Six Pitcairn islanders were convicted today of a string of sex attacks following trials that exposed a

Six Pitcairn islanders were convicted today of a string of sex attacks, following trials that exposed a culture of abuse on the remote British Pacific territory, home to descendants of the 18th-century Bounty mutineers.
Among those convicted was the Pitcairn Island mayor, Steve Christian, who claims to be a direct descendant of mutiny leader Fletcher Christian. Three Icelandic civilian peace-keepers and two other Afghan civilians were wounded.Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Poulain, spokesman for the Nato-led mission, said the attacker, who was disguised as a beggar, had detonated a string of grenades strapped to his waist. A Taliban spokesman said that more suicide missions were being prepared.. On Saturday, an American woman and an Afghan girl were killed in a Taliban suicide attack in a bustling street in Kabul. The dead woman was in her early twenties and worked for a translation company and the girl was between 10 and 12, hospital workers said. His win could boost Afghanistan’s main sponsor, President George Bush, in his own bid for re-election on 2 November.But the country is still a dangerous place. “It’s too early to judge the result now,” he said.Mr Karzai has served as stopgap president since US forces drove out the Taliban regime for harbouring Osama bin Laden.

Election victory will give him a five-year mandate.Afghans are frustrated at the slow pace of their country’s recovery, but Mr Karzai has rounded up strong support in the cities and among fellow Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group. We were up against 17 candidates, but the people were behind us. We will sleep soundly tonight.”Mr Karzai’s other rivals for the Afghan presidency say they are reserving judgement, pending the investigation. Mohammed Mohaqeq, a Hazara chieftain who is running third with 11.8 per cent of the vote, refused to concede. Mr Karzai has 4,240,041 votes so far, more than half of the estimated 8,129,935 valid votes cast. Some 7,666,529 votes – or 94.3 per cent of the total – had been counted by the time Mr Qanuni conceded, after gaining just 16.2 per cent of the votes.Hamed Elmi, Mr Karzai’s campaign spokesman, said: “I’m going to see his excellency this evening to see when to start the celebrations. “We accept in the interests of the nation, because we don’t want to face another crisis,” the spokesman added.An expert panel is reviewing allegations of electoral fraud, and an official announcement declaring the winner is expected to take days.

Hamid Karzai’s main rival for the Afghan presidency yesterday conceded defeat with less than 6 per cent of the vote count remaining. They were urgently and specifically informed that terrorists could be helping themselves to the most dangerous explosives bonanza in history, but nothing was done to prevent it from happening,” he said.”This material was monitored and controlled by UN inspectors before the invasion of Iraq. Thanks to the stunning incompetence of the Bush administration, we now have no idea where it is,” Lockart said. HMX and RDX are the key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents have widely used in a series of bloody car bombings in Iraq.”These explosives can be used to blow up airplanes, level buildings, attack our troops and detonate nuclear weapons,” Lockhart said.”The Bush administration knew where this stockpile was, but took no action to secure the site. military control but repeatedly has been looted, raising troubling questions about whether the missing explosives have fallen into the hands of insurgents battling coalition forces.Saddam was known to have used the site to make conventional warheads, and IAEA inspectors dismantled parts of his nuclear program there before the 1991 Gulf War.

The experts also oversaw the destruction of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons.The nuclear agency pulled out of Iraq in 1998, and by the time it returned in 2002, it confirmed that 35 tons of HMX that had been placed under IAEA seal were missing. government with the request for it to take any appropriate action in cooperation with Iraq’s interim government.”"Mr. Confusion surrounded the fate of the Iraq aid worker Margaret Hassan last night after main rebel groups denied being involved with her kidnap. Despite making a video of the hostage in captivity, the kidnappers have not been pictured or made any claim of responsibility.The statement by the Fallujah group came a day after the husband of Irish-born Mrs Hassan made an plea for her release on an Arabic TV station.”This woman works for a humanitarian organisation. She should not have been kidnapped,” the emir, or commander, of one group of Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah told Reuters reporters.”She had been living in Iraq for 30 years and she was a humanitarian. The resistance did not kidnap her because this would have left a bad impression of the resistance in the world,” he added.Commanders of five separate guerrilla groups in Fallujah said they were not holding Mrs Hassan and had seen no evidence that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s organisation had kidnapped her.The US military and Iraqi government officials say Fallujah is a base for foreign militants loyal to Zarqawi, a Jordanian whose group has claimed responsibility for kidnappings and murders, including that of British hostage Ken Bigley.Mrs Hassan, who worked in Iraq for the aid agency Care International and holds British and Iraqi citizenship, was seized on Tuesday.