The recording appeared Thursday on Web sites used by al-Qaida-linked militant groups.

The speaker says Somalis should fight and dethrone President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who the recording claims is “paid by the enemies” of al-Qaida’s cause.

The 11.5-minute message was entitled “Fight On, Champions of Somalia” and included a picture of bin Laden with the audio.

President Sheikh Sharif is a moderate Islamist elected by lawmakers in January, after a peace deal between the previous government and Islamist opposition groups.

The new government plans to make Islamic law the basis of Somalia’s legal system, in an effort to appease hardline Islamists still fighting the government.

One Somali politician, Mohamed Amin Osman, told VOA that bin Laden’s alleged call to topple the president may anger many Somalis, who are tired of war.

Militant groups like al-Shabab control most of southern and central Somalia, after more than two years of fighting in the Horn of Africa country.

Al-Shabab has also rejected the new president, and continues to fight government forces and African Union peacekeepers.

The government controls only portions of the capital, Mogadishu.

Somalia has not had a stable central government since 1991, when a coup toppled President Mohamed Siad Barre.

New Bin Laden Tape Calls for Somali President’s Ouster

President Asif Ali Zardari, whose popularity ratings are at rock bottom, is locked in a standoff with the main opposition leader Nawaz Sharif over demands that he reinstate judges sacked by former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.

Opposition activists and lawyers have called on hundreds of thousands of protesters to march on the capital Islamabad by Monday, but the authorities have blockaded activists, banned protests and detained hundreds.

The turmoil could not come at a worse time for the nuclear-armed Muslim nation, a central front in US President Barack Obama’s fight against Islamist militancy, and locked in a wave of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked violence.

Several hundred party workers from Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N and black suited lawyers marched down empty streets in Multan, a city in Pakistan’s strategically important Punjab political heartland, waving flags and slamming Zardari.

“We will go with lawyers to Islamabad by any means possible,” declared Maimoona Hashmi, a veiled lawmaker from the national parliament.

Shops were shuttered and streets empty of traffic, as protesters, followed by police vans, streamed towards exit points barricaded with shipping containers to stop them leaving.

“We have to stop the lawyers and others because they are violating the law,” senior police official Karamat Ali told AFP.

Police also stopped one of Pakistan’s most respected lawyers, Ali Ahmed Kurd, the president of the national Supreme Court bar association, from boarding a flight to the Punjab capital Lahore, where he intended to join the protests.

“They have denied us the boarding facility, saying it is closed,” Kurd told reporters at the airport in his home city Quetta, where he was holed up after police stopped his convoy from leaving the province on Friday.

It is the most severe crackdown since a civilian government won elections last year to replace Musharraf. Top British and US diplomats have personally intervened to urge leaders to avoid violence and solve their problems.

Zardari, who has held consultations with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and army chief of staff Ashfaq Kayani, has agreed to press political channels, his spokesman said without mentioning any concrete measures.

“It was agreed that there will be political response to all contentious issues according to the constitution and the Charter of Democracy,” presidency spokesman Farhatullah Babar told AFP.

He said the issues would be discussed further by leaders in the Pakistan People’s Party of Zardari’s assassinated wife Benazir Bhutto “early next week”.

Past proposals include setting up a constitutional court, as well as the Supreme Court, and ending governor’s rule in Punjab, Sharif’s heartland and where a court disqualified his brother as chief minister last month.

It remains highly doubtful whether any deal can be reached and protesters have vowed that no government clampdown will deter their march on Islamabad, but the main opposition leader left the door to reconciliation open.

Pakistan’s flagship private television channel Geo said its cable transmission was blocked on Zardari’s orders because the government was angry over its coverage of long march protest.

Babar said that was “absolutely wrong.”

Musharraf removed independent-minded chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and some 60 other judges in 2007, fearing that he would be declared ineligible to contest a presidential election while in military uniform.

The move triggered a countrywide protest, spearheaded by lawyers, which ultimately forced Musharraf to quit in August 2008.

