Mongolia's mining boom

Mongolia's biggest copper and gold mine is transforming an area of the Gobi Desert and a traditional way of life.

MTV video awards honor Britney Spears, Katy Perry

Pop star Lady Gaga opened the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday dressed in drag and singing her "You and I" while Britney Spears and Katy Perry took awards, but it may be Beyonce who stole the show.
The R&B singer whose hits include "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" appeared visibly pregnant as she showed up on the red carpet outside the show, posing for photographers and outlining a baby bump with her hands under her long gown.
Beyonce, who is married to rapper Jay-Z, avoided reporters waiting to ask whether she is pregnant. For years, her fans and the media have speculated whether and when the pair might have a baby.

Lady Gaga, who showed up last year at the MTV video awards in a dress made of raw meat, did an about face this year, opening the program in a man's dark suit and T-shirt as her male alter ego, Joe Calderon who gave the audience a lecture in just who Gaga is -- high heels, wild hair and crazy costumes.

"When she gets on stage, she holds nothing back," Calderon said.
Lady Gaga then launched into a version of "You and I," backed by a group of dancers and legendary rock guitarist Brian May of Queen. She danced on her piano and spewed beer from a bottle into the air in celebration.
The MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) annually give out honors for the top music videos and performances to singers and bands, and each year, audiences can count on at least one surprise.
Beyonce's picture-perfect baby news will likely be this year's unexpected event.
EARLY WINNERS
But awards are the focus of the night and the first winner was

Spears for best pop music video "Till the World Ends."

The pop star took the stage and seemed surprised, saying she hadn't expected to win and thanking her family and fans.
Along with Spears, Foo Fighters picked up an early honor for best rock video with "Walk," and Nicki Minaj picked up the "Moonman" winner's statuette for her "Super Bass." Katy Perry and Kanye West were named best collaboration with "E.T."
Another major award still to come is best new artist, and Tyler, The Creator figures prominently in that race, too, alongside Wiz Khalifa with "Black and Yellow," Kreayshawn for "Gucci Gucci," Foster the People with "Pumped Up Kicks," and Big Sean (featuring Chris Brown) for "My Last."
British singer Adele with her chart-topping song "Rolling in the Deep" is vying for the top award, video of the year, against Katy Perry ("Firework"), Bruno Mars ("Grenade"), the Beastie Boys ("Make Some Noise") and Tyler, The Creator ("Yonkers").
Early performances included a duet by Jay-Z and Kanye West, singing a song from their new album, "Watch the Throne."
Other singers still to come include Lil Wayne, and there will be special tributes to Britney Spears and late soul singer Amy Winehouse.

Faulty policy on the Taliban

EDITORIAL:

The latest cross-border attack of fugitive Taliban terrorists has mounted tensions between Islamabad and Kabul. Pakistan suffered a huge loss on Saturday when over two dozen security men were killed in another pre-dawn onslaught by 300 terrorists on seven Pakistani check posts in Chitral. There are conflicting reports about the actual death toll in the attack as the intense firing between the security forces and the terrorists continued for hours. The ISPR put it at 25 while the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Malakand division claimed killing 80 security personnel and capturing another six. Lodging a strong protest with Afghanistan’s envoy in Islamabad, Pakistan stressed that ISAF and the Afghan National Army need to take effective measures to thwart such cross-border incursions by the terrorists from their sanctuaries in the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan bordering Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Pakistan’s military authorities have held the inadequate presence of Nato and Afghan security forces in the northeastern region of Afghanistan responsible for the attacks. It also said that despite intelligence sharing for the last one year about the large concentrations of the Taliban in the area, Nato and Afghan forces did not take any action against them.

Saturday’s attack on Pakistan’s border security personnel was the sixth deadly attempt since April 21 when 14 Frontier Corps soldiers were killed by terrorists in the Kharkari area of Dir. In four other attacks, more than 50 security men, including civilians, lost their lives. Since the US-led Nato forces withdrew from remote outposts in Kunar and Nuristan, a security vacuum had been created there. The situation required prompt and stringent security measures from Pakistan. But we failed in doing so. Before demanding the Afghan government to check the terrorists, we should question ourselves about what are we doing for our own defence. How effective are our own security measures? Instead of pointing a finger at Nato and Afghan forces, it is time that Pakistan should increase its own security and reinforce the borders. No doubt, ensuring security along the 2,430 kilometre long rugged and porous border that Pakistan shares with Afghanistan is a strenuous task; however, extraordinary situations also entail extraordinary efforts.

Our government and the military authorities should also not buy the TTP’s denial regarding the involvement of the Afghan Taliban in their cross-border raids. It is evident that the Taliban, who had fled from Swat, Dir and Bajaur during the military offensives have taken refuge in the bordering provinces of Kunar and Nuristan and organised themselves with the help of the Afghan Taliban. In collusion with each other, they plan, attack and kill not only Pakistani troops deployed at isolated border checkposts but also the innocent villagers living nearby. We should come out of the fallacy that surrounds the ‘good Taliban’ and ‘bad Taliban’ notion. There is no such division. The Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan are one and the same, bent upon carrying on their terrorist activities with impunity. The presence of Taliban sympathisers in both our parliament and the military ranks is not a secret. Our military has been nourishing the Taliban, including the Haqqani network, as its strategic assets since decades. Despite suffering massive human and property losses, our military still seems reluctant in taking action against its Afghan proxies. We have been repeating in this space that these jihadi outfits have to be disbanded once and for all. We need to be for our own survival. Protests to the Afghan government for the menace of terrorism, which we ourselves have inflicted upon us, would not serve any purpose until we change our policy and stop supporting these terror outfits.

Hoti condemns militants' attack on Pak sovereignty

The Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ameer Haider Khan Hoti while denouncing the brazen attacks of Afghan militants on check posts in Chitral termed these cowardice attacks an open aggression on country's solidarity.

In a statement issued here on Sunday, the Chief Minister slammed the brutal aggression of militants from neighboring Afghanistan and stressed upon NATO forces to take concerted steps on their part to stop these nefarious activities in future.

The Chief Minister said that we did not allow any one to use our soil for any kind of activities and brutalities of killing innocent people and expect the same from others.

The Chief Minister expressed the hope that in future such hostilities would not take place and the people controlling the power on the other side would keep a vigilant eye to prevent these unwanted incidents.

The Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti made it clear that our government would not allow any one to interfere in country's solidarity and autonomy. Ameer Haider Khan Hoti was of the view that regrouping of the militants in Kunar and Noristan provinces of Afghanistan is alarming for Pakistan, therefore, he urged upon the Afghan government and NATO forces to devise a comprehensive plan to stop such dangerous alliances for ensuring peace and harmony in the region.

He said such activities would not only endanger the peace and harmony in the region but also affects the cordial relations between two Muslim neighboring countries - Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Chief Minister expressed his grief over loss of precious lives in these subversive attacks and reaffirmed his vow that sacrifices of our valiant people would not let go waste and these hostilities would be prevented at all cost.

Mirza’s bombshells

EDITORIAL: THE NEWS

Maverick PPP leader Dr Zulfiqar Mirza, a close aide and friend of President Asif Ali Zardari, has opened up a can of worms which have been described by some as bombshells and others as mini nukes. He has resigned not only from the Sindh government and the Sindh Assembly but also from his position in the PPP. His words have thrown the already complex Karachi situation into a state of greater flux and uncertainty. In his 100 minutes of live TV harangue on Sunday, he levelled serious charges on not only the MQM but also the interior minister and, by implication, the entire PPP government. The countless questions raised by his press talk and resignation will certainly make life impossibly difficult for his own party as well as its opponents. Mirza’s outbursts were initially dismissed as an angry man’s cry of anguish, but the swiftness with which the Sindh government accepted his resignation, and his claim that he had discussed the entire situation with President Zardari two days ago and had also informed his aging father a day earlier, indicate that the event was thoughtfully considered and properly planned. The immediate cause of Mirza’s wrath was considered to be the Rangers operation in Lyari — a PPP stronghold in Karachi. Mirza hardly mentioned the operation during his talk, but indirectly criticised it when questioned. His body language and the confidence he expressed in President Zardari showed that the PPP leadership might have given him a tacit nod to go ahead.

