Baghdad, April 14
A car bomb blasted through a busy bus station near one of Iraq's holiest shrines Saturday, killing at least 37 people, police and hospital officials said.

The bus station bombing occurred about 200 yards from the Imam Hussein shrine in Karbala, where the grandson of Islam's Prophet Muhammad is buried — one of the most important sites for Shiites. After the attack, hundreds of people swarmed around ambulances, crying out and pounding their chests, and attacking police who tried to clear the roadway.

"I want my father. Where is my father?" 11-year-old Sajad Kadhim cried out as he lay on the grounds of the hospital, where doctors were treating his burns.

"All I remember was we were shopping. My father was holding my hand and suddenly there was a big explosion. I don't know where my father is. I want my father," the boy cried.

Dr. Khalid Adnan Obeid, director of Al-Hussein Hospital, Ghalib al-Daamai of the provincial security committee and Rahman Mishawi, spokesman for Karbala police, all said 37 civilians were killed and 168 wounded. Earlier, hospital officials said at least 56 people had been killed.

State television aired footage from the scene, in which rescue workers could be seen evacuating casualties. At least 16 children were among the dead, said Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, spokesman for the Interior Ministry. Iranian and Pakistani pilgrims were also among the casualties, said an official at Al-Hussein Hospital, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Rioters surrounded the Karbala governor's office and demanded his and provincial council members' resignations — blaming them for lax security. Mobs threw stones at the governor's office and set fire to the building.

A curfew was imposed in the area, and the city's entrances were sealed off while police and soldiers patrolled the streets.

More than 168 people were wounded in the attack, said Dr. Saleem Kadhim, spokesman for Karbala health department.

Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, is the destination of an annual Shiite pilgrimage. Hundreds of Shiite faithful were killed traveling back and forth to the city during this year's pilgrimage, which took place last month. — AP

Iraq's ambassador in Washington, while noting that his country had been "thrust" into deadly turmoil by the US, on Friday faulted American lawmakers for drawing up timetables to pull out the troops.

Ambassador Samir Sumaida'ie said the debate in Washington "seems to be always framed in: "When can we have the troops back? Is it next month or is it the month after?'" He suggested in a speech at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies on Friday that the American people should look at the war with one clear objective in mind: "Are we going to come out as defeated, or are we going to come out on top?"

Democrats have introduced Bills in the House and Senate that seek the return of the US troops from Iraq in 2008, a plan opposed by most Republicans and White House.

Anthony Cordesman at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies pointed out that: "We as Americans may find it a little too easy to forget that we have moral and ethical obligations to the Iraqis and to the Iraqi people, not simply strategic interests." Calling the Iraq debate in Washington "heartfelt,"

Sumaida'ie admitted that the people think the US intervention had become "bogged down" and a "big drain" on resources.

Speaking a day after a suicide bomber struck in the heart of Baghdad's Green Zone, killing one member of parliament, Sumaida'ie lauded the courage of his people. "To date, there have been over 1,000 suicide bombers who have attacked Iraq. You tell me any country on the face of earth which can withstand 1,000 suicide bombers going into markets, going next to schools, going wherever there is a crowd and blowing themselves up," he said. Iraqi lawmakers held a symbolic session on Friday to show their defiance toward the terrorists.

Sumaida'ie denied that the fighting in Iraq was a civil war. Extremists were killing innocent people, but there was no animosity between ordinary Sunnis and Shi'ites, he said.

Some lawmakers and analysts have suggested partitioning Iraq on sectarian lines to force peace in the region. 

Kathmandu, April 14
A film on contemporary Tibet, made by a Tibetan exile and his Indian wife, has raised the hackles of the Chinese government which is reportedly trying to stop it from being screened at film festivals worldwide.

“Dreaming Lhasa”, produced by Hollywood star Richard Gere and made by the husband-wife team of Indian Ritu Sarin and Tibetan exile Tenzing Sonam, premiered at the Imaginasian Theater in New York Friday and is also set to be screened in seven major US cities, including Chicago, San Francisco and Boston.

