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Unfazed by the rich baritone and charm of Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice stared him down and by the end of a meeting held two years back, he was "babbling" and "shifting uncomfortably", according to a new biography of her. When Rice sat down with Aziz during her visit to Pakistan in March, 2005, the Pakistan Premier, who fancied himself as a ladies man, puffed himself up and held forth in what obviously was his seductive baritone. "He bragged to Western diplomats, no less, that he could conquer any woman in two minutes," says the biography Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and her path to power, according to Pakistani daily Dawn. Aziz "tried this Saville Row-suited gigolo kind of charm: Pakistan is a country of rich traditions, staring in Rice’s eyes," the biography’s author, who is Newsweek chief of correspondents and senior editor Marcus Mabry, wrote. "There was this test of wills where he was trying to use all his charm on her as a woman and she just basically stared him down. By the end of the meeting, he was babbling," the newspaper quoted the author as writing. — PTI China’s no to horror China has launched a nationwide crackdown on "illegal terrifying books" such as Death Note to clean up the publications market ahead of Children’s Day. Death Note, one of the horror tales the government has ordered off the shelves, has been read by many primary school students, according to the circular issued by the National Office for Cleaning Up Pornography and Fighting Illegal Publications, the state media reported today. "It contains elements of mystery, death and revenge, which is harmful to children’s psychological development," it said ahead of the Children’s Day on June 1. "It elaborates on different scaring ways of dying — it will even make adults feel uneasy, let alone children who are still psychologically immature," Xinhua news agency quoted a Beijing municipal government official as saying. The municipal government has received numerous complains from parents and educators who says students are spending too munch time reading the horror stories and not enough time studying, he said. The circular orders local
governments to confiscate the publications by hunting down the books in
book stores and street vendors, especially around schools, and to give
heavy penalties to their publishing houses. — PTI
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