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Architect Diva looks ROME, May 27: Think of Rome and classical ruins probably spring to mind, or Baroque churches, Rococo fountains and renaissance palaces — definitely not modern architecture. ...more First body found after Oklahoma bridge collapse WEBBERS FALLS, OKLA, May 27: Rescue workers pulled the body of a person from a mangled car as divers searched for several others feared....more OTTAWA, May 27: Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, whose Government is mired in increasingly serious allegations of sleaze and...more |
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First body found WEBBERS FALLS, OKLA., May 27: Rescue workers pulled the body of a person from a mangled car as divers searched for several......more Lebanon’s
temporary BEIRUT, May 27: She was young and divorced, and caught Hussein’s eye, so he married her — again and again, sometimes for just a few hours, over . .....more Pak ready to use nuclear weapons in case of war LONDON, May 27: If the current heightened tensions between India and Pakistan lead to war between the two neighbours, Islamabad is prepared to exercise its nuclear option. ....more |
Architect Diva looks to revive ancient Rome ROME, May 27: Think of Rome and classical ruins probably spring to mind, or Baroque churches, Rococo fountains and renaissance palaces — definitely not modern architecture. Well, it might be time to change your ideas. After years of urban fossilisation, Rome is finally dragging itself into the 21st century with a slew of projects that could turn one of Europe’s oldest cities into a Mecca for contemporary art and architecture fans. Only last month, Rome cut the ribbon on the country’s biggest music venue, a high-tech complex designed by leading Italian Architect Renzo Piano, who shot to fame in the 1970s for his work on the space-age Pompidou Centre in Paris. Now construction has started on another ambitious, modernist venture — a national museum of contemporary art conceived by the Iraqi-born Zaha Hadid. "Rome is a city that has been frozen in time, steeped in ancient culture, but largely devoid of modern culture. Things are finally changing," she told Reuters during a visit to the Italian capital. Hailed by some as architecture’s first Diva, Hadid has a string of projects on the go, ranging from an arts centre in Cincinatti, a ski-jump in Austria, a science centre in Germany, an urban complex in Singapore and a road bridge in Abu Dhabi. Her 130 million Euro Rome Gallery is being built on the northern fringes of the historical centre and will offer a wide range of space for all kinds of art. The blueprints suggest the building, due for completion in 2005, will look like a series of twisting glass-topped roadways laid one on top of the other. "It is a modern extension of what a city is about with various layers. Hopefully it will act like a stone in a pond creating a ripple affect around the neighbourhood," Hadid said. Ever since the spectacular Guggenheim Art Museum opened in the northern Spanish city of Bilbao in 1997, politicians around the world have woken up to the fact that great buildings can give a new lease of life to moribund regions. In only three years some four million tourists have visited Bilbao’s titanium-clad masterpiece persuading other cities to leap onto the modernist bandwagon. While Rome has no problems attracting tourists, the city fathers nonetheless realised that the place needs an infusion of dynamism and they are pushing numerous initiatives, including a theatre, a cinema house and a gallery for multimedia art. "In many cities there is now a thirst for modern culture. People want new experiences and ideas of art have changed. Galleries, libraries and opera houses are not seen as fortresses any more. They have to be open for everyone," Hadid said. Born in Baghdad in 1950, Hadid was educated in Iraq, Switzerland and Lebanon before finally settling in London in 1972 to focus on architecture. Until the early 1990s she was famous for being an internationally-acclaimed architect who had won countless competitions for her radical designs, but had built nothing. That unwanted epithet fell in 1993 when work finished on her concrete and glass vitra fire station in Weil Am Rhein, Germany — a building which typifies her style of tying experimental design to unusual geometric shapes. Commissions started to flow and she is currently juggling a global order book that is the envy of many rivals. Ironically, the one place that has yet to sign on the dotted line is her adopted-home Britain, which of all the major European countries has perhaps proved the most resistant to the so-called ‘Guggenheim effect’. In 1994, Hadid won a competition to build an opera house in the Welsh city of Cardiff, but her typically avant-guarde designs alarmed the British establishment and the project was swiftly binned. "Delight as toff scheme is ko’d" said one tabloid headline. "That was one of