The film, depicting the plight of the exiled Tibetan community in India, gleans Sonam's own experiences as a first-generation Tibetan who was born and brought up in India and then lived most of his adult life in the West before returning to Dharamsala in north India, the seat of exiled Tibetan leader and Nobel laureate, the Dalai Lama.

Hailed as the first major feature film by a Tibetan to deal with contemporary Tibet, “Dreaming Lhasa” has been a thorn in the flesh of the Chinese government that has reportedly been trying to prevent it from being screened abroad in the fear that it will focus new attention on the plight of Tibetans in China, ahead of the Olympic Games to be hosted by Beijing in 2008.

In 2005, Chinese officials tried to pressure the organisers of the Toronto International Film Festival to remove “Dreaming Lhasa” but the organisers refused.

Beijing, however, had more success at the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea the same year when though initially chosen for screening, “Dreaming Lhasa” was dropped at the last moment with no explanation.

Lahore, April 14
When it comes to the role of NGOs in spreading basic and primary education, there is a lot India can learn from across the Radcliff line. Unable to cope with the growing need of educating the young in Pakistan, several NGOs, some even with their own funding have come up with innovative ideas and schemes raising levels of literacy in the Islamic State.

This initiative has taken many school dropouts back to ‘unconventional schools’ where they are receive training in traditional art with the objective to help preserve art forms as well as to earn a livelihood.

Unable to achieve a 100 per cent enrolment in primary education, Pakistan has recorded a 50 per cent dropout rate, meaning thereby that half of the students who join a school drop out before completing class V. This happens despite providing free education till primary classes as a constitutional obligation of the government.

An NGO Pulse Report released by Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and McGill University (Canada) says most NGOs were clear that their role was not to replace the government, but to ensure that the government effectively covered the educational needs. In other words the independent NGOs act as a pointer for the government.

Rapid growth of NGOs is a recent phenomenon, but tradition of individual and organisational philanthropy in Pakistan is as old as the country itself.

Naqsh School of Arts and Naqsh Art Gallery, a project of the Babar Ali Foundation, located in the Bazar-e-Hakiman inside Bhatti Gate, Lahore which began at the turn of the millennium is a fine example of how a project started as a charity for the not so well off children of society has become a centre of excellence.

“After spending three years here, anyone can easily earn a livelihood for the rest of their lives,” says Syed Babar Ali, a industrialist cum philanthropist who stared the centre in his ancestral haveli to perpetuate the memory of his parents.

The students are trained in calligraphy and miniature painting before they can take up other serious art forms like sculpture, ceramics, etc.

President General Pervez Musharraf has rejected ‘absolutely and totally’ the prospect of a joint US-Pakistan military operation to pursue retreating insurgents inside Pakistan.

“The whole population of Pakistan will rise against it,” he told the US news channel, CNN.

Musharraf hit out at his Afghan counterpart, saying that he was very angry at criticism of Pakistani progress in fighting cross-border terrorism.

“Pakistan is being maligned by the west unfairly,” in criticism that it is not doing enough to root out terrorists on its soil and to help crush the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, he said.

On Wednesday, addressing an international symposium here, Musharraf said if his sincerity and truthfulness continued to be questioned, then Pakistan ought to opt out of the coalition against terror.

Musharraf said the criticism showed a “total lack of understanding of the environment and reality by President Hamid Karzai himself.”

Musharraf said on Thursday that tribesmen in the south Waziristan tribal area had killed 300 foreign militants of the Al-Qaida network with help of the Pakistani military.

Washington: Barry Nelson, an MGM contract player during the 1940s who later had a prolific theater career and was the first actor to play James Bond on screen, has died.

Nelson (89) died on April 7 while traveling in Bucks County, Pa., his wife, Nansi Nelson, said Friday. The cause of death was not immediately known. 
After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1941, Nelson was signed to MGM after being spotted by a talent scout. He appeared in a number of films for the studio in 1942, including "Shadow of the Thin Man," "Johnny Eager" and "Dr. Kildare's Victory." — AP