A new twist to Egypt protest as Army holds back
February 1, 2011 by SAF Desk
CAIRO: Egyptians plan mass marches on Tuesday in their campaign to oust President Hosni Mubarak, reassured by the all-powerful army, which has said their demands are legitimate and that it will not fire on them.
As Mubarak announced a new cabinet that saw the demise of a widely feared interior minister, and the newly appointed vice president offered talks with the opposition, protesters pushed ahead with a singular goal of forcing the president from office.
They announced an indefinite general strike and called for a “march of a million” in the capital on Tuesday, the eighth day of an uprising that has claimed at least 125 lives in clashes between demonstrators and police.
Another million-strong march was planned in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, as national train services were cancelled in an apparent bid to stymie protests.
The new demonstrations will come as the hated police have returned to the street after a mysterious two-day absence that protesters said was a ploy to sow a sense of insecurity.
But while it remains unknown what posture police will adopt in the face of the strike and marches, the army stated clearly that it would not confront the demonstrators.
“To the great people of Egypt, your armed forces, acknowledging the legitimate rights of the people,” stress that “they have not and will not use force against the Egyptian people,” the military said in a statement.More
Pakistan floods could have been minimised: US team
February 1, 2011 by SAF Desk
WASHINGTON: Last year’s disastrous floods in Pakistan could have been minimised if European weather monitors had shared their data and it had been properly processed, US researchers said Monday.
Catastrophic monsoon rains that swept through the country in July and August killed thousands, affected 20 million people, destroyed 1.7 million homes and damaged 5.4 million acres of arable land, experts have said.
“This disaster could have been minimized and even the flooding could have been minimised,” said lead author Peter Webster, a professor of earth and atmospheric science at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
“If we were working with Pakistan, they would have known eight to 10 days in advance that the floods were coming.”
Using data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF), Webster and colleagues found the floods could have been predicted if the data “had been processed and fed into a hydrological model, which takes terrain into account.”More
Mubarak’s deputy linked to secret CIA program
As spy chief, Suleiman reportedly embraced the CIA’s controversial “extraordinary rendition” program under ex-president George W. Bush, in which terror suspects snatched by the Americans were taken to Egypt and other countries without legal proceedings and subjected to harsh interrogations.
He “was the CIA’s point man in Egypt for rendition,” Jane Mayer, author of “The Dark Side,” wrote on the New Yorker’s website.
After taking over as spy director, Suleiman oversaw an agreement with the United States in 1995 — during Bill Clinton’s presidency — that allowed suspected militants to be secretly transferred to Egypt for questioning.
Human rights groups charge the detainees have often faced torture and mistreatment in Egypt and elsewhere, accusing the US government of violating its own legal obligations by handing over suspects to regimes known for abuse.More
US condemns Hezbollah ‘intimidation’ in Lebanon
(AFP) – The United States accused Hezbollah on Tuesday of using intimidation to gain government control in Lebanon and vowed that the work of the UN-backed Hariri tribunal would continue regardless.
“The make-up of Lebanon?s government is a Lebanese decision, but this decision should not be reached through coercion, intimidation and threats of violence,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, Hezbollah, backed by Syria, engaged in all three in pursuit of its political goals.”
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States accused Hezbollah on Tuesday of using intimidation to gain government control in Lebanon and vowed that the work of the UN-backed Hariri tribunal would continue regardless.
“The make-up of Lebanon?s government is a Lebanese decision, but this decision should not be reached through coercion, intimidation and threats of violence,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, Hezbollah, backed by Syria, engaged in all three in pursuit of its political goals.”More
Pakistan Ulema chief admits hate literature leads to violence
January 27, 2011 by SAF Desk
LAHORE: Pakistan Ulema Counsel (PUC) Chairman Allama Tahir Ashrafi has said that easy availability of instigating literature in the market was the core reason behind the rising extremism in the country, a private TV channel reported on Wednesday.
Speaking in a programme aired by the channel, Ashrafi condemned Tuesday’s bomb blast in Lahore, which took more than 10 lives and left several others injured.
He said nobody in the country mulled over the post 9/11 rising wave of terrorism in the country.
Literature and CDs spreading hate against all schools of thoughts was available in the markets, he said, adding that no authority in the country took action against it.
He said the country was founded in the name of Islam, but there was no true Muslim in the country at present. Followers of every sect considered the others kafir (non-believer) or issue edicts alleging others of blasphemy. Such unauthorised people were in action because the authorised ulema were silent over such issues, he added.More
Sindh faces acute hunger: UNICEF
January 27, 2011 by SAF Desk
ISLAMABAD: The Sindh province, hit hard by the last year’s floods, is suffering levels of malnutrition almost as critical as Chad and Niger, with hundreds of thousands of children at risk, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Wednesday.
A survey conducted by the Sindh government and the UNICEF revealed malnutrition rates of 23.1 percent in northern Sindh and 21.2 percent in the south.