Police hem in Pakistani protesters

Representatives of several Tibetan groups in exile say tensions remain high in Tibet. The groups say China has responded to the 50th anniversary of the occupation of the country with a military crackdown that has increased the climate of fear and intimidation faced by the Tibetan people.

President of the Geneva-based Tibetan U.N. Advocacy group, Ngawang Choepel, likens Tibet to a huge detention center.

“As the Dalai Lama said, it is like a death sentence has been passed upon the Tibetan people. Given these alarming developments and given the history of over 50 years of human rights violations by the Chinese authorities in Tibet, what we are asking today is for a high-level U.N. engagement with the Chinese authorities to stop these brutal crackdowns against the Tibetan people,” said Choepel.

At the current session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, a number of leading human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have presented reports on the deplorable human rights situation in Tibet.

Choepal says he is pleased by the amount of evidence presented in these reports of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, torture, and enforced disappearances. But, he adds, he is disappointed by the reports presented by several U.N. rights groups.

“For example, the report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has not highlighted the massive arbitrary detentions which took place in Tibet … Now concerning the Working Group on Enforced Disappearances, again my own NGO submitted cases. But, this year, very, very little attention has been paid. And, we must not forget the case of the Panchan Lama of Tibet. His disappearance remains an outstanding case before the Working Group,” said Choepel.

Twelve years ago, the 11th Panchan Lama, then six years old, disappeared after the Dalai Lama nominated him to this position. He and his family have not been seen since. The Chinese authorities say they are well and do not want to be disturbed.

The Tibetan groups are asking the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay to lead a high-level inquiry into the situation of Tibetans. But, the prospects are not promising. They say requests to meet with the High Commissioner have gone unanswered.

Tibetan Groups Urgently Appeal for UN Intervention

Some 124 people were reportedly held, as the demonstrators tried to march to the royal palace in the capital.

The ethnic Malay protesters demanded a return to Malay as the teaching language for maths and science.

Both subjects have been taught in English since 2003 to improve pupils’ poor language skills, officials say.

Language – along with race and faith – remains a sensitive issue in the multi-ethnic Malaysia, correspondents say.

‘No choice’

The demonstrators chanted “Long live the Malay language!” as they marched through Kuala Lumpur on Saturday.

Protesters said police started firing tear gas when they tried to march from a mosque to the royal palace, several kilometres away.

“It was a peaceful march. They shot without any warning,” protester Hatta Ramli was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

Police said they had no choice but to use tear gas, saying the organisers had agreed that there would be no gatherings or rallies in the capital.

Police added that the organisers had also agreed beforehand to send representatives into the palace to hand in a petition against the use of English in schools.

Police break up Malaysia protest

Activist groups reported police shot the monk when he protested in the flashpoint area of Aba in southwest China’s Sichuan province last week, and residents there contacted by AFP confirmed that they had heard guns fired.

But the Xinhua news agency issued a report on Thursday saying another monk had confessed to making up allegations about the police shooting, and cited residents saying they heard no firing.

“Jangkor, a monk at the Kirti Monastery in Aba County… said that he lied to ‘create greater disturbances so as to attract attention from overseas’,” Xinhua said, citing local police.

It also said the monk who tried to set himself alight, 24-year-old Tashi, had no bullet wounds and was recovering at a hospital in the provincial capital Chengdu.

The report gave no further details as to why Tashi, who like many Tibetans has only one name, had protested, other than to quote his mother saying he was “very silly”.

The incident has been one of the highest-profile protests in recent days amid high tensions ahead of next week’s 50th anniversary of a Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.

Chinese security forces have locked down Tibet and areas of western China with Tibetan populations such as Aba, according to exiles and activist groups.

Foreign reporters are barred from visiting Tibet independently and police have blocked attempts to reach some of the flashpoint areas in western China.

Last year, the anniversary of the uprising saw violent unrest across the Tibetan plateau.

Tibetan exiles say more than 200 people died as security forces cracked down, although China denies this and accused “rioters” of being responsible for 21 deaths.

China has ruled Tibet since 1951, a year after sending in troops to “liberate” the Buddhist region.