the darkest moments in my life," Hadid recalled. She blames entrenched conservative values and a lack of political vision for the fact that while Germany, France and now Italy invest in daring public architect, the British don’t. "Britain produces more talented architects than any other place, but then doesn’t utilise them. It is absolutely shocking," she said. She feels she has also paid a price in Britain for being a woman — one of the very few at the top of her profession. A formidable person with a fearsome temper, Hadid says many men can’t deal with her — especially English men. "Men are either over nice or over horrible. In England, many can’t even look me in the eyes," she said with a laugh of derision. Her growing fame has come as a surprise. Walking round the streets of Rome, her wide-eyed face stares down from billboards advertising a show of her work, newspapers call her a superstar and young women architects turn to her as a role model. "Judging by the number of women who come up to me and say hello, you realise that they need to believe that it is possible to survive as a female architect," she said. Although she is based in London, Hadid spends much of her life travelling between her various projects and is a regular visitor to New York. She was in the city on September 11 and was deeply shocked by the destruction of the World Trade Center. "The twin towers blocked out a lot of light, but they balanced the New York skyline. They were beautiful." With work clearing the vast site almost finished, attention is switching from recovery to rebuilding. Leaseholders, victims’ relatives and city officials all want to make their voices heard and Hadid said there should be no rushed decisions. "It is very important for America and New York to do something phenomenal there, but I fear they are going to miss their opportunity by either doing nothing, or else by building something too quickly." The disaster has led architects to question the value of skyscrapers, but Hadid is convinced people will continue to build big and tall — they will just think more in future about how to get people out of a stricken office building. Sitting in the heart of Rome, surrounded by exuberant Baroque churches and Renaissance-era Palaces, the world of concrete, steel and glass seems very remote. But Hadid says Rome is living proof that architecture cannot stop dead in its tracks and live off past glories. "History cannot be frozen and isn’t static. They would never have had the baroque if that was the case," she says. "We have to constantly question how we live and how we inhabit space." (REUTERS) |
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First body found after Oklahoma bridge collapse WEBBERS FALLS, OKLA, May 27: Rescue workers pulled the body of a person from a mangled car as divers searched for several others feared drowned in vehicles that plunged into the Arkansas river on Sunday when part of a bridge collapsed after being struck by a barge, police said. Authorities said they were working to determine the identity of the first confirmed victim of the crash and expected to pull several more vehicles from about 11 feet (3.5 metres) of water in coming hours. An Army Corps of Engineers barge with a crane and teams of divers planned to work through the night on recovery operations, police said. The Oklahoma highway patrol estimated six to 11 people were trapped and feared dead in their vehicles, which fell into the water from the interstate 40 bridge about 7:45 a.m. CDT (1830 hrs Ist), 95 km South of Tulsa. About nine vehicles fell about 30 metres into the water after the captain of an empty oil barge apparently passed out at the controls after suffering a seizure and slammed into an unprotected part of the bridge, causing a 150-metre section to give way, police said. The crash cut traffic on a major East-West thoroughfare and led to a stoppage of river traffic on Oklahoma’s main inland waterway. "It sounded like an explosion," a witness told reporters. He said he was participating in a bass fishing tournament and there were several boats in the water at the time of the crash that helped rescue victims. Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, who toured the crash site earlier, told CNN on Sunday night there was still no confirmation on the number of people killed. "There have been divers examining those wrecks and hopefully tomorrow morning they’ll be able to get in there and find out how many, in fact, have died." Four survivors were taken to the Muskogee Regional Medical Center and all were in stable condition, the hospital said. The injured were a 37-year-old man from Missouri, a 62-year-old man from Arkansas and a couple in their 60s from Oklahoma, the hospital said. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard sent teams to Oklahoma city to investigate the accident. A Highway Engineer at the site told reporters it would likely take six months to repair the bridge. The bridge carries interstate 40, the main cross-state route that connects Oklahoma city with little rock, Arkansas, and Amarillo, Texas. The interstate was closed in both directions, the highway patrol said. (AGENCIES) |