Those rates are above the 15 percent emergency threshold set by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and are on a par with some of the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Northern Sindh also had a 6.1 percent severe acute malnutrition rate and southern Sindh had 2.9 percent, both far above the WHO thresholds.
“We are looking at hundreds of thousands of children at risk,” UNICEF chief of communication, Kristen Elsby, told Reuters.
A full report would be released on Friday by the Sindh government, she said, along with the province’s response plan.
Elsby said it was unclear if the August’s floods had caused a spike in malnutrition, but that it had revealed the extent of the problem because babies and mothers were being screened for the first time.
“People were already vulnerable and this kind of kicked the chair out from under them,” she said.
Monsoon floods starting in late July last year devastated Pakistan. More than one-fifth of its territory was inundated and 20 million people affected. Ten million were left homeless and nearly 2,000 people died. Source
Manipuri people in Bangladesh held protest
Members of the Manipuri community yesterday demanded immediate action against the gang that tried to grab the land of veteran activist S Rina Devi in the city’s Shibganj area on Sunday.
Rina is president of the Bangladesh Manipuri Mohila Samity.
The protesters also staged a human chain and held a rally at the Central Shaheed Minar in the city to press for steps to save the ancestral property of the people of indigenous community from local grabbers.
Activists of the Bangladesh Manipuri Mohila samity, Bangladesh Manipuri Sahitya Sangsad, Integrated Manipuri Association, Ethnic Community Development Association, Bangaledsh Manipuiri Jubo Samity, Bangladesh Manipuri Chhatra Samity, Patra Sampraday Kalyan Parishad and Tribal Welfare Association, among others, joined the programmes.
They later submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister through the Deputy Commissioner of Sylhet.More
Egypt protest enters third day
January 27, 2011 by SAF Desk
CAIRO: Activists trying to oust Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak played cat-and-mouse with police on the streets into the early hours of Thursday, as unprecedented protests against his 30-year rule entered a third day.
Prominent reform campaigner Mohamed ElBaradei, who lives in Vienna, was expected to return to Egypt on Thursday, an arrival that could galvanise protests that so far have lacked a leader.
At least three protesters and one policeman have died in clashes since they erupted on Tuesday. The protests, inspired by a popular revolt in Tunisia and unprecedented during Mubarak’s strong-handed rule, have seen police fire rubber bullets and tear gas at demonstrators throwing rocks and petrol bombs.
In central Cairo on Wednesday demonstrators burned tyres and hurled stones at police. In Suez, protesters torched a government building.
Demonstrations continued well into the night. By the early hours of Thursday, smaller groups of protesters were still assembling in both cities and being chased off by police.
Protesters are promising to hold the biggest demonstrations yet on Friday after weekly prayers.
“Egypt’s Muslims and Christians will go out to fight against corruption, unemployment and oppression and absence of freedom,” wrote an activist on a Facebook page.More
Another bomb blast in Russia
January 27, 2011 by SAF Desk
MOSCOW: Four people were killed and six injured in a car bomb blast in front of a cafe in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region of Dagestan, reports said on Wednesday quoting local police.
“Three dead and seven injured were taken to hospital, one injured person died on the operating table,” a medical source told the Ria-Novosti agency following the attack at Khassaviourt.
Russia is battling an insurgency in the Caucasus and deadly attacks on government and police officials in Dagestan as well as neighbouring Chechnya and Ingushetia are an almost daily occurrence. Suicide bombings are also becoming increasingly frequent in the Caucasus.
The car blast followed Monday’s suicide bombing at Russia’s main airport in which 35 people died.More
In next two decades Muslims will be more than one fourth of world population
January 27, 2011 by SAF Desk
WASHINGTON: The world’s Muslim population will grow twice as fast as the non-Muslim population in the next 20 years, when Muslims are expected to make up more than a quarter of the global population, a study published Thursday predicts.
Using fertility, mortality and migration rates, researchers at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life project a 1.5-per cent annual population growth rate for the world’s Muslims over the next two decades, and just 0.7 per cent growth each year for non-Muslims.
The study, called “The Future of the Global Muslim Population,” projects that in 2030 Muslims will make up 26.4 per cent of the world’s population, which is expected to total around 8.3 billion people by then.
That marks a three-percentage-point rise from the 23.4-per cent share held by Muslims of the globe’s estimated 6.9 billion people today, the study says.
More than six in 10 followers of Islam will live in the Asia-Pacific region in 2030, and Pakistan, which has seen a rise in radical Islam in recent months, will overtake Indonesia as the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
In Africa, the Muslim population of the sub-Saharan country of Nigeria will be greater than that of Egypt in 20 years, the study projects.
And in Europe, Pew predicts the Muslim population will grow by nearly a third in 20 years, from 44.1 million people, or six per cent of the region’s inhabitants in 2010, to 58.2 million or eight per cent of the projected total population by 2030.More