What happens now is unclear. Mirza, who said he was ready to share each and every ‘secret document’ with the media, has unmistakably accused the Sindh government of complicity in serious crimes he says have been committed by the MQM, which he called a terrorist organisation. He swore on the Holy Quran that MQM chief Altaf Hussain spoke of the breakup of Pakistan at the behest of the Americans, a claim which many will find impossible to digest. But in a way Mirza has strengthened the hands of President Zardari in his ongoing political bargaining with and against the MQM. Mirza has also made the task of the Supreme Court, which begins hearings on Karachi today, a bit more difficult. The SC now will have to call Mirza as a witness, not just as a former Sindh home minister, but also for him to explain and corroborate the serious charges he has made on solemn oath. He has put the MQM chief on the spot; Altaf Hussain will have to explain his own position and tell the nation what he thinks and will do about the former Sindh minister’s grave accusations of his party’s involvement in the murders of MQM’s Imran Farooq and journalist Wali Khan Babar, and about the allegations of corruption against ministers belonging to the MQM.

Interior Minster Rehman Malik will have to prove — harder perhaps than he appeared to be doing in his press talk following Mirza’s frontal attack — that he is not a liar. President Zardari too will have to justify the continued role he has assigned to Malik in handling the MQM and the Karachi situation. If the MQM reacts violently, bringing Karachi again to a halt, Mirza again will have to share the blame. Whatever the outcome, the maverick Mirza has brought the simmering political intrigues and conflicts between the PPP, the MQM and others into the open. If he is not reprimanded by his party leadership, the impression of complicity and the whole drama being part of the PPP and Zardari strategy would gain strength. Politics in Sindh, Karachi in particular, may not remain the same after the Mirza bombshells.

Punjab Police failed to trace out the abducted Shahbaz Taseer

Having failed to trace out the abducted Shahbaz Taseer, son of slain former Governor Punjab Salman Taseer, police have broadened the investigation scope to recover the abductee.In this regard the police have included Taseer Company’s shareholders in investigation to find out possibility of any link of kidnapping of Shahbaz Taseer with business deal if there was any.In the backdrop of the circumstances Shahbaz Taseer’s abduction has gained more importance as some months earlier his father late Salman Taseer was gunned down by one of his security guard for his controversial statement regarding blasphemy law. Most people still believe that the kidnapping of Shahbaz Taseer was in continuation of same issue and the kidnappers can bargain to get release ofMumtaz Qadiri but no group has yet claimed that responsibility neither contacted the family or authorities for their demands.The police was investigating the case from various angles to track down the abductors. In this connection, investigators are trying to figure out the nature of Taseer’s relations with his relatives, business partners and rivals.Sources said that Inspector General Punjab Police (IGP), Capital City Police officer (CCPO) along with other officers personally visited various areas of Lahore and met people to get any clue behind the abduction.It should be mentioned that Shahbaz Taseer was abducted from Gulberg area of the capital city Friday, Aug 26, by four unidentified gunmen. The police soon after the kidnapping incident placed strict cordoned off in the area and raided various areas of the city for the recovery of Shahabz Taseer but could not succeed.On the other hand abduction of Shahbaz Taseer has resulted in rifts between political parties and gave rise to new blame game.

The Libyan blues

EDITORIAL:THE FRONTIER POST

With the capture of the last army base in the capital city Tripoli by the rebels, the horrible 41-year-long tyranny of Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi may have at long last kissed its destined sunset. But this may not be an end to the terrible travails of the long-suffering Libyan people. They indeed are now in harder and testing times. The Arab Spring that had erupted suddenly like a tidal wave and threatened to sweep out each and every entrenched despotic rule all over the region has already lost much of its steam and direction. Although still shaky, the nervousness that convulsed dreadfully-fortified autocracies, monarchies and sheikhdoms has perceptibly dissipated considerably. The tide too has visibly waned a lot.Libya nonetheless it has left in shatters, a deeply fractured polity. The insurrection against the Libyan tyrant was not as mass-based as were the popular revolts against despots Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. They did have smallish privileged pockets of loyalties. But the street was wholly up in arms against them. In Libya, the rebellion had its main base in the east while the west was largely lukewarm, if not outright with the autocrat. His autocracy’s demise has thus left the North African Arab state with a sharpened east-west divide and heightened tribal antipathies. To piece together this broken polity, a formidable leader of national stature is direly needed. But that kind of a figure is not yet in sight. The National Transitional Council, which in fact is a conglomeration of the proxies hatched up by the NATO community, has no charismatic personality on it to undertake this onerous task of national reconciliation. In reality, it is mostly a collection of imported people and domestic defectors, many tainted with long association with the autocrat’s tyrannical dispensation. Mustafa Abdel Jalil, heading this council, himself was part of his regime. Jalil in fact was very much part of his brutal justice system, holding as he was the portfolio of justice before defection. Furthermore, the inexplicable murder of Abdel Fattah Younes, the military commander of the rebel forces last month bespeaks of internecine division within the council’s ranks. Most importantly, this top command structure is bereft of the rebels who originally threw the challenge to Qaddafi and stirred up the revolt to dislodge him. Only two of those pioneers were taken in. But they statedly have walked out of the council, expressing distrust in its principal leaders and disgust with their functioning. As such, the council is made up of the proxies that the NATO powers have propped up to lead the not-so-veiled NATO-driven campaign for the autocrat’s ouster. Still, the council stands a chance, even if bleak, to smoothen the ruffles in the shattered Libyan polity if the outside powers hold back and give it a free hand to reach out to the recalcitrant for a grand national reconciliation. Indeed, poking of foreign noses would be a great impediment to this difficult task. Although it would be unfair to belittle the courage of the Libyan rebels who risked their lives with an armed challenge to the autocrat’s tyrannical rule, the fact nevertheless stands this battle has in reality been fought between the Qaddafi forces and the NATO militaries. It is not just the NATO air action that crippled and threw his military largely out of the battlefield. Believably, the NATO advisors have played a crucial part in the invasion of the government forces and military installations by the Libyan rebels. Indeed, for the massive foreign military involvement in the Libyan revolt, this insurrection has lost much of its shine even on the Arab street. At home, it has left incurable scars on the western Libyans’ psyche. Though the NATO commanders and their conformist western media maintained throughout that their air assaults took out only military targets, causing no collateral damage whatsoever, such implausible assertions could only be taken with a big, big pinch of salt.Human beings, despite all the expertise and technological advancements, are still to fabricate a weapon so discreet that it would hit only the soldiers, not the civilians. The civilians did die in the NATO assaults, and not just few but very many. And while the rebels are grateful to their NATO helpers, the victims of their assaults are understandably hateful of them. Given this, any visible foreigners’ active role in their national tasks will incense very many Libyans and may ultimately even plunge them in a wholly undesirable internal conflagration, even a civil war. And a horrific eventuality it would be, as Libya is presently awash with weapons pilfered freely and in abundance from the arsenals of the defeated government forces. Hence, the outsiders must curb their thirst for the Libyan oil for the time being and let the Libyans alone to bring about their urgently-needed grand national reconstruction for their nation’s and the country’s good. They can have all the Libyan oil thereafter. After all, the Libyans have to sell it to raise the cash for their ravaged country’s rebuilding.

Major split expected in PML-N Sindh

A big split is expected in the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) Sindh as Syed Ghous Ali Shah and his supporters did not participate in any of the activities of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif while in Karachi. Shah started talks with the PML-Q and a new party might formed by Shah Mehmood Qureshi.
During his visit, Shahbaz met senior journalists, writers, intellectuals members of the business community, and condoled with the relatives of those party workers who had fallen prey to targeted killings. In these all activities, the most senior most leader of the PML-N, Shah and his group remained absent. Even the PML-N womens wing was out of the scene.
However, Shah’s opponent group remained very active during Shahbaz’s visit.The gravity of the issue was felt when during a press conference, Shahbaz was asked about the PML-N leadership’s differences with its Sindh chapter. In response, the chief minister told the questioner that it needed to be ascertained “who has put the question in your mouth”.
Shah and his supporters developed serious differences with the party leadership when he was made senior vice president of the party but was not made the PML-N Sindh president.
Sources said the PML-N leadership decided not to listen to Shah.
Insiders said Shah had indirectly started negotiations with Qureshi as well had contacted the PML-Q leadership.
If the negotiations remain successful, a large number of PML-N Sindh members might leave the party.

Maoist picked as Nepal’s prime minister

The deeply fractured Parliament of Nepal elected a Maoist as the country’s new prime minister yesterday, after weeks of efforts to form a national unity coalition proved fruitless.

The new prime minister, Baburam Bhattarai, is a senior leader and intellectual force in the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). The party gave up armed rebellion in a 2006 peace accord and unexpectedly won the most seats, though not an outright majority, in the 2008 legislative elections.

Bhattarai faces the same thorny problems that made previous governments of Nepal short-lived: how to reintegrate the 19,000 former fighters of the Maoist rebellion back into civilian society or the army, and how to balance power in a permanent new constitution.

“This is the last opportunity,’’ Bhattarai, 57, told the Parliament. “I am determined to complete the peace process and constitution drafting.’’

