M WAQAR.....
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary.Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
--Albert Einstein !!!
NEWS,ARTICLES,EDITORIALS,MUSIC... Ze chi pe mayeen yum da agha pukhtunistan de.....(Liberal,Progressive,Secular World.)''Secularism is not against religion; it is the message of humanity.''
تل ده وی پثتونستآن
Pakistan will strengthen economic, defense and anti-terrorism cooperation with China, and promised to guarantee the security of Chinese nationals in the country, the chairman of Pakistan’s Senate told Chinese reporters yesterday.
Senate Chairman Farooq Hamid Naek said, “We guarantee we are doing our best to ensure Chinese nationals are safe and secure” because they have contributed a lot to the development of Pakistan and stayed there “despite suffering losses, even their lives. When we are protecting them, we are protecting our own Pakistan.”
Regarding China’s handling of the July 5 riots in Urumqi, Naek suggested that “We support the stand taken by the Chinese government. We are against terrorism and separatism. Violence has got to be suppressed, and justice has to be done. Pakistan has blocked the meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in this regard.”
Naek pointed out that Pakistan and China could cooperate in many fields, such as sports, media and people-to-people exchanges, while giving priority to the economy, defense, and combating terrorism, separatism and extremism.
“Pakistan and China are old and trusted friends, and our friendship dates back five decades,” he said, adding that the friendship has been strengthened by many great Pakistani leaders, such as former President Pervez Musharraf, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, the current Prime Minister.
Asked by the Global Times about the purpose of his visit, the chairman said he was leading a delegation of senators to China to “renew and strengthen the ties and friendship between the two countries.”
The senate chairman arrived in Shanghai on July 10 and inspected the Pakistan Pavilion for the Shanghai Expo 2010 there. He met with China’s top legislator Wu Bangguo and top political advisor Jia Qinglin in Beijing early this week.
ISLAMABAD-- The Pakistani security forces have apprehended 18 more suspected terrorists while destroying a number of their bunkers and tunnels in northwest Pakistan's Swat and Malaknd districts, the army said in an update issued on Friday. The security forces conducted search and clearance operations in various parts of Swat and Dir and apprehended some weapons, the army said. Meanwhile on Friday the third phase of the internally displaced persons (IDPs)' repatriation to their native towns started while as many as 9,000 families have been dispatched to their homes at the end of the second phase of IDPs' repatriation.According to reports, a total of 5002 families returned to Swatand Buner from Mardan and Swabi on the last day of second phase while 460 families among them were dispatched officially.Most of the other family members of IDPs returned Swat and Buner through their personal sources, unit said.The army said repatriation for Mingora city has also started. It is expected that the entire process of repatriation will complete in period of 14 days as per announcement of the government.
ISLAMABAD-- The Pakistani security forces have apprehended 18 more suspected terrorists while destroying a number of their bunkers and tunnels in northwest Pakistan's Swat and Malaknd districts, the army said in an update issued on Friday. The security forces conducted search and clearance operations in various parts of Swat and Dir and apprehended some weapons, the army said. Meanwhile on Friday the third phase of the internally displaced persons (IDPs)' repatriation to their native towns started while as many as 9,000 families have been dispatched to their homes at the end of the second phase of IDPs' repatriation.According to reports, a total of 5002 families returned to Swatand Buner from Mardan and Swabi on the last day of second phase while 460 families among them were dispatched officially.Most of the other family members of IDPs returned Swat and Buner through their personal sources, unit said.The army said repatriation for Mingora city has also started. It is expected that the entire process of repatriation will complete in period of 14 days as per announcement of the government.
China's economic growth rate shot up in the second quarter fueled by government spending and bank lending, boosting hopes that the biggest emerging economy will lead the way out of the worst global downturn since the 1930s.
Gross domestic product (GDP) growth accelerated in the second quarter, to 7.9 percent from 6.1 percent in the first quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said yesterday.
A string of accompanying NBS data for June depicted an economy successfully making up for a slump in exports through domestic demand, especially capital spending, generated by a 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) pump-priming package and record bank lending.
The data laid a foundation for hitting the year's growth target of 8 percent, the minimum deemed necessary to hold down unemployment, NBS spokesman Li Xiaochao said.
"We see more people shopping and prices beginning to rise. The economy is recovering and the recovery is intensifying. All the government's policies have worked together to help us overcome the financial crisis," Li said.
Economists had forecast 7.5 percent growth, and several promptly responded to yesterday's figures by raising their projections for this year and next year.
"We see clear upside risks to our current GDP growth forecast of 8.3 percent for 2009," said Song Yu and Qiao Hong at Goldman Sachs. They said the second quarter's 7.9 percent growth translated into a 16.5-percent pace compared with the first quarter when expressed as a seasonally adjusted annualized rate.
Frank Gong, head of China research with JP Morgan Chase, raised his GDP forecasts, to 8.4 percent from 7.8 percent for 2009, and to 9.0 percent from 8.5 percent for 2010.
The analysts said if they simply keep the previous quarter-on-quarter assumptions for the third and fourth quarters, the implied annual GDP growth will reach 8.9 percent, comparable to its level in 2008.
The recovery, however, was not yet on a solid footing and the economy was growing below potential, the NBS spokesman warned.
"Prices were still falling; overall demand was weak; some industries faced overcapacity; and the industry use rate was low," Li said.
The consumer price index declined by 1.7 percent year-on-year in June from a negative 1.4 percent in May, while the producer price index fell by 7.8 percent year-on-year in June from a negative 7.2 percent a month earlier.
But analysts said that while prices would likely continue to fall in the coming months on a year-on-year basis, deflation is unlikely to become a long-term trend.
"China's expansionary monetary policy, coupled with rebounding commodity and asset market prices, suggest that China will emerge from deflation in the second half of 2009," Li Jianfeng, an analyst with Shanghai Securities, said.
A missile, suspected to have been fired by a US drone, has killed four people in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region, intelligence officials say.
The missile struck a house about 30km (19 miles) from Miranshah, the district's main town.
The identity of the dead was not immediately known, officials said.
The region is known as a haven for Taliban and al-Qaeda militants and the US has carried out dozens of attacks in the area in recent months.
Pakistan has been publicly critical of drone attacks. The government says that they fuel support for the militants.
Most of the strikes have taken place in the tribal regions of North and South Waziristan.
The region is the stronghold of Pakistan's top Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud.
The US military does not routinely confirm drone attacks but the armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are believed to be the only forces capable of deploying drones in the region.
In March, US President Barack Obama said his government would consult Pakistan on drone attacks.
USA TODAY WASHINGTON — Seeking to overhaul the failure-plagued Afghanistan reconstruction program, U.S. development officials are taking lessons from one of the few bright spots: the health sector, where more than $1 billion in international aid since 2002 has produced measurable results. Though Afghanistan's health statistics remain some of the worst in the world, they have improved markedly over the past seven years, according to annual assessments by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Infant mortality has dropped 21%, while tuberculosis treatment has expanded from 15% to 97% of cases, according to the Johns Hopkins surveys and World Health Organization data.
"Here's a place where it works," said James Bever, who directs the Afghanistan-Pakistan task force at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has spent $535 million on Afghan health programs since 2002. It works, Bever said, because the Afghan Health Ministry worked with big donors to create a list of basic services, determined a common way to build clinics and then divided the country among them. "We're trying to learn some lessons from that," he said.
In 2002, 9% of Afghans had access to basic health services, and now 85% do, Afghan Health Minister Sayed Fatimie said in an interview. "It is a tremendous achievement," he said, "because the national health system of Afghanistan had collapsed."
Since Afghan government ministries are weak and corruption-plagued, most international aid to the country has been sent through private contractors and relief groups that operate on their own. That has led to poor coordination, high overhead and spotty performance, say critics, including the relief group Oxfam.
In February, USA TODAY reported that of six audits of Afghan aid programs conducted in the last year by USAID's inspector general, only one found a program working largely as it was supposed to.
Most health care aid goes through the Afghan Health Ministry, where the main donors — USAID, the World Bank and the European Union— have not encountered the problems seen elsewhere in the government, said Julie McLaughlin, the World Bank's South Asia health manager. The ministry operates health clinics through non-governmental organizations, but most of the contractors are non-profits — often small Afghan groups, she said.
USAID has built more than 700 health clinics. Although there were initial glitches, a 2006 inspector general's audit found the program had eventually delivered most of what it promised.
"The idea that we're pouring resources down a rodent hole — at least in the health sector, that is definitely not true," said Gilbert Burnham, a physician who co-directs the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Johns Hopkins and has supervised reviews of the Afghan system.
There are limits. The aid has yet to change Afghanistan's status as one of the world's most dangerous places for women to have babies. The maternal death rate is among the world's highest. About 26,000 Afghan women died in childbirth in 2005, according to WHO.
USA TODAY NEW YORK — President Obama on Thursday traced his historic rise to power to the vigor and valor of black civil rights leaders, telling the NAACP that the sacrifice of others "began the journey that has led me here." The nation's first black president bluntly warned, though, that racial barriers persist. "Make no mistake: The pain of discrimination is still felt in America," the president said in honoring the organization's 100th convention.
