The National Judicial Committee has resolved that no chief justice or judge of any superior court will become the acting governor of a province or hold any public office in the future.

It also asked the retired judges not to accept any office of profit after retirement.

The panel, a policy-making judicial forum, meeting under Chief Justice Iftikhar
Mohammad Chaudhry, noted with concern the trend among retired judges of
superior courts to accept appointment to various offices and said it was below
the status of a judge.

It asked the government to stop making such offers and asked judges to remain in the position they were currently holding.

The meeting took notice of increasing complaints of corruption amongst judicial officers and court staff and supported the policy of the Chief Justice of Pakistan to show zero tolerance for corruption.

It asked the legal fraternity to help curb rampant corruption in the judiciary and promised stern action on genuine complaints with evidence.

The committee endorsed suggestion for declaring the year 2009 as the ‘Year for Justice for All’ with focus on speedy and inexpensive justice at the grassroots level.

The Chief Justice said judicial reforms would soon be in place and all cases would be decided within three months.

An intensive campaign would be undertaken to clear the entire backlog of thousands of pending cases by the end of this year, Justice Iftikhar said.

“The existing laws are sufficient enough but require proper implementation and if they are followed properly it will automatically streamline the system and provide justice to the people,” Justice Chaudhry said.

Calling upon retired judges to desist from accepting any office of profit after retirement, the panel recommended that the provision of the Constitution should be strictly followed which says: “A former judge of the Supreme Court or a high court should not hold the office of profit in the service of Pakistan, not being judicial or quasi-judicial office of the chief election commissioner or of a chairman or member of the Law Commission or of chairman or member of the Council of Islamic Ideology before the expiry of two years after his retirement.”

Colombo, April 20
Sri Lanka's military today opened up its aerial surveillance centre to journalists for the first time, offering a glimpse of real-time footage from a battlefield usually off-limits to independent observers.

A handful of reporters were brought inside the Battle Management Centre at air force headquarters in Colombo, from where controllers monitor video from Israeli-made unmanned drones and a Beechcraft reconnaissance airplane.

That real-time information is then fed to commanders fighting the LTTE separatists.

In the Indian Ocean island's 25-year-old war, the fight on the battlefield has often been measured by how much propaganda mileage events there can garner to frame the conflict to a wider world that rarely spares it much thought.

With tens of thousands fleeing the war zone and major international pressure on the government to protect them, the military hastily called journalists to view what it said was a mix of live and recorded video of the morning's exodus.

"All of these small dots are human beings waiting to be checked," Vice Air Marshal Kolitha Gunatilleke told reporters, pointing to video on a widescreen monitor showing throngs of people around a few makeshift structures.

He then aimed a laser pointer at an adjacent screen with a Google Earth map to chalk out the 1.5 km (1 mile) path he said people had taken, crossing an earthen berm built by Tigers and then wading through a lagoon to reach army-held areas.

"I think the civilians saw the army was close and thought it was a safe route. Probably the civilians spied them because this is an open space," he said, making a circle with the laser pointer.

He then showed the video he said was taken at about 8 am. from around 7,000
feet (2,134 metres), which showed a stream of people running to reach the earth
berm. — Reuters

However, Minister for Agriculture and Cooperatives and Co-chairman of Madheshi People's Rights Forum said the cabinet was yet to reach the decision.

London, April 20
Professor Stephen Hawking, oneof the world's foremost physicists and the acclaimed author of "A Brief History of Time", has been urgently admitted to hospital, Cambridge University said on Monday.

Hawking, 67, who is wheelchair-bound and almost completely paralysed by motor neurone disease, was taken by ambulance to a local hospital in Cambridge, where he teaches as a professor of applied mathematics and theoretical physics.

"Professor Hawking is very ill and has been taken by ambulance to Addenbrooke's Hospital," the university said.

A source said Hawking was ill for a couple of weeks, with his condition deteriorating since he returned from a trip to the United States at the weekend. — Reuters