It will be an uphill task. The other two major parties - the Nepali Congress Party and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) - remain in opposition, and to win, Bhattarai needed support from smaller parties, which could withdraw at any time. Though seen as the No. 2 Maoist leader after the chairman, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Bhattarai is not universally supported in his own party.

The Maoists have struggled to turn their plurality into a stable coalition government. Three successive prime ministers have resigned after a few months in office, followed by weeks of deadlock over a successor. The latest, Jhalanath Khanal of the Communist Party, was elected in February and stepped down Aug. 14.

Bhattarai was one of the central negotiators of the November 2006 accord that ended the country’s bloody 10-year insurrection, and he won praise as finance minister in the first elected Maoist government. He has a reputation for integrity and for a modest lifestyle that is unusual among top Nepalese politicians.

He said yesterday that despite the failure to organize a national unity government, he would continue to try to garner agreement from the main opposition parties for measures to complete the peace process.

Dick Cheney taking 'cheap shots' in book

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday dismissed as "cheap shots" the criticism leveled at him and others in Vice President Dick Cheney's memoir.
It was the latest volley in a clash that stretches back to their first years in the George W. Bush administration.
Powell went so far as to say that if Cheney's staff and others in Bush's White House had been as forthcoming as the State Department in the case involving CIA operative Valerie Plame, the indictment and conviction of Cheney's friend and former chief of staff never would have happened.
Powell made the remarks Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation" ahead of the Tuesday release of Cheney's book, "In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir." Cheney said in an earlier NBC interview that the book would cause "heads to explode" in Washington, a description Powell said he expected from a supermarket tabloid and not a former vice president.
"My head isn't exploding. I haven't noticed any other heads exploding in Washington," Powell said. "From what I've read in the newspapers and seen on television it's essentially a rehash of events of seven or eight years ago."
Cheney and Powell had numerous disagreements in the administration, particularly over policy toward Iraq and the run-up to the 2003 invasion by U.S.-led forces. Still, Powell termed "nonsense" Cheney's description of how Powell went outside with his criticism of administration policies.
Powell also suggested that Cheney wrongly took credit for Powell's resignation from the State Department in 2004; Powell said he had always planned to serve only four years. He labeled as "almost condescending" the tone of Cheney's criticism of Condoleezza Rice, who succeeded him as secretary of state.
"Mr. Cheney has had a long and distinguished career and I hope in his book that's what he will focus on, not these cheap shots that he's taking at me and other members of the administration who served to the best of our ability for President Bush," Powell said.
On the Plame matter, Powell said Cheney tries to "lay it all off" on Powell and Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state under Powell.
Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI during its investigation into who leaked to the news media that Plame, the wife of a former ambassador critical of the Bush administration, worked for the CIA.
Powell said that when Armitage realized he was the anonymous source cited by syndicated columnist Robert Novak in an article that revealed Plame's CIA connection, Armitage contacted Powell and they spoke to the Justice Department and the FBI for the probe ordered by Bush.
"If the White House and the operatives in the White House — on Mr. Cheney's staff and elsewhere in the White House — had been as forthcoming with the FBI as Mr. Armitage was, this problem would not have reached the dimensions that it reached," Powell said.
Instead, Powell said, the FBI continued for two more months trying to find out what had happened in the White House and that a special counsel ended up conducting a two-year probe of what he called a "mess."

9/11:Obama asks what service will you do to remember

U.S. Tactics in Libya May Be a Model for Other Efforts

It would be premature to call the war in Libya a complete success for United States interests. But the arrival of victorious rebels on the shores of Tripoli last week gave President Obama’s senior advisers a chance to claim a key victory for an Obama doctrine for the Middle East that had been roundly criticized in recent months as leading from behind.Administration officials say that even though the NATO intervention in Libya, emphasizing airstrikes to protect civilians, cannot be applied uniformly in other hotspots like Syria, the conflict may, in some important ways, become a model for how the United States wields force in other countries where its interests are threatened.

“We’ve resisted the notion of a doctrine, because we don’t think you can impose one model on very different countries; that gets you into trouble and can lead you to intervene in places that you shouldn’t,” said Ben Rhodes, the director for strategic communications at the National Security Council.

Even so, he said, the Libya action helped to establish two principles for when the United States could apply military force to advance its diplomatic interests even though its national security is not threatened directly.

Mr. Obama laid out those principles on March 28, when he gave his only big address on the Libya conflict, in a speech at George Washington University that in many ways established the principles of the Obama doctrine.

During that speech, Mr. Obama said that America had the responsibility to stop what he characterized as a looming genocide in the Libyan city of Benghazi (Principle 1). But at the same time, he said, when the safety of Americans is not directly threatened but where action can be justified — in the case of genocide, say — the United States will act only on the condition that it is not acting alone (Principle 2).

And so, with Libya, the United States used its might — providing crucial cruise missiles, aircraft, bombs, intelligence and even military personnel — but it did so as part of the larger NATO coalition, led by the French and the British and including Arab nations.

And it did so only after a United Nations Security Council resolution authorized the kind of multilateral approach that had been viewed with disdain by Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.

In fact, American officials argued, the Libya strategy worked in large part because it was perceived as an international effort against a brutal dictator and “not a U.S. go-it-alone approach,” as one senior administration official put it.

“ ‘Made only in the U.S.A.’ would have risked it becoming Qaddafi versus the U.S.A.,” the official said.

But any speculation that the Libya model could be transferrable to the next obvious place, Syria, where the United States and its European allies have called for President Bashar al-Assad to leave, might be a bit hasty.

For now at least, the administration and its allies in the Libya action have stopped far short of threatening military force in Syria. Still, the officials argue that creating the broadest possible diplomatic pressure — what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton last week called an “international chorus of condemnation” — could ultimately have an effect and, if Mr. Assad continues his violent crackdown on dissenters, lay the foundation for more aggressive action.

“How much we translate to Syria remains to be seen,” the senior official said, citing differences among the many Arab nations experiencing upheaval. “The Syrian opposition doesn’t want foreign military forces but do want more countries to cut off trade with the regime and break with it politically.”

Robert Malley, head analyst for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, said a military intervention in Syria could present a host of challenges that the United States and its allies did not face against Libya.

“What distinguishes Syria from Libya is there is neither regional nor international consensus on Syria,” Mr. Malley said. “There’s no specific area of the country to come in and defend. The opposition in Syria doesn’t hold any territory. And Syria has many ways it could retaliate to make life difficult.”
Damascus has allies that Libya and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi did not. Iran and the militant Islamic groups Hamas and Hezbollah are allied with Syria and capable of inflicting damage on the United States and its satellite interests — Israel, in particular. In fact, Syria, located in the heart of the tumultuous Arab-Israeli conflict zone, can wreak havoc on Israeli interests.

Syria also shares a border with Iraq and could, if it chose, look for ways to retaliate against the remaining American troops and American interests there, some foreign policy experts say. Beyond that, there is a very real worry that a Syria without Mr. Assad, whose family has governed the country for more than 40 years, would come apart at the seams, degenerating into the kind of sectarian warfare that characterized Iraq after the American invasion there ousted Saddam Hussein.

So far, with the possible exception of Turkey, no other countries have shown any interest in a military intervention in Syria, despite repeated reports of Mr. Assad’s brutal crackdown on those advocating for democracy there. Even as the Obama administration, alongside France, Britain and Germany, was demanding a week ago that Mr. Assad step down, there has been no talk of trying to establish a no-fly or no-drive zone in Syria, as was done in Libya.

“People will be much more cautious about Syria,” said Nader Mousavizadeh, chief executive of the consulting firm Oxford Analytica. “There’s more ambivalence about what’s worse, a bloody Assad staying in place, or the bloody aftermath of Assad being toppled.”

But the very fact that the administration has joined with the same allies that it banded with on Libya to call for Mr. Assad to go and to impose penalties on his regime could take the United States one step closer to applying the Libya model toward Syria. While military intervention in Syria is highly unlikely, administration officials say that the coordinated approach to calling for Mr. Assad’s ouster and imposing financial penalties on the Syrian government show that they are already applying the Obama doctrine there.

And things could always escalate. “There’s no appetite to engage in military action in Syria,” Mr. Malley of the International Crisis Group said. But, he added, “If 30,000 people were killed there, that would be a different story.”

U.S.A. The Nation’s Cruelest Immigration Law

EDITORIAL

The Alabama Legislature opened its session on March 1 on a note of humility and compassion. In the Senate, a Christian pastor asked God to grant members “wisdom and discernment” to do what is right. “Not what’s right in their own eyes,” he said, “but what’s right according to your word.” Soon after, both houses passed, and the governor signed, the country’s cruelest, most unforgiving immigration law.

