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| Hair today, gone
tomorrow for Malaysian barbers KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 18: Malaysia is running out of barbers and needs to import foreign workers to keep the population’s hair neat and tidy. The President of the Consumers Association of Penang (CAP), S M Idris, said at least 30 barber shops in Kuala Lumpur and the northern state of ......more
Bush to hike school WACO, TEXAS, Feb 18: President George W Bush announced plans to increase federal funding for schools underscoring a sea change for Republicans who once wanted to abolish the...more G7 make little progress PALMERMO, ITALY, Feb 18: The group of seven rich countries failed to come up with any........more After 21 yrs, Afghans HERAT, AFGHANISTAN, Feb 18: Occasional explosions, rockets or shootings failed to disrupt this month’s grand ...more |
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Pak likely to
test fire Naval missile next month ISLAMABAD, Feb 18: Pakistan navy would be conducting a test-fire of medium range anti-ship french.....more
Pak-a progressive, ISLAMABAD, Feb 18: Pakistan’s military ruler General Pervez Musharraf has countered country’s stereo.....more
Benazir faces fresh corruption charges LONDON, Feb 18: In an attempt to thwart Benazir Bhutto making a come back, Pakistan’s military regime is planning to ......more |
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Hair today, gone tomorrow for Malaysian barbers KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 18: Malaysia is running out of barbers and needs to import foreign workers to keep the population’s hair neat and tidy. The President of the Consumers Association of Penang (CAP), S M Idris, said at least 30 barber shops in Kuala Lumpur and the northern state of Penang closed last year due to a shortage of barbers, the National Bernama news agency reported today. Malaysians are not interested in becoming barbers, forcing shops to turn to foreign labour, Idris said. The Indian Barbers Association of Malaysia has submitted a request to employ 2,500 foreign barbers. "CAP appeals to the Government to deal with this request urgently as the barber shops need to obtain workers quickly. Even a month’s delay can result in another few shops closing down," said Idris. Multiracial Malaysia depends on foreign labour for menial jobs. It recruits foreigners to work in plantation, construction and service sectors. (REUTERS) |
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Bush to hike school spending, takes on labor unions WACO, TEXAS, Feb 18: President George W Bush announced plans to increase federal funding for schools underscoring a sea change for Republicans who once wanted to abolish the Department of Education. He also issued yesterday four executive orders that the White House said were aimed at fair and open competition in federal contracts. The most explosive one will effectively reduce the amount of money labor organizations can spend on political activities. A day after authorizing the first major air strikes against iraq in two years, Bush spent Saturday quietly "doing some work" at his Ranch about 40 from Waco, an aide said. The preent had his routine national security briefing. Neither he nor his spokespersons publicly addressed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s threat to retaliate or international concern over the raids. The aide said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card were at the Ranch with Bush. In his weekly radio address, Bush vowed to make the case for his proposed across-the-board 1.6 trillion tax cut when he addresses a joint session of Congress on Feb. 27. He said the budget he submits the next day would be "responsible" and signal that his administration would be "good stewards" of taxpayers’ money. But in the democratic radio response, Rep. Charles Rangel of New York called Bush’s tax cut "unfair" and said democrats would offer their own "honest and responsible" budget. Bush, who made education reform the cornerstone of his Presidential campaign and the focus of his first week in the White House, is scheduled to take his message to Ohio, Tennessee and Missouri on Tuesday and Wednesday. "My budget for the Department of Education will have a higher percentage increase than any other federal department," he said. "We’ll pay for new testing programs and new reading and intervention programs, and new choices for parents with children in failing schools." Neither Bush nor the White House provided specific figures, but the proposals he outlined mirrored those on which he campaigned. The new spending totaled almost 48 billion dollars including a 5 billion dollar plan to ensure every child can read by the end of third grade, aged about 8 or 9. Past Republican leaders, including Presidential candidate Bob Dole and House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, sought a drastic reduction in federal spending on education or even the dissolution of the department. While Bush is bucking the Republican trend, he also is demanding evidence of tangible results for the money spent, proposing to give 1,500 dollarvouchers to parents of children in failing schools that could go toward private school tuition. "Money isn’t the whole answer," he said. "High standards and accountability matter most. ... We will spend more on our public schools, but we’re going to expect more in return." Bush