China blames monk for spreading rumours over police shooting

Protesters gathered outside the New York Post’s Manhattan office last night chanting “shut the Post down” after they claimed a cartoon in the tabloid compared President Obama to a chimpanzee.

The Post’s Editor-in-Chief insists his cartoonist was simply mocking the authors of the fiscal stimulus Bill as no better than a team of trained monkeys. But the newspaper’s critics say Sean Delonas’s sketch was tantamount to calling for Barack Obama to be assassinated.

The cartoon, published on page six of the newspaper on Wednesday, showed a policeman standing over the corpse of an ape with a smoking gun in his hand. A colleague says to him: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus Bill.”

The cartoon was referencing a celebrity chimpanzee named Travis who was shot dead by police in Stamford, Connecticut on Monday, after it mauled a friend of its owner.

Civil rights leaders and politicians responded furiously claiming it echoed racist stereotypes. The Reverend Al Sharpton, an prominent civil rights leader, called the cartoon “troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys”.

Members of the public also reacted angrily against the Post. Its phones rang all day with upset readers and protesters, picketing the tabloid’s offices, demanded an apology and a boycott.

“How could the Post let this cartoon pass as satire?” said Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists. “To compare the nation’s first African-American commander-in-chief to a dead chimpanzee is nothing short of racist drivel.”

State Senator Eric Adams called it a throwback to the days when black men were lynched.

Col Allan, editor-in-chief of the Post, defended the work. “The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut,” Allan said in a statement. “It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.”

Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, declined comment. “I have not seen the cartoon,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One as Mr Obama returned to Washington. “But I don’t think it’s altogether newsworthy reading the New York Post.”

Protesters picket New York Post over chimp cartoon

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Andry Rajoelina, who was dismissed last week from his post as mayor of the capital, Antananarivo, spoke as he visited injured supporters in hospital.

He is locked in a power struggle with President Marc Ravalomanana, who he says should step down.

There have been repeated protests against the firing of the ex-mayor.

Demonstrators had been marching towards President Ravalomanana’s compound on Saturday when police opened fire, killing 28 and injuring more than 200.

Earlier, during a rally attended by 20,000 people, the former mayor’s supporters had declared him head of a “transition higher authority”.

Mr Rajoelina, a 34-year-old former DJ, has successfully tapped into widespread frustration with the government.

“I tell the people that their lives, their blood was lost,” he said on Sunday. “(But) we cannot stop. The struggle continues,”

“The people need change,” he said. “What is Ravalomanana’s answer? Shots.”

There was an uneasy calm on the streets of the capital Sunday as heavily armed security forces patrolled, correspondents said.

Prime Minister Charles Rabemananjara announced that a night-time curfew already in force in the capital would be extended for a week, AFP news agency reported.

The sacked mayor accuses President Marc Ravalomanana of misspending public money and being a dictator.

President Ravalomanana, 59 and also a former mayor of Antananarivo, has blamed the opposition leader for the violence and called for a return to calm.

Dozens of people were killed in unrest in January after anti-government protests turned into rioting and looting.

Madagascar, the world’s fourth-largest island, has become a destination for tourists as well as foreign companies, searching for oil, gold, cobalt, nickel and uranium.

Madagascar protests ‘to continue

Amid rising anger that a multimillion euro contract was given to an Italian firm, Energy workers staged unofficial walkouts.

Workers nationwide have downed their tools to show their support for UK workers who have lost their jobs.

With unemployment soaring, uppermost in many minds is Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s pledge in 2007 to provide “British jobs for British workers.” A recent opinion poll showed around half of British workers fear losing their jobs over the next year.

Unions say, in this case, refinery owner Total has excluded Britons from the contract. Total maintains that Italian firm IREM has a specialist workforce and won the contract after a “fair” tendering process.

At least 100 Italian and Portuguese workers are already at the Lindsey site to build a new unit there. Hundreds more are set to join them. Total says there will be no lay-offs among existing contractors as a result.

UK workers stage nationwide protest