Painting himself as the beneficiary of the NAACP's work, Obama cited historical figures from W.E.B. DuBois to Thurgood Marshall to explain how the path to the presidency was cleared by visionaries.
Obama's remarks, steeped in his personal biography as the son of a white mother from Kansas and black father from Kenya, challenged the audience — those in the room and those beyond — to take greater responsibility for their own future. He told parents to take a more active role and residents to pay better attention to their schools.
Rousing up a friendly crowd, Obama made his first speech so directly linked with race since he took office; the White House says he worked on it for about two weeks. Implicit in his appearance: He is seeking the backing of the powerful NAACP and its members for his ambitious domestic agenda.
The president said that in the current down economy, blacks are suffering high unemployment and are afflicted with more diseases but are less likely to own health insurance. He said that the African-American child is about five times as likely as a white child to be sent to jail.
Obama touted education as essential to improving the lives of all children. He said the state of schools is an American problem, not an African-American one.
"You know what I'm talking about. There's a reason the story of the civil rights movement was written in our schools. There's a reason Thurgood Marshall took up the cause of Linda Brown. There's a reason the Little Rock Nine defied a governor and a mob," Obama said. "It's because there is no stronger weapon against inequality and no better path to opportunity than an education that can unlock a child's God-given potential."
"We have to say to our children, 'Yes, if you're African-American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that someone in a wealthy suburb does not,'" Obama said, returning to his tough-love message familiar from his two-year presidential campaign.
"But that's not a reason to get bad grades, that's not a reason to cut class, that's not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school," he said. "No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands and don't you forget that."
Obama expanded his message of equal rights beyond the black communities. He said many Americans still face discrimination.
Racism, he said, is felt "by African-American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and gender. By Latinos made to feel unwelcome in their own country. By Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion for simply kneeling down to pray. By our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights."
Obama also pressed for NAACP members to encourage their young people to find new role models beyond sports or music.
"I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers, doctors and teachers, not just ballers and rappers," Obama said. "I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court justice. I want them aspiring to be president of the United States."
To bolster his argument that it's within their reach, he cited his own biography, growing up with a single mother.
"I don't come from a lot of wealth. I got into my share of trouble as a kid. My life could easily have taken a turn for the worse. But that mother of mine gave me love; she pushed me, and cared about my education; she took no lip and taught me right from wrong," Obama said. "Because of her, I had a chance to make the most of my abilities. I had the chance to make the most of my opportunities. I had the chance to make the most of life."
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor revealed only what she wanted to, and nothing more, during two days of grilling by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The 55-year-old New York native showed her human side; at one point, pivoting in her chair to whisper to her 82-year-old mother, Celina, ''Thanks, Mom.'' She flexed her prosecutorial muscle, speaking of her time in the district attorney's office. She stayed calm, praised precedent and respectfully cited conservative justices.
Though the confirmation hearing continues Thursday with further questioning of Sotomayor and testimony by witnesses, including some antagonistic toward the nominee, senators from both parties know now how the hearing will turn out.
''She's handled herself very well,'' conceded Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the committee's senior Republican member. ``She's not rushed.''
So far, Sotomayor has stayed completely in control even as the Judiciary Committee's 19 members alternately tried to shake and support her.
Nowhere has her self-command been more evident than in her refusal -- despite repeated efforts by Republicans and Democrats alike -- to offer hints about her thinking on the nation's most politically sensitive disputes.
On abortion, Second Amendment rights, voting rights and more, Sotomayor consistently has steered clear of hinting how she might rule. In part, she refuses to pre-judge a specific case she might see again. In part, she is showcasing her stated intention to ''bring an open mind to every case'' that comes before her.
''And by an open mind I mean a judge who looks at the facts of each case, listens, and understands the arguments of the parties, and applies the law as the law commands,'' Sotomayor said.
``It's a refrain I keep repeating because that is my philosophy of judging: applying the law to the facts at hand.''
Physically, too, Sotomayor has held her ground, despite a cast on her right leg and a lifelong diabetic condition, which requires her to keep a glass of sugary Sprite by her side.
Her body language has been commanding. She gestures freely, occasionally touching senators like Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina while in casual conversation.
Hoping to dislodge her, Republicans have repeatedly tried asking the same question in different ways. Sotomayor's comments about a ''wise Latina'' have prompted at least 15 questions, with her answers hardly varying.
SECOND AMENDMENT
Sotomayor's ruling with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold New York state's ban on the joined-sticks weapon called nunchucks, likewise, drew question after question about whether she thinks the Second Amendment applies to states. She frustrated them all, insisting the state issue might yet come before the high court.
On abortion, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, noted that the White House reportedly was offering vague assurances to abortion rights groups in May that Sotomayor would be sympathetic to their views.
How would they know that? Cornyn wondered. Sotomayor said she didn't know.
''You just have to look at my record to know that in the cases that I addressed on all issues, I follow the law,'' Sotomayor said.
The focus throughout has been extremely tight. Though Sotomayor has participated in more than 3,000 decisions during her 17-year tenure on the federal bench, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats noted that during two days of questioning, Republicans asked her about a grand total of eight cases.
The Senate Democratic Communications Center said that, ''Judge Sotomayor has answered more questions more in depth than any nominee in recent history.'' More pointedly, though, the Democrats noted that Sotomayor was hardly less forthcoming than Republican nominees, including John G. Roberts and Samuel Alito.
''I think I should stay away from discussions of particular issues that are likely to come before the court again,'' Roberts said during his 2005 confirmation hearing, in words that Sotomayor might have quoted directly.
NO ACTIVIST
Philosophically, Sotomayor stressed her respect for precedent and her intention to judge every dispute on a case-by-case basis.
Put another way, she was assuring senators that she's no ``judicial activist.''
''I can only talk about what the court said in the context of that particular case,'' Sotomayor said, when asked about a high-profile property rights case.
''It's entitled to stare decisis and deference,'' she said, using a Latin term meaning ''Let the decision stand,'' a doctrine requiring that judges apply the same reasoning to lawsuits that has been used in previous cases.
``But the extent of that has to await the next cases.''
THE JERUSALEM POST WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton carefully recalibrated the administration's statements on Israel in a major foreign policy address Wednesday, stressing the need for greater Palestinian and Arab action on the peace process.
She also toughened US rhetoric toward Iran, warning that the window for engagement "would not remain open indefinitely," and reiterating that Teheran's goal of a nuclear weapon was unacceptable. She referred to a changed situation on the ground that has "shifted" prospects for engagement despite America's continued adherence to that policy.
Clinton, in an appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations, spoke two days after US President Barack Obama assured Jewish leaders in a closed-door meeting that his administration would be taking steps to address the media-driven "misperception" that Israel was the party more at fault for a stalled peace process, primarily because it wasn't completely halting settlement activity.
In discussing the peace process Wednesday, Clinton did not once say that settlement activity needed to stop - a common refrain among senior administration officials in recent weeks - and stressed that the onus for peacemaking lay as much with Arabs and Palestinians as with Israel.
"We have been working with the Israelis to deal with the issue of settlements," she said. "The last few decades, American administrations have held consistent positions on the settlement issue. And while we expect action from Israel, we recognize that these decisions are politically challenging."
"We know that progress toward peace cannot be the responsibility of the United States - or Israel - alone. Ending the conflict requires action on all sides," she said.
Clinton called on the Palestinians to improve their security reform efforts and to act forcefully against incitement. And the Arab states, she said, "have a responsibility to support the Palestinian Authority with words and deeds, to take steps to improve relations with Israel, and to prepare their publics to embrace peace and accept Israel's place in the region."
Gestures toward Israel, "however modest," could make a difference, she said, and stressed, "We are asking those who embrace the proposals to take meaningful steps now."
She also reiterated US support for the Quartet principles of renunciation of violence, recognition of Israel and respect for previous agreements before Hamas could be engaged.
On Syria, however, she said the US was interested in pursuing its engagement efforts in the hopes that "the Syrian conclusion about where they should be positioned with relation to Iran and support for terror activities will be changing." She also said Washington expected the effort "to be reciprocal."
During the hour-long speech and question-and-answer session, Clinton directed some of her harshest words at Iran. She spoke of watching "the energy of Iran's election with great admiration, only to be appalled by the manner in which the government used violence to quell the voices of the Iranian people."
She said the administration, which found those acts "deplorable and unacceptable," didn't harbor "any illusions that dialogue with the Islamic republic will guarantee success of any kind, and the prospects have certainly shifted in the weeks following the election."
But despite changing realities on the ground, as well as assessments about whether engagement could work in the new climate, the secretary of state stressed that America remained committed to the track, at the very least because it gives the US more information and shows the world the nature of the regime. She maintained that she had seen a "turn in attitude" already during her past six months in office.
"Iran does not have a right to nuclear military capacity, and we're determined to prevent that," she said. "But it does have a right to civil nuclear power if it reestablishes the confidence of the international community that it will use its programs exclusively for peaceful purposes.
"The choice is clear. We remain ready to engage with Iran, but the time for action is now. The opportunity will not remain open indefinitely," Clinton warned. She would not elaborate on future steps, but did say that "we obviously have exits along the way depending upon the consequences of the discussions."