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OTTAWA, May 27: Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, whose Government is mired in increasingly serious allegations of sleaze and corruption, abruptly removed two ministers who have caused considerable embarrassment. Chretien, saying the Government had let down its guard, yesterday sacked long-term ally, Defence Minister Art Eggleton, and moved scandal-hit Public Works Minister Don Boudria to a less sensitive cabinet post. During his nine years in power chretien has made a point of standing by ministers in trouble, and the unexpected and startling changes show how badly he has been damaged by revelations that fat Government contracts were regularly awarded to friends of the ruling liberal party. "We were having a few problems in public life...Which we had to manage as best we could. So in everyone’s interest I made the changes," Chretien told reporters. "After nine years people perhaps got a bit too comfortable so (this) will teach a lesson to all of us." Eggleton lost his job after a newspaper revealed on Saturday that a former girlfriend had been given a military contract worth 24,000 dollars, and there had been no open tender for the deal. Eggleton, who embarrassed Chretien in January by not telling him that Canadian troops had taken prisoners in Afghanistan, said there was nothing to the story, but was forced to quit. Boudria was at the center of the furor over contracts and faced mounting opposition ire after it emerged he had stayed in a luxury mansion owned by the President of an advertising agency that won Government contracts. The crisis is particularly galling for chretien, who won office in 1993 campaigning against what he said was the sleaze of the outgoing conservative Government. "This is a Government in crisis...This is a party in crisis," said John Reynolds of the official opposition Canadian alliance, which has for months been accusing the Government of corruptly awarding contracts to its friends. Chretien’s problems increased dramatically on Friday when police launched an official inquiry into how three contracts Worth C 1.5 million had been awarded to a firm which was a major backer of the liberals. The day before Chretien had promised to bring in tougher ethics rules for ministers and politicians to counter mounting opposition attacks on his Government’s record. Chretien’s liberals have a healthy majority in Parliament and remain far ahead of other parties in opinion polls. But as new revelations emerge, the four opposition parties are doing their best to whittle away at that lead. Chretien, 68, has not yet said whether he intends to step down or soon or lead the party into the next election. Asked whether he was fed up with recent events, he replied: "I don’t know. Things are accumulating." Junior Finance Minister John McCallum will take over at the Defense Ministry from Eggleton in a meteoric rise up the cabinet ladder. McCallum, a former commercial bank economist, only joined the cabinet in January. Boudria, one of Chretien’s oldest allies, took over at the Public Works Ministry in January after his predecessor Alfonso Gagliano was dispatched to Denmark as Ambassador after he lobbied a Government Ministry to benefit a friend. Boudria will switch jobs with Ralph Goodale, currently the Government leader in the House of Commons. McCallum will be replaced by Junior Science Minister Maurizio Bevilacqua. The cabinet shuffle does not affect Finance Minister Paul Martin or Deputy Prime Minister John Manley, both likely contenders for the Liberal Party leadership if Chretien decides to quit. (AGENCIES) |
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First body found after Oklahoma bridge collapse WEBBERS FALLS, OKLA., May 27: Rescue workers pulled the body of a person from a mangled car as divers searched for several others feared drowned in vehicles that plunged into the Arkansas river on Sunday when part of a bridge collapsed after being struck by a barge, police said. Authorities said they were working to determine the identity of the first confirmed victim of the crash and expected to pull several more vehicles from about 11 feet (3.5 metres) of water in coming hours. An army corps of engineers barge with a crane and teams of divers planned to work through the night on recovery operations, police said. The Oklahoma highway patrol estimated six to 11 people were trapped and feared dead in their vehicles, which fell into the water from the interstate 40 bridge about 7:45 A.M , 95 km south of Tulsa. About nine vehicles fell about 30 metres into the water after the Captain of an empty oil barge apparently passed out at the controls after suffering a seizure and slammed into an unprotected part of the bridge, causing a 150-metre section to give way, police said. The crash cut traffic on a major east-west thoroughfare and led to a stoppage of river traffic on Oklahoma’s main inland waterway. "It sounded like an explosion," a witness told reporters. He said he was participating in a bass fishing tournament and there were several boats in the water at the time of the crash that helped rescue victims. Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, who toured the crash site earlier, told CNN on Sunday night there was still no confirmation on the number of people killed. "There have been divers examining those wrecks and hopefully tomorrow morning they’ll be able to get in there and find out how many, in fact, have died." "The people who survived came out right at the start. Those who didn’t make it, obviously, are still in the water," Keating said. Kevin ward of Oklahoma’s Department of Public Safety told reporters he expected the recovery operation to last through Monday afternoon and that most of the vehicles appeared to be concentrated in one place in the river. "I imagine they are on top of one another," he said. Four people were plucked from the river and treated at local hospitals, officials said. Rescue efforts were put on hold while two barges were placed under a slab of the bridge that fell in the water to prevent the massive structure from breaking off. Dennis Johnson of the Army Corps of Engineers said he was waiting for the coast guard to give the go-ahead to allow commercial ships to use the river again. Four survivors were taken to the Muskogee Regional Medical Center and all were in stable condition, the hospital said. The injured were a 37-year-old man from Missouri, a 62-year-old man from Arkansas and a couple in their 60s from Oklahoma, the hospital said. "We’ve got a lot of agencies that are assisting us down on the water and up on top," said police Lt. Brandon Kopepasah. "it’s going to be a long ordeal." Teams of divers, helicopters, a barge with a crane and emergency teams from across the state were dispatched to the bridge. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Coast Guard sent teams to Oklahoma city to investigate the accident. A highway engineer at the site told reporters it would likely take six months to repair the bridge. The bridge carries interstate 40, the main cross-state route that connects Oklahoma city with little rock, Arkansas, and Amarillo, Texas. The interstate was closed in both directions, the highway patrol said.(REUTERS) |
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Lebanon’s temporary Shi’ite marriage BEIRUT, May 27: She was young and divorced, and caught Hussein’s eye, so he married her — again and again, sometimes for just a few hours, over the space of several years. The majority of Islam’s Sunni sect regards it as illicit sex, but Hussein calls the temporary marriages that he and other Lebanese Shi’ite Muslims enter into a gift from God that kept him sane until he had a chance to marry for good. And, as deepening economic woes make traditional marriage a distant, expensive prospect for many Lebanese, he says the temporary unions — called Muta’a, or pleasure, marriages — are a divinely sanctioned safety valve. "This is solving a huge crisis for young people it saves them from adultery," Hussein says, referring to sex outside marriage. "Everyone has instincts, and if you can’t deal with them they rule you." Shi’ite Muslim legal experts echo that view, saying temporary marriage is grounded in the authority of the Prophet Mohammad and strikes a balance between the needs of the flesh and the legal demands of marriage. "Temporary marriage is for solving a problem that human beings suffer from, a problem that is basically sexual," explained Sheikh Hussein Al-Khishin, who teaches religious law under the auspices of the country’s most prominent Shi’ite Cleric, Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. "At times, you can’t be patient and put a cap on your desires and physical instincts," he says, adding: "We believe that it has been practised since the time of the companions of the Prophet...And that the Prophet himself declared it legitimate and permitted it." Muslim tradition agrees that Muta’a marriage dates back to time of the Prophet Mohammad, and holds that he recommended it to his followers as a means of meeting their needs during circumstances that made ordinary marriage difficult, such as pilgrimage or military campaigns. Sunni Muslims abandoned the practice, with their legal scholars arguing it was permissible only under the extraordinary circumstances of the early Muslim community. Continuing it now, they sniff, is just cloaking vice in pious garb. Their Shi’ite counterparts in Lebanon, who are the country’s largest religious group, counter that the temporary marriages are legally valid Muslim unions, right down to the contract and payment of a dowry that ordinary marriages have. "All of the controls of a permanent marriage are there, and so when someone says ‘this