was spending the weekend at his own 1,600-acre (650 hectares) Ranch near Crawford, Texas, after a quick trip to Mexico on Friday for talks with President Vicente Fox at the Mexican leader’s Ranch in San Cristobal. This is the first time the former Texas Governor has visited "Prairie Chapel" since his swearing-in as President a month ago, and he will be familiarizing himself with a new house recently completed on the property. First lady Laura Bush has been in texas for two weeks supervising the move. After visiting Oklahoma city on Monday to open a memorial museum for the victims of a 1995 bombing, Bush returns to Washington where "the work begins with a responsible budget." "If President Bush’s plan passes, our country will not be able to meet the challenges of better health care for families, better schools, and retirement security," Rangel said. "Our budget will be honest and responsible by balancing all of the priorities that are important to you." (REUTERS) |
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G7 make little progress on debt relief for poor PALMERMO, ITALY, Feb 18: The group of seven rich countries failed to come up with any new ideas on debt relief for poor countries at a meeting drawing fire from campaigners who had hoped for progress. In a communique released after their meeting yesterday, G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Chiefs said the group had brought 22 of the world’s poorest countries into the so-called Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative last year. They also said they would work to ensure those countries benefited fully from HIPC over the coming years, which would eventually see two-thirds of their debts written off. But there was no response to calls by campaigners to include new countries in the HIPC process or to call in independent auditors to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to check their ability to extend their share of debt write-offs. "The G7 are on dangerous ground," said Jamie Drummond, spokesman for "drop the debt" — the successor organisation of the famous jubilee 2000 campaign group which disbanded at the end of last year. "Unless they move quickly, they are not going to build the foundations of a new deal on debt at Genoa," he said, referring to a full G8 (G7 plus Russia) summit in July. Drop the debt and other groups are pushing for the Genoa summit to give a fresh boost to debt relief, which they say risks being forgotten now that many people in rich countries think, wrongly, that all poor country debt has been cancelled. The G7 — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — did agree on Saturday to sign up to an existing international target to halve world poverty by 2015, something which Britain’s Finance Minister, Gordon Brown, said was very significant. "There is now a much greater focus on the needs of the poorest," Brown, a keen advocate of debt relief, told reporters. But Drummond said the key point was that the 2015 target would never be achieved without much more generous debt write-offs. Many poor countries spend more servicing debt than on health and education combined. HIPC was originally set up in 1996 by the G7, IMF and World Bank to help write off the unsustainable debts of the world’s 41 poorest countries. But its progress was slow, even after the G7 overhauled it in 1998. The 22 that have entered the process have received some relief on their debt service payments but full debt cancellation remains years away, if it happens at all. Drop the debt said the 22 had only seen debt payments fall by a third and were still sending 2 billion dollars a year to rich countries. But that amount could quickly fall by half a billion dollars if the IMF and World Bank moved to pledge cancellation of 100 percent of those countries debts, as the G7 countries have done, instead of one third they have agreed to. This would cost the World Bank 196 million dollars a year in income foregone and the IMF 287 million dollars, small amounts in comparison with the large financial reserves the organisations are sitting on, drop the debt says. The sister organisations say such a move would hamper their ability to channel funds to middle income countries, but drop the debt dismisses that view. "This is why we want an independent third party such as one of the big accountancy groups or a rating agency to go in there and do a proper audit which we know will prove we are right," said Drummond. Drop the debt had found support for its idea before the G7 meeting from Italian Finance Minister Vincenzo Visco. But Britain’s Brown said the G7 had not even discussed it. Italy, Canada and Britain — three of the G7’s keener supporters of debt relief — were said by sources to have been planning a new announcement on debt relief at the meeting, believed to be related to debt payments by countries involved in conflict and therefore barred from HIPC. But nothing emerged. (REUTERS) |