"We are hoping to still engage, but the process might be slower," a senior State Department official said following the speech, in addressing questions on the effect the fallout from the disputed Iranian elections had on America's policy of outreach toward Iran
ATTOCK: The Punjab government has approved special relief package of about Rs6 million for the Sikh Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) of Swat, Malaknad and Buner to facilitate them in returning to their native areas.
The Sikh IDPs had been residing in Gurdawara Punja Sahib Hasanabdal for the last about four months.
The district coordination officer (DCO) Capt (Rtd) Saqib Zafar told Dawn on Wednesday that the chief minister Punjab Mian Shehbaz Shairf has approved the special relief package of about Rs6 million on the demand of Sikh IDPs.
Under this package, Rs10,000 will be given to each family along with a dinner set and traveling bags, he explained.
He said that total about 3,000 Sikh IDPs (450 families) had been shifted at Gurdawara Punja Sahib, out of them, 350 families were registered after proper verification.
He said that as per Punjab government approval, financial assistance of Rs 10,000 would be given only to registered Sikh families, whereas dinner set and traveling bags would be given to the all Sikh families.
Moreover, the Punjab government had also provided free wheat flour (Atta) to the Sikh IDPs besides provision of relief goods to them time to time by the district administration, he maintained.
While Auqaf department with the coordination of NGOs, World Food Programme fulfilled their daily food requirement in proper way during their stay at the Gurdawara Punja Sahib, he maintained.
ISLAMABAD: An advance team of the UN commission to probe into Benazir Bhutto’s assassination arrived here on Wednesday.The members of the team — Boonrod Tanarak, Pitak Isan and R. Pothathong — were received at the Benazir Bhutto International Airport by senior officials of interior ministry and the Foreign Office.Senior members of the inquiry commission, Chile’s permanent representative to the UN Heraldo Munoz, Marzuki Darusman and Peter Fitzgerald, will arrive on Thursday. The members of the commission were expected to be in the country until July 19, a source said.
PESHAWAR: The provincial capital – as in the 1980s during Moscow’s invasion of Afghanistan – continues to attract the Afghan media, with a second Kabul-based TV channel scheduled to launch a bureau in Peshawar, said sources on Wednesday.
“Lemar TV – a subsidiary of Kabul-based Tolo TV – is making arrangements to set up a bureau in Peshawar, and the management of the channel is negotiating with local journalists to hire their services,” the sources told Daily Times. Shamshad TV was the first Afghan TV channel to set up a bureau in Peshawar.
The ouster of the Taliban regime in late 2001 allowed independent TV channels to begin operations in Kabul for the first time in the country’s history, and – according to Afghan journalists – 14 satellite-based TV channels are already operational. The sources said in light of the large number of Afghan refugees, the Afghan media was focussing on Pakistan to boost revenue and increase viewership.
“This is good news that another Afghan TV channel is launching operations in Peshawar,” said Janullah Hashimzada, who works for Shamshad TV at the Peshawar bureau.
“Bureaus of Afghan TV channels in Peshawar would also help strengthen bonds between media workers of the two countries … we hope Pakistani channels will also follow in our footsteps,” said Hashimzada. No Pakistani TV channel has yet opened a bureau in Kabul, nor hired a local Afghan journalist to cover events in neighbouring Afghanistan.
“Kabul is quite expensive these days, and a war story from Afghanistan is not as important now as it was in the 1908s … the same story is now emanating from within Pakistan,” said Jamshed Baghwan, bureau chief of Express News TV.
However, he did say that Pakistani channels should launch operations in Kabul to let viewers in Pakistan know about Kabul’s attitude towards their country.
ISLAMABAD-- Pakistan's security forces continued Wednesday the search and clearance operations in Swat and Malakand, while the pace of repatriation process of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country's northwest is getting momentum.
According to a press release, the security forces killed 28 terrorists, including a most wanted terrorist leader of Peochar Abu Laith, while conducting operations in Swat. A terrorist commander Ismail, resident of village Goal Sakhra, voluntarily surrendered himself to security forces through local nazim.
The security forces, the statement said, continued relief activities, as 150,969 cash cards have been distributed amongst the IDPs of Malakand.
At least 677 vehicles carried 2,296 families and 122 trucks moved to Malakand and as many as 30 civil trucks were provided by security forces to civil fruit vendors for transportation of fruits from Khawazakhela of Swat.
Meanwhile, 181 more displaced families comprising 869 individuals left for their hometowns in Buner and Swat from two relief camps in Swabi under the government's arrangement.
The IDPs of Malakand have lauded the efforts of the government and the whole nation for support during their displacement.
The government has made tough security arrangements for the families during their moving from camps to their hometowns.
However, the affected people in Kund park protested against nonprovision of relief goods to them by the government. This camp is housing 6,500 affectees of Swat, Dir, Buner and Malakand.
PESHAWAR: The Peshawar City District Government on Tuesday presented over Rs8.339 billion budget for the year 2009-10, showing a surplus of over Rs20.65 million.
Total expenditure, including development and non-development, has been estimated at Rs8.312 billion while the district revenue was forecast at Rs8.339 billion. The budget document showed that Rs4.742 billion had been allocated for overall development schemes in the district compared to Rs3.82 billion in the previous year.
Acting City District Nazim Muhammad Omer Khan presented the fifth and final budget of the current district council at the District Council hall. The federal government had recently announced that district nazims would be replaced soon by administrators across the country. Some of important projects targeted in the budget included improvement of schools condition for which Rs50.58 million has been earmarked.
For provision of better health facilities and medicines, Rs20.14 million has been allocated. Last year, the sum allocated for health was Rs40.66 million, showing Rs20 million less allocation for this important sector in the current fiscal. For providing clean drinking water to villages of the district, Rs10.1 million has been allocated; construction of a bus terminal Rs10 million; solid waste unit Rs10 million; fire brigade, sports, civil defence and natural calamities Rs10 million; Special Development Programme (through district nazim fund) Rs20 million and establishment of a Crisis Management Centre Rs10.2 million.
In the previous year’s budget, Rs20.32 million had been earmarked for establishment of the same centre. City District Nazim Muhammad Omer Khan, in his budget speech, dilated upon the development schemes that have been completed or on the verge of completion. He regretted that for district Peshawar the amount allocated in last year’s federal budget had not been released, nor had the district received any special grant from the federal government in the last four years.
Last year, the predecessor of Omer Khan also complained about the non-provision of funds allocated for the district in the federal government budget.
He appealed to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to announce a grant for the scheme of clean drinking water from Warsak Dam to Peshawar. Former district nazim Ghulam Ali, in his last year’s budget speech, had also appealed for the same but the federal government did not pay any heed to his requests. He informed the house that the provincial government had deducted Rs30.72 million as Town-I arrears, while Rs20.34 million had been deducted for the rent of Peshawar Bus terminal.
Omer Khan said the city district government had made a record increase of 41 per cent in their revenue. He told the council that fruitful talks were held with donors regarding various mega projects in the city, including fly-over, underpasses and clean water supply scheme.
“If the district government gets the required funds, work will start on the projects,” he said. Though the district government has presented a surplus budget, the sweepers, tube-well operators and other employees of Town-I always protested against delay in payment of their salaries. Later, the convener, Razaullah Khan, adjourned the council till Thursday.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan— Pakistani troops killed six militants in the Swat valley, where the government has bussed home thousands of civilians displaced by a military offensive, officials said. Pakistan says the pace of returns to the northwest district has quickened this week but fresh violence is likely to exacerbate fears about security after two months of fierce fighting between government forces and Taliban militants. "Six militants were killed when troops retaliated and returned fire after a rebel attack on an army checkpost in Kabal town on Tuesday night," a military official told AFP on condition of anonymity. A senior police official in Swat confirmed the incident in the northern part of the valley, once dubbed the Switzerland of Pakistan for its pristine mountain resorts but since overrun by a Taliban insurgency. On Tuesday, the military reported killings in Swat for the first time in days, announcing that nine militants were shot dead in the last 24 hours. Last week, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said it was safe to start sending home nearly two million people displaced by the conflict and that the military had "eliminated" the extremists. The army launched its offensive under heavy US pressure in late April in Buner and Lower Dir districts, before besieging militants in neighbouring Swat, where the Taliban focused its two-year rebellion to enforce sharia law. Officials said about 2,300 displaced families have so far returned to Swat and Buner since the government-organised returns process began Monday. "A total of 1,534 families returned to Swat while 757 families headed back to Buner since the repatriation of displaced persons started," a spokesman for the government aid effort, Lieutenant Colonel Waseem Shahid, told AFP. Azam Khan, a government emergency relief official, confirmed the same statistics but said it was difficult to calculate a precise number of people who have returned to hometowns, largely in southern Swat. "However, we can say there are approximately eight to 10 people in a single family, living in the camps," Khan told AFP. Pakistan says more than 1,700 militants and around 160 security personnel were killed in operations to crush the Taliban in northwest districts since late April, but the death tolls are impossible to verify independently. The government says it has worked hard to restore electricity and running water in main towns since the fighting but analysts warn that much needs to be done to sustain the returnees particularly with Taliban leaders still at large. In a video posted on jihadi web forums, Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri purportedly urged Pakistanis to support insurgents in their battle against a US-led "crusade" which he said threatened the country's existence. In an English-language video called "My Muslim Brothers and Sisters in Pakistan," he said US intervention in Pakistan's military and politics could break up the nuclear-armed nation, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. In Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, two policemen were killed and five wounded in a bomb blast in the town of Bannu on Wednesday, police said. Islamist militants bitterly opposed to the government's alliance with the United States, whose troops are fighting a Taliban insurgency in neighbouring Afghanistan, carry out daily attacks on security forces in the northwest.
