Obama proposes $ 2.2 bn aid to Pakistan

 

Unveiling its annual budget of $3.8 trillion that calls for tax hikes on the rich, the Obama administration on Monday proposed $2.4 billion in financial aid to Pakistan for the fiscal year 2013.

 

Of this, $2.2 billion is in assistance to strengthen democratic and civil institutions that provide a bulwark against extremism and support joint security and counter-terrorism efforts, including $800 million for the Pakistan Counter-insurgency Capability Fund, the State Department said soon after the White House sent the budgetary proposals to the Congress.

 

In addition to this, the budget also proposes $197 million support to the US government s civilian presence, as well as programs for engagement with civil society, it said.

< --if gte mso 9>< --if gte mso 10>

 

In all, the budgetary proposals of President Barack Obama provides $8.2 billion for Overseas Contingency Operations to support the extraordinary and temporary costs of civilian-led programs and missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

 

Obama s budgetary proposals also include $4.6 billion for Afghanistan. This includes $2.5 billion in assistance for counterterrorism-related programs.

 

Oscar organizers honor film science, technology

LOS ANGELES: Hosting Oscar organizers’ Scientific and Technical Awards on Saturday night, actress Milla Jovovich, a veteran of effects-driven movies like the “Resident Evil” franchise, confessed she knew little about what actually goes on behind the cameras.  

“I’m not an expert in technology. However I will say that as an actor, I certainly benefited from the many innovations you bring to filmmaking,” she told a packed ballroom of technical wizards being honored by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills.  

The annual awards event is typically overshadowed by the Academy Awards, or Oscars, which will be given out on February 26 for the best film, performances, directing, writing and other film work of the year.  

Saturday’s scientific and technical awards were reserved for honorees including Douglas Trumbull, recipient of the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for work that has “brought credit to the industry.”  

Trumbull has been at the forefront of visual effects for decades, working on classics like “2001:  A Space Odyssey,” “Blade Runner” and more recently, “The Tree of Life,” a contender in this year’s best film race.  

He spoke to the audience about rapidly changing technology in cinema and challenges facing the industry as attendance dips.  

“I think we can make movies that make people say, ‘I’m going to go out to a movie tonight because it’s so cool, it’s so big, it’s so grand and it’s so spectacular and there’s so much showmanship,” said Trumbull. “I think we can bring movies to new heights.”  

Other scientific and technical winners included the late John D. Lowry, inventor of the Lowry technique that is used to enhance image quality. Lowry died in his sleep only three weeks ago on January 21. Upon accepting the honor in his absence, his widow kissed the plaque then held it to the heavens.  

Honorees also included achievements in lens development, high-speed digital camera systems, camera stabilization rigs and high-resolution stock used in archival preservation.  

Visual effects guru Jonathan Erland was awarded the John A. Bonner Medal for a lifetime of dedication to the academy. With a career spanning over 50 years, Erland joined legendary effects house Industrial Light & Magic in the 1970s and worked on such classics as “Star Wars.”  

The academy’s science and technical awards chairman, Erland holds a patent for the Blue-Max flux projector, a traveling matte process, and was instrumental in establishing visual effects as a separate branch of the Academy.  

“The real task before us is to manage the present so that motion pictures stay relevant to the academy’s mission and the ideals we espouse,” declared Erland. “When all motion pictures are excellent, then, perhaps, we can talk about a new vision for this body. AGENCIES

DPC to protest outside parliament on Feb 20

Defence of Pakistan Council, in its Karachi rally on Sunday, passed resolutions of immediate recovery of missing persons, ending target killing in Karachi, instantaneous arrest of criminals involved in target killings and decrease in petrol prices.

 

The Council also announced to hold a protest rally outside parliament in Islamabad on February 20 against government policies.

 

Addressing the Defence of Pakistan Conference in Karachi, Jamaat ud Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed said that NATO forces have been violating our integrity in the name of so-called war on terror.

 

Capitalistic system is fading away from the world panorama replaced by the Islamic system, Saeed said.  

 

He said that the US wanted to establish the supremacy of India in the region but it would not be tolerable for Pakistan at any cost, adding that any endeavour done at any stage or any sense would be foiled.

 

He appealed that rulers should stop unconditional favour of the US that has crushed the Muslim World under the guise of war on terror.

 

Throwing light on current situation of Balochistan, he said that the US wanted to ignite chaotic conditions in war-torn province for her vested interests.

 

Actually, the US has nothing to do with the progress and prosperity of the Balochis; rather its first and foremost ‘mission’ to disintegrate the province endowed with natural resources, he added.

 

Hafiz Saeed said that the US wants to intrude in Balochistan after its failure in Afghanistan and India is using Kashmir as a puppet to watch its interests in the region.

 

All kinds of resources would be utilised to halt NATO supply, he emphasised.

 

Jamaat Islami chief Syed Munawar Hassan said that the Pakistan Defence Council has been formed to secure the integrity and sovereignty of motherland.

