The Pakistan government has decided to file an appeal in the Supreme Court against Lahore High Court’s ruling to bar former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from contesting National Assembly bypoll, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said on Tuesday.

Gilani regretted the HC decision and described it as harmful to the growth of democratic institutions in the country. He said the federal government had appeared before the HC through the deputy attorney general and took the plea that the petition against Sharif was not maintainable under the constitution.

He said Sharif was unwilling to file an appeal against any court comprising judges who were appointed by Pervez Musharraf under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) after promulgating emergency on November 3. The federal government has, therefore decided to become a party and file the appeal. The government will request the court to stay operation of the HC judgment, defer election due on June 26 and allow Sharif to contest the poll.

Afghanistan, June 24
International troops killed 16 Taliban insurgents in airstrikes today after the militants attacked a small town in eastern Afghanistan, a provincial police chief said.

The Taliban have overrun a number of isolated small towns in the last two years, briefly taking control of local government buildings and forcing thinly spread Afghan and international forces to mobilise or to chase them out.

The Taliban insurgents attacked the district centre of Sayed Karam in Paktia province overnight and international troops responded with airstrikes.

"Fifteen insurgents, most of them foreigners, were killed. Four were wounded and arrested and one later died in hospital," the Paktia Police Chief, Hashmatullah Alizai told reporters.

Afghan officials accuse neighbouring Pakistan of providing sanctuary to the Taliban and say many of the militants who cross the porous border to fight the government and international troops in Afghanistan are Pakistani and Arab nationals.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed an incident in Paktia, but could not immediately confirm the number of insurgents killed or exactly where the attack took place.

"During the night the Afghan national police started receiving small arms fire in a district centre in western Paktia. An unmanned aerial vehicle identified several militants and close airstrikes were called in. Several militants were killed," said a spokesman, ISAF's eastern command.

More than two years after the Taliban relaunched their insurgency to overthrow the pro-Western Afghan government and eject foreign troops, the violence shows no signs of abating with neither side able to gain the upper hand.

Separately in Germany, defence minister Franz Josef Jung said his country planned to increase the number of troops it can send to Afghanistan by 1,000 later this year.n Speaking at a news conference in Berlin, Jung said the government wanted to raise the ceiling on German soldiers in the country to 4,500. — Reuters

Kuwait, June 24
Kuwait, one of the few OPEC members with spare capacity, will increase its oil output by 300,000 barrels per day starting mid-2009, state news agency KUNA reported, citing oil minister Mohammad al-Olaim.

“The minister affirmed ... that Kuwait is capable of increasing its oil output (currently) but wondered if the market needed that increase,” KUNA reported.

OPEC officials have repeatedly blamed factors beyond their control for the high price of oil, which has more than doubled in a year to nearly $140 a barrel.

Olaim has said speculation, refining capacity strain and the weakness of the US dollar were behind the high price, and not lack of supply.

“Olaim announced that Kuwait will increase its oil production in the middle of next year by 300,000 bpd, disclosing that it will spend $55 billion on oil projects in the coming five years,” KUNA reported.

Kuwait produced 2.58 million bpd in May, according to a Reuters survey, compared with 2.59 million in April.

Like fellow members of the OPEC, Kuwait too decides its production volume. Most OPEC countries have no spare output capacity.

The agency did not say whether the investment would be allocated for production capacity expansion or other projects.

The world's seventh-largest oil exporter, which sits on a tenth of global crude reserves, plans to boost output to 4 million bpd by 2020.

Kuwait says it plans a multi-billion dollar scheme to produce more oil from some northern oil fields under a plan it calls ''Project Kuwait'' which has been delayed for years as some deputies oppose the involvement of foreign firms in production.

Olaim said on Sunday his country would not hesitate to pump more oil if the market needed it but said it was too early to talk of any increase. OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia has said it will raise its output by 200,000 bpd in July to 9.7 million bpd. 
— Reuters

Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist says the situation has become so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action. James Hansen told the Congress yesterday that the world had long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needed to get back to 1988- levels. He said the earth's atmosphere could stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide only for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea-level rises.

"We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences, who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science said yesterday. "This is the last chance."

Hansen brought global warming home to the public in June, 1988, during a Washington heat wave, saying global warming was already there. To mark the anniversary, he testified before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

To cut emissions, he said coal-fired power plants that did not capture carbon dioxide emissions should not be used in the US after 2025, and should be eliminated in the rest of the world by 2030.

That carbon capture technology was still being developed and not yet cost-efficient for power plants. Burning fossil fuels like coal is the chief cause of manmade greenhouse gases. — AP

BRIEFLY

Mittal buys £70m property
LONDON: Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal has bought his third property for £70 million in London's most expensive street nicknamed 'Billionaire's Row', a news report said on Tuesday. Mittal, who in March 2008 was named as the world's fourth wealthiest person by Forbes Magazine, lives in a home in Kensington Palace Gardens, which he bought for £57 million four years ago and is three times bigger than his latest acquisition. — PTI

First US woman Army general
WASHINGTON: A 33-year veteran of the US military, Lt Gen Ann Dunwoody, has become the first woman to be nominated to the highest rank in the US Army, four-star general. Dunwoody's nomination has to be approved by the US Senate. She would take over as commander of Army Materiel Command, a branch of the army that provides logistics support to tens of thousands of US soldiers stationed around the world. — AFP

Coalition of South Asians
NEW YORK: As many as 29 different groups have joined hands to launch an initiative aimed at empowering South Asians in the US, to take up the problems facing them and highlight the issues of concern to them especially in view of the November presidential elections. The newly formed National Coalition of South Asians (NCSO) will initially work in 12 metropolitan areas in the US that are homes to a large majority of the South Asians, a community which has done extremely well economically. It will also emphasise on social service, community education and advocacy. — PTI

Ban on trans-fat in restaurants
NEW YORK: The restaurants in the city will completely eliminate artificial trans-fat, considered harmful for heart, from the food they serve when the final phase of the trans-fat regulations takes effect from July 1. The regulations require restaurants to clear artificial trans-fat from all their menu items. Acceptance of the first phase of the trans-fat regulation has been very high, with more than 98 per cent of the inspected restaurants in compliance as of last month, officials said. — PTI

Tributes to Kanishka victims
OTTAWA: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has paid tributes to the victims of Air India bombing and said that his government was committed to preventing such acts of terrorism from happening again. "The Government of Canada remains committed to supporting the victims of terror and vigilant to preventing such acts of terrorism from happening again," Harper said in a statement to mark the fourth annual national day of remembrance for victims of terrorism. — PTI