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Wednesday,
January 1, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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N-programme in safe hands: Pak MMA leader threatens to quit House
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Alan Bates, Ridley Scott knighted Baby Eve heads home USA bombs Pak border patrol Airports on high alert in Britain
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N-programme in safe hands: Pak Islamabad, December 31 “The nuclear programme and transfer of technology is totally impeccable,” Foreign Office spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said yesterday while responding to reports that Pakistan transferred nuclear material in a coffin. “This is a baseless, tendentious and ridiculous report. It is a totally baseless report and we outrightly reject it,’’ he said. He responded in negative when asked about any pressure on Pakistan to abandon its nuclear programme, The News reported. On reports of India putting more restrictions on visits by Pakistanis, the spokesman termed them unfortunate, saying that the measures would not help improve the situation, but would create problems for ordinary people visiting their relatives there. “Pakistan would not reciprocate these new measures,” he said. KARACHI: The Pakistan navy is already in possession of the state-of-the-art Electronic Support Measure systems and has enhanced the electronic warfare capabilities to meet the envisaged threat scenario at sea, Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Shahid Karimullah said.
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MMA leader threatens to quit House Islamabad, December 31 Addressing the Assembly yesterday after Mr Jamali won the vote of confidence, he said, “At least I will no more remain member of this House if the Legal Framework Order (LFO) was accepted as legitimate part of the constitution”. The amendments were promulgated by General Musharraf ahead of the October elections as the LFO, which was rejected by all mainstream parties.
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‘Make Friday weekly holiday’ Islamabad, December 31 Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali promised in recent meetings that “he would restore Friday as a weekly holiday,” Qazi Hussain Ahmad, parliamentary head of the religious coalition of six parties called the United Action Forum, told AP today. In the 1970s, late Zulifquar Ali Bhutto, made Friday an official day off, and Sunday, for the first time, became a working day.
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Alan Bates, Ridley Scott knighted London, December 31 Actor Alan Bates and director Ridley Scott received knighthoods on Tuesday in a New Year’s list honouring Britons from all walks of life for contributions to their professions and to charity. Recipients honoured by Queen Elizabeth II range from stage and screen stars to a beekeeper, a cleaner and a creator of crossword puzzles. British-born Scott, 65, director of celluloid spectaculars including “Alien,” “Blade Runner” and the quintuple Academy Award winner “Gladiator”, is honoured for services to film making. As a knight, he will be known as Sir Ridley Scott. There is also an knighthood for a Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker who rescued hundreds of Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia before the outbreak of World War II. Winton, 93, kept his role in the transports secret for decades, but the story of the “British Schindler” was told in a documentary film released last year. Winton arranged for trains that brought 669 children to Britain and Sweden. More than 15,000 Czech children died during the Nazi occupation. The honours are officially bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II, but largely selected by the government. Almost half of those honoured were nominated by members of the public. Among the recipients are the parents of a murdered black teenager, honoured for their services to community relations. Neville and Doreen Lawrence, whose 19-year-old son Stephen was stabbed to death by a gang of white youths in 1993, were named Officers of the Order of the British Empire, or OBE. The title Companion of Honour — awarded for “conspicuous service” to the nation — goes to artist Sir Howard Hodgkin, art collector Sir Denis Mahon and James Lovelock, the environmental scientist whose Gaia theory sees the Earth itself as a living organism. Novelist, biographer and London historian Peter Ackroyd is named Commander of the British Empire, or CBE, as is actor Brian Cox - the original Hannibal Lecter in the 1986 film “Manhunter”. Other arts figures awarded the CBE are conductor Jane Glover, Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel and poet Jo Shapcott.
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Baby Eve heads home Washington, December 31 The President of the group’s cloning company Clonaid, Brigitte Boisselier, would not say where the parents live, indicating only that it was outside the USA. She said the baby was a carbon-copy of her US mother. Hours after Boisselier announced the birth of the seven-pound baby, the White House said President George W. Bush wanted the US Congress to pass legislation banning all human cloning. “Despite the widespread skepticism among scientists and medical professionals about today’s announcement, it underscores the need for the new Congress to act on bipartisan legislation to ban all human cloning,” said Bush spokesman Scott McClellan. Boisselier said an independent journalist would monitor verification tests on the mother, a 31-year-old American, and the baby. The Raelian sect, which believes cloning is the key to immortality, has said 20 more baby clones are expected in the next year, the first of which is due to be born next week to a North American couple living in Europe. Meanwhile, the prospect of someone seeking a US passport for a new-born clone exercised minds at the State Department, but experts appeared at a loss on how they would handle it. SEOUL: Prosecutors are trying to confirm testimony from Clonaid officials in Seoul that the company impregnated a South Korean woman with a cloned human embryo and that she left the country in July, local media reported on Tuesday. The testimony came during questioning of officials at the South Korean office of Clonaid.
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USA bombs Pak border patrol Kabul, December 31 The statement said a Pakistani border scout operating near the Afghan frontier town of Shkin opened fire on December 29 with a rifle after a US patrol hunting extremists asked him to return to the Pakistan side of the border. It said the gunman, accompanied by several others, fled to a nearby building at which point the US patrol called in an air strike. “Close air support was requested and one 500 pound bomb was dropped on the target area,” the statement said. “We are working with the Pakistanis for an accurate battlefield assessment of the damage.”
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Airports on high alert in Britain London, December 31 The arrest of the man of Algerian origin at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, which operates frequent flights to Britain, prompted increased security concerns at airports across the country and in the rest of Europe. A British Airports Authority spokesman, said 300 extra security personnel had been drafted into Heathrow during the past few weeks.
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