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Pervez set for Term II
Political humorist Buchwald dead
30 Indians hurt in Dubai fire
US to reduce ‘suspects’ on no-fly list |
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Malaysian newspaper sues bloggers
Half-animal woman may be lost daughter
Lewinsky hunting job in London
Ship holed in Channel
Thousands attend funeral
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Pervez set for Term II
Islamabad, January 18 The decision was taken at a Cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz yesterday. “Hopefully, the present assemblies will complete their term and since the President’s tenure expires on November 15, his re-election will be sought from the present assemblies in accordance with constitutional provisions,” Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durani told reporters after the meeting. He, however, did not say whether Mr Musharraf would continue to hold the dual post of the Chief of Army staff as well as the head of the state. The Cabinet was briefed on the constitutional and legal aspects of the presidential elections by a team of experts led by Aziz’s senior advisor Sharifuddin Pirzada, a Musharraf confidante. The Pakistan President’s present five-year term would end almost a week before the completion of the tenures of the sitting assemblies on November 16, 2007. The announcement of Musharraf’s re-election was a forgone conclusion because under Article 41(1), the President’s tenure would expire on November 15 this year and he needed to be re-elected before October 15 as the rules say that the election should take place within 30 days. Significantly, all ministers of Muthahida Quami Movement (MQM), a key ally in the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) were conspicuous by their absence at the Cabinet meeting. However, Ports and Shipping Minister Babar Khan Ghauri, one of the senior MQM leaders, played it down saying that it was a coincidence that all his party’s ministers were attending the marriage of party leader Adil Siddiqui's sons till late last night. Opposition parties have termed the Cabinet's decision to re-elect him by the sitting assemblies as “unconstitutional, undemocratic and unethical”. Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) Deputy Secretary General Liaquat Baloch said it was the responsibility of all political parties to stop Musharraf's re-election. The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) headed by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto also condemned the decision of the federal cabinet and termed it unconstitutional and immoral. Ahsan Iqbal, the Information Secretary of the Pakistan Muslim League-N headed by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, questioned how a Parliament with a five-year tenure could give someone a 10-year tenure. — PTI
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Islamabad, January 18
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Political humorist Buchwald dead
Washington, January 18 Buchwald’s six-decade career began with chronicling Parisian night life before he moved to the US to lampoon US politics and culture from Washington. Joel Buchwald said his father, who died of kidney failure, had lived with him for much of the past eight years. Buchwald, whose leg had been amputated due to his health problems, decided not to continue dialysis last year and moved into a hospice expecting to die within a few weeks. But as word got out, he received a stream of big-name visitors and old friends, reminisced about life and ended up writing a book about the experience, “Too Soon to Say Goodbye,” which was published in November and included eulogies that friends had planned to deliver at his expected funeral a year ago. A newspaper humorist whose column was syndicated to more than 550 newspapers at one point, Buchwald
won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1982. He also published more than
30 books. — Reuters
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30 Indians hurt in Dubai fire
Dubai, January 18 Unconfirmed reports said two of the killed were
Indians. The fire broke out at around 12.30 am local time (2 p.m. IST) at the 21st floor of the 37-storey building at Dubai Marina, a new township coming up on the southern outskirts of the city, which has nearly 100 high-rise towers. Fire tenders reached the spot after nearly an hour. Acting Indian Consul General B.S. Mubarak, who visited the hospitals in the evening, said 19 Indians were among the 41 workers admitted at Rashid Hospital. Most of the Indian workers are reportedly from Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan.
