US fingerprints more travellers
Visitors to the US who are not required to have a visa will be fingerprinted and photographed from Thursday.

It applies to 27 nations which have so far escaped the new security controls - including several European nations, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Immigration officials will take a digital photo of each visitor and inkless prints of both index fingers.

The US says longer queues are a small price to pay for greater safety but civil liberties groups oppose the move.

The new rules will apply to about 13 million people who enter the US each year under the visa waiver programme.

The data will be cross-referenced against "no-fly" lists held by anti-terrorist and law enforcement agencies.

The tightened controls are a response to the 11 September 2001 attacks when hijackers crashed four airplanes, killing nearly 3,000 people.

Travel agents have warned of massive queues for those arriving at US airports, but the US Department of Homeland security says the checks will add less than a minute to waiting times.

The new measures have been in place for other nations since January.

The authorities say that since then, they have caught 280 suspected criminals and people travelling with false documents.

The screenings are in place at 115 major airports and 14 seaports. By the end of next year, all US border crossings will be carrying out the new checks.

From October next year, all new passports issued in the 27 countries on the visa waiver programme must have a biometric passport, which will contain a bar code and a digital photo.

Human rights group Privacy International says the new measures damage people's privacy and civil rights.

"The technology being used is demonstrably unsafe and can only result in security being compromised rather than being improved," said the group's director, Simon Davies.

"This programme is a slap in the face for those countries that have regarded the United States as a friend and ally."

Travellers would have no rights under US law "when falsely accused and deported", he added.

Colombian lawmakers issued weapons for self defense
The Colombian Congress on Wednesday issued 150 pistols and 45 submachine guns to some of its members for self-defense, according to the legislature.

The weapons will be used only for personal security of congress members and will be under the responsibility of themselves.

The speaker of the Lower House of Congress, Zulema Jattin, said the move was made in response to security threats against legislators.

Some congressmen welcomed such a measure and accepted the weapons, but several others refused the guns, saying the measure was against the pacifist spirit.

Colombia has been locked in a four-decade civil war, the longest in Latin America, in which government forces, leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries fight one another. The conflicts kill more than 3,500 people each year.

Argentina shocked by school shooting, mourns dead
Hundreds of people on Wednesday accompanied coffins of the two victims of Argentina's worst school shooting to the municipal cemetery in Carmen de Patagones, a small city about 960 km south of the capital.

The funerals for a boy and a girl came a day after a 15-year-old boy allegedly shot his classmates with a 9-mm handgun in a classroom at the public Islas Malvinas Middle School, in which two girls and one boy were killed and five others were wounded.

The cries of weeping and lamentation rent the air for miles during the funerals. Some family members of the two victims were too grieved to control themselves and they even attacked local journalists who came to cover the funerals.

Another girl was buried at a private cemetery elsewhere, and the five wounded, all aged 15 or 16, were treated in local hospitals. The most seriously wounded teenager, Rodrigo Torres, was shot three times in the thorax and abdomen, but his condition has improved, said a local governmental official.

Some psychologists have been sent by the government to comfort the shocked students and their teachers. The education ministry has sent a letter to the countries' middle schools and universities on intensifying the security education at campus.

The shooter, said to be an introverted boy, was being held at a detention center in the nearby city of Bahia Blanca, said local police officials.

He has received medical and psychiatric test, said Alicia Ramallo, local female judge in charge of the case, noting he has answered some questions.

The boy took the gun from his father when the latter was asleep, and his father was a local border and river policeman who had no record of bad behaviors, local police chief said.

The boy's father, when talking with the city's mayor Ricardo Curetti on phone, could not help crying and apologized several times for his son's behavior, said the mayor.

The tragedy shocked the small city with only 25,000 people and even whole Argentina. President Nestor Kirchner on Wednesday announced a two-day national mourning, calling the shooting "a distressing accident" and expressing his condolences to the families of the victims.

Minister of Education and Culture Daniel Filmus said campus security was part of the whole social security and called for a gun restriction.

"Neither the society nor the school can look the other way," he said. "There are some 1.5 million families with arms at home, but never again can guns be within the reach of the juvenile."

Although he promised new measures for detecting troubled students who might pose a threat to schools, he opposed to installing metal detectors at school gates, saying no precedent has ever been seen in the world.

Some sociologists here said schools are no longer immune to the crime wave shaking the country, while the tragedy just embodied the deteriorated social security since an economic crisis hit Argentina two years ago.

Some psychologists here said school violence was complex issue for children can be influenced by everything, and it was necessary to boost psychological education among students. But many schools in the country had no psychological teachers due to financial constraint.
 

Venezuela to send aid to storm-hit Haiti
A fourth Venezuelan air force plane will soon carry 15 tons of food, potable water and medicine to Haitian victims of tropical storm Jeanne, local press said Wednesday.

The new shipment will bring Venezuela's total aid to 60 tons for that country.

Over the coming days, a Venezuelan navy will take 100 tons of humanitarian relief including food, water, medicine and the equipment for reconstruction of roads and houses.

Venezuela's humanitarian mission will be headed by Colonel Antonio Rivero, national director of the Civil Protection and Disaster Management, who will go to Haiti aboard the air force plane.

A group, made up of 16 Venezuelan doctors, paramedics and technicians, began performing humanitarian tasks in Haiti on Sept.22, and has since treated about 8,000 people.

Venezuela sent humanitarian missions to Grenada on Sept. 16, Jamaica on Sept. 18 and Cuba on Sept. 19. They were all devastated by hurricane Ivan.

The South American country has donated 50 tons of humanitarian aid to the above-mentioned countries, including food, water, medicine, construction material, blankets, mosquito net and fuel.