The law, which takes effect Sept. 1, is so inhumane that four Alabama church leaders — an Episcopal bishop, a Methodist bishop and a Roman Catholic archbishop and bishop — have sued to block it, saying it criminalizes acts of Christian compassion. It is a sweeping attempt to terrorize undocumented immigrants in every aspect of their lives, and to make potential criminals of anyone who may work or live with them or show them kindness.

It effectively makes it a crime to be an undocumented immigrant in Alabama, by criminalizing working, renting a home and failing to comply with federal registration laws that are largely obsolete. It nullifies any contracts when one party is an undocumented immigrant. It requires the police to check the papers of people they suspect to be here illegally.

The new regime does not spare American citizens. Businesses that knowingly employ illegal immigrants will lose their licenses. Public school officials will be required to determine students’ immigration status and report back to the state. Anyone knowingly “concealing, harboring or shielding” an illegal immigrant could be charged with a crime, say for renting someone an apartment or driving her to church or the doctor.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Justice Department have also sued, calling the law an unconstitutional intrusion on the federal government’s authority to write and enforce immigration laws. The A.C.L.U. warns that the law would trample people’s fundamental rights to speak and travel freely, effectively deny children the chance to go to school and expose people to harassment and racial profiling.

These arguments have been made before, in opposition to similar, if less sweeping, laws passed in Arizona, Utah, Indiana and Georgia. What is remarkable in Alabama is the separate lawsuit by the four church leaders, who say the law violates their religious freedoms to perform acts of charity without regard to the immigration status of those they minister to or help.

“The law,” Archbishop Thomas Rodi of Mobile said in The Times, “attacks our core understanding of what it means to be a church.”

You’d think that any state would think twice before embracing a law that so vividly brings to mind the Fugitive Slave Act, the brutal legal and law-enforcement apparatus of the Jim Crow era, and the civil-rights struggle led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But waves of anti-immigrant hostility have made many in this country forget who and what we are.

Congress was once on the brink of an ambitious bipartisan reform that would have enabled millions of immigrants stranded by the failed immigration system to get right with the law. This sensible policy has been abandoned. We hope the church leaders can waken their fellow Alabamans to the moral damage done when forgiveness and justice are so ruthlessly denied. We hope Washington and the rest of the country will also listen.

U.S.A. The Nation’s Cruelest Immigration Law

Pakistan's Karachi faces tension after resignation

A ruling party minister in Pakistan's violence-plagued city of Karachi resigned Sunday, charging that the city's largest political party was behind the bloodshed and its leader was a "killer", allegations that could spark more trouble.
Holding a copy of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, Zulfikar Mirza accused the powerful Muttahida Qaumi Movement of responsibility for kidnapping, extortion and violence that has killed more than 400 people since July. He also accused the party of killing journalist Wali Khan Babar earlier this year.
"I am saying it openly that the MQM killed him," he told a news conference televised live around the country.
In unusually blunt comments, he singled out MQM leader Altaf Hussein, who critics say runs the party like a cult from his home in London, as a "killer" and the head of a "terrorist organization."
In a statement, the MQM said Mirza himself was a patron of murderers and his remarks were a "heinous bid to spark the fire of hatred, violence and insurgency."
There was no immediate reaction on the streets of the city of 18 million people.
The city, Pakistan's economic hub and largest city, has long been plagued by ethnic and political bloodshed, but the current surge has been particularly prolonged.
Analysts say the MQM is involved in a turf war with another political force in the city, the Awami National Party, and the Pakistan Peoples Party, of which Mirza was a member. Killers linked to the parties are behind most of the violence, they say.
The MQM represents the region's Urdu-speaking population, while the ANP is supported by Pashtuns who have arrived in the city in great numbers over the last 10 years, challenging the dominance of the MQM. Many victims have been targeted because of their ethnic background.
Mirza, who was the senior minister for the PPP in the city, said he was resigning because of differences with Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who is trying to negotiate an end the violence. The bloodshed in Karachi threatens the nation's stability, because the parties are in the ruling coalition government. The violence is a major distraction from the country's battle against militants.

NYC mayor: Evacuees can soon return home

The nearly 400,000 New Yorkers who had been ordered to evacuate low-lying neighborhoods because of Hurricane Irene were told they could go home Sunday afternoon, but officials said the city's transit system probably won't be up and running again by the start of the work week.That could mean a rough start to the work week for millions.
Overall, the city made it through the storm fairly well, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in announcing he would lift the evacuation order covering 370,000 people by 3 p.m.
He said Irene inflicted significant damage, with retaining walls collapsing in some places and serious flooding across all the five boroughs.
But "whether we dodged a bullet or you look at it and said, 'God smiled on us,' the bottom line is, I'm happy to report, there do not appear to be any deaths attributable to the storm," the mayor said. He added: "All in all, we are in pretty good shape because of the extensive steps we took to prepare."
Among those steps was the shutting down of city subways, commuter rails and buses.
Jay Walder, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said it is not clear when service will be restored because damage to the various parts of the system will have to assessed first.
Walder said the shutdown — the first time the nation's biggest transit system suspended all service because of a natural disaster — was the right move, noting that some train yards were under water.
New York's subway system alone has more than 5 million riders a day.
"I think it's fair to say you're going to have a tough commute in the morning," Bloomberg said. "Tough commute tomorrow, but we have tough commutes all the time."

ANP meeting on Mirza’s statement .. Altaf Hussain said he would kill the Pathans"... Zulfiqar Mirza

Sindh Awami National Party President Shahi Syed has called an important meeting of ANP at Mardan House Karachi on Monday to discuss the situation after the press conference of former provincial senior minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza.
The provincial head office of the party said that the top leadership of ANP has taken serious notice of the revelation made by ex- provincial home minister Zulfiqar Mirza during his press conference, while taking Holy Quran in his hands.
ANP (Sindh), during the meeting, would evolve a future strategy regarding the points raised by Dr Zulfiqar Mirza, ongoing surgical operation in Karachi and cold behaviour of government towards ANP.

Libyan rebels free over 10,000 prisoners after seizing Tripoli

Libyan rebels said Sunday that over 10,000 prisoners arrested by embattled leader Muammar Gaddafi's government had been freed since the rebel forces took control of the capital Tripoli.

But, according to rebel military spokesman Col. Ahmed Bani, about 50,000 prisoners were still missing, and it would be " catastrophic" if they had already been killed after being arrested.

Bani meanwhile said at a press conference Sunday that Libya's gas pipeline to Europe had been repaired.

Head of the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) Mostafa Abdel Jalil Saturday vowed fair trials for those having worked with Gaddafi, and said the reward for killing or capturing the fallen leader could be increased.

On the battle front, the rebel forces were closing in on Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte, one of the last few areas still held by troops loyal to the toppled Libyan leader, from the west and east. Rebel leaders have vowed to take Sirte by force if their negotiations with the region's tribal leaders fail.

U.S. official says worst of Hurricane Irene over

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Sunday that the worst of Hurricane Irene was over but communities still in Irene's path should continue to be vigilant.

Napolitano told a briefing that U.S. President Barack Obama was briefed Sunday morning as Irene was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm.

Irene churned up the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast as category one hurricane since it made landfall in North Carolina Saturday morning. It lost some strength as it hit the New York City Sunday morning, with winds dropping to 65 mph by 9 a.m. EDT, the National Hurricane Center said. Still, Irene remains dangerous as streets at edges of New York City started to flood.

About four million people are currently out of power, as power lines were downed by strong wind and heavy rain and some power plants shut down or reduced operation out of precaution. At least 11 people died from the hurricane in states including North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Connecticut.

Irene makes landfall in NYC as tropical storm

Irene arrived as a tropical storm at Coney Island in New York City at around 9 a.m. local time (13: 00 GMT) on Sunday, bringing winds of 65 miles per hour (mph), the National Hurricane Center reported.

As Irene bore down on the city, the storm brought heavy winds and rapidly rising seawater to the city.

The East River in New York City is topping the edge of its barrier wall and seawater from New York Harbor lapped on some streets in lower Manhattan. At about 9:00 a.m., the crossroads of the world, where scenes of hustling had been common, was largely abandoned amid torrential rain and intermittent gusts.

Electronic screens were still flashing on skyscrapers, but the windows of shops flanking the square remained shuttered. Traffic was thin but for a couple of police cars parked on the roadside and the occasional passing of yellow cabs.

There were power outages in all four of the outer boroughs. About 85,000 customers across New York City were out of power supply as of early Sunday.

In New York, a flood watch will be effective until late Sunday night. The public transit system was shut down. Bridges, tunnels and ports were also closed in the city of more than 8 million people. A resumption is not expected until Monday.