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US to reduce ‘suspects’ on no-fly list
Washington, January 18 The service, due to begin on February 20, will permit passengers, who have been subjected repeatedly to extra security checks to file an inquiry “in order to have erroneous information corrected in the government’s database, the DHS said in a statement yesterday. Additional details about how travellers can file and trace the progress of an inquiry will be available when the program launches next month, the department said. The US authorities, meanwhile, were conducting an elaborate case-by-case review of the names on the list of terror suspects, Kip Hawley, the director of the Transportation Security Administration, told a Congressional hearing. “This effort will effectively cut the no-fly list in half,” Hawley told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The no-fly list dramatically expanded following the attacks of September 11, 2001, with tens of thousands of names added amid numerous complaints of errors. In some cases, innocent passengers were included on the list because their names were similar to terror suspects. In September 2004, a US-bound plane with singer Cat Stevens, who now goes by the name Yusuf Islam, on board was diverted because his name appeared on the no-fly list. US Senator Edward Kennedy was delayed several times from boarding flights because his name appeared on the list by mistake. — AP
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Malaysian newspaper sues bloggers
Kuala Lumpur, January 18 The New Straits Times, the country's oldest newspaper group, had filed suits against Ahirudin Attan and Jeff Ooi over numerous postings in their respective blogs attacking top company officials, Ahirudin and a NST executive said. "The papers have been filed. The nature of the suits is defamation," said the executive, who did not elaborate. "I am now looking for a lawyer to represent me," said Ahirudin, a former editor of Malay Mail, one of the newspapers in the NST stable. Ooi and NST Chief Executive Syed Faisal Albar could not immediately be reached. This is the first instance of bloggers being sued for libel in Malaysia, where Internet chatrooms are mushrooming amid tight government controls on mainstream media. Opposition leader Lim Kit Siang said the suits would have a "chilling effect" on freedom of bloggers and citizen journalists. "It will have far-reaching consequences for healthy, mature and democratic growth of free speech and expression on the Internet and in the country as a whole." —Reuters
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Half-animal woman may be lost daughter
Phnom Penh, January 18 Policeman Ksor Lu long believed that his daughter had been eaten by a wild animal until last Saturday when he was told that loggers had found "a forestman" at a village in Cambodia's province of Ratanakiri. The an eight-year old went missing tending cows near the Cambodian border, he told a newspaper on Thursday. The woman -- believed to be Ro Cham H'pnhieng, who would now be 27 -- cannot speak any intelligible language, so details of her saga have been difficult to confirm. “When I saw her, she was naked and walking in a bending-forward position like a monkey... She was bare-bones skinny. I recognised her from a scar on her right arm, a result of a cut from a knife in childhood,” Lu said. When Lu arrived, he "recognised his daughter from the first sighting" even though her body was blackened and she had long hair down to her legs and could not speak. Lu said his daughter probably spent most of the time in the jungle in Cambodia since she went missing in 1989. The loggers told Lu that they caught her after realising that someone had sneaked up and taken their lunch. Lu said that at first it was difficult bringing her back to normal life because she resisted showering, wearing clothes or using chopsticks, fending him off and shouting and crying. Four days later she started cooperating, Lu said. "It is not easy indeed but life is waiting ahead for her," he said. — Reuters/ AP
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Lewinsky hunting job in London
London, January 18 Lewinsky, (33) graduated from the London School of Economics last month. Hutson refused to go into further details or to specify in which discipline Lewinsky had earned her degree. “She’s not doing any press,” Hutson said. In 1998, the US House of Representatives had impeached Clinton on charges of lying to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice to conceal his affair with Lewinsky. Although he was acquitted in a Senate trial, Clinton was branded as the second US president impeached for conduct in office.
— AP
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Ship holed in Channel
London, January 18 The British-flagged MSC Napoli was on the French side of the Channel when it became holed on the starboard side, a coastguard spokeswoman said. ''The 26 crew have abandoned the vessel and are now in a lifeboat. The Napoli is damaged and has lost power but it is still afloat,'' she said. The managers of the container ship, London-based Zodiac Maritime Agencies, said the Napoli was carrying hazardous cargo, confirming that there were no explosives aboard.
— Reuters
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Thousands attend funeral
Islamabad, January 18
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Quartet meet in Feb
Man dies planting bomb
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Pulitzer Prize-winning satirist Art Buchwald, who entered a hospice last year to die but survived to write a humorous, yet sobering, book about facing death, has died at 81, his son said today.
