World News joined 6

[Black Widow]

all i can say is..


DAMN!.

[JohnCenaFan28]

That's terrible news...

[hbkizbest]

PURCELL, Okla. — Toby Keith, his mother and his siblings have been awarded $2.8 million in damages in the 2001 collision that killed the country music star's father.

A jury returned the verdict against Elias Rodriguez and Pedro Rodriguez, operators of Rodriguez Transportes of Tulsa, and the Republic Western Insurance Co.

According to evidence presented at trial, a charter bus owned by the Rodriguezes was "in urgent need" of brake repairs before H.K. Covel was killed in the March 2001 accident on Interstate 35, said attorney Greg Dixon, who represented Keith's family. The Rodriguezes had been advised of the brake problem before Covel's truck crossed the center median and struck the bus, he said.

The family initially suspected Covel suffered a medical condition that caused the truck to veer out of control. It later learned another vehicle had bumped the truck and filed a wrongful death lawsuit to clear Covel's name, Dixon said.

The verdict was returned last week. "The jury found no fault on the part of Mr. Covel in the wreck that claimed his life," Dixon said.

The plaintiffs, wife Carolyn Covel, daughter Tonni Covel and sons Toby Keith Covel and Tracey Covel, alleged that H.K. Covel would not have died if the bus had been equipped with properly working air brakes.

source: foxnews

[hbkizbest]

J.K. Rowling has made a tearful return to the flat where Harry Potter came to life.

The author was a struggling single mother on benefits when she began writing her first book, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." (In the U.S., the book was titled "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.")

She has now gone back to the flat in Edinburgh, where she lived during that time and where she dreamed up the story of the schoolboy wizard.

It is only a few miles from her current home in Leith, Edinburgh, yet this was the first time she had returned since moving out a decade ago.

Visiting the flat, she wiped away tears as she relived memories of those days and contemplated her own "fairytale" ending.

And she was thrilled to find that the new residents had copies of the Harry Potter books on their shelves.

"Oh, look, Harry Potter books! Now that is really freaky," she exclaimed. "This is really the room where I finished 'Philosopher's Stone.'

"This is really where I turned my life around completely. My life really changed in this flat," she said as she stepped into the front room.

source: foxnews

[hbkizbest]

The following information pertains to former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Pakistani politician became the first female leader of a Muslim nation in modern history. She served two terms as prime minister of Pakistan, from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996.

Bhutto was the daughter of the politician Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was the leader of Pakistan from 1971 until 1977. She was educated at Harvard University (B.A., 1973) and subsequently studied philosophy, political science and economics at the University of Oxford (B.A., 1977).

After her father's execution in 1979 during the rule of the military dictator Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, Bhutto became the titular head of her father's party, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), and endured frequent house arrest from 1979 to 1984.

In exile from 1984 to 1986, she returned to Pakistan after the lifting of martial law and soon became the foremost figure in the political opposition to Zia.

President Zia died in August 1988 in a mysterious plane crash, leaving a power vacuum at the center of Pakistani politics. In the ensuing elections, Bhutto's PPP won the single-largest bloc of seats in the National Assembly. She became prime minister on Dec. 1, 1988, heading a coalition government.

Bhutto was unable to do much to combat Pakistan's widespread poverty, governmental corruption and increasing crime. In August 1990 the president of Pakistan, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, dismissed her government on charges of corruption and other malfeasance and called for new elections. Bhutto's PPP suffered a defeat in the national elections of October 1990; thereafter she led the parliamentary opposition against her successor, Nawaz Sharif.

In elections in October 1993 the PPP won a plurality of votes, and Bhutto again became head of a coalition government. Under renewed allegations of corruption, economic mismanagement and a decline of law and order, her government was dismissed in November 1996 by President Farooq Leghari.

Voter turnout was low in the 1997 elections, in which Bhutto's PPP suffered a decisive loss to Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League party. With British and Swiss cooperation, Sharif's administration continued to pursue the corruption charges against Bhutto. In 1999 Bhutto and her husband, the controversial businessman and senator, Asif Ali Zardari, jailed since 1996 on a variety of additional charges, both were convicted of corruption by a Lahore court, a decision overturned by the Supreme Court in 2001 because of evidence of governmental interference.

Bhutto did not achieve political accommodation with Gen. Pervez Musharraf's seizure of power in a 1999 coup d'état; her demands that the charges against her and her husband be dropped were denied, undercutting negotiations with the Musharraf government regarding a return to the country from her self-imposed exile. Facing standing arrest warrants should she return to Pakistan, Bhutto remained in exile in London and Dubai from the late 1990s.

Because of Musharraf's 2002 decree banning former prime ministers from holding a third term, Bhutto was not permitted to stand for elections that same year. In addition, legislation in 2000 that prohibited a court-convicted individual from holding party office hindered her party, as Bhutto's unanimously elected leadership would have excluded the PPP from participating in elections.

In response to these obstacles, the PPP split, registering a new, legally distinct branch called the Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPPP). Legally separate and free from the restrictions brought upon the PPP by Bhutto's leadership, the PPPP participated in the 2002 elections, in which it proceeded to earn a strong vote. However, Bhutto's terms for cooperation with the military government, that all charges against her and against her husband be withdrawn, continued to be denied. In 2004 Bhutto's husband was released from prison on bail and joined Bhutto in exile. Just before the 2007 elections, talk began to circulate of Bhutto's return to Pakistan.

Shortly before Musharraf's re-election to the presidency, amid unresolved discussions of a power-sharing deal between Bhutto and Musharraf's military regime, he finally granted Bhutto a long-sought amnesty for the corruption charges brought against her by the Sharif administration.