At least 23 Taliban militants have been killed in fresh fighting, most of them in overnight clashes with Pakistani village militias, officials said on Tuesday. Islamabad is increasingly relying on local lashkar militias to help rout Taliban forces. Fighting in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt killed at least 23 Taliban militants and destroyed an oil tanker supplying NATO forces posted across the border in Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.
The deadliest clashes involved a village militia, officials said, reflecting the state's increasing reliance on local tribesmen to battle Islamist radicals allegedly plotting attacks in this region and in the West.
The worst violence occurred Monday and overnight in the village of Anbar in Mohmand district, 15 kilometres (nine miles) southwest of the Islamist hotspot of Khar, in neighbouring Bajaur district.
"According to reports received here, a lashkar (traditional tribal militia) killed 23 militants and several others were wounded," local administration official Asad Ali Khan told AFP.
Administration official Mohammad Rasul Khan said three villagers were missing after the clashes between a 150-strong village force and militants.
"The lashkar has fought very well and militants are now on the run," he said, adding that villagers had gone into the mountains to take on the rebels.
Islamist insurgents routinely escape into the mountains after gunfights in built-up areas, and authorities are frequently criticised for not mobilising adequate manpower into terrain where guerrillas can easily disappear.
Intelligence and security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to release information to the media, confirmed the fighting and the death toll.
In the infamous Khyber region, militants ambushed a tanker carrying fuel for NATO forces in Afghanistan and an ensuing gunfight killed two civilians and wounded three others, said an official with the Khyber regional administration, Rehan Gul Khattak.
The attack took place near the town of Landi Kotal on the main highway which links Pakistan to landlocked Afghanistan.
"Militants first fired a mortar on the oil tanker and then set it on fire. Meanwhile a gunfight broke out with paramilitary troops which left two civilians dead and three others wounded," Khattak said.
The ambush was staged by around 30 militants, who fled after the exchange of fire, he said. The highway was temporarily closed, but NATO supply convoys were halted even after the road re-opened, Khattak said.
Pakistani troops have led campaigns against Taliban militants in recent years, in a bid to counter a deadly Islamist backlash that has killed about 2,000 people in bomb attacks in the last two years.
Hundreds of Islamist fighters are believed to have fled Afghanistan into Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal areas to carve out safe havens after the US-led invasion toppled the hardline Taliban regime in Kabul in late 2001.
Pakistan is encouraging locals to organise lashkars against militants in several northwestern regions, where the country's traditional army, hampered by equipment shortages, has found it difficult to operate.
Security forces launched a huge operation against Islamist militants in Bajaur and Mohmand last August. In February, they said the area had been cleared after months of fierce fighting, but unrest has rumbled on.
DUSHANBE: The leaders of Russia, Afghanistan and Pakistan are scheduled to meet in the Tajik capital Dushanbe later this month in an effort to boost regional cooperation, the Tajik authorities said on Tuesday. Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, Emomali Rakhmon of Tajikistan, Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan are scheduled to meet on July 29 and 30 ‘for discussions of closer economic cooperation,’ said a Tajik foreign ministry spokesman. ‘Preparations for the meeting of the leaders are under way. The meeting’s main theme is cooperation in energy, communications and transportation,’ said the spokesman Davlat Nazriyev, adding that regional security might also be discussed. The get-together would come on the heels of a three-party meeting between Medvedev, Karzai and Zardari last month in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, where the men pledged to join efforts in the fight against terror and expand economic cooperation. Russia and Tajikistan have traditionally had strong ties since the fall of the Soviet Union and the Kremlin has also been keen to increase its role as a mediator in the region. Medvedev will travel to Tajikistan to launch the Sangtuda-1 hydro plant, controlled and operated by Russia, while Zardari was scheduled to arrive in Dushanbe on an official visit on the eve of the four-party meeting. ‘Tajikistan boasts rich hydro energy resources and during the meeting the leaders will pay special attention to the Central Asia South Asia electricity transmission project,’ said Nazriyev. The multimillion dollar project aims to supply surplus power from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
ST. LOUIS — After President Obama was introduced at the All-Star Game on Tuesday night, he trotted out of the first-base dugout at Busch Stadium wearing a black White Sox jacket. Obama stopped before throwing the ceremonial first pitch to shake hands with Stan Musial, a Hall of Famer for the St. Louis Cardinals, who was sitting in a red golf cart.
Once Obama made it to the mound, he eased into his motion and softly floated a pitch to Albert Pujols. Pujols, the current Cardinals icon, reached in front of home plate to catch Obama’s wobbly pitch. The fans cheered for Obama, who then hugged Pujols halfway between the mound and the plate.
Besides Musial, the other five living Cardinals who are in the Hall of Fame were behind the plate to welcome Obama. Lou Brock, one of the retired players, saluted Obama, who saluted back. Obama waved to the fans several times as he retreated from the field through the dugout.
On Monday, Pujols said he would be emotional about standing 60 feet 6 inches from Obama. “Obviously, it’s an honor to catch the first pitch from the president,” Pujols said. “He’s our leader.”
When Obama visited the National League clubhouse before the game, he hugged Pujols. Obama also spoke with Prince Fielder and Ryan Howard, whose lockers were side by side.
After Air Force One landed in St. Louis at 5:19 p.m, Obama, dressed in jeans, sneakers, a white shirt and a black jacket, descended the stairs with the Hall of Famer Willie Mays.
Mays, who wore a Giants cap while he traveled here from Detroit as a guest of Obama, offered the president one snippet of advice.
“I’m telling him follow through,” Mays said. “He’s going to do fine, I guarantee you. He’ll be fine. I just want to make sure he follows through.”
Obama was scheduled to sit with Hank Aaron, another Hall of Famer, in a private box at Busch Stadium.
Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said the president had “been throwing a little bit” with Reggie Love, his aide and a former basketball player at Duke. Gibbs noted that Obama, an ardent White Sox fan, last threw out the first pitch at a game during the 2005 American League Championship Series. The White Sox went on to win the World Series title that season.
Commissioner Bud Selig said he sent Obama a letter inviting him to become the first sitting president since Gerald Ford in 1978 to throw out the first pitch at an All-Star Game. Selig said the White House responded in less than 24 hours and that Obama was “really happy to” attend the game.
“No matter what one thinks politically, right or left or whatever, it’s a big thing,” Selig said. “The players will enjoy it, the fans will enjoy it. It’s another test to the meaning of this sport.”
WASHINGTON - Sonia Sotomayor pushed back vigorously Tuesday against Republican charges that she would bring bias and a liberal agenda to her seat as the first Hispanic woman on the Supreme Court, insisting repeatedly she would be impartial as GOP senators tried to undercut her with her own words from past speeches.
WASHINGTON :President Barack Obama said on Tuesday 'all of us want an effective exit strategy from Afghanistan' in which Afghan authorities are able to take more responsibilities.
Obama made the comment after talks with Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende that centered on the current situation in Afghanistan as well as the global economy and climate change.
"All of us want to see an effective exit strategy where increasingly the Afghan army, Afghan police, Afghan courts, Afghan government are taking more responsibility for their own security," Obama said.
Around 4,000 US Marines and hundreds of Nato and Afghan forces are taking part in an offensive in various parts of Helmand province against Taliban.
The operation comes ahead of next month's presidential election, which is crucial both for Kabul and for a US administration that has identified Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan as its top foreign policy priority.
"If we can get through a successful election in September and we continue to apply the training approach to the Afghan security forces and we combine that with a much more effective approach to economic development inside Afghanistan, then my hope is that we will be able to begin transitioning into a different phasee in Afghanistan," Obama said.
NEW YORK TIMES ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Hundreds of people who fled a military offensive against the Taliban in the Swat Valley began trickling back home on Monday after the Pakistani government announced the first stage of a three-part plan to return them.
They represented a tiny fraction of the nearly two million refugees who have been displaced by the fighting in Swat, which started after the collapse of a February peace deal that handed the Taliban effective control of the district, and a military campaign to uproot the militants began. The refugees, tens of thousands of whom have spent months in government camps, are eager to return home, but many have expressed trepidation about their safety.
Buses and trucks provided by the government began shuttling hundreds of families to Swat on Monday from three camps in the Mardan and Charsadda districts, south of the valley.
Mohammad Shumon Alam, the spokesman in Pakistan for the aid agency Oxfam, said many families were sending one or two people as scouts to check the area and their homes before putting everyone, including children, into vehicles to return.
“It’s not a big wave,” Mr. Alam said. “It’s limited. People want to go back, but they are extremely skeptical and concerned.”
The government of North-West Frontier Province announced over the weekend that 23,040 displaced families would receive assistance returning to Swat in three phases. The provincial government plans to complete the process in two weeks.
