"I READ THE NEWS TODAY,OH BOY..."John Lennon

Tuesday, March 3, 2009 - 20:20

AFP News Briefs List
 
Global new deal 'possible' on banking sector in months : Brown

US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (R) walk through the Colonnade following a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC. Brown said Tuesday that a global "new deal" on cleaning up the reeling banking sector was possible within months, during talks with Obama.

AFP - A pall of economic gloom Tuesday hung over President Barack Obama's talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who came armed with a plan for huge reforms of the reeling global finance system.
   
Brown was set to become the first European leader to visit Obama in the White House, and was set to call for a "global New Deal" of economic reform and banking regulation, to check quickening economic deterioration.
   
The meeting, designed to prepare the ground for a Group of 20 developing and developed countries summit in London on April 2, takes place against a backdrop of crashing stock markets and building global economic anxiety.
   
Less than two hours before meeting Brown for the Oval Office meeting set for 11:30 am (1630 GMT), Obama issued a grim forecast for more pain in the US economy, despite his massive government rescue effort.
   
"I want to begin with some plain talk," Obama said, during a visit to the US Department of Transportation in Washington.
   
"The economy's performance in the last quarter of 2008 was the worst in over 25 years, and frankly, the first quarter of this year holds out little promise for better returns."
   
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged to its lowest level in 12 years on Monday, and global stocks also dipped sharply, amid fears that there was no exit in sight from the economic contagion.
   
Brown, who is fighting political unpopularity back home, went into the talks with Obama calling for coordinated global action on the banking crisis and new regulation of the financial industry.
   
He told National Public Radio that the rest of the world should match the same standards of transparency, accountability and regulation that Britain and the United States were intending to adopt.
   
"There is a global banking collapse that we're dealing with consequences of in every country," Brown said in an interview.
   
"I think there is a general understanding, whether you talk to China, whether you talk to the European Union or you talk to our great friends here in America, that we need to show that the world can come together," he said.
   
He said those that did not push through such measures on their banking systems should lose their prestige in the global financial community.
   
The United States and Britain have launched massive economic stimulus packages since the collapse of US subprime home loans sparked a credit crunch that developed into the worst economic slowdown since the Great Depression.
   
Brown was also set to have lunch with Obama at the White House, before delivering a speech to a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday, becoming the fifth British prime minister to do so.
   
While issues such as global warming, Afghanistan, Iran's suspect nuclear program and the Middle East are also expected to loom large in their talks, the economy will dominate the summit.
   
Obama and Brown have met several times, most recently when Obama made a brief visit to London last year during his presidential campaign.
   
Brown's predecessor Tony Blair struck up a strong relationship with former president George W. Bush, but also with the US leader who preceded him, Bill Clinton.
   
Brown effusively praised Obama in comments to British radio shortly before departing for the United States.
   
"I think the impression he has given of America to the world is transformative, because he is a black man who has won the presidency, who is living in the White House that was built by slaves," said Brown.
   
"I think people's view of America is changing as a result of that," he said.
   
The two leaders are expected to press other countries for greater help in fighting the raging insurgency in Afghanistan, although Brown's spokesman refused to speculate which nations they had in mind.
   
As the focus shifts away from Iraq, Obama has already pledged to send 17,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan this year to join 38,000 already there.
   
Britain has 8,500 soldiers in the violence-wracked southern region of the country.
   
The visit comes at a crucial time as the prime minister struggles to gain public support for his domestic stimulus package and huge bank bailouts.
   
His supporters hope the trip will boost his flagging popularity -- the governing Labour Party currently trails the opposition Conservatives ahead of a general election that must take place by mid-2010.

[He told National Public Radio that the rest of the world should match the same standards of transparency, accountability and regulation that Britain and the United States were intending to adopt.
"There is a global banking collapse that we're dealing with consequences of in every country," Brown said in an interview.]

You got to be joking Prime Minister Brown ! The U.S.A.and the IMF has been preaching transparency,accountability and regulation to the countries hit by the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis as well as to governments of the third world !

Well, if only the U.S.A and the E.U. has been practising what they preached, the rest of the world will not be swimming in the cesspool that you have created !!! So why don't you guys do more practicising and less preaching ???

Five grilled over grim attack on cricketers

TUESDAY 03 MARCH 2009

Pakistani police have detained five people believed to have information about attackers who earlier on Tuesday launched a brazen assault on Sri Lanka's cricket team, on tour in Pakistan, killing eight people and wounding seven.

AFP - Pakistani police were Tuesday interrogating five people in connection with a deadly ambush on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, security officials said.
   
"We have detained five people for questioning following the attack," senior local police officer Amjad Saleemi said.
   
A security official confirmed the arrests. 
   
"Police detained five people who they believe may have information about the attackers," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Attackers armed with grenades and guns ambushed Sri Lanka's cricket team here Tuesday, killing eight people and wounding seven players in a huge blow for Pakistan's security and sporting reputation.
The brazen attack in Lahore sparked condemnation from around the world, forced Sri Lanka to hastily abandon their tour and threw a big question mark over cricket's future in troubled Pakistan -- a co-host for the 2011 World Cup.
"The plan was apparently to kill the Sri Lankan team but the police came in the way and forced the attackers to run away," Lahore's city police chief Habib-ur Rehman said.
"They appeared to be well-trained terrorists," he told reporters.