 

At the end of the conference, religious scholars passed a 10-points resolution, emphasising that the rulers should take the resolution seriously; otherwise, revolutionary steps would be taken for security and survival of the motherland.
 

Karachi Ching-Chis rev up in protest

 

The drivers said that police were tormenting them under the garb of enforcing routes. The police on the other hand say that they are forcing routes as a number of motorcycle rickshaws were violating route restrictions. Police also say they received complaints to this effect from the Karachi Transport Ittehad.

 

Police have imposed heavy fines of rickshaw drivers found violating the routes. The rickshaw drivers took out a rally from Purani Numaish MA Jinnah Road.

 

All Karachi Motorcycle Rickshaw Welfare association leader Syed Safdar Shah Qadri said police have arrested many drivers in the name of crackdown. He also said police were trying to block their rally by saying there was VIP movement on MA Jinnah Ropad, but rickshaw drivers are determined to reach Tibet Centre.
 

Protests erupt in Kashmir as youth slain by Indian army

 

The brazen army officials described it as an “accidental” shooting in a shameless statement.

 

Ashiq Hussain Rather, 22, was killed late Friday when a soldier accidentally fired his rifle as security forces combed the area for militants, the army said.

 

The killing occurred in the Baramulla district of the scenic Kashmir valley.

 

“It was a case of the accidental discharge of a single bullet by a soldier which led to the unfortunate incident,” Lieutenant General S.A. Hasnain said.

 

The statement was a true reflection of the mindset dominant in the Indian army towards unarmed Kashmiris. However, a single bullet is what it takes to claim someone’s life.

 

“The deceased was innocent. Inquiries have been ordered,” the Indian official said.

 

Police used baton charges and teargas to disperse the protesters who were blocking traffic along the main Kupwara-Baramulla highway in Indian Kashmir, according to reports.–AFP

 

Sovereignty hinges on economic autonomy: MQM

Four industrialists Feroze Alam Laari, Saeed Usman Ali, Muhammad Rehan Zeeshan and Sadiq Muhammad have announced joining MQM at a press conference at Muthidda Qaumi Movement Headquarters, Nine Zero, in Karachi.

 

MQM deputy convener Dr Farooq Sattar and other officials were also present at the press conference.

 

The industrialists said that only MQM chief Altaf Hussain can take the country out of the current political and economic crisis and they have become the part of MQM to join hands with Altaf Hussain.

 

Dr Farooq Sattar said that industry and trade are the key sectors of any country and national sovereignty depends on economic independence.

 

Sattar said that the days have gone when politics overwhelmed the economy.

 

More and more people are joining the MQM in order to strengthen and support the economic programmes of Altaf Hussain, he said.
 

U-19 squash player robbed of Paris event chance

Robbers snatched passport and other valuables from the junior squash player, Saad Shahid, leaving him unable to travel for Squash U-19 Tournament in Paris.

 

Street-criminals, who held Shahid at gunpoint, fled away with his valuables, which included a mobile phone, Rs20000 cash, ATM card, passport, and important documents.

 

Shahid, while talking to News Trends, appealed to the looters to return his passport for he was set to leave for an international event in three days, which he wouldn’t be able to attend as a new passport would take at least ten days to come.
 

After film on Bosnia war, Actress Jolie plans film on Afghanistan

BERLIN: Angelina Jolie says it was only natural that her directorial debut should tackle some of the toughest issues facing humanity and after wartime Bosnia, Afghanistan is likely to be her next subject.

At the Berlin film festival to present her unflinching drama about rape as a weapon of war, “In the Land of Blood and Honey”, the Hollywood icon-cum-humanitarian told AFP her turn behind the camera was aimed at using cinema as a force for reconciliation.

“I’ve written a lot of journals while travelling over 10 years in the conflicts around the world and being frustrated by the lack of intervention,” said the 36-year-old Oscar-winning actress.

“So I went to the region and started to really look at the Bosnian war, but I couldn’t really understand or figure it out, and I felt this is my generation this happened to so I should know this. So I gave myself some education.”

Jolie, who backs a range of causes as a UN goodwill ambassador, said her research inspired her to start writing a screenplay and her partner Brad Pitt encouraged her to show a rough draft to people from all sides of the brutal 1992-1995 war.

But when it came to making the film, she realised she was the only one with both the objective distance and passionate commitment to do the job.

“And this is how I found myself being a director!” she said.

“I knew that there might have been people who were technically more capable than me, but I knew I really, really cared from the bottom of my heart so therefore I felt I should do it.”

She filmed versions of the movie in local languages and English in parallel.

It tells the story of a young Muslim woman and the policeman son of a Bosnian Serb general who had a fling before the conflict broke out.

When they meet again, she has been taken prisoner by a unit of the Bosnian Serb army commanded by her former lover.

As the women around her are gang raped, the officer offers her protection, telling the other soldiers she is his “property”. But the upheaval of the relentless war means he is only able to shield her for so long.

Jolie said the most difficult part of filming was asking her actors, almost all of whom come from the former Yugoslavia and had their own bitter memories of the war, to simulate the savagery that tore their country apart.

