Russia: Caucasus fighters killed

Russian security forces say they have killed 20 separatist fighters during a gun battle in the volatile Caucasus region of Ingushetia.

The FSB security services said the "counterterrorism" operation, which began near the border of Chechnya on Thursday, was aimed at rooting out some 30 people fighting for a Muslim commander.

Local police officials said at least 10 fighters were killed in clashes on Thursday, but it was not clear whether the latest figures took those deaths into account.

The FSB said its operation had resumed on Friday morning.

"A gun battle is currently under way with remaining members of this armed group," a spokesman for the Ingushetia branch of the FSB was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.

'Social deprivation'

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Vyacheslav Matuzov, a former Russian diplomat, said: "The main source of all these clashes and disturbances [has] a social basis.

"After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, [the North Caucasus] republics were deprived of jobs, deprived of social security, deprived of social standards of life ... and this is the main cause increasing population.

"I don't think al-Qaeda or any outside sources play a main role in these disturbances.

"I don't exclude that some third party, especially based in Georgia, is using all this situation to encourage anti-Russian revolt in the southern regions, especially the North Caucasus."

Violence in the North Caucasus region has escalated in recent months, with clashes occurring regularly between security forces and separatist fighters.

Russia is attempting to crush an armed separatist movement in its mostly Muslim southern regions of Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya, where federal forces fought two bloody wars against separatist groups in the 1990s.

The separatist movement has been largely led by Dokka Umarov, 45, the self-proclaimed leader of the "Caucasus Emirate", which has sought to unite various Muslim groups in the North Caucasus and establish Sharia rule in the region.

Local leaders in Ingushetia, with a population of around 300,000, say poverty and unemployment are fuelling the unrest.

Human-rights groups have criticised heavy-handed tactics by the security forces, saying they have created a groundswell of popular opposition to Moscow-backed officials.

But Russian officials blame the violence on groups of armed men, many driven by Islamist ideology, who they say have tried to overthrow Moscow's rule since 2002.

Deaths in US university shootings

At least three people have been killed and several more injured in shootings at a science building at the University of Alabama's Huntsville campus, officials say.

A female suspected shooter was in custody, a university spokesman and police said on Friday.

Ray Garner, a university spokesman, refused to identify the suspect, but local television stations reported she is a faculty member.

"At this point we have three dead, three confirmed people who are dead," Garner said.

Female suspect

Garner said two of the three people injured in the shooting remained in critical condition while a third was in stable condition.

Local television WAFF, citing local authorities, said the shooter was a female staff member who had opened fire after learning at a biology faculty meeting that she would not be granted tenure.

The television station said all three fatalities were staff members at the university.

The local Huntsville Times reported that a female biology professor had been taken into custody and that her husband had been detained.

Erin Johnson, a second-year student, told the newspaper that a biology faculty meeting was underway at the Shelby Center when she heard screams coming from one of the rooms.

History of shootings

The incident was the latest in a series of school shootings to rock the United States, most of which have been carried out by students, amid the nation's ever-prevalent debate about gun control.

The shooting comes more than two years after the southern state of Virginia was left horrified by the April 2007 massacre of 32 people at the Virginia Tech university by a student gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, who turned his gun on himself.

In 1999, two teenagers went on the rampage at Columbine school, Colorado, gunning down 13 people before killing themselves.

In the first six weeks of this year alone several shootings have already been reported around the country.

Last month, eight people were killed in the southern state of Virginia. A man surrendered to authorities after a massive manhunt in the woods near the historic town of Appomattox, during which he opened fire at a helicopter aiding the search.

And in early January a disgruntled employee at a Missouri plant of a Swiss power company went on the rampage shooting dead three people and wounding five others.

He also killed himself in the bloody shooting, believed to have been triggered by a dispute with the ABB company over his pension funds.

Quake-hit Haiti mourns its dead

Thousands of Haitians have spent a day of mourning in the capital's main square to mark a month to the day since Haiti was shattered by a devastating earthquake.

Streets of Port-au-Prince were flooded by mourners on Friday, who wepted and prayed amid the rubble one month after the magnitude 7 quake wrecked the city and surrounding towns, leaving at least 212,000 people killed and 1.2 million others homeless.

In his first live, nationally broadcast speech to the impoverished Caribbean nation since the quake, Rene Preval, the president of Haiti, asked his people to "dry their eyes" and rebuild.

"Haitians, the pain is too heavy for words to express.

"Let's dry our eyes to rebuild Haiti," Preval said at a ceremony held on a flower-decked platform at the University of Notre Dame's nursing school in the capital.

