The tempo at Bagram airbase headquarters for US and British military operations is quickening by the day and expectation is

The tempo at Bagram airbase, headquarters for US and British military operations, is quickening by the day, and expectation is widespread that operations will begin next week.Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, is due to arrive in Afghanistan today, on what has been described as a visit on the eve of the final phase of this war. He will meet the interim Afghan Prime Minister, Hamid Karzai, and the warlord Ismail Khan, who controls western Afghanistan and is seen by the Americans as dangerously reliant on Iran. Then Mr Rumsfeld moves on to Islamabad to meet General Pervez Musharraf, after news broke that US-led special forces were engaged in a “secret war” inside Pakistan.The revelation has come at a difficult time for the Pakistani leader, who is seeking a five-year extension to the power he obtained in a coup against an elected government. General Musharraf’ssupport for the West’s Afghan war has become the focal point for the opposition in a referendum on his rule due to be held on Tuesday.According to military sources, Mr Rumsfeld will tell General Musharraf that the allies want to continue hunting guerrillas who have taken refuge across Afghanistan’s border with his country.British involvement will remain limited, because the Government is less willing than Washington to see such pressure put on General Musharraf, according to diplomatic sources. The Royal Marines will, however, be in action in the north-east and south-east of Afghanistan, and the Chinook flights will soon be in earnest.Two Chinooks from 27 Squadron took part in Wednesday’s exercise, as is normal during operations, in case one gets shot down. After a brief stop at Kabul airport, where a patrol of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was attacked recently, they swept around through Paktia and Paktika provinces.There are five Chinooks at Bagram Each will carry up to 30 marines into the combat zone. The helicopters will fly fast and low, to give enemy forces less time to launch missile attacks, although this does make them vulnerable to small arms fire.Around 200 Chinooks were shot down during the Vietnam War.

Those in Afghanistan now are of the same design used then, although the engine and instrumentation have been updated.. Lang Hancock was a multi-millionaire mining magnate with a penchant for safari suits; Rose Lacson was his Filipino housekeeper, and half his age. When they married, Perth high society was shocked and titillated. He built her a mansion overlooking the Swan River, dyed his hair and threw lavish parties where he danced through the night. Yesterday Ms Rinehart’s 10-year campaign to prove that her stepmother, now Rose Porteous, hastened her father’s demise collapsed when a coroner ruled that he had died of natural causes.The 10-week inquest gripped Australia, with its lurid allegations of hitmen, voodoo and sexual misconduct. Determined to see Mrs Porteous stand trial for murder, Ms Rinehart spent millions of dollars dredging through her past and persuading former servants to testify against her. The crowd that packed the public gallery at Perth Coroner’s Court each day was not disappointed.There was the plot to push Mr Hancock out of his wheelchair, the addiction to pethidine that made Mrs Porteous howl like a dog and the slaughtering of five white chickens on the night that the tycoon died.

Did she or did she not swap her husband’s medication? Did she feed him fatty foods so she could get her hands on his fortune all the more quickly?The coroner, Alastair Hope, was not convinced. Ms Rinehart, Australia’s most independently wealthy woman, left court poker-faced after Mr Hope concluded there was no evidence of murder.Mrs Porteous was not present to hear the verdict, but made a melodramatic appearance later in a Catholic church, head and shoulders draped in a cream lace shawl.Ms Rinehart had recruited Mrs Porteous to be her father’s housekeeper. He had made a fortune in iron ore and had recently lost his second wife. She was a former stockings model and airline hostess with two failed marriages behind her. They married two years after she began working for him in 1983.