is legalised adultery’, they’re wrong," says Khishin. While the conditions of the early Muslim community may be over and done with, he argues, sex is a basic human need that demands satisfaction regardless of whether one is in a position to marry or not. The message of Muta’a is simple, Khishin says: It is better to marry — even briefly — than to burn. "What is one to do? either one slips into adultery, or marries," he says. "We say, ‘there is a way that Islam has made legitimate with which you can build a relationship with a woman and conduct a (marriage) contract for a certain period"’, Khishin says. "It is a matter of solving problems." The contracts can run into the years, or conclude in hours. Widows, divorcees and those who lack the cash to marry in the customary fashion and set up a household have needs and always will, the cleric says. "The opposing (Sunni) view is that the prophet made this legitimate for a limited time. We say he made it legitimate to meet a pressing need, and that need is still around. Why would anyone forbid it?" Whatever the theory of temporary marriage — also practised in Shi’ite Iran, under the name of Sigheh — among Lebanon’s Shi’ites it is in practice a humble affair. "There has to be some kind of exchange, even if it’s just a symbol," says another Lebanese who has married temporarily. The point, he explains, is to make it clear that the marriages are above ground and nothing to be ashamed of, but they are still something not everyone is eager to flout. Few women who have taken part in a temporary marriage are willing to be identified or discuss their temporary union. Hussein, who asked not to be identified by his real name, has no regrets about his temporary marriages but says they are part of a past when his chances of a permanent marriage were slim, for want of cash. Now employed as a chauffeur for a prominent Lebanese businessman, he has settled in a large flat with his children and the woman his job made it possible for him to marry. "This was something to get me through until I could really marry," he says, bouncing one of his toddlers on his knee. "And it’s still sort of not an open topic it’s something that’s treated like it’s not really for discussing a lot." Another man from the same neighbourhood who agreed to speak anonymously about his marriages echoed the sentiment that it filled a need before he was able to settle down, disdaining an older relative who shows no sign of ever settling down. "It’s embarrassing to see someone his age act that way," he said. "The idea is to solve a problem you have when you’re young, not stretch out your youth until you’re dead." (AGENCIES) |
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Pak ready to use nuclear weapons in case of war LONDON, May 27: If the current heightened tensions between India and Pakistan lead to war between the two neighbours, Islamabad is prepared to exercise its nuclear option. Pakistan’s Army believes it would be difficult to contain a conflict in Kashmir from spiralling out of control, "The idea of keeping this as a limited conflict is very difficult. Where do you draw the line," said Lieutenant General Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani officer and security analyst. "Because of the arithmetic Pakistan becomes very vulnerable and then you have to consider the nuclear option." "Pakistan relies on first use. We have to have the option, otherwise there would be no deterrence,"a former Foreign Ministry official Khalid Ahmed said. While India has committed itself to a "no first-use" policy, Pakistan’s generals are prepared to use nuclear weapons, a report in the guardian here today said, quoting international nuclear experts. India and Pakistan are believed to be stepping up production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium as the threat of serious conflict over Kashmir intensifies. Zia Mian, a Pakistani physicist at Princeton University, said the two countries were racing to expand their nuclear arsenals. "The Pakistani uranium enrichment facilities, as far as we know, are working three shifts round the clock," he said. Indian analysts suggested their generals were aware that forcing Pakistan into a desperate position could be the final trigger. "If the Indians made an incursion deep into Pakistan and didn’t show signs of stopping, the Pakistanis might threaten the use of nuclear weapons, Sumit Ganguly, a political scientist at the University of Texas said, adding, "but everything about Indian military culture speaks of prudence." The military leadership in Pakistan has also drawn up the three worst case scenarios in which it might resort to nuclear weapons. The most likely would be a massive Indian strike into Sind province in the south, which would cut Pakistan in half. Second would be the loss of Lahore, which is close to the Indian border. The final risk would be the collapse of its Army in the face of overwhelming odds. (UNI) |