Ahmad Rajwana, the chief coordinator of refugee camps for the government of the North-West Frontier Province in the Swabi district, said 800 families were scheduled to return to Bari Kot in Swat on Tuesday as part of the first stage.
“To be honest, people in the camps wanted to go back for a long time,” Mr. Rajwana said of the mood of the displaced people in the camps. “The government is not forcing them. The refugees have signed a declaration that they are not being forcibly returned.”
Two weeks ago, about 4,000 refugees voluntarily left the Chota Lahore camp in Swabi, he said.
Ishaq Khan, a resident of Saidu Sharif, a town in Swat, said that the military had divided the return by area, with those whose homes were closer to the camps returning first. Mr. Khan, a graphic designer, said he was scheduled to depart on Friday.
“They said it was quiet, no shooting, no violence,” he said by telephone from Rawalpindi, where he has been living since early May, citing what others who had returned on Monday were finding. Early accounts of those who returned today were cautiously good, he said, but added that he was glad that he was scheduled to return later to be able hear the experience of others first.
The camps have been shrouded in stifling summer heat, and some aid agency officials have warned that keeping them in camps longer than absolutely necessary would only breed resentment of the government.
Elsewhere, at least nine people, including seven children, were killed when a blast ripped through a house in a farming village in the southern part of Punjab Province, police officials said. At least 60 people were injured in the explosion, which occurred in the house of a member of an outlawed militant group who had stored explosives, officials said. The blast destroyed half of a village near the town of Mian Channu in the Khanewal district, residents reached by telephone said.
The police said that the house where the explosion occurred belonged to Riaz Kumboh, who, according to local residents and the police, had set up a private religious school and had hidden explosives.
He belonged to a banned militant organization, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and had received militant training from Afghanistan, a resident said.
Police officials said that Mr. Kumboh had hidden explosives in the house. What set off the blast remained unclear.
“The blast was so loud that it was heard over a distance of six miles,” Ghulam Jilani, 36, a resident of Mian Channu, said by telephone. “Half of the village is destroyed. Most of the houses were made of mud and bricks.”
Rescue teams from nearby towns headed to the village after the blast. Local television news networks broadcast images showing people rummaging through the rubble to pull out the injured.
The blast raised concerns about the ease and ability of the militants to operate quietly and unnoticed in the rural areas of southern part of Punjab. Militant groups in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, have joined forces with the Taliban in the country’s west, and have been jointly conducting attacks in major cities, a trend that has worried Pakistani authorities.
But Muhammad Aslam Bodla, an opposition politician and member of Parliament from Khanewal, said in a telephone interview that Mian Channu was a peaceful town not known for any extremist or militant activity. “The blast today is the first incident of its kind in Mian Channu,” he said.
ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said that militants in Swat have been defeated and security forces were in control of the region, several militant commanders had been killed and Swat Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah injured.
Talking to reporters after launching the FM radio channel of Islamabad traffic police, he said the militants had nefarious designs, but their activities were being closely watched.
Mr Malik said Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and other provincial governments were trying their best to curb terrorists.
He said that a man named Zubair, a suspect in the attack on Sri Lankan cricket team belonged to Dera Ghazi Khan but he had and his accomplices had been traced in Makeen area of Waziristan.
Some arrests had also been made in Buner and Rawalpindi division. ‘All roads lead to South Waziristan,’ he added.
Earlier, addressing the ceremony, Mr Malik said the enemies had been flushed out of Swat, but a few pockets of militants existed in other areas of the Frontier province.
He said that 31 people, among them would-be suicide bombers, their handlers and a mastermind, had been arrested in Islamabad and six suicide attacks had been averted. He said the suspects were on a mission to attack important installations.
The minister said conspiracies against Pakistan had been foiled because of national unity and bravery of the armed forces and law-enforcement agencies.
He said international conspiracies to weaken the country had been hatched 30 years ago.
‘The cancer of terrorism has affected our economy and law and order, but we are determined as a nation to root out the menace,’ he added.
Meanwhile, police announced on Monday to have arrested two terrorists who were allegedly involved in four suicides attacks and were planning more terrorist activities in the capital.
Mohammad Ovais, 34, of Adyala Road, and Obaidullah Khan, 30, of Westridge, were picked up from Sector I-11 on July 5 by a joint team of city police and intelligence agencies.
According to sources, they were traced when they contacted another alleged terrorist, Fidaullah, in Adyala jail and delivered Rs100,000 and a mobile phone to him.
They and their accomplices were involved in planning suicide attacks on personnel of the special branch on March 23 and Frontier Constabulary on April 4. There was also information about a suicide attack on a lawyers’ rally.
The alleged terrorists had close links with militants of Miramshah, Batagram and Buner and were trained in operating modern weapons and making explosive devices.
They were also involved in recruiting teenagers for suicide attacks on security forces.
According to the sources, the accused have confessed to having sent over a dozen youths to militant training camps from Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Azad Kashmir.
The suspects also had links with one Shoaib of Lahore who arranged funds for terrorist activities.
Ovais, hailing from Poonch district, and Obaidullah of Attock worked for one Tipu who was affiliated with a militant group named Ghazi Force. Ovais had earlier received militant training as a member of Harkatul Mujahideen.
Deputy Inspector General of Police (Operation) Bani Amin said Ovais was an expert in electronics and communication technology and he had got a diploma in navigation from Karachi, but he drove a taxi in the twin cities.
He also worked for the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan to scan communication of security forces.
Obaidullah had a diploma in associate engineering and taught in a computer college in G-9/3.
The DIG said that police had arrested dozens of people allegedly affiliated with the Ghazi Force, Baitullah Meshud’s TTP, Buner group, Momin Khan group, Ilyas Kashmiri group and Al Qaeda.
Both the accused were handed over to Aabpara police on Monday for interrogation in connection with suicide attacks in Aapbara Market in July 2007 and at special branch headquarters on March 23 this year.
www.telegraph.co.uk They have seen the part-time employees clock out one last time and the foreign labourers' contracts not renewed. They know there is no staffing fat left to trim and have seen the axes beginning to fall in companies where previously the dark-suited salaryman has been untouchable. "It's very hard right now," says Keisuke Obata, a 42-year-old employee of a major manufacturing company based in Tokyo. "I've never seen things so bad, and all we hear from the company and the politicians is that we have to try a little harder and endure for a little longer."
Obata has been on a reduced working week since January, has seen his pay cut and his summer bonus similarly shrivel. The company is appealing for people to take voluntary redundancy. "It makes you think," he admits. "But there are not many other jobs out there and I have commitments." Men like Obata, who has given two decades of service to his company yet is on the verge of being summarily dismissed, are finding their previously unswerving commitment to their employers eclipsed by the instinct for self-preservation. With a mortgage and three young children to provide for, Obata has heard the message that has gradually spread across the shop floor and entered the domain of the white-collar workers. Communism, they say, might just have the answer. "Companies are only interested in their profits and protecting their management," says Tatsuya Yoshida, an employee of a Tokyo-based transport company. "They do not care about their staff. They see us as disposable." The last time 42-year-old Yoshida voted, he backed the New Komeito Party. The junior member of the two-party coalition with the Liberal Democratic Party, it draws its support mainly from the ranks of the Sokka Gakkai Buddhist organisation and is presently the third largest party in the Japanese Diet. According to the latest opinion polls, however, it has been overtaken by the Japanese Communist Party. And workers like Yoshida are doing all they can to spread the word. "I used to have pressure from my family to vote for New Komeito, but Japan needs real change and I've had enough of politicians making promises that they soon break," he says. Yoshida ticks his main concerns off the fingers of his left hand: protecting his job, ensuring his two sons have enough money to go to a good university, ensuring that everyone has a minimum standard of living and protecting Article 9 of Japan's constitution, which renounces war. Other parties have made those promises, and more, in opposition, he points out, but "forgotten" them as soon as they are in a position of power. "The opposition is effectively a pseudo-LDP and even if they do win the next election I see no chance of improvements in the political, economic or social situation in Japan," Yoshida says, pointing a finger at the Democratic Party of Japan until recently headed by a former LDP politician who was forced to resign for taking illegal donations from a construction company. "How can we trust these people with our futures?," he said. Public prosecutors indicted Ichiro Ozawa's personal secretary for accepting the funds, but stopped short of arresting the DPJ leader. "People are coming to us because the JCP does not accept donations from companies or organisations," says Yoshida. "That is why we can speak out against big corporations." And despite sticking to its principles on donations, the JCP is the second-best fund-raising party in the country. Only the ruling LDP does better. Rampant corruption combined with the spiralling unemployment caused by the global economic downturn has given the party a huge new support base. Party officials say that more than 14,000 people have joined the cause in the last 18 months, a quarter of whom are under 30. Similarly, circulation of the party newspaper, Akahata (Red Flag) has risen to 1.6 million copies. The LDP, on the other hand, has seen its membership collapse from a peak of 5 million to just 1 million today. "Many workers are being deprived of the right to work with dignity," Kazuo Shii, the charismatic 54-year-old chair of the JCP, told a press conference in March. "This is the cruelest form of behaviour under 'capitalism without rules.' "Most people working on temporary contracts are disposable workers, forced to endure exploitative and unstable working conditions as well as discrimination," he said, describing conditions as "a revival of slave labour and a modern-day form of cruelty." "I am indignant that temporary workers are being forced to toil in such inhumane conditions at corporations such as Toyota and Canon," he said. According to the party, the number of workers earning less than Y2 million (£13,885) a year has risen to more than 10 million. This increase in grass-roots support has been boosted by a manga version of Karl Marx's "Das Kapital," which sold more than 6,000 copies in the two days after it was released in December, and revival of interest in a 1929 novel titled "Kanikosen" that told of a rebellion among workers on a crab processing ship off northern Japan. Despite the recent surge in its fortunes, Shii and his supporters accept that the JCP will not have a majority in the Diet in the near future. They will fight the national elections, of course, but they are focusing much of their attention on winning hearts and minds at the local level. "In general, Japanese people do what they are told by more powerful people," says Yoshida. "We do not want to cause disharmony with the people around us. So we obey when we are told what to do and do not give our own opinions. This is why we have the same political parties running the country since the end of the war. "Even though the communists only have 3.3 per cent in the latest opinion polls, more than 31 per cent of the people said they were undecided," he points out. "We aim to increase our support one vote at a time and we want our politicians to tell the Diet what the people are really thinking." The approach is showing signs of working; in late April, JCP candidate Hiroshi Shikanai was elected mayor of the city of Aomori, overcoming his LDP opponent and incumbent. A key issue in the campaign was the state of the regional economy, which will undoubtedly be at stake again when the country goes to the polls in the next few months. Keisuke Obata has cancelled his plans for a trip to Hawaii with his family later this year and is instead planning to take them on a camping trip by the lakes around Mount Fuji. He said he was looking forward to some time away from the office and a little peace to contemplate his future, both professional and political.