Jason Le miere, who stayed put, told Xinhua that he is relieved about the Irene status: "I thought by now we'd definitely have lost power and water but we are okay. We are on the 28th floor and the windows are completely fine too."

Irene made landfall Sunday morning around Little Egg Inlet, New Jersey, around 5:35 a.m. local time (09:35 GMT) as a minimal category 1 hurricane, with winds near 75 mph.

It had already unloaded more than a foot of water on North Carolina, spun off tornadoes in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, and left more than 3 million homes and businesses without power. Eleven people were killed so far.

Over a dozen people arrested, torture cells destroyed in Lyari raid

DAWN.COM
During a seven-hour operation in the Lyari area, Rangers arrested more than a dozen suspected criminals on Sunday, DawnNews reported.

The Rangers also destroyed two torture cells and seized a heavy cache of weapons.

The Rangers cordoned off the Nayabad area of Lyari early in the morning and launched a door-to-door search.

As soon as the operation was launched, residents of Lyari started protesting against the raids and blocked the roads, however, the Rangers continued the search.

The head of Sachal Rangers, Brigadier Waseem Ayub also visited the area with media persons and briefed them with the details of the operation.

Separately, it was also reported that PPP senior leader Dr Zulfiqar Mirza may resign from his party post in protest against the operation conducted by the Rangers in Lyari this morning.

Sources said that Mirza would later hold a press conference to announce his decision.

In helping Afghanistan build up its security forces, U.S. is trimming the frills

The commander of NATO’s elaborate and expensive effort to build the Afghan security forces, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, was standing inside the bathroom of a police training school in this obscure eastern town, looking at the sinks. He did not like what he saw.

“Every time I walk into someplace and see a porcelain sink, I cringe,” he said.

That’s because Caldwell is tasked with making the Afghan army and police capable of holding off the Taliban — but in a way the United States can afford. Growing political concern in the United States over the high cost of the American mission has made for a blunt new imperative: The Afghan security forces, which cost the United States $11.6 billion this year, need to get cheaper — fast.

To this end, out are the pedestal porcelain sinks in the bases the United States is building for the Afghan army and police; in are communal metal troughs. Out: air conditioning. In: ceiling fans. Out: brick-and-mortar barracks. In: quick-rising steel “arch-span” buildings.

“If they can’t afford it and sustain it in 2014” — the year Afghan security forces are scheduled to be in charge of their own destiny — “we don’t build it,” Caldwell said.

The scope of the U.S.-funded building boom for Afghan security forces nevertheless remains immense. Contractors are about a quarter of the way through a $11.4 billion effort to erect 10,000 buildings — about 100 bases for the Afghan army and nearly 1,000 sites for the police — though a large number of projects are expected to be completed by spring. They range from small police outposts to the $200 million National Defense University in Kabul.

This effort began in earnest just a couple of years ago, when U.S. officials made training and equipping the Afghan security forces a top priority. Soon some of the more glaring cultural differences became apparent, said Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller, the deputy commander for programs with NATO’s training command in Kabul.

Some Afghans were unaccustomed to Western-style toilets, for example, and would perch, squatting, on the rim of the seat, mimicking how they used the hole-in-the-floor style more common here. When gas was in short supply, some tried to convert the NATO-supplied propane stoves into wood-burning ones, with little success.

“What we’re trying to do is realize how would the Afghans operate if they were to go out and contract for a building,” Fuller said. “Let’s make things appropriate for Afghanistan. We call it ‘Afghan right.’ ”

Not by coincidence, these new construction standards, revised this year, also are cheaper. Just by eliminating most air conditioning in Afghan military and police bases, NATO officials estimate they are saving more than $100 million a year on fuel. The pared-down standards also result in simpler structures that NATO officials hope are more likely to be kept up after coalition troops depart.

“We’re teaching them something that’s a lot simpler, and certainly they understand,” said Col. Mario A. Trevino, a NATO engineer in Kabul.

Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, the Afghan army’s chief of staff, said he did not have a problem with the change in construction methods for military bases.

“I am pleased with what we have for the army,” he said in an interview. “I appreciate all of them. They are great facilities. They are not substandard. They are to international standard.”

The new frugality is a necessity, a message reiterated by congressional delegations that visit Afghanistan and remind U.S. soldiers and diplomats about economic problems back home. NATO’s planners have been operating under the assumption that it will cost $6 billion a year to maintain a 352,000-man army and police force in 2014. But they realize that figure, to include an Afghan army of nearly 200,000 soldiers, may not be politically sustainable, and they are looking for ways to field that force at a half or a third of the cost.

“How much is the United States going to be contributing in the out years? That’s what the big discussion is,” Fuller said.

The Obama administration has asked Congress to appropriate $12.8 billion for Afghan security forces in the coming year, but that request has not been approved.

Before he stepped down as defense secretary this summer, Robert M. Gates asked that the rest of the NATO nations essentially triple their contribution, to about $1.4 billion a year. NATO officials hope the Afghan government’s meager contribution will also increase.

“How do you get others besides us injecting cash into the system?” Fuller said of the American goal — beyond finding a way to “squeeze’’ the projected $6 billion annual cost of supporting Afghanistan’s security forces after 2012.

If necessary, there are other ways to save money, Fuller said, such as cutting salaries, limiting fuel or changing how often the security forces replace equipment and vehicles. But ultimately, U.S. and Afghan officials said, the answer might lie in a decision to field a smaller Afghan army than planned — particularly if there are further successes in combating the Taliban insurgency.

“There is just no need to keep a 200,000 man army if the insurgency level goes down,” Caldwell said.

Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader is killed in Pakistan, U.S. officials say

http://www.washingtonpost.com/


Al-Qaeda’s second in command was killed last week in Pakistan by a CIA drone strike, according to U.S. officials who said Atiyah Abd al-Rahman’s demise is a significant blow to a terrorist network still reeling from the death of Osama bin Laden.

Rahman was killed Monday in Waziristan, the tribal northwest region of Pakistan, where he presided over the remnants of al-Qaeda and served as a critical link between the lower ranks of the organization and its top leaders, including bin Laden before his death in May.A senior U.S. administration official called Rahman’s death “a tremendous loss for al-Qaeda” because the group’s new leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, “was relying heavily on him to help guide and run the organization, especially since bin Laden’s death.”

Rahman was seen as a high-priority target in the CIA drone campaign at a time when U.S. officials have described al-Qaeda as near collapse and have said that a small set of successive blows could all but extinguish the organization behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Last month, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said a strategic defeat of al-Qaeda was “within reach” and called for continued efforts to hammer the group’s weakened leadership with a series of attacks.

“Now is the moment, following what happened with bin Laden, to put maximum pressure on them,” he said, “because I do believe that if we continue this effort we can really cripple al-Qaeda as a major threat.”

A cache of computer files seized from bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, showed that Rahman had emerged as perhaps the most important operational figure in al-Qaeda. A veteran militant who was in regular communication with the al-Qaeda chief, Rahman expressed frustration with the mounting toll of the CIA drone campaign.

In one message, Rahman complained that al-Qaeda’s fighters “were getting killed faster than they could be replaced,” said a U.S. counterterrorism official who, like other sources for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing secrecy surrounding the drone campaign.

Rahman’s role became even more important after the elevation of Zawahiri, bin Laden’s longtime deputy who has also spent much of the past decade deep in hiding. He is seen as an abrasive and divisive figure who was likely to depend on loyalists, including Rahman, to help keep the network and its increasingly ambitious affiliates from unraveling.

Rahman, a Libyan explosives expert, appears to have met bin Laden when he was still a teenager. He rose to the No. 3 position in the network and was charged with running its financial operations after Saeed al-Masri was killed in a U.S. drone strike in May of last year.

U.S. intelligence officials have regarded Rahman, who was in his early 40s, as an important player in al-Qaeda since at least 2006, when U.S. military officials recovered a long letter that Rahman had sent to al-Qaeda’s chief in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, rebuking the Jordanian for his bloody campaign against Shiites in that country.

Pakistani officials said that they were notified Friday that Rahman had been among those killed in the Monday drone strike and that they had no information about additional casualties.
“There is no question this is a major blow to al-Qaeda,” said a U.S. official familiar with CIA drone operations who portrayed Rahman as an important link to the network’s regional affiliates, including al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen.

“Atiyah was the one affiliates knew and trusted, and he spoke on behalf of both [bin Laden] and Zawahiri,” the official said. “He planned the details of al-Qaeda operations and its propaganda. His combination of background, experience and abilities are unique.”Rahman was linked with some of al-Qaeda’s boldest operations, including the December 2009 bombing of a CIA compound in Khost, Afghanistan, that left seven agency employees dead. The suicide bomber Humam al-Balawi lured the CIA officers into a trap in part by using a videotape that was purported to be footage of a meeting between Balawi and Rahman. In fact, Rahman was involved in a setup in which he served as bait, helping Balawi secure an invitation to the CIA base at Khost.

