the standards that providers are required to meet in the delivery of training to domestic and international students.

“The decision to reject a training organization’s registration is not one we take lightly but the interests of students and the integrity of training standards across the VET sector have to be upheld,” said ASQA chief commissioner Chris Robinson. (PTI)