Egypt ruling party heads to sweeping win in vote

CAIRO: Egypt’s ruling party won 209 seats of the 508 that were up for grabs in the first round of a parliamentary election while opposition parties took just five seats, an Egyptian newspaper reported on Wednesday.

State-owned al-Akhbar cited results announced by the High Election Commission, confirming that President Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP) was cruising to a sweeping victory as expected.

The opposition Muslim Brotherhood, which had controlled a fifth of seats in the previous lower house, earlier said none of its candidates had won seats outright in the first round.

Human rights groups and the opposition accused the authorities of ballot-stuffing, bullying and other fraudulent tactics in Sunday’s first round. The government has said the election was fair.

The election commission said it had annulled the counts from more than

Almost quarter of votes in Afghan election invalid: IEC

KABUL: Almost a quarter of the 5.6 million votes cast in Afghanistan’s parliamentary election last month were invalid, election commission officials said while releasing provisional results on Wednesday.

Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) said it had ruled 1.3 million votes invalid, and that ballots collected from 2,543 of the 17,744 polling stations which opened for the Sept. 18 vote had been disqualified.

The election went ahead despite a threat by the Taliban to disrupt the poll. Western nations have been wary of describing the election as a success after after a fraud-marred presidential election last year.

The credibility of the latest vote, for 249 seats in the lower house of the Afghan parliament, will weigh heavily on U.S. President Barack Obama’s review of Washington’s Afghanistan war strategy in December.

More than 4,000

Al-Qaeda threatens attacks on the Royal family

Al-Qaeda militants threatened to launch fresh attacks on Saudi royal family members in a video message posted on the Internet on Tuesday commemorating a 2009 bombing targeting the interior minister.
We say to the tyrants that we can get you in your offices, we can get you in your bedrooms, said Qassem al-Rimi, a commander of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. I advise you to check before going to bed that there’s no suicide bomber or bomb in the room, Rimi added. An Al-Qaeda suicide bomber attacked Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism chief, Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, on August 27 last year as he was receiving members of the public. Al-Qaeda said it had also narrowly missed Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz in another attack last year as he flew into the Yemeni capital Sanaa on a visit. The group said it had attempted to target the visiting Saudi delegation with a surface-to-air missile and had also planned to shell the welcoming ceremony at the airport.

Video shows Taliban stoning woman

A Dubai-based television station which released the footage said the stoning was carried out in northwest Pakistan, apparently by Taliban militants, incensed because she was seen out with a man.
Turbaned men in Pakistan gather around a woman with a black hood over her head, pick up large rocks and repeatedly throw them at her until she lies motionless, a video purports.
Al Aan TV, which focuses on womens issues in the Arab world, said it got the tape from its sources and that it took place in Orakzai agency. It said it had other footage of a man who was executed by shooting, possibly the one the woman was seen with.

Video shows Taliban stoning woman

A Dubai-based television station which released the footage said the stoning was carried out in northwest Pakistan, apparently by Taliban militants, incensed because she was seen out with a man.
Turbaned men in Pakistan gather around a woman with a black hood over her head, pick up large rocks and repeatedly throw them at her until she lies motionless, a video purports.
Al Aan TV, which focuses on womens issues in the Arab world, said it got the tape from its sources and that it took place in Orakzai agency. It said it had other footage of a man who was executed by shooting, possibly the one the woman was seen with.

British police quiz Pakistan bowlers in probe

LONDON: British police questioned Pakistan bowlers Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif on Friday as cricket’s governing body insisted the case was not the tip of a corruption iceberg in the game.

Aamer and Asif arrived for questioning at a police station near the “home of cricket”, Lord’s in north London, and detectives are also expected to quiz Test captain Salman Butt on Friday.

Meanwhile the International Cricket Council said it had acted as soon as it could to charge the trio with “various offences” under its anti-corruption code and to suspend them pending a decision on those charges.

“The conclusion that we have come to is that there is a really arguable case to answer,” Ronnie Flanagan, chairman of the ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, told a press conference at the Lord’s ground.

The former Northern Ireland police chief said the players

Pakistan Taliban threaten attacks in US, Europe

DERA ISLAMIL KHAN: Pakistan’s Taliban on Friday threatened to launch attacks in the United States and Europe “very soon” and dismissed a move by Washington to add the group to its terrorism blacklist.

The United States on Wednesday said it had added Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, to its list of foreign terrorist organisations.

“The U.S. listing of TTP as a terrorist organisation is a sign of them bring scared. It shows the U.S. and its allies are scared of us,” Qari Hussain Mehsud, a senior TTP leader, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location. AGENCIES

Suicide bomber kills at least one in Tajikistan

DUSHANBE: A suicide bomber blew himself up at a police station in northern Tajikistan on Friday, killing at least one person and wounding 20, a police source said.

“There were people in the buiding and it’s now burning,” the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

He said the death toll was likely to rise but that it was not immediately clear if the dead included the suicide bomber.

The attack occurred in Khujand, about 340 km (211 miles) north of the capital Dushanbe and near the border with Uzbekistan.

Governments in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia are clamping down on what they see as growing radicalism in the predominantly Muslim, though secular, region after a rise in clashes between security forces and armed groups

Tajikistan, which has a porous 1,340-km (832 miles) border with Afghanistan, has jailed 115

Stalled funding hits Pakistan aid effort: UN

THATTA: Relief efforts in flood-ravaged Pakistan are being stretched by the ‘unprecedented scale’ of the disaster, with the flow of international aid almost at a standstill, the UN said Thursday.

Thousands remained trapped by floodwaters in the hardest-hit southern province of Sindh, while others complained of going without food or water for days and some were being forced to live in the rubble of their ruined homes.

Although the initially slow pace of aid had improved since a visit by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in mid-August, the UN said it had “almost stalled” since the beginning of last week, rising from 274 million dollars to 291 million dollars — about two thirds of aid needs.

The deluge has engulfed an area the size of England, affecting more than 18 million people, including eight million who are dependent on aid handouts to

Iran Launches New Ground-to-ground Missile

In the latest demonstration of Iran’s military capacities state TV broadcast the test-launch of a new ground-to-ground missile, the Qiyam (Resurrection)-1 on Friday.
Iran did not disclose the range of the missile, but Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said it had a range of new technical characteristics with high tactical capability.
This is a surface to surface missile. It does not have small directional wings, which give it tactical superiority. It has it’s own tracking and targeting, and can avoid being targeted by counter-missile systems, Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said.
Iran would stop higher-grade enrichment if it is assured of nuclear fuel supplies for a research reactor, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying in a Japanese newspaper on Friday.
Published on the eve of the inauguration of Iran’s first nuclear power plant, Ahmadinejad’s comments appeared to signal possible willingness to compromise on a key concern for the West regarding the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme.

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