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After 21 yrs, Afghans take war in stride HERAT, AFGHANISTAN, Feb 18: Occasional explosions, rockets or shootings failed to disrupt this month’s grand opening of the Mowafaq Hotel, proudly described as the finest place to stay in this dusty West Afghan city. While the hotel could not produce hot water, a full night of heat or power beyond 10:30 p.m. on the eve of its opening, it symbolises the fact that after 21 years of war Afghans have learned to live with violence. "War has been going on for so long that it is no longer a question of re-establishing peace," said Hans-Christian Poulsen, the UN coordinator for humanitarian affairs in western Afghanistan. "Peace would be a new thing." Although Taleban fighters captured the historic trading town in 1995, soon after beginning the advance that has given them control of most of Afghanistan, a couple of rockets over herat at the new year and an explosion this month came as grim reminders that civil war continues. A humanitarian crisis caused by war and drought is also deepening, prompting the World Bank to warn of famine. Some 80,000 Afghans from the countryside are in emergency camps around Herat, and more are expected to arrive. But the self-reliant residents of this city seem to cope despite the humanitarian crisis and Austere Taleban rules like a ban on most entertainment as un-Islamic. Grinning staff at the Mowafaq Hotel pointed to a radio blaring out foreign music never heard on the Taliban-run station where Islamic verse is the norm. While television stations have been shut by the Taleban, who use the 1,400-year-old era of Mohammed as their roadmap to create what they see as the world’s purest Islamic state, many Afghans have found alternatives. Home-made television dishes, kept from the view of Taleban religious police, access signals from Iran, Russia and India, one Afghan said. The extent of hidden video recorders is demonstrated by a craze for anything linked to the film titanic — the mixture of tragedy and romance strikes a cord in this war-ravaged nation. The Taleban have been arresting barbers in the capital Kabul who had a thriving business giving haircuts to Afghan youths aspiring to look like the hero of the film, Leonardo Dicaprio - except for the untrimmed beards they must keep to avoid jail. But the Taleban hand seems lighter in Herat, which appears to be thriving on trade with nearby Iran and Turkmenistan that is vital to the whole country. This city, unlike Kabul or the southern city of Kandahar where the Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Umar is based, is relatively relaxed. Women, barely seen in some cities, sell used clothes in the bustling bazaar. While confiscated music tapes dangle from a traffic roundabout manned by three Taleban members, most people have no hesitation talking to foreigners, showing none of the typical Taleban xenophobia about the outside world. "In the past they were putting people in jail," an Afghan engineer said of the maze of Taleban rules. "But for the moment they are just letting people enjoy themselves. They have to be careful if they want to hold power here." Afghan mosaic This reflects the mosaic of Afghanistan, a land of fiercely independent people, who proved in battling Soviet invasion forces through the 1980s that they never submit to rulers they don’t accept. The centres of Taleban strength are Pashtu-speaking. The movement has problems in areas with Hazaras - who are Shi’ite Muslims instead of the Taleban’s Sunni Islam - or the Tajik regions that are the backbone of the remaining resistance to a Taleban Government. The conviction that no one group can dominate is a reason the United Nations continues to push both sides in the civil war to form a broad Government. The opposition, led by Tajik guerrilla master Ahmed Shah Masood, might be willing since it has been pushed into a corner and has no realistic hope of rolling back the Taleban. The Taleban, holding at least 90 percent of Afghanistan, gives no indication it has abandoned plans to conquer it all. Even the normal lull of war during the winter, when passes are blocked by snow, has been less than usual. This week the opposition forces took back the key town of bamiyan in the remote middle of the mountainous country. "The fighting has continued and may well intensify in the coming weeks and months," warned Erick De Mul, the Pakistan-based UN coordinator of humanitarian aid for Afghanistan. But no one predicts a decisive outcome. Iran and Russia are believed to be arming the opposition, enabling possible advances in recent months. The United Nations last month slapped an arms embargo on the Taleban, but since Pakistan denies arming the Taleban an order to stop is unlikely to have much impact. If not completely peaceful, at least Herat is no longer on the frontlines. A sign of the relative normality is a UN-funded project to restore some of the past glory of this city, which was once the capital of the Mongolian Conqeuror Tamerlane. Workers are replanting gardens around the domed Mausoleum of Tamerlane’s daughter-in-law and patching holes blasted in 15th century Minarets Sy soviet artillery, removing some scars of war. (REUTERS) |