www.telegraph.co.uk All wars have anthems for doomed youth. Afghanistan is no exception. At a memorial service yesterday, senior officers paid tribute to the eight British soldiers who died in the worst day of attrition since the Falklands. Of the three youngest, William Aldridge had a gift for friendship, Joseph Murphy was a fine artist and James Backhouse, who wanted to be a fitness instructor, could run faster than the wind. Like his two comrades, he was 18 years old. Like them, he was, according to his superiors' eulogies, prepared to kill and to be killed.
Helmand province is not the Somme, but Wilfred Owen's lament for squandered life has seemed, back in the UK, to echo down the years. "What candles may be held to speed them all?/Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes/Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes." Owen blamed the state for sacrificing the young. Now, once again, government is deemed culpable as every parent sees, in the faces of the juvenile dead, an image of his or her own child. "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?" Owen asked. Almost a century later, there is no shortage of funeral hymns. Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, says Gordon Brown has "catastrophically" under-equipped the Armed Forces. For the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg challenges the PM to show the sacrifices of lives "have not been in vain". The Army demands extra troops and more equipment. With the Taliban getting smarter and 15 British troops dead so far this month, Afghanistan is a dimestore war. In four decades, the defence budget has fallen from 6.5 per cent of GDP to 3 per cent, while Tony Blair's imperial ambitions committed troops to four major conflicts, of which Iraq was inexcusable and Afghanistan, on the current showing, unwinnable. Mr Brown's critics imply that he is trying to fight a Prada war at Lidl prices. Although he disputes this, defence spending is undeniably out of kilter with reality. The PM's likely concession on Trident – cutting back on warheads and perhaps reducing the new fleet – is a feeble compromise that will not free up significant sums for the frontline. Nor is it likely that taxes will rise to boost defence. But even if a war chest were to be found, there is little clarity about what we're fighting for: the end of brutal and repressive Taliban mandates or, as Mr Brown says, to stop terror being exported to the UK. With al-Qaeda moving sinously across the globe, the second goal looks hopeless. The real question is whether the Afghan war can ever be won by military means alone, and the answer, as David Miliband has always recognised, is No. In stirring up trouble for the Government, the generals and the Tories risk peddling a delusion. Yes, extra helicopters may save some lives (though by no means all), but the truth about Afghanistan risks being obscured by political opportunism. Even vast injections of money, hardware and manpower would not, by themselves, subdue the Taliban or procure victory. A political solution is the only guarantee of success, yet that objective is barely spoken of. In the US and the UK, next month's presidential election attracts almost no mention. Since the temporary increase in British troops is specifically to provide cover for the ballot, this silence is suspicious, if not downright sinister. The appalling regime of Hamid Karzai is western leaders' grubby little secret. Mr Karzai, who boasts of being Washington's (and thus Britain's) man, presides over the fifth most corrupt government in the world. As well as turning a blind eye to last year's alleged loss, through abuse, of two thirds of his country's annual revenue amounting to $1.6 billion, Mr Karzai has failed the vulnerable and the trusting. Naturally, Western leaders cannot impose an alternative placeman to sort out his narco-state. But, in a field of around 40 challengers, two credible candidates stand out. One, Abdullah Abdullah, is the former foreign secretary; the other, Ashraf Ghani, is the one-time finance minister and former chancellor of Kabul University. Although Dr Ghani, once tipped to become UN Secretary General, has the only coherent agenda and a well-orchestrated e-campaign, the odds are greatly against him, and other contenders, because the election commission is stacked with Mr Karzai's henchmen. Disgracefully, neither Washington nor London has publicly demanded a level playing field or complained that the election for which British soldiers are dying is effectively rigged. Meanwhile, Dr Ghani, who has no official protection, is making a swift transition from Washington technocrat to politician. His billboards in Mr Karzai's home town of Kandahar have been vandalized with acid and removed; supporters in Britain say he is putting his life at risk. Until a few days ago, it looked impossible that Dr Ghani would ever institute his 10-year framework enshrining the rule of law, good governance and co-operation with local groups and the international community. But suddenly, Washington is growing nervous. As chilly signals about Mr Karzai reach Kabul, the president is hiding in his palace, declining to appear on the campaign trail or debate on television with his rivals. Educated voters, informed by independent TV and radio, are disgusted by his pardon of drug-dealers and his ties to militia leaders. The UN and the Afghan human rights commission have logged many complaints about state interference in the election amid a dawning hope that Mr Karzai may not win outright in the first ballot. If he fails on August 20, then his network of powerful allies may collapse, leaving either of his main rivals a chance of victory. Should Mr Karzai cling to power, which is still much the likeliest outcome, then it is just conceivable that the US "surge" will be enough to broker a deal with the Taliban. More probably, corruption will continue and insurgents will gloat at the prospect of a long war whose history will be written in British blood. Our government must urgently address national security and the misfit between yesterday's under-funded defence strategy and today's myriad dangers. As Professor Paul Rogers, of Bradford University, says, the colonial era ended in 1947 with the partition of India. Mr Blair failed to notice the shift, and Mr Brown is left to pick up the pieces. The omens could hardly be grimmer. Not only are the military objectives hazy, but a campaign costing $20 billion a month has no political direction. Voters here, as in Afghanistan, deserve the truth. We are pouring blood and money into a black hole, and the flow will not be staunched unless a political solution is found. Until then, 18 year-olds with the fresh faces of your sons, or mine, will fight and fall. They do not require passing-bells, or candles; only good equipment and the guarantee that they are the brave architects of a better future. No civilised nation should ask its soldiers, young or old, to die for less.
PESHAWAR: The displaced persons, who lost their houses and family members during the conflict and military operation in Swat, are skeptical of the repatriation plan announced by the government and demand compensation for their losses.
They are critical of the government plan citing various reasons including the presence of militants in different parts of Kabal and Matta tehsils of Swat.
Some of them claim that they have personal enmity with militants in their respective areas and they cannot go back till complete elimination of militants.
‘Militants had killed three of our female family members on Feb 4 on minor issue of providing drinking water to security forces. Since then we have been living in Charssada as we have now personal enmity with those people,’ said Bukht Munir, hailing from Dagai village of Matta, a stronghold of militants.
He added that they had received information from their areas that militants had still been roaming around.
According to his account of the incident, around 15 to 20 militants had attacked their residence when they were not around and killed his mother and two sisters-in-law (wives of his two brothers). The attackers had also taken away their vehicle and made hostage two of his relatives, who were released after payment of money.
‘So far we have not been given any compensation by the federal or provincial government and we have now been living in miserable conditions,’ he said.
Mohammad Zada, another displaced person, said that they had no place to go back as their houses were destroyed during bombing by jetfighters. Mr Zada lost eight of his family members in the bombing including his wife, four children, a daughter-in-law, a grand daughter and a guest.
‘I am a poor labourer and had gone to Mardan along with my son when the incident took place on May 10 soon after the military operation was launched,’ he said, adding that the remaining members of his family had now been residing at a school in Charssada district.
Three other houses situated near his residence at Shofin village were also destroyed in which five persons were killed. One of the inmates of those houses, Ghulam Mohammad, a distant relative of Mr Zada, said that their area had yet to be cleared of militants as it was situated near Peuchar valley, the headquarters of militants.
‘When the house of Mohammad Zada was hit we rushed to retrieve bodies from the debris and in the meantime jets returned and bombed my house,’ he said. The bodies were mostly dismembered beyond recognition.