"Haitian people who are suffering, the courage and strength you showed in this misfortune are the sign that Haiti cannot perish. It is a sign that Haiti will not perish," said Preval.

The ceremony marked a brief pause in the government's recovery effort from Haiti's worst natural disaster.

Al Jazeera's Rob Reynolds reporting from Port-au-Prince, said: "Today is really a chance for Haitians to come together and offer one another's support - or at least begin with coming to terms with the unimaginable suffering that has engulfed the country since that day one month ago."

Poor nutrition

While aid workers from foreign governments and private organisations rushed to feed the disaster's survivors and homeless in the days immediately after the quake struck, the destitute still suffer and Haiti is now concerned about how to feed its people in the medium and long-term.

Minister Joanas Gue, Haiti's agriculture minister, voiced his country's concerns at the keynote speeck on Friday at the UN World Food Program headquarters in Rome.

Poor nutrition was common in Haiti even beforehand, when three-quarters of Haitians were living on $2 a day.

Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull spoke to a mother-of-four, Edmonde Roseline, as she strove to provide the bare necessities for her children.

"As long as the children can eat and drink, that's enough for me," she said.

"When I am here with them I just try to stop them getting sad."

The country's approaching rainy season is making the agricultural situation even more urgent - while bringing danger for families like Edmonde's.

"I want to find a tent before the rain starts, to shelter my children," she told Al Jazeera.

"The rain will bring diseases and I don't want them to get sick."

An estimated 50,000 families, or about 272,000 people, have received emergency materials to build their own shelters, according to the UN office that coordinates humanitarian affairs.

Hindu Threats For Muslim Bollywood Film

Fearing attacks by Hindu extremists, cinemas in the Indian city of Mumbai on Friday, February 12, shied away from screening top Muslim actor Shah Rukh Khan’s new film.

"Shiv Sainiks tore the screen at Maratha Mandir (cinema) even before the release of the film,” Manoj Desai, who owns a number single-screen theatres, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Why should I take chances?"

Another cinema owner in central Mumbai also decided not to screen the “My Name is Khan” movie over the Hindu threats.

Ultra-nationalist Shiv Sena Party has vowed to disrupt the film’s release after Khan regretted the absence of Pakistani cricketers in the Indian Premier League.

Amid fears of Hindu attacks, hundreds of police personnel were deployed to protect cinemas.

"Hundreds of men have been deployed in plain clothes and in uniform to see that everything goes well," said Mumbai police commissioner D. Sivanandhan.

Police this week arrested more than 2,000 Shiv Sena members, mainly as a preventative measure, after sporadic violence outside cinemas.

Shiv Sena, which runs the Mumbai municipality, sees itself as a guardian of traditional Hindu values and pushes a strong anti-Muslim, anti-Pakistan rhetoric.

It has long claimed to champion the rights of people from western Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, over "outsiders", often backing up its stance with violence.

The right-wing party draws political sustenance from hardline Hinduism and an ultra-nationalism that includes strident opposition to Pakistan.

Anti-Muslim

Many cinema owners are panicked to screen the film over the Hindu threats.

"At the moment we are not sure if we will be able to screen the movie," said Yatin Rawal, owner of single screen Apsara theatre in Ahmedabad.

"We will only show the film if adequate safety and security is guaranteed by the police."

Multiplex chains Fun Cinemas and TVR also decide to limit the movie screening, while Cinemax India and INOX have decided to postpone the showing.

Anti-Khan protests by Shiv Sena activists were not confined to only Mumbai, but spread to New Delhi and Ahmedabad, with posters of the film and its Muslim star defaced and burned outside cinemas.

However, many Mumbai residents ventured to defy threats by the Hindu extremists.

"I came to see the movie because it's been so controversial, and because I am a huge fan of Shah Rukh Khan," said Subhash Kandrep, who stood outside Inox multiplex with friends.

"I don't see why a movie should not be shown just because some people are protesting over what Khan said."

The film features Khan, Bollywood’s most successful star, an autistic man subject to racial bias in the United States after the 9/11 attacks.

It was ironic, he said, that a film made for peace "has led to so much angst in my own house. My city. My country. Am I political or politically incorrect?"

Analysts believe that the Hindu threats against the Muslim actor are meant to win Hindu votes.

“Why is Shah Rukh Khan attacked in this fashion?” said Dipankar Gupta, a scholar and commentator who has studied Shiv Sena.

“Because he is a Muslim.”

Indian Muslims, estimated at nearly 140 million, have for decades complained of social and economic neglect and oppression.

They account for less than seven percent of public service employees, only five percent of railways workers, around four percent of banking employees and there are only 29,000 Muslims in India's 1.3 million-strong military.