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Cameron takes over as UK PM
9 slaughtered in Chinese kindergarten
Fonseka now in mess over news report
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Terror, not India, main threat to Pak: Obama
Washington, May 12 US President Barack Obama today said Pakistan had realised that it was not India but the “cancer” of terrorism emanating from its own territory that was its primary concern as extremists posed a serious threat to the sovereignty of that country. “I think there has been in the past a view on the part of Pakistan that their primary rival, India, was their only concern,” Obama said at a joint press availability with the visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai. “I think what you’ve seen over the last several months is a growing recognition that they have a cancer in their midst; that the extremist organisations that have been allowed to congregate and use as a base the frontier areas to then go into Afghanistan - that now threatens Pakistan’s sovereignty,” Obama said in response to a question. — PTI
Indefinite strike was a blunder, admits Prachanda
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Cameron takes over as UK PM
London, May 12
Cameron (43), who ended the Labour’s 13-year reign, made Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg Deputy Prime Minister. “This (coalition) is a five-year arrangement ... And we will take decisions in the long term interest of the country,” Cameron said at a joint press conference with Clegg here today. Clegg, also 43, said this is a government that will last. “There will be bumps... But we are united.” Earlier in the day, Cameron named part of his Cabinet, giving four more posts to LibDems, who came third in the May 6 general election which threw up a hung Parliament. Conservatives were the single largest party with 306 seats in the 650-member House of Commons, while Labour bagged 258 and Lib Dems 57. William Hague, a veteran Tory leader, will be the Foreign Secretary while Goerge Osborne will be the new Chancellor of Exchequer. Osborne (38) becomes the youngest Chancellor of the Exchequer in 125 years. Liam Fox will be Defence Secretary, Theresa May (Home Secretary), Ken Clarke (Justice Secretary) and Andrew Lansley (Health Secretary). LibDems’ Vince Cable will be Business/Banking Secretary, Danny Alexander, Scottish Secretary; and Chris Huhne, Environment and Climate Secretary; while David Laws is tipped to be the Schools Secretary. Besides five Liberal Democrats in the Cabinet, there will be around 15 other ministers from the party at the junior level. “We have some deep and pressing problems,” Cameron, who heads the first coalition government in 70 years, said in his maiden speech after arriving at the No. 10, Downing Street, flanked by his pregnant wife Samantha. Earlier, a statement from Buckingham Palace said the Queen had requested Cameron to form a new government. Cameron, the youngest Prime Minister since 1812 when Lord Liverpool ran the government at the age of 42, identified the challenges before his government as a huge deficit, deep social problems and political system in need of reform. Cameron, who visited India after taking over as the Conservative chief in 2006, has pledged to support its bid for a permanent seat in the UNSC. — PTI
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9 slaughtered in Chinese kindergarten
Beijing, May 12 The deadly rampage took place at about 8 am (local time) at the privately-run kindergarten in Linchang Village in the Shaanxi province when 48-year-old villager Wu Huanming, who apparently owned the school building, barged inside started hacking children. Seven children, five boys and two girls, and their teacher 50-year-old Wu Hongying were killed on the spot and Wu’s mother later died in the hospital, the Shaanxi Provincial Emergency Response Office said in a statement. Eleven other children were injured, two severely. They are being treated in hospital. Wu Huanming returned home after his gory killings and committed suicide, the statement said. An initial police investigation showed that Wu had been unhappy after a property dispute with the teacher Wu Hongying. Wu Huanming had rented out his house to Wu Hongying to run the kindergarten, without approval from any government departments. Wu Huanming demanded in April that his house should be vacated when the lease expired, but teacher said she hoped to return the property in June or July, during the school vacation, official Xinhua news agency reported. About 20 children went to the kindergarten this morning, Zhao Leji, Chief of the local Communist Party of Shaanxi said. This is the seventh such gory attack on schools in different places since late March, in which 18 children have been killed and over 80 others including few teachers injured. One attacker, a community doctor, has already been executed by firing squad after he was found guilty by local courts and another self immolated himself after killing the children. The state-run media routinely carried rudimentary details of these attacks with some analysis by commentators. But not many details were available on what was the root cause of all these attacks, which has now assumed a pattern, with enraged and unhappy men, generally regarded as failures targeting hapless children to vent their anger at easy targets. Both the central and provincial government appeared clueless about how to deal with the attacks as they were not carried out by any organised networks but by desperate individuals. —
PTI
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Fonseka now in mess over news report
Colombo, May 12 Fonseka, already facing two court martial inquiries over alleged irregularities in tender procedures while serving in the army and conspiring against the government, was brought to the Colombo Chief Magistrate’s court amidst tight security. A state counsel told the court that Fonseka would be indicted in the High Court shortly over his statement, one that has been denied subsequently by Fonseka.
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Indefinite strike was a blunder, admits Prachanda
The Unified CPN-Maoists Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Prachanda, who was forced to withdraw the nationwide general strike on Friday after crippling the normal life for six days, admitted on Wednesday that it was a wrong decision to announce indefinite strike. As he failed to topple the government from the street and seize the power to enforce people's constitution that it wants to introduce Prachanda said, "Our party has realized that it was a blunder to announce indefinite strike that failed to garner support from all sections of society in accordance with our desire." Referring to the Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal's preconditions that he had asked the Maoists to meet before he resigns, Prachanda made a frustrated tone saying, "I have heard that even if we meet his preconditions, the PM will not step down immediately without receiving signals from the foreign power centers." Maoist chief apologises for hurting intellectuals Chairman of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Prachanda, on Wednesday publicly apologised for the offence by his controversial statement on intellectuals, civil society members and Kathmandu dwellers. Speaking at an interaction with professionals, intellectuals, businessmen, middle class people of Kathmandu, Prachanda said: "I am sorry and really did not really mean to hurt anybody." While addressing the party cadres in Kathmandu on Saturday, Prachanda had accused journalists, writers, intellectuals, business community and middle class residents of Kathmandu for humiliating the rural and poor people, who had come to Kathmandu to join the general strike called by Maoists.
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Conservative leader David Cameron, who favours a ‘new special relationship’ with India, took charge as Britain’s youngest Prime Minister in nearly 200
years
Former Sri Lanka army chief Sarath Fonseka was hauled up before a Magistrate Court here on Wednesday for his alleged comments to a local Sunday newspaper. Fonseka had said that Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had ordered that no LTTE member attempting surrender during the last stages of the war last May be spared.
