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Mursi opponents rally in Tahrir
Arafat’s remains exhumed for poison tests
Pak polls in May
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Space pioneer to send 80,000 people to Mars
Pak court rejects bail plea of suspect
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Mursi opponents rally in Tahrir
Cairo, November 27 The protest called by leftist, liberal and socialist groups marks an escalation of the worst crisis since the Muslim Brotherhood politician was elected in June and exposes the deep divide between newly empowered Islamists and their opponents. The crowd is expected to grow in the late afternoon but hundreds were already in the square after many camped overnight. The police fired tear gas and organisers urged demonstrators not to clash with Interior Ministry security forces. One person, a Muslim Brotherhood activist, has been killed and hundreds more injured in violence set off by a move that has also triggered a rebellion by judges and battered confidence in an economy struggling to recover from two years of turmoil. Mursi's opponents have accused him of behaving like a modern-day pharaoh. The United States, a big benefactor to Egypt's military, has voiced its concerns, worried by more turbulence in a country that has a peace treaty with Israel. The protest will test the extent to which Egypt's non-Islamist opposition can rally support. The Islamists have consistently beaten more secular parties at the ballot box in elections held since Hosni Mubarak was toppled in February, 2011. The decree issued by Mursi on Thursday expanded his powers and protected his decisions from judicial review until the election of a new parliament expected in the first half of 2013. The New York-based Human Rights Watch said it gives Mursi more power than the military junta from which he assumed power. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted judges had challenged the decree in remarks to Austria's Die Presse, adding: "But I have also noted that Mursi wants to resolve the problem in a dialogue. I will encourage him to continue to do so." In a bid to ease tensions with judges outraged at the step, Mursi has assured the country's highest judicial authority that elements of the decree giving his decisions immunity would apply only to matters of "sovereign" importance. Though that should limit it to issues such as a declaration of war, experts said there was room for a broader interpretation. In another step to avoid more confrontation, the Muslim Brotherhood cancelled a mass protest it had called in Cairo for Tuesday in support of a decree that has also won the backing of more hardline Islamist groups. But there has been no retreat on other elements of the decree, including a stipulation that the Islamist-dominated body writing a new constitution be protected from legal challenge. —
Reuters
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Arafat’s remains exhumed for poison tests Ramallah, November 27 The process was carried out in secrecy, with Arafat's grave carefully shielded from the public eye and media kept far away, but Palestinian sources confirmed the remains had been removed for testing this morning. The source said only a Palestinian doctor would be allowed to directly touch the remains and remove the samples, but that the process was being conducted in front of Swiss, Russian and French experts. After the samples are removed, the remains are to be reburied in a military ceremony expected to be broadcast live on Palestinian television. For weeks now, Arafat's grave has been hidden from view by blue tarpaulins. The samples being collected are to be tested for the radioactive substance polonium as part of a new investigation into whether Arafat was poisoned. —
AFP
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Lahore, November 27 "The General Election will be held in May next year. In the presence of a vibrant media and independent judiciary, there is no chance of postponement of the elections," Kaira said during an interaction with senior journalists here. "Nothing can postpone the schedule of the next general election but some natural catastrophe," he added. The Pakistan People's Party-led government will ensure free and fair polls under an independent interim caretaker set-up and the Election Commission, he said. The caretaker PM will be a consensus candidate of the government and the opposition. If the two sides fail to achieve consensus, the candidate will be decided by a parliamentary committee or the EC from amongst candidates proposed by the government and opposition, Kaira said. — PTI
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Space pioneer to send 80,000 people to Mars
London, November 27 "At Mars, you can start a self-sustaining civilisation and grow it into something really big," Musk told the Royal Aeronautical Society in London. Laying out precise details and figures to his "difficult" but "possible" plans, the space pioneer says the first ferry of explorers would be no more than 10 people at a price tag of $500,000 per ticket, the Daily Mail reported. "The ticket price needs to be low enough that most people in advanced countries, in their mid-forties or something like that, could put together enough money to make the trip," he said. Instead of lounging around on an interplanetary vacation, the passengers would be sent to work, carrying with them equipment to build sustainable housing on the dusty and currently barren soil for future generations, the report said. Immediate ground work would focus on building transparent domes pressurised with carbon dioxide while possibly covered in a layer of water to serve as protection from the Sun. Musk, founder and CEO of private spaceflight company SpaceX, claimed with the help of carbon dioxide, Martian soil would be capable of growing crops for food. Equipment carried over could also produce fertilisers, methane and oxygen using the atmosphere's natural elements of nitrogen, carbon dioxide and its surface of ice water. One person out of every 100,000 people would be interested in making the journey with 8 billion expected on Earth by time his plans become reality, Musk said. He expects the mission to getting man to the Red Planet to be completed in the next 15 to 20 years. Phase two would require a SpaceX design of a "rapid and reusable" vertical-landing rocket, which would be "the pivotal step to achieving a colony on Mars". Musk said such a design is underway in his Falcon 9 rocket, currently undergoing testing for vertical take-off and landing. — PTI
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Pak court rejects bail plea of suspect
Islamabad, November 27 A two-judge Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court rejected Ahmad’s petition after hearing arguments from his counsel and the lawyer of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). Earlier this month, the court had issued a notice to the FIA to respond to Ahmad’s bail plea. According to a chargesheet filed by the FIA in 2009, Ahmad and another accused, Mohammad Younas Anjum, provided Rs 3.98 million to Lashkar-e-Toiba member Shahid Jamil Riaz for preparing for the Mumbai attacks. The two men sent the funds to Riaz’s two bank accounts in Karachi from four banks in Punjab and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Ahmad, who has not been accused of being a member of the LeT, was also charged with obtaining a satellite phone connection from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia that was used by the ten LeT terrorists who attacked Mumbai. The seven Pakistani suspects, including LeT operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, are currently being held in Adaila Jail in Rawalpindi. — PTI
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Pakistan not a good place to
be born in 2013: EIU Report
TTP claims attempt on life of TV anchor ‘Drop neutron bomb on Af-Pak border’
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Opponents of President Mohamed Mursi rallied in Cairo's Tahrir Square for a fifth day on Tuesday, stepping up calls to scrap a decree they say threatens Egypt with a new era of autocracy.