Another displaced person, who did not want to be named, said that militants had been lurking around in various areas and their leadership had still been intact. ‘How could we return to our areas when a dreaded commander Ibne Amin and his brother Ibne Aqeel have still been seen there? People are scared of them and scores of other commanders,’ he added.
A social activist from Swat, Ishaq Khan, said that people mostly demanded that the operation should be taken to its logical conclusion, which also included targeting of militant leadership. ‘People want that Maulana Fazlullah and other leaders of the militants should be apprehended and they should be interrogated to know as to who are the masterminds behind them,’ he said.
Despite all the apprehensions, he said, people wanted to go back as they did not want to live life of an IDP.
Last month, NWFP Chief Minister Ameer Haider Hoti had announced that they had approved a package for the citizens affected by sectarianism, army operation and terrorism.
He had announced that Rs300,000 would be given for each killed person, Rs200,000 for each permanently disabled person, Rs300,000 in the case of complete destruction of house to the owner and Rs50,000 for partly destructed house.
However, the mechanism for providing that compensation has yet to be adopted.
JALOZAI CAMP: Only a fraction of nearly two million Pakistanis displaced in the onslaught against the Taliban went home on the first day of an organised return Monday, with many fearful about security.
The government laid on buses and trucks to return displaced families on Monday, the first day of large-scale organised returns but only a fraction of the families earmarked for voluntary return actually left the camps.
Azam Khan, a senior official in the government’s emergency response unit said 192 families out of an estimated 2,680 left three camps on Monday.
‘We expect an increase in coming days,’ Khan told reporters at Charsadda, where 22 out of a planned 247 families left for the northwest Swat district.’
Dozens of displaced people blocked a road outside one Charsadda camp vowing not to return until they received ATM bank cards on which they can draw 25,000 rupees of financial aid to rebuild their lives.
Crops were left to rot during the two-month offensive and the local economy has been shattered by a two-year uprising to enforce sharia law in Swat.
‘Some people did not receive their ATM cash cards and they refused to go until they got this card,’ said Khan.
But those who returned to Swat spoke of their joy in returning despite the uncertainty about peace that many expressed back in the camps.
‘Everybody is so happy. They are crying tears of joy,’ Sakhawat Shah, a 25-year-old English student, told AFP by telephone after reaching Landakai.
‘My room was destroyed in the shelling. My computer and books were also damaged but I’m not worried because if I’m alive I can buy more books.’
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari told a gathering of aid organisations working for displaced people the operation to return people to their homes was a ‘huge challenge’, his spokesman Farhatullah Babar said.
‘We resolve not to abandon our brothers and sisters in this hour of trial.
We will take every possible step to help them resume normal life in their homes,’ Babar quoted the president as saying.
Pakistan launched the offensive in the northwest districts of Buner, Lower Dir and Swat after armed Islamist militants advanced to within 100 kilometres (60 miles) of Islamabad last April in defiance of a peace deal.
Pakistan says more than 1,700 militants were killed but official death tolls are impossible to confirm independently and many suspect that the Taliban simply melted away into the mountains as after past operations.
The government says it has worked hard to restore electricity and running water in main towns since the fighting but analysts warn that much needs to be done to sustain the returnees.
‘They will start living a normal life if the environment is secure and their fundamental needs are addressed. Secure environment means army, police and civil administration,’ said independent analyst Imtiaz Gul.
AFP reporters said they saw just over 200 people leaving Jalozai and the nearby camp of Charsadda but officials swept aside concerns.
‘Twenty-four buses reached Swat. These are full of displaced people,’Bashir Ahmad Bilour, a senior provincial cabinet minister, told reporters.
‘We hope the situation will improve in the coming days and that people will come back with the passage of time,’ he said.
But Shamsher Ali, a 55-year-old shopkeeper, also said he was worried after previous military operations failed to crush the Taliban.
‘The army promised us twice before that they cleared the area but then Taliban came again and again to Swat. Perhaps this time the Taliban will come again to Swat,’ he said.
PESHAWAR : NWFP Senior Minister, Bashir Ahmad Bilour Monday said that government has reserved an amount of Rs. 24 billion for rehabilitation of operation hit Malakand division. Talking to newsmen at Charsadda after seeing off repatriating IDPs to their homeland, Bashir Bilour said the amount of Rs. 24 billion would be provided by the center to provincial government in four installments. Bashir Bilour said after completion of return of IDPs, government would start work on rehabilitation of Malakand division. The Malakand division would be made as a model division in the province, Bilour added. He said in order to ensure lasting peace in the area, government would double the number of Police force. Similarly, he added, Frontier Corps and Frontier Constabulary would be strengthened in the region. Bashir Bilour said the number of tehsils would be increased to seven from the existing two. Similarly, the number of police stations would also be enhanced. The government, he added, would appoint 2500 retired armed personnel to form a special security force in the area. Similarly, 7000 persons would be recruited from communities under the Community Policing Programme for Malakand division. In response to a question about setting up of Army Cantonement in Swat, Bilour said land is being searched for this purpose. He said presence of Army in Malakand division is necessary unless lasting peace is ensured and the region is purged from militants.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama announced Monday his choice for surgeon general -- Dr. Regina Benjamin, a 52-year-old family practice doctor who has spent most of her career tending to the needs of poor patients in a Gulf Coast clinic in Alabama.
"When people couldn't pay, she didn't charge them," Obama said. "When the clinic wasn't making money, she didn't take a salary for herself."
He called Benjamin "a relentless promoter" of programs to fight preventable illness.
Benjamin cited the toll of preventable illness as the reason her family was not with her at the announcement: Her father died with diabetes and high blood pressure; her older brother and only sibling died at age 44 of an HIV-related illness; her mother died of lung cancer after taking up smoking as a girl; her mother's twin brother could not attend because he is at home "struggling for each breath" after a lifetime of smoking.
"I cannot change my family's past, but I can be a voice to improve our nation's health for the future," she said. Benjamin received a bachelor's degree in 1979 from Xavier University of Louisiana, attended Morehouse School of Medicine from 1980 to 1982, and received a doctor of medicine degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1984.
She completed her residency in family practice at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in 1987.
Her medical training was paid for by a federal program, the National Health Service Corps, under which medical students promise to work in areas with few doctors in exchange for free tuition, one year of service for every year of paid tuition.
Benjamin founded the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in 1990 in the fishing village of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, and has served as its CEO since.
Like many of her patients, the clinic has suffered its own life-threatening challenges. It was heavily damaged by Hurricane Georges in 1998 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It also burned to the ground several years ago. But Benjamin rebuilt it after each setback and has continued to offer medical care to the village's 2,500 residents.
Her commitment to them has meant making house calls during the rebuilding, mortgaging her house and maxing out her credit cards, Obama said.
"Regina Benjamin has refused to give up; her patients have refused to give up," he said.
Many of her family practice patients are immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos who make up a third of Bayou La Batre's population, and many of them are uninsured.
Benjamin's expertise goes beyond medicine; she earned a master's in business administration in 1991 from Tulane University. But her focus has not been on making money for herself, she said.
"My priority has always been the needs of my patients," she said. "I decided to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay."
Benjamin said she has worked for years to scrape together the resources needed to keep the clinic doors open and found "it has not been an easy road. ... It should not be this hard for doctors and other health care providers to care for their patients."
She praised Obama "for putting health care reform at the top of your domestic agenda," and said she hopes, if confirmed by the Senate, "to be America's doctor, America's family physician."
"As we work toward a solution to this health care crisis, I promise to communicate directly to the American people, to help guide them through whatever changes come with health care reform. I want to make sure that no one falls through the cracks," she said.
A call to the clinic, where Benjamin was working last week, found it in full swing. "We are just packed in with patients right now, and I'm the only one at the front office," said a breathless woman who then hung up.
Benjamin has served as the associate dean for rural health at the University of South Alabama's College of Medicine and as president of the State of Alabama Medical Association, from 2002-2003.
She was the first African-American woman board member of the American Medical Association, and she just served a term as chairwoman of the group's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs.
The position of surgeon general, whose effectiveness is largely in its use as a bully pulpit, requires Senate confirmation.
Sonia Sotomayor, the first nominee to the Supreme Court by a Democratic president in 15 years, told the Senate Judiciary Committee today, on the opening day of her confirmation hearing, that her judicial philosophy can be distilled to just a few words: "fidelity to the law."
As a federal trial judge and appellate judge during the past 17 years, Sotomayor said, she has sought to "strengthen both the rule of law and faith in the impartiality of our justice system."
Her statement came at the end of the first day of her confirmation hearing, a day filled with opening statements from each senator on the committee, in which they strived to define Sotomayor. Democrats set about portraying her as a seasoned jurist with a "modest" and restrained approach, while Republicans sought to cast doubt on her impartiality, saying her statements and rulings have been unduly influenced by her own background.
Despite the drama and ceremony that accompany any Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) quickly put the proceedings in context in his opening statement: "Unless you have a complete meltdown," he told the nominee, "you are going to get confirmed."
Today was the first time that Sotomayor, 55, who rose from projects of the South Bronx to a member of U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, has spoken publicly since President Obama selected her May 26, the first Latina nominated to serve on the nation's highest court.
Sotomayor, speaking firmly in a voice tinged with her native Bronx, recounted for the senators her now-familiar biography, the child of poor parents who moved from Puerto Rico. "The progression of my life has been uniquely American," she said.