Rehman said up to 12 gunmen attacked Sri Lanka's convoy as it neared Gaddafi Stadium for the third day of the second Test, unleashing rockets, grenades and automatic weapons and sparking a fierce gun battle with security forces.

The gunmen, who appeared young and well-trained, fled in stolen vehicles, triggering a giant manhunt. Pakistani officials said the incident showed marked similarities to November's devastating Mumbai attacks.

It was the first deadly direct assault against a sports team in this nuclear-armed country, where over 1,600 people have died in a wave of Islamist attacks in 21 months, and where Al-Qaeda and Taliban shelter in its northwest.

What on earth is happening !?!  What the @@@@ can the idiots, who carried out such senseless and cowardly attacks,on unarmed sportsmen and other civilians ,can possibly hope to achieve !!!

Pakatan stages country's first open-air assembly

By : Jaspal Singh (NST)

Pakatan Rakyat assemblymen having an open-air sitting of the state assembly under a rain tree near the State Secretariat in Ipoh yesterday.

IPOH: In the shade of a rain tree, some 50 metres from the State Secretariat here yesterday, history was made when 28 Pakatan Rakyat state assemblymen gathered for the country's first-ever open-air assembly sitting.

Speaker V. Sivakumar (wearing songkok) conducting the fourth sitting of the first session of the 12th Perak state assembly.

Witnessed by a small crowd of about 300, the extraordinary event followed their barring from the State Secretariat by the police, in accordance with assembly secretary Abdullah Antong Sabri's declaration of the emergency sitting as unlawful for lacking the consent of ruler Sultan Azlan Shah. 

Unperturbed, the Pakatan assemblymen, under Speaker V. Sivakumar, decamped to a small clearing under the rain tree to proceed with the fourth sitting of the first session of the 12th Perak state assembly.

Despite the rising heat of the late morning sun, Sivakumar, formally dressed in his official robe and songkok, called the meeting to order at 10.10am.

Over a portable PA system, he announced to all the assemblymen present that the sitting would be held under the tree as efforts by Pakatan assemblymen to gain entry into the state secretariat had been thwarted by the police.
"The police have left me with no other choice," Sivakumar announced. "Because of their action, I cannot conduct this meeting in the state secretariat.

"Therefore, by the powers vested in me as the speaker, I hereby declare this spot as the venue of the House."

The assembly then proceeded with the reading of the doa by Mohd Misbahul Munir Masduki, the newly appointed secretary of the House, after which Sivakumar announced that the House had received three motions and that these would be read and voted on by a show of hands.

The first motion, tabled by Titi Serong assemblyman Khalil Idham Lim Abdullah, sought the assembly's support in declaring that former menteri besar Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin was the rightful menteri besar appointed by Sultan Azlan Shah, and had the confidence of the majority to hold that office.

The second motion, tabled by Teja assemblyman Chang Lih Kang, called on all state assemblymen to support the dissolution of the current assembly and to ask Nizar to seek an audience with Sultan Azlan Shah, to get the ruler's consent for dissolution to allow for state elections.

Sitiawan state assemblyman Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham then proceeded to table the third motion, requesting that the state assembly adopt the decision of the Committee of Privileges to suspend Datuk Dr Zambry Abd Kadir and his six exco members and bar them from state assembly sittings.

All three motions were unanimously approved by the Pakatan state assemblymen, whereupon Nizar proposed that the assembly be adjourned. With Ngeh seconding that motion, Sivakumar adjourned the assembly at 10.30am.

At a press conference held at DAP headquarters around 11am, Nizar expressed his disappointment that the police had interfered by stopping the assemblymen from performing their legislative duties.

"Because of police action, the speaker was forced to hold the sitting of the assembly under a tree. This should not have happened at all," he said, adding that the meeting was valid under the "doctrine of necessity".

Asked when he would meet Sultan Azlan Shah on dissolving the state assembly, Nizar said he would first have to discuss the matter with Sivakumar.

"The only way to resolve the current impasse or constitutional crisis is for (Sultan Azlan Shah) to dissolve the assembly and hold fresh elections," Nizar said.

"That is why we passed a resolution on that matter. The rakyat is crying from their hearts for a solution to the present crisis. And, as we all know, only Tuanku has the power to dissolve the assembly. We in the Pakatan sincerely hope that Sultan Azlan Shah will consent to the dissolution when we see him."

Asked what Pakatan would do if the ruler declined to grant their wish, Nizar said Pakatan would continue its battle through legal means as well as through the office of the speaker.

Sivakumar, who was not at the press conference but was in another room in the building, declined to speak with reporters.

I am quite sure that such a development has never occured in a developing or developed democracy before.I don't know whether to cry or laugh - may be both !

It is sad but the joke will ultimately be on BN. As long as PR perseveres and hold on to its democratic principles it will prevail and triumph !!!