“It was very hard for everybody, for the actors, the men who had to be the aggressors,” said Jolie, who is in the German capital with Pitt and their six children.

“They were fathers, husbands and very sweet men and they didn’t want to do that. But they knew also they had to do it on behalf of the women just to show the brutality they suffered.”

She said the hardest scene to shoot was one in which elderly women were ordered to undress at gunpoint while soldiers look on and laugh – an experience recounted to her by a prison camp survivor.

“This is one that you just never want to ask anybody to do and you are asking real older women to do this,” she said.

“The whole crew was very uncomfortable but the women were so sweet and so professional. I came to them several times asking, ‘Are you really OK, are you sure?’”

She said she hoped Serbs would see the film with open minds when it is screened in wide release this month.

“I went to Auschwitz recently and so many names are Serb names all along the walls because they fought against the Nazis .. and later they were to be the aggressors,” she said.

“I think it’s important to study (genocides) and to understand them so we will really understand how to stop them.”

Bosnia’s war between its Croat, Muslim and Serb communities claimed some 100,000 lives. Tens of thousands of people were held in prison camps, where torture and abuse were commonplace. Some 20,000 women were raped, according to the government’s estimates.

Asked what’s next, Jolie said she would keep her focus on the world’s trouble spots.

“I have been working on something that deals with Afghanistan but I haven’t shown it yet to anybody,” she said. AGENCIES

Two Lahore fires cause loss worth millions of rupees

TrendPK.com
LAHORE: Goods worth millions of rupees were gutted in two incidents of fire during the last 24 hours in the city. Also, four people sustained burns injuries in the two incidents.

A blaze incident occurred in a plaza housing shops of electronics products located at Hall Road, where goods worth millions of rupees were torched by the sudden fire after engulfing two shops.

The relief teams contained the fire on time.

Another fire, caused by short circuit, broke out in a business center located on Gulberg’s main thoroughfare. Fire has been brought under control; but, at least two floors of the plaza are completely burned down with goods of millions of rupees gutted.

According to traders, the commercial center was furnished with considerable firefighting system; but, the fast-paced blaze stormed the plaza in no time. TrendPK

Please click ‘Video’ button to watch this news.

Iran slams US, Israel on revolution anniversary

TEHRAN: Iranians, some holding placards declaring “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”, on Saturday marked the anniversary of their country’s 1979 Islamic revolution with mass marches and a speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
  
Tens of thousands of demonstrators congregated in cities across Iran under winter skies, state television showed.
  
The main rallying point was in Tehran, where Ahmadinejad was to address a crowd of around 30,000 in Azadi (Freedom) Square from a stage in front of which a full-scale model of a captured US spy drone was erected.
  
In an unusual break with tradition — and a pointed swipe at Israel — the Hamas prime minister of Gaza, Ismail Haniya, was to give a speech from the podium at Ahmadinejad’s side, in which he vowed that the Islamist movement would never recognise the Jewish state.
  
“They want us to recognise the Israeli occupation and cease resistance but, as the representative of the Palestinan people and in the name of all the world’s freedom seekers, I am announcing from Azadi Square in Tehran that we will never recognise Israel,” Haniya told the crowd.
  
“The resistance will continue until all Palestinian land, including Al-Quds (Jerusalem), has been liberated and all the refugees have returned,” he said.
  
His reassertion of the longstanding Hamas position is likely to complicate Palestinian efforts to form a unity government in the teeth of opposition from the Jewish state, which blacklists the Islamist group as a terrorist organisation.
  
The model drone and Haniya were clear signs of defiance by Iran’s regime as it confronts US-led Western economic sanctions and Israeli threats of military action against its controversial nuclear programme.
  
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials have said they would not abandon their rights to the nuclear activities, which they maintain are exclusively non-military in nature.
  
The United States and Israel, however, see the nuclear programme as including research to build an atomic bomb that can fit into Iran’s ballistic missiles — a contention given some backing by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, three months ago.
  
The United States and the European Union have ratcheted up economic sanctions on Iran to an unprecedented level to try to force it to halt uranium enrichment and re-engage in long-stalled talks.
  
Iran has instead defiantly stepped up its enrichment activities, notably in a fortified mountain bunker near the shrine city of Qom designed to be bomb-proof.
  
Israel’s government, voicing concerns that Iran could shield its nuclear programme from attack by the end of this year, has fuelled speculation of imminent air strikes against its long-time foe.
  
Iran’s anniversary commemorations mark the day 33 years ago that a revolution led by clerics, students and dissidents overthrew the US-backed shah and installed an Islamic theocracy.
  
The United States cut off all diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980, after Islamic students stormed the US embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and took 52 Americans inside hostage in a crisis that lasted 444 days.
  
Demonstrators on Saturday marched towards rally points, many holding Iranian flags, pictures of Khamenei and his predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, or the placards saying “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.
  
The US drone replica on display in Tehran was that of an unmanned stealth aircraft, a bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, which Iranian officials said they brought down by hacking its flight controls as it overflew their territory in December on a surveillance mission. AGENCIES

Next Page »