A Pakistani intelligence official in the North Waziristan region said four missiles had been fired in the Monday drone strike, two at a vehicle and two at the guest house of a tribal leader. The strikes occurred in Nork, about 12 miles from Miranshah, a town that has been a focal point of the escalating drone campaign for the past two years. Five people were killed in the attack on the vehicle, the Pakistani official said, but it was unknown whether any were killed in the guest house.

A second Pakistani official said that Rahman was “very active and always on the move,” that he had recently been in Mir Ali and had been spotted with both Taliban fighters and Uzbek militants. Rahman sought to cultivate support among locals by providing seed money for shops and businesses, including an auto parts shop, according to a pro-militant tribal elder in Mir Ali.

“If he is lost as reported, this will be a serious blow both in planning and also financially,” the elder said.

Rahman is believed to have served as a liaison between al-Qaeda and Algerian radicals as early as 1993 at a time when militants were waging a civil war against that North African nation. He had previously fought as a guerilla against the Algerian government in the mid-1990s.

But instead of welcoming him, an Algerian rebel network, the Armed Islamic Group, placed Rahman under detention and threatened to execute him for reasons that remain unclear. He and a handful of other Libyan prisoners escaped after five months and fled the country, according to a Libyan political exile familiar with the episode.

Rahman eventually returned to Afghanistan and al-Qaeda’s fold and became one of its leaders after the Sept. 11 attacks, serving as a liaison for al-Qaeda-linked groups in Iraq, Iran and Algeria.

In 2006, the U.S. government posted a $1 million reward for information on Rahman’s whereabouts.

Irene makes landfall in New Jersey near Beach Haven

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com
By DAN GOOD
Hurricane Irene rolled along South Jersey's coastline Sunday morning - passing within 10 miles of Ocean City before making landfall near Beach Haven, according to the Associated Press.
This is the first hurricane to strike South Jersey since 1903.
The storm, with winds measured at 75 miles per hour, remained a Category 1 hurricane at 5 a.m. as it approached Atlantic City's shoreline, according to Weather.com.
The previous night, the storm knocked out power to more than 100,000 Atlantic City Electric customers and flooded area roadways.
More than 90,000 ACE customers - the bulk in Atlantic County - remained without power at 6 a.m. Sunday.
Heavy rains and crippling rain turned the region's barrier islands into ghost towns, on what would have been a beach weekend for hundreds of thousands of residents and tourists. People were asked to leave those islands Friday, in anticipation of the storm.
Some residents stayed - hoping to ride out Hurricane Irene.
But most left, rooming with friends and family away from the coast or staying at one of the dozens of emergency shelters organized throughout the area.
Rain continued to fall at daybreak, the sky a heavy blue. Daylight will reveal the storm's full impacts.
Hurricane Irene posed the most serious storm threat to the region in decades. Locals worried that it would mimic the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944.
Heavy rain and wind are expected to linger for a few more hours, as Hurricane Irene continues its trip north.

Gilded Traces of the Lives Qaddafis Led

His name of choice was the Brother Leader, though his nearly 42 years of rule were rarely brotherly, and his leadership left a country with plentiful oil in shambles.

Now, as the former subjects of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi comb through his family’s estates, farms and seaside villas, the properties are revealing the details of lives lived far removed from the people, and ones filled with the signs of their peccadilloes and rivalries.

At one farm, horses wandered by marble statues of lions, tigers and bears, and on a sun-baked day, reindeer grazed by the deck of an empty pool. At the home of one son, Saadi, there were signs of a life mundane in its seeming frustration. A man who drifted through stints as an athlete, soldier and Hollywood producer, Saadi kept the English-language self-help book “Success Intelligence” in his master bedroom.

Given Colonel Qaddafi’s noted flamboyance, the residences of the House of Qaddafi were not quite as grand as people might have supposed.

They lacked the faux grandeur of Saddam Hussein’s marbled palaces. There are no columns that bear the colonel’s initials, or fists cast to resemble his hands or river-fed moats with voracious carp.

But in Baghdad and Tripoli, the physical remains of the leader’s rule still projected the distance between power and powerlessness. As rebels and residents started to pick through the detritus of the Qaddafis’ lives in recent days, there was a sense of laying claim to a country commandeered by the Arab world’s longest-ruling leader — and speaking their minds without fear about the country they have inherited, and the leader they hope they have left behind.

“For somebody who’s very rich, he was very cheap,” Fuad Gritli said as he drove through a sprawling parcel near the airport known as the Farm, where Colonel Qaddafi lived.

There was also a sense of something incomplete. Even as people pulled back the cloak on the Qaddafis’ lives, the colonel and his children remained at large.

In the sanctum of the Farm, there are rolling, irrigated fields. Camels wandered unattended. Still standing was a tent where Colonel Qaddafi met foreign dignitaries, its canvas decorated with pictures of camels and palm trees. NATO bombers seemed to have no idea where he was; their hunt destroyed an unfinished Moroccan-style house, other tents built with more expensive canvas and a knot of bunker-style concrete buildings for official use.

As Mr. Gritli and a friend drove along roads that seemed to lead nowhere, they shook their heads. Rebels rolled through a compound still not secure. So did looters.

“We weren’t allowed to get anywhere near, not even the gate,” Mr. Gritli said of the years before the revolt that shattered the colonel’s hold on power.

“Qaddafi was not living like a rich man, I admit that,” said Malik el-Bakouri, a 27-year-old doctor from Tripoli, as he drove past a guesthouse where water cascaded from a broken pipe in a city suffering from a shortage of it. “But his sons, all the people in his tribe, and all the families around him lived good, and they lived good for 40 years.”

Colonel Qaddafi’s sons’ behavior would have made reality show producers proud — Hannibal repeatedly had brushes with the law in Europe. And Seif al-Islam, the heir apparent, began his ascent with promises of democracy, then ended his tenure with a pledge to turn Libya into a country “like Saudi Arabia, like Iran.” (“So what?” he added.)

The villas of some of the sons on a sand bluff overlooking the Mediterranean, though, failed to match the ostentation they displayed in other facets of their lives. They were not lavish; the brown paint on the patio decks was peeling, and they had a distinctly 1970s feel. But to the young fighters roaming through Hannibal’s quarters — furnished overwhelmingly in whites and blacks, and ringed with plastic grass — there was just enough luxury to inspire envy in a country whose wealth was squandered.

“We’ve got to take this over!” said Bahaeddin Zintani, a 23-year-old fighter who took turns with his brother lying in bed and posing for pictures before a home gym fitted with a mirror. “This is the first time I’ve even seen anything like this.”

On a black granite bar, there were cases for Johnnie Walker Blue Label and Dom Pérignon Rose, all empty. The patio opened to a spectacular view of turquoise waters.

“All I can ask is why?” said Mr. Zintani’s older brother, Serajeddin, carting an Israeli-made rifle. “Why can’t we live like this, the good life? Every day you walk out and see the sea.”

Muatassim, another of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons and the country’s national security adviser, surrounded himself with more luxury. He regularly arrived in a convoy of cars to a farmhouse in the Ain Zara neighborhood of Tripoli protected by high walls and gates on four sides that were made to look like cinder-block walls. A driveway with a fountain featuring four horse-drawn carriages led to an ostentatious pool bungalow, with Roman columns at the entrance and topped by gold domes that looked like Hershey Kisses.

On Saturday, fighters from Misurata toured the house, stunned. “It’s like some Aladdin castle,” one said. “He doesn’t care about the Libyan people. Just living in heaven.”

Another fighter walked out with a book of stamps depicting the Brother Leader.

In a diplomatic cable from 2009 released by WikiLeaks, Muatassim was described as “ambitious and competitive,” and as being groomed as another potential successor. “Considered little more than a playboy two year ago, Muatassim has surprised many observers by the seriousness with which he has taken his new responsibilities as the national security adviser,” wrote Gene A. Cretz, who was then the United States ambassador to Libya.

In the charred remains of his house, limes littered the floors of a barroom. A painting of samurai doing battle was the only one not ripped from its frame. Chinese lanterns hung on long deck by a massive pool, with a gazebo in the middle. Mohamed al-Hutmani, who lived nearby, walked around the grounds, through the lemon trees and olive groves that covered several acres.

“We were not allowed to stop our cars on the street,” Mr. Hutmani said. “It was impossible to think that I would enter this place.”