The Supreme Court challenged Musharraf's right to grant the amnesty, however, criticizing it as unconstitutional; nevertheless, in October 2007 Bhutto returned to Karachi from Dubai after eight years of self-imposed exile.

source: foxnews

[5be92]

AFP - Friday, December 28

COLOMBO (AFP) - - Sri Lanka sent a crack commando unit to the state-run television station Thursday to rescue a government minister seized by journalists for allegedly assaulting a colleague, officials told AFP.

An anti-hijacking and hostage rescue squad of army commandos deployed at the Rupavahini state television network to free Labour Minister Mervin Silva who had allegedly stormed the studios with body guards and attacked journalists, officials said.

Un-edited footage broadcast over the state television showed army officers and police escorting Silva out of the usually tightly-guarded building located within a high security zone of the capital.

Police anti-riot squads were moved to the station while heavily armed commandos dressed in body armour and wearing hard hats moved in to the premises while unarmed officers rescued the minister amid jeering by rebellious staff.

"The minister is being held in an office by the staff," the television said earlier in a statement broadcast while interrupting regular programming.

The minister was escorted out after being held for more than two-and-a-half hours, the station said adding that the high drama was a "tremendous victory" for the media in the country.

Minister Silva was forced to apologise to the staff in the presence of an army of cameramen and press photographers while his son made similar pleas for mercy as employees turned boisterous.

One of the bodyguards accompanying the minister was roughed up by staff before television cameras despite tight police protection.

Police announced over the television that they "arrested" Silva's son who had taken part in the alleged assault and urged employees to remain calm.

Silva's son had earlier been ordered by a court to stay away from night clubs after several brawls.

Police and politicians were shouted down as media minister Lakshman Yapa tried to pacify the employees. Yapa condemned Silva's storming the station and assaulting journalists.

The state television said Silva had taken exception to the station not broadcasting a speech he made at a public rally attended by President Mahinda Rajapakse in the south of the island on Wednesday.

Rupavahini's unprecedented live coverage of the minister's detention was the first such unrest at the station since its inception in 1982.

[5be92]

that's just bad

[OMEN]

Benazir Bhutto's coffin was strewn with flowers
Tens of thousands of people have attended the funeral of assassinated Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto.

Mourners converged on the family mausoleum where she was buried next to her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto near their home village in Sindh Province.

The coffin, draped in the flag of Ms Bhutto's party, was driven in a white ambulance through dense crowds.

Pakistani security forces are on high alert, with at least 19 people killed in violence across the country.

President Pervez Musharraf appealed for calm after the former Pakistani prime minister was shot at an election rally in Rawalpindi on Thursday by a gunman who then blew himself up.

Slogans and tears

Her plain wooden coffin was taken from the family home to the burial site 7km (four miles) away at the village of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh.

Amid weeping and beating of heads and chests, mourners jostled to see the coffin, which was accompanied by Ms Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari and her three children.

Outside the triple-domed mausoleum, crowds chanted slogans blaming Gen Musharraf for Ms Bhutto's death.

The BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones, who is in the district of Larkana, says the mood among local people is one of anger and confusion.

Rioting and unrest has been reported across the country.

* At least one passenger train was set ablaze in Sindh Province and a number of railway stations were reportedly burnt as security forces in the province were ordered to shoot rioters on sight

* Several people died in Karachi as government offices, police stations and vehicles were torched by rioters and police opened fire on protesters in Hyderabad

* The office of a pro-government party was ransacked and set ablaze in Peshawar

* In the city of Multan in Punjab province, a mob ransacked seven banks and torched a petrol station

Musharraf under pressure

Plans for parliamentary elections on 8 January, for which Ms Bhutto had been campaigning when she was killed, remain unchanged, the government says.

However, caretaker Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro has said the government will consult other political parties on the issue.

Ms Bhutto's political rival Nawaz Sharif, also a former prime minister, has announced his party will boycott the vote in response to the assassination.

"The holding of fair and free elections is not possible in the presence of Pervez Musharraf," he said.

Correspondents say credible elections will be very difficult to hold with the leader of the largest opposition party dead and Mr Sharif refusing to take part.

Another opposition politician, the former cricketer Imran Khan, has joined Mr Sharif's call for Gen Musharraf's resignation, blaming the president for failing to provide adequate security for Ms Bhutto.

"Why was [she] not provided with security, a similar kind of security to [that provided for] Gen Musharraf?" he asked at a news conference

Final speech

Ms Bhutto, 54, was leaving the election rally in Rawalpindi, standing in the open sunroof of a car, when the gunman shot her in the neck and chest.

Pakistan lost its binding bond in the shape of Great Ms Bhutto... It is high time that all political parties unite together to save Pakistan and get rid of Musharraf
Muhammad Arshad, Lahore, Pakistan

Seconds later, the attacker blew himself up, killing at least 20 other people.

Ms Bhutto was twice prime minister of Pakistan, from 1988 to 1990, and from 1993 to 1996. She was sacked on both occasions after being charged with corruption.

She returned from eight years of self-imposed exile in October, following an amnesty agreed with President Musharraf.


BENAZIR BHUTTO
Father led Pakistan before being executed in 1979
Spent five years in prison
Served as PM from 1988-1990 and 1993-1996
Sacked twice by president on corruption charges
Formed alliance with rival ex-PM Nawaz Sharif in 2006
Ended self-imposed exile by returning to Pakistan in October
Educated at Harvard and Oxford

Shortly after her return, she survived a double bomb attack on her convoy in Karachi which killed more than 130 people.

She accused rogue elements of the intelligence services of involvement in the attack.

The al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, has claimed responsibility for her assassination, according to the Asia Times newspaper.

Gen Musharraf has blamed Islamists for the attack.

BBC

[JohnCenaFan28]

Ouch, that is terrible.

[JohnCenaFan28]

That was truly a terrible thing:sad2: