Attique is PoK House leader
Muslim Conference leader Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan has been elected unopposed as the Leader of the House in the legislative assembly of PoK on Thursday morning.

This is the fourth change in as many years and his second stint in this period as members of the assembly kept shifting loyalties at will. The outgoing prime minister Raja Farooq Haider opted to resign after 18 ministers in his cabinet tendered resignation and switched sides.

Washington, July 29
It has been billed as the wedding of the decade and of the century, but President Barack Obama has no invitation to the star-studded weekend wedding of former first daughter Chelsea Clinton.

“I was not invited to the wedding because I think Hillary and Bill, properly, want to keep this thing for Chelsea and her soon-to-be husband,” Obama told the ladies of ABC's The View yesterday.

Obama started out by joking, “You don't want two presidents at one wedding! All the secret service, guests going through (metal detectors), all the gifts being torn apart ...”

Then host Barbara Walters asked directly if former president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had invited him to the nuptials, the president said no.

“I was not invited to the wedding,” he said. “because I think Hillary and Bill, properly, want to keep this thing for Chelsea and her soon-to-be husband."

Clintons are guarding the details of the nuptials like state secrets, and haven't released any information. Hillary Clinton recently said she's "under very strict orders" not to talk about it. But count on pesky reporters to scoop out some. — IANS

Kabul, July 29
Afghan President Hamid Karzai today asked his Western allies to destroy Islamist militant sanctuaries in neighbouring Pakistan after thousands of secret US files were leaked.

“The time has come for our international allies to know that the war against terrorism is not in Afghanistan’s homes and villages,” Karzai told a news conference in the Afghan capital Kabul.

“But rather this war is in the sanctuaries, funding centres and training places of terrorism which are outside Afghanistan. Whether we are able to destroy these sanctuaries or not is another question. We will try what we can... our international allies have this ability, but the question is why they are not doing it?” he said.

His remarks came just two days after Afghanistan’s national security adviser Rangeen Dadfar Spanta called on the West to review policy towards Pakistan after leaked Pentagon documents pointed to Pakistan’s double-dealing. — AFP

Washington, July 29
The United States has said that it is fully prepared to hold talks with Iran anytime on the nuclear issue and hoped for high-level parleys soon along with five other world powers on the matter.

“We are clearly indicating a willingness to engage Iran directly and we’ll see how Iran responds in the coming days and weeks,” State Department spokesman P J Crowley said.

The Obama Administration, which recently took the lead at the UN Security Council to slap fresh sets of sanctions against Iran and this month had announced a series of sanctions against it, however said such move alone would not be able to achieve the goals of the international community.

"We see important utility in sanctions. Sanctions by themselves will not answer the questions that the international community has. Sanctions by themselves will not assuage the concerns that we have," Crowley told reporters.

"Ultimately, there needs to be a process and dialogue where Iran can come forward and, we hope, answer the questions that we have about the nature of its programme," he said.

"If Iran remains out of compliance with its international obligations, and at the same time, it continues activity of great concern to us and to others, including the further enrichment of nuclear material, then that has consequences and we will evaluate the choices that Iran makes," Crowley said. — PTI

London, July 29
The personal details of 100 million users of social networking website Facebook are now available for download after they were leaked online.

Ron Bowles, an online security consultant, used a code to scan Facebook profiles, collected data not hidden by users' privacy settings, and compiled a list, which is now available as a downloadable file, containing the URL of every "searchable" Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID, the BBC reported today.

Bowles said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook retorted by saying the information was already public. "People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want," the website said. "In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher and already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook." — IANS

United Nations, July 29
In a departure from diplomatic norms, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has issued a statement voicing concern over the security situation in Kashmir over the past one month.

“In relation to recent developments in Kashmir, the Secretary General is concerned over the prevailing security situation there over the past month,” Farhan Haq, Ban’s spokesperson, said in the statement.

“He (Ban) calls on all concerned to exercise utmost restraint and address problems peacefully,” Haq added.

The Secretary General’s unprecedented statement comes in the backdrop of violence in the Kashmir valley that has led to the death of 17 persons and repeated shutdown at the behest of separatists.

Ban went further and called for “rekindling the spirit of the composite dialogue” between India and Pakistan, which India disfavours till Pakistan addresses the terrorism issue. “He (Ban) encourages both sides to rekindle the spirit of the composite dialogue,” the statement said. — PTI