Rebel guards closed the former home of Colonel Qaddafi’s daughter Aisha because too many Libyans were wandering through, having their pictures taken and looking for souvenirs.

Through his long reign, Colonel Qaddafi posed as an ever-struggling revolutionary, his ideas encapsulated in the Green Book. (In one memorable passage, he defended freedom of expression, even if a person chooses “to express his or her insanity.”) But the avowed simplicity never matched his lifestyle, prone as he was to epaulets, billowing robes and shirts emblazoned with green maps of Africa. His all-female contingent of guards was said to be sworn to celibacy. Interspersed in his ravings were the words of a man with the healthiest of egos, even as health, education and housing in his country crumbled. “King of kings,” he once declared himself.

At his former residence in Bab al-Aziziya, his leadership’s fortresslike preserve in the heart of Tripoli, there was a white binder with hundreds of pages of clippings about him.

Graffiti on a wall nearby taunted the Brother Leader, now nicknamed for another distinguishing trait: unmanageable grooming. “Where’s the guy with the crazy hair?” it said.

New York Wakes to Hurricane’s Fury

Hurricane Irene began pounding the New York City area with heavy rain and wind on Sunday morning, shutting down mass transit and causing power failures and some flooding.While New York had all but closed down in anticipation of what forecasters warned could be violent winds with the force to drive a wall of water over the beaches in the Rockaways and between the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan, as of early Sunday morning, all bridges and tunnels remained open, with the exception of the lower level of the George Washington Bridge because of high winds, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Windspeeds from the storm had diminished somewhat at it moved north, capping off at 75 miles an hour, the National Hurricane Center reported, slightly above the minimum needed to considered a Category I hurricane. A wind gust of 58 m.p.h. had been reported at JFK Airport. Still, forecasters said the relentless rain from the slow-moving storm made it very dangerous.

“Even though they are saying that the storm is quote-on-quote weakening, hurricane winds are hurricane winds,” John Searing, the deputy commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services, said before daybreak Sunday as he prepared to deal with the damage. “Whether they say its 80 miles or 75 miles an hour, what’s the physical difference in that?”

City officials warned that a big problem could be flooding at high tide, at about 8 a.m. Sunday — before the storm has moved on and the wind has slacked off. The storm is expected to pass through by Sunday afternoon, moving into Southern New England.

“That is when you’ll see the water come over the side,” Mr. Bloomberg cautioned Saturday afternoon.

In its latest forecast, the National Hurricane Center warned that “water levels have been rising rapidly in advance of the center of Irene.” At 5 a.m., the center reported the storm surge of 3.1 feet at Cape May, N.J., 3.8 feet in Sandy Hook, N.J., and 3.9 feet in New York Harbor.

On the Jackie Robinson Parkway, three feet of water blocked all lanes, state and city officials reported. Floodwaters diverted traffic on the Verrazano Bridge and shut the southbound F.D.R. drive at 116th Street. The Union Turnpike ramp on the Grand Central Parkway was shut and on the Cross Bronx Expressway, the rising waters blocked the exit at White Plains Road.

More than 100,000 people in the New York area had lost electricity by early Sunday morning — 150,338 on Long Island, according to the Long Island Power Authority, which shut power to Fire Island, Captree Island, Robert Moses, and Oak Island; 166,000 in New Jersey, according to Public Service Electric and Gas; and about 57,992 in the city and in Westchester, according to Consolidated Edison. Of those more than 8,400 were on Staten Island, according to utility’s Web site, and about 5,000 in Queens and Brooklyn.

Utilities in Connecticut reported about 70,000 customers are without power, according to The Associated Press. The Connecticut Light and Power Company reported nearly 60,000 customers were without power early Sunday, and United Illuminating, which serves the Bridgeport and New Haven area, reported 10,000 customers.

“The number of outages continues to climb as Hurricane Irene moves north,” the New Jersey utility said in a statement on its Web site.

Since Friday, the city had done more than issue warnings. The subway system, one of the city’s trademarks, had shut down in the middle of the day on Saturday, and firefighters and social service workers had spent much of Saturday trying to complete the evacuation of about 370,000 residents in low-lying areas where officials expected flooding to follow the storm. In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie said that more than a million people had been evacuated, mainly from four counties in the southern part of the state.

The storm, a wide and relentless mass that had had lurched onto the Outer Banks of North Carolina in the early daylight hours of Saturday, heaved clumsily but implacably north, leaving in its wake at least nine deaths. After crawling slowly from North Carolina into Virginia, the storm weaved out to sea and onto a path that forecasters said would take it to Long Island and New York City.

The storm was a spinning kaleidoscope of weather, sometimes pounding windows with rain, sometimes flashing the sky with lightning, sometimes blacking out the horizon with ominous, low-riding clouds. As the hurricane moved up the East Coast, tornado watches had moved right along with it, and that lockstep continued as the storm closed in on the New York area: early Sunday, the National Weather Service announced a tornado watch for the city, along with Westchester, Suffolk, Nassau and Rockland Counties. “It’s actually common when we have these tropical systems,” said Brian Ceimnecki, a meteorologist with the Weather Service.The Nassau County executive, Edward P. Mangano, said that “thousands” of people were spending the night in county facilities, including Nassau County Community College. He asked people in areas that were in danger to stay with friends or relatives, if possible.The city opened 78 emergency shelters that could take in 70,000 people. But officials said that only 8,700 had arrived by 11 p.m. on Saturday. The only other statistics available pointed to the difficulty of getting people to abide by the mayor’s mandatory evacuation order in what the city calls Zone A low-lying areas: The mayor had said several hours earlier that 80 percent of the residents in some city-run buildings — but only 50 percent in others — had left.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ordered 2,000 National Guard troops called up. Mr. Cuomo saw the first of them off from the 69th Regiment Armory, on Lexington Avenue at 26th Street, after saying they would assist the police, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He also said that some would be sent to Long Island, which could face heavy damage in the storm.

Mr. Christie said 1,500 National Guard troops had been deployed in New Jersey.

The mayor attributed one casualty to the storm, a 66-year-old man who fell from a ladder while trying to board up windows at his house in Jamaica, Queens, early in the day. A Fire Department spokesman said the man, who was not immediately identified, was in serious condition at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center.

The mayor said police rescuers had pulled two kayakers from the water off Staten Island after their boats capsized. “When they were out there in spite of all the warnings, I don’t know,” the mayor said at his late-evening briefing, adding that they had been “kept afloat by lifejackets” they were wearing. He said they had been given summonses.

He also said that going out in the water as the storm approached was a “reckless” move that had “diverted badly-needed N.Y.P.D. resources.”

The city’s beaches were closed, and at midday, as the transit system prepared to shut down, police officers sounded the warning, strolling along subway platforms and telling people that the next train would be the last. The conductor of a No. 4 train that pulled into the Borough Hall station in Brooklyn at 12:14 p.m. had the same message.

“This is it,” he said, smiling. “You’re just in time.”

Soon subway employees were stretching yellow tape across the entrances to stations to keep people from going down the steps and into a subterranean world that was suddenly off limits, but not deserted. Transit workers were charged with executing a huge, mostly underground ballet, moving 200 subway trains away from outdoor yards that could flood if the storm delivered the 6 to 12 inches of rain that forecasts called for. The trains were to be parked in tunnels across the city, making regular runs impossible.

Mr. Bloomberg said the transit system was “unlikely to be back” in service on Monday. He said crews would have to pump water from tunnels if they flooded and restore the signal system before they could move the parked trains out. That would mean “the equipment’s not where you would want it” for the morning rush, he said. “Plan on a commute without mass transit on Monday morning.”

Mr. Bloomberg also said electricity could be knocked out in Lower Manhattan if Consolidated Edison shut off the power to pre-empt the problems that flooding could cause for its cables. (A Con Ed spokesman said later that the company, while prepared, had no immediate plans for that kind of shutdown.)

Other officials, including Mr. Christie, repeated what they had said on Friday: Evacuate.

Mr. Christie said that 90 percent to 98 percent of residents in parts of four counties in South Jersey had left — Cape May, Atlantic, Ocean and Monmouth. About 1,200 people who were evacuated from Atlantic County on Friday had spent the night without cots at the Sun Center arena in Trenton, where many people ended up sleeping in seats, he said. They were taken to the Rutgers University campus in New Brunswick, which Mr. Christie visited after a news conference.

In New York, Mr. Bloomberg said the evacuation and the transit shutdown, actions that he said had not been ordered before, had gone as well as could be expected. Officials went door to door in high-rise housing projects and firefighters drove school buses to help get homebound residents out of low-lying neighborhoods.