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Pak likely to test fire Naval missile next month ISLAMABAD, Feb 18: Pakistan navy would be conducting a test-fire of medium range anti-ship french missile SM-39 (exocet) early next month, a media report said. "The Pakistan observor" quoting sources in the Pakistan naval headquarters said the missile was likely to be test-fired from its prestigious Agosta 90-B submarine on March four. The move is aimed at "correcting the strategic balance in terms of naval power in the region and also to flex muscles before the ever-growing Indian Navy, senior officials at the Pakistan naval headquarters told the newspaper. The missile will be fired on a ship target from an unknown position in the southern far coast of India Ocean. Pakistan has also informed other countries including India about its planned test-firing, the paper said. The missile SM-39 is a submarine-launched fire-and-forget missile that can carry high explosive warhead of upto 165 kgs and the known maximum range is believed to be from 42 kms to 70 kms. Pakistan will be the second country after france to have SM-39 missile that can be launched from a submerged submarine, the newspaper claimed. Officials at the naval headquarters say that the naval fleet will be involved in the test-firing of the missile while of Atlantics aircraft, Sea-kin helicopters as well as the fokkers will keep a close air vigilance of the area, the newspaper said. Pakistan Navy has received un-specified number of SM-39 missiles alongwith submarine "M Khalid" (Agosta 90-B). A cold missile will take two minutes to launch but a warmed one will take only one minute, although in emergency situation, launching can be achieved in 20 seconds. The missile was used operationally by Argentina in the South Atlantic conflict of 1982 and by Iraq in its war with Iran. (PTI) |
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Pak-a progressive, tolerant Islamic state: Musharraf ISLAMABAD, Feb 18: Pakistan’s military ruler General Pervez Musharraf has countered country’s stereotyped image of being an extremist nation was based on misperception and distortion which he said was a modern, progressive and tolerant Islamic state bestowed with abundance of rich natural and human resources. Addressing a delegation of foreign businessmen from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Malaysia, Indonesia, United States of America, Hong Kong, Australia and India at Lahore yesterday Musharraf said Pakistan’s environment was far better and progressive than the world knew of it. The military ruler said that Pakistan was gifted with immense natural and human resources like fertile land, trained manpower, a rich coastline. It has all the ingredients of a self-sustained and self-reliant country. The conference of foreign businessmen was organised in connection with the colourful besant festival currently being held at Lahore. He said that in order to revive the economy his Government has initiated several economic policies, undertaken confidence building measures and modified rules and regulations to make Pakistan a investment friendly country. (PTI) |
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Benazir faces fresh corruption charges LONDON, Feb 18: In an attempt to thwart Benazir Bhutto making a come back, Pakistan’s military regime is planning to frame fresh corruption charges against the former Prime Minister currently living in Dubai on a self-imposed exile, media reports said today. Bhutto would face four new charges including one that she and her jailed husband Asif Zardari illegally owned a 340-acre estate in Surrey in the UK, The Sunday Times reported. The newspaper quoted Lieutenant-General Khalid Maqbool, head of the National Accountability Bureau, Pakistan’s main anti-corruption body, saying that Bhutto would face four new charges and none of the charges allowed bail so if she went back she would be placed in custody on arrival. Maqbool said the Government was awaiting 20,000-page documents from the UK about the purchases of the estate including Rockwood house before detailing charges. Bhutto’s lawyers have been fighting in the high court to stop the Home office from releasing the documents to the Pakistani authorities. The latest threat of the slapping fresh corruption charges against her come at a time the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chief was contemplating to return to Islamabad in the wake of disclosure of taped telephone conversations allegedly showing that Malik Abdul Qayyum, the judge who presided over her corruption trial in 1999, had been in regular contact with her political adversaries and had settled on his guilty verdict before the defence case began. The tapes, seemingly the result of bugging by Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau, make it more likely that Bhutto’s original convictions and a five-year sentence imposed in absentia will be quashed when her appeal is heard next week. Bhutto left the country before the trial, living first in Britain and then in Dubai with her elderly mother. According to the report, she remains popular in Pakistan, and the military rulers fear she is preparing to challenge them. The taped telephone conversation has thrown Pakistan’s legal system into turmoil. As a sequel, the high court in Lahore has asked the Government for a report on the tapes and a writ has been issued urging the President to suspend Qayyum. Bhutto has demanded a formal united Uations Nnquiry into Pakistan’s judiciary over its handling of her case. "I’d been hearing for some time that these tapes were in existence," she said in an interview to the daily. "But I could not believe my eyes when I read the transcripts. They confirmed what I had been saying for many months. It was clear that it was the Law Minister, Saifur Rehman, conducting the trial and not the judge. Bhutto maintains that her political enemies fabricated corruption evidence against her and Zardari, who is in custody awaiting trial. Their children Bilawal (11) and Bakhtwar (9) and Aseefa (7) are in Dubai along with her. (PTI) |
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