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Pak Govt may neither have will or means to rein in militants NEW YORK, May 27: Pakistan Government may neither have the will or the means to rein in militants operating in Kashmir who it has used as an instrument of both domestic and foreign policy for more than 20 years, a media report said today. "This Government does not have the political will to crack down. The only thing new is that since December, these groups are not visible. They have changed their names, their telephone numbers and addresses, and they have moved out of Islamabad," Arif Jamal, a Pakistani author who has spent years studying Islamic militancy, told The New York Times. "The terror structure built up in the 1980’s is very much intact, and the Jihadi groups are functioning the same way they always have, recruiting, training and fund-raising." The holy warriors or Jehadis are called, have become a huge network of violence. There are as many as 500,000 in Pakistan itself, most of them belonging to the various Muslim holy war organisations, the report said. There are also thousands committed to the Kashmir cause. One expert said as many as 3,000 fighters trained in Pakistan are operating in the Valley. "If the Army is with Musharraf, he can neutralize these groups, but it will take a long time, and a terrible amount of violence in Pakistan first," a Pakistani official with intimate knowledge of the security services told the paper. "I still don’t see the Army taking these groups on, though. Jihad has been part of the defense structure of this country for 20 years. How do you get rid of 500,000 people?" the expert on Islamic militancy and national security was quoted by the paper as saying. In a report from Islamabad, the paper said President Pervez Musharraf under pressure from the international community to rein in religious extremists, has resolved to strengthen a 1997 anti-terrorism law to make it easier to prosecute and allow longer detention of suspects without trial. Another expert on the country’s militant movement, said "we have fought three wars with India and have not won even one of them... The success of the Jihadi strategy in Afghanistan compelled the generals to try it on India, too. The Kashmir Jihadis are our cannon fodder because they are willing to die for their cause in a way that no paid soldiers would." The Pakistani Government, the paper noted, strongly denies promoting cross-border infiltration but enduring official ambivalence about support for such groups exists. Quoting a senior official in Islamabad, the paper said that although there was heavy pressure now to arrest separatist leaders, any action must "ensure that the Kashmiri population on our side of border is not disillusioned, because their support for our strategic objectives is crucial." Also, the political issue of governing the state has become overshadowed by the religious agenda of Islamic militants. This "religious aura" has been reinforced by the return of many of Pakistan’s most hardened Islamic militants from Afghanistan since the unseating of the Taliban there. Groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahab, reportedly still enjoy strong links to the Pakistani intelligence services, particularly through retired agents and army officials, it said. (PTI) |
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Ranking Taliban move freely in Pak, regrouping PESHAWAR, May 27: Two former high-ranking Taliban talk of reorganizing their militant religious movement and describe a recovering Al-Qaida - all while they sit secretly inside Pakistan, Washington’s front-line ally in the war on international terrorism. In an interview with the Associated Press, they said the Afghan-Pakistan border can’t be sealed to stop the movement of militants. Even more advantageous, they said, is the split within Pakistan’s powerful spy agency between those who share the Taliban’s ideology and those who support Pakistan’s alliance with America. One of the two, Fazul Rabi Said-Rahman, was the Taliban Army Corps Commander for Eastern Afghanistan. During the last six months of Taliban rule he was Chief of Police in Paktia province, an area still considered by the US-led anti-terrorist coalition to be harbouring fugitive Taliban and Al-Qaida fighters. The other man, Obeidullah, was an assistant to the Taliban’s intelligence chief Qari Ahmadullah, who was killed by a US bomb in January in Eastern Afghanistan. Speaking in Pashtu through an interpreter, they said the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and Al-Qaida’s leader, Osama bin Laden, are both alive, but offered no specifics on the Saudi dissident who leads Al-Qaida. They said that they had met with Omar within the last two months "in the mountains in Afghanistan." They did not claim to have seen Bin Laden or explain how they knew he was alive. "He is waiting for the next big attack and then he will show his body," Obeidullah said. (AP) |
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