January 27, 2012

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Friday postponed by-elections on 10 national and provincial seats by Feb 25, ensuring transparent voters lists in national and provincial constituencies.

Polling for six national and four provincial assembly seats were scheduled to take place on February 20, which were postponed for five days.

According to the ECP, the decision has been made in line with a ruling of Supreme Court to ensure transparent voters list.

Indo-Pak

January 27, 2012

LAHORE: Democracy in Pakistan consolidated in 2011 through a number of measures notably the implementation of the 18th Amendment bill which devolved powers to the provinces but improvement still exists to further stabilise and strengthen the democratic system.

This was stated in a report prepared by Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) on ‘Assessment of the quality of Democracy in Pakistan 2011′ and released at a media briefing on Friday.

Indo-Pak

January 27, 2012

DAVOS: Pakistan’s former president Pervez Musharraf will “certainly” be arrested if he returns to Pakistan, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said Friday.

“In fact there had been murder charges against him, and there had even been some very grave charges against him, and the Supreme Court had already given a verdict against him,” Gilani told CNN from the Global Economic Forum in Davos.

“Certainly when he’ll come back, he has to face those charges and certainly be arrested,” he said.

International

January 27, 2012

KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain on Friday said that time for “divide and rule” politics has ended in the country, DawnNews reported.

Praising MQM’s services at a massive rally in Sukker, he said that his party presented the bill for the rights of karachiites in National Assembly.

During his telephonic speech from London, he said that MQM stopped the controversial Kala Bagh Dam.

The party chief said that it would be difficult to run the country without Sindh’s contribution to the national exchequer.

Indo-Pak

January 27, 2012

PHOENIX: The U.S. Secret Service is investigating the origins of a photo on an Arizona police officer's Facebook page that shows a group of armed youths posing in the desert with what appears to be a bullet-ridden image of President Barack Obama on a T-shirt.

Max Milien, a Secret Service spokesman, said on Friday that the agency was looking into the picture taken of seven youths, four of them toting guns, that turned up on the Facebook page of Sergeant Pat Shearer of the Peoria, Arizona, police department.

National

January 27, 2012

SEOUL: Secretive North Korea is making rapid progress in building a uranium-fuelled reactor that poses an alarming safety risk, a nuclear expert said on Thursday.

International

January 27, 2012

PARIS: French troops are to resume their training of Afghan soldiers after a week-long suspension due to a renegade Afghan soldier shooting dead four French troops, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday.

Sarkozy also said after talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai that French troops would complete their withdrawal from the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2013.

Sarkozy had threatened a possible early pull-out because of the January 20 shooting of unarmed French troops.

International

January 27, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter has refined its technology so it can censor messages on a country-by-country basis.

The additional flexibility is likely to raise fears that Twitter’s commitment to free speech may be weakening.

It comes as the short-messaging company expands into new countries in an attempt to broaden its audience and make more money.

But Twitter sees the censorship tool as a way to ensure individual messages, or ”tweets,” remain available to as many people as possible while it navigates a maze of different laws around the world.

International