"Over the past three decades, I have seen our judicial system from a number of different perspectives -- as a big-city prosecutor, a corporate litigator, a trial judge and an appellate judge," Sotomayor said.
She said that she decided more than 450 cases as a federal district court, before her elevation to the appellate court -- a position, she said, in which she has decided "a wide range of constitutional, statutory, and other legal questions."
"Throughout my 17 years on the bench, I have witnessed the human consequences of my decisions," she said. "Those decisions have been made not to serve the interests of any one litigant, but always to serve the larger interest of impartial justice. . . . In each case I have heard, I have applied the law to the facts at hand. My personal and professional experience help me listen and understand, with the law always commanding the result in every case."
Senators will not begin their questioning of Sotomayor, which will form the bulk of the hearing, until Tuesday morning.
For now, Republicans tried to make the first Supreme Court hearing of the Obama administration as much a referendum on the president as on the nominee, 55. Republicans also sought to cut into the political mileage Democrats have accrued through Obama's nominating the first Hispanic to the nation's highest court, with some citing Miguel Estrada, a Hispanic lawyer whose appeals-court nomination by President George W. Bush was blocked by Democrats in 2002 and 2003.
Republicans also emphasized a speech Sotomayor gave at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001, widely cited by her detractors in the weeks since her nomination. In it, she said that she hoped that a "wise Latina" judge might make better decisions than a white man. The committee's ranking Republican, Jeff Sessions (Ala.), said that her remarks in that speech were not an anomaly, saying that Sotomayor had said similar things in public "at least five times over the course of a decade."
And Sessions was one of several Republicans who criticized Sotomayor's role in a case, Ricci v. DeStefano, in which the Supreme Court late last month overturned a decision by three 2nd Circuit judges. The high court ruled that white firefighters had been discriminated against when the city of New Haven, Conn., withdrew a promotional test in which minority candidates scored worse than whites.
"I will not vote for, and no senator should vote for, anyone who will not render justice impartially," Sessions said. "Call it empathy, call it prejudice or call it sympathy, but whatever it is, it's not law," he said. "In truth, it's more akin to politics, and politics has no place in the courtroom."
Democrats countered that Sotomayor's years on the federal bench, first as a U.S. district judge before joining the appellate court in 1998, have been characterized by what Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) her home-state senator, called "judicial modesty."
Schumer said: "Judge Sotomayor puts rule of law above everything else. Given her extensive and even-handed record, I'm not sure how any member of this panel can sit here today and seriously suggest that she comes to the bench with a personal agenda."
Schumer noted that she had dissented from her colleagues on the court less frequently than Samuel A. Alito Jr. had during his years as an appellate judge before he was nominated by Bush and became the last justice confirmed to the Supreme Court, 4 1/2 years ago. That record, the senator said, "shows that she is in the mainstream. She's agreed with Republican colleagues 95 percent of the time. She has ruled for the government in 83 percent of immigration cases against the immigration plaintiff. She has ruled for the government in 92 percent of criminal cases. She has denied race claims in 83 percent of the cases and has split evenly on employment cases between employer and employee."
In a similar vein, Schumer and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) both predicted that she would prove less ideological on the Supreme Court than Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who had said at his own confirmation hearing in 2005 that a judge's role was to be merely an umpire. Durbin said, "It's hard to see home plate from right field," and added that Roberts's action on the court have been a "triumph of ideology over common sense."
Five minutes before the hearing began this morning, Sotomayor wore a broad smile and a royal blue jacket and black skirt as she walked into the packed hearing room of the Hart Senate Office Building, accompanied by the committee's chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.).
In leading off the hearing, Leahy portrayed Sotomayor as a nominee with an uncommonly extensive judicial résumé. "She is the first nominee in well over a century to be nominated to three different federal judgeships by three different presidents," Leahy said.
And he compared Sotomayor to Thurgood Marshall, the court's first African American justice, and Sandra Day O'Connor, its first female member.
Conservatives and some Republicans, Leahy said, have attempted to "twist her words and her record. . . . Ideological pressure groups have attacked her before the president had even made his selection," Leahy said. "They then stepped up their attacks by threatening Republican senators who do not oppose her.
"In truth," he said, "we do not have to speculate about what kind of a justice she will be because we have seen the kind of judge she has been. She is a judge in which all Americans can have confidence."
Democrats are betting that an overly zealous assault on Sotomayor by Republican senators could anger Latinos and accelerate the shift of Hispanic voters away from the party, particularly in the South and West. Conservatives are hoping to use the Sotomayor hearings as a way to motivate their base if they can successfully portray her as an activist judge whose "empathy" for certain groups guides her rulings more than court precedent or the written law.
Before today, Republican senators had given mixed signals on how hard they plan to press Sotomayor, with supporters saying harsh questioning would be politically risky. But pressure from the conservative base mounted this morning. Jay Sekulow, the influential head of the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, issued a statement saying that the Senate "must fulfill its constitutional role in providing advice and consent and that means asking the tough, in-depth questions about Judge Sotomayor's view of the Constitution and her judicial philosophy."
Sessions was careful not to strike too barbed a tone in his opening statement, saying that the hearing would be "respectful" and would consisted of "a thoughtful dialogue and maybe some disagreements."
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who leads the GOP's campaign arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, cited three speeches Sotomayor has given in recent years in which, he said, she advocated in favor of judges changing the law, even a "radical change," and advanced the idea of foreign courts as basis for domestic rulings.
"We thank you for your candor in these speeches," Cornyn told the nominee. "Not every judicial nominee is so open about their judicial philosophy. Yet many Americans wonder what these various statements mean -- and what you're trying to get at with these remarks. And many more wonder whether you are the kind of judge who will uphold the written Constitution -- or the kind of judge who will veer us even further off course -- and towards new rights invented by judges rather than ratified by the people."
Republicans repeatedly jabbed at Obama. At one point, Graham recalled the president's role in Supreme Court confirmations of the recent past, when he was in the Senate. "When he was here," Graham said of the president, "he set in motion a standard, I thought, that was more about seeking the presidency than being fair to the nominee.
"When he said, 'The critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart,' translated, that means, "I'm not going to vote against my base, because I'm running for president.' " Graham said.
The hearing had barely begun before it was interrupted by a brief protest. As Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was giving her opening remarks, an abortion protester in the back of the room punctuated the somber quiet by screaming out, "Senator, what about the unborn?" A few seconds later, just before he was promptly hauled out of the room by a security guard, he referred to "unborn Latinos."
According to Sgt. Kimberly Schneider of the U.S. Capitol Police, 48-year-old Robert M. James was charged with disruption of Congress. James, of Centreville, said later that he was trying to remind GOP senators "of their principles," adding, "This is one of these rare moments when attention is focused in a singular way." Standing outside the Hart building alongside noted antiabortion opponent Randall Terry, James said, "the unborn have no one to speak for them. This is our opportunity -- that someone who can speak for them will stand up and defend them."
Almost two hours later, another abortion protester interrupted the opening statement of Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). Andrew R. Beacham, 27, of Indiana, was also charged with disruption of Congress. And in the afternoon, two others tried to disrupt the proceedings as they were leaving the hearing room.
Leahy sharply rebuked the gallery after each outburst, saying at one point, "Judge Sotomayor deserves respect, to be heard. These Senators deserve the respect of being heard."
Sotomayor's handlers said there would be "watch parties" in more than 30 states, with supporters gathering to hear from the woman they hope will replace retiring Justice David H. Souter. In Washington, the Hispanic Bar Association planned to gather at a law office to watch Sotomayor's opening statement.
Yesterday, sources predicted that a surprise could come late today, if several Republican senators announce their support for Sotomayor's nomination. That would effectively seal her appointment to the court and make the only question how many votes she will receive.
Among those who some court watchers say could make an early announcement are Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, the only Latino Republican in the chamber, and Sens. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine.
Meanwhile, both political parties have released a list of witnesses who will appear before the Judiciary Committee later in the week. The Republican witnesses will include a former president of the National Rifle Association, a firefighter from New Haven, Conn., and an antiabortion activist, reinforcing the themes that GOP senators hope to cement as the hearings close by the end of the week. Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, wrote recently in the Washington Times that "Justice Sotomayor's lack of reflection combined with her record of abortion activism shows that, with her on the court, the unborn would be at greater risk than ever before."
The Democratic list includes David Cone, a former Major League Baseball pitcher who watched as Sotomayor helped resolve baseball's strike; Michael R. Bloomberg (I), the mayor of New York; and Michael J. Garcia, a former U.S. attorney appointed by President George W. Bush.
Obama called Sotomayor yesterday after he returned from a three-nation overseas trip, the White House announced. Press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement that Obama "complimented the Judge for making courtesy calls to 89 Senators in which she discussed her adherence to the rule of law throughout her 17 years on the federal bench" and "expressed his confidence that Judge Sotomayor would be confirmed to serve as a Justice on the Supreme Court for many years to come."
Sotomayor is expected to meet for a short time with senators in a closed-door luncheon, most likely on Thursday. The meeting is standard procedure for Supreme Court nominees.
But otherwise, the judge will be before the cameras the entire time.