But, for all the evacuation, some people had to stay put. The city did not evacuate inmates on Rikers Island because, a city spokesman explained, “It’s not in Zone A.”

The storm caused major disruptions long before the first bands of rain swirled by. The three major airports in the New York region stopped clearing flights for landing at noon. Officials said they would remain open for planes that wanted to take off, but most flights had been canceled on Friday, according to Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority.

Amtrak canceled most trains after 11 a.m., although there was some confusion at Pennsylvania Station. A northbound train that left at 10:15 a.m. was, the conductor said, the last one going in that direction and was sold out.

The storm’s potential path reminded weather historians of the devastating hurricane of 1938. That storm devastated the Connecticut coast and rearranged Long Island’s geography, carving an inlet through what had been a thin but solid stretch of land on the way to the Hamptons.

On Saturday, New York awoke to an odd, greenish-gray sky, overheated air that felt heavy with moisture and only a light, summery breeze. It was not just another sleepy Saturday in August — too many people were on alert too early. In Battery Park City, long lines of taxis waited to take evacuees who carried their possessions to the curb. Uptown, some were dismayed when they found that stores like the new Fairway on East 86th Street had closed.

“It fits into the whole alarmist nature of the city,” said Mike Ortenau, 44, who lives in the neighborhood.

HRCP demands safe recovery of Shahbaz Taseer

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) expressed concern over former Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer’s son Shahbaz Taseer’s kidnapping and urged the Punjab government to ensure his early and safe recovery. The abduction of Shahbaz highlights the Punjab government’s inability to afford security and protection even to those known to be at high risk, the commission said.
The human rights watchdog said that such brazen crimes reflect a general deterioration of law and order and add to the sense of insecurity that the people have now grown accustomed to. If those assigned special security are not safe from being snatched in broad daylight in the heart of the country’s second most populous city, the lot of the common person is not that difficult to imagine, the HRCP said. While it is too early to speculate about the abductors’ motives, the HRCP calls upon the Punjab government to ensure that Shahbaz is recovered speedily and his abductors are held to account.
It also demands that rather than responding to the crime after the fact, the Punjab government must invest its efforts and resources in preventing crime, irrespective of the victim’s identity.
Separately, the public expressed its sadness and fear over the horrific incident. Street interviews showed that people felt stripped of the little security that they had begun to feel after a long time. “It’s outrageous the way even people belonging from high-profile sections of society are being kidnapped and killed in broad day light,” Hassan, 26, said. “One can imagine the level of safety a common man would feel in Pakistan,” he said. “After the murders of Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti, I have begun to feel that anything can happen,” Mohsin, 27, said.
Many also expressed their anger at the Punjab government for being incompetent in handling the problems of terrorism so rampant in the province. “Why is the CM in Sindh, while there are so many problems in his own province?” questioned one angry man. “We must support other provinces too, but at least today the CM should have immediately flown back to Lahore to handle the issue. Instead, he is giving speeches about target killings in Karachi and floods in Badin. What about floods in his own province?” he asked.
The public seems to have lost any kind of peace of mind that they might have wanted to maintain during Ramadan. “Who will get abducted, killed, or tortured here no one knows. But I wish the authorities responsible would really do something about this. No one can feel safe around here with such administration,” Shaheen, 45, said.

Khyber Pakhtunkhawa education institutions facing financial crunch

As many as 15 higher education institutions of Khyber Pakhtunkhawa (KPK) have sent letters to the governor informing him about the financial crunch that has made it impossible for the universities to pay 50 percent increase in salaries announced last year as well as the 15 percent increase announced this year.

According to well-placed sources, the higher education institutions of KPK have been intimated that funds related to the 50 percent increase announced last year as well as the 15 percent increase announced this year may not be released after all.

The universities that have written letters to the governor included KP Agriculture University, University of Malakand, University of Peshawar, University of Bannu, Gomal University, Institute of Management Sciences Peshawar, Frontier Women University, University of Swat, Kohat University, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Islamia College University, Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University Sherigal, Khyber Medical University, Hazara University and KP University of Engineering and Technology.

According to information, the universities of KPK are facing liabilities of around Rs1.9 billion in which the impact of 50 percent increase in salaries is around Rs1.3 billion while the impact of 15 percent increase in salaries is around Rs838.377 million.

The break-up of liabilities of KPK universities is as follows: the KPK Agricultural University has a total liability of Rs222.328 million that include Rs119 million impact of 50 percent increase and Rs103 million impact of 15 percent increase. A total of Rs66.640 million is the liability of University of Malakand that includes Rs21.640 million impact of 50 percent increase and Rs45 million is the impact of 15 percent increase. The University of Peshawar has a total liability of Rs575.714 million that includes Rs297 million impact of 50 percent increase and Rs278.338 million impact of 15 percent increase.

The University of Bannu has total liability of Rs59.500 million that includes Rs45 million impact of 50 percent increase and Rs14.5 million impact of 15 percent increase. A total of Rs278.285 million is the liability of Gomal University that includes Rs131 million impact of 50 percent increase and Rs147.285 million impact of 15 percent increase. The Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, has a total liability of Rs38.731 million that includes Rs29.528 million impact of 50 percent increase and Rs9.203 million impact of 15 percent increase.

The Frontier Women University has a total liability of Rs25.191 million that includes Rs13.191 million impact of 50 percent increase and Rs12 million impact of 15 percent increase. Rs34.145 million are the total liability of the University of Swat that includes Rs14 million impact of 50 percent increase and Rs20 million impact of 15 percent. The Kohat University has a total liability of Rs143.569 million that includes Rs98.569 million impact of 50 percent increase and Rs45 million impact of 15 percent increase.

PML-N fails to impact Karachi turmoil

http://www.thenews.com.pk
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has failed to make its presence felt on the political horizon as far as the grim Karachi situation is concerned.

The PML-N leaders this correspondent talked to conceded that Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s just concluded three-day visit to Karachi, which was intended to heal the wounds of its people, was too belated.

“Given our political standing and relevance, we have not paid the needed heed to Karachi when it was engulfed by worst violence with the government being busy playing tricks to gain political mileage and trying to expand its political base,” one PML-N leader said on condition of anonymity.

As per his practice being followed over the past several years, PML-N President Nawaz Sharif is spending the last ten days of the Ramazan in Saudi Arabia. Even when he was in Pakistan, he did not take time out to pay a visit to Karachi with the purpose of instilling a sense of urgency and emergency in the government to hurry up and rectify the deteriorating situation.

The PML-N leader said that Shahbaz Sharif’s activities in Karachi on the last day, which even otherwise were not very elaborately politically planned, were dampened by the sensational kidnapping of slain Punjab governor Salman Taseer’s son and he rushed back to Lahore. He met businessmen, entrepreneurs and intellectuals, and hoped to change that the PML-N was not popular in Karachi, acknowledging that it was not able to play an active role in Sindh.

He admitted that despite the unparalleled damage being done to Pakistan’s economy by the anarchy in Karachi, the PML-N simply left it to the ruling coalition to handle and bring the situation under control. “I believe we should have built up pressure on the government. This is what we being in the opposition are supposed to do. Had we done so, the government would not have acted the way it had since long.”

Another PML-N stalwart said that if the central party leadership avoided going to Karachi again and again during its difficult time to tell its people that it feels for them, the performance of its Sindh chapter has been too dismal in this regard. Elderly Leaguer Syed Ghous Ali Shah, who has been mainly managing (or mismanaging) the PML-N in Sindh has of late been displeased with the Sharif brothers due to its reorganization in Sindh.

The PML-N leader said that it was of course unsettling for a major political party like his to be totally ignored in the context of the Karachi situation. “We have faced constant embarrassment by repeatedly hearing that there are only three stakeholders in Karachi - Muttahidda Qaumi Movement (MQM), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Awami National Party (ANP). No doubt, their representatives were elected from the Sindh metropolis in the last elections, but this doesn’t mean that the PML-N, Jamaat-e-Islami, Sunni Tehrik, MQM-H etc. don’t have any say there. They are also relevant players.”

While the PML-N took the back seat with the eruption of increased violence in Karachi over the past few months, the Jamaat-e-Islami continues to undertake activities there despite having been tremendously marginalized by the MQM.

The PML-N leader said that as Nawaz Sharif would return from Saudi Arabia early next month, the party would devise a policy for its activities in the Sindh including Karachi. “In any case, we are going to field our candidates for a number of national and provincial constituencies of Sindh in the next general elections.”

No matter the PML-N nominees win or lose, their participation will show that the party is seriously treating Sindh like other areas of Pakistan in the electoral contest, he said. The PML-N would also hold its provincial elections in September. After that Nawaz Sharif will visit all the provinces with his focus being on Sindh, the PML-N leader said.