Civil armed forces under-equipped due to fund shortage

The Senate’s Committee on Interior on Tuesday was informed that the civil armed forces of the country, including Pakistan Rangers, Frontier Corps (FC) and Pakistan Coast Guards lack necessary equipment and are understaffed due to funds shortage.

The Ministry of Interior accused the Finance Ministry for not releasing allocated funds for purchase of weapons and other necessary equipments for the civil armed forces.

“Parliament allocates budget for civil armed forces, but Ministry of Finance did not release funds to Ministry of Interior using various delaying tactics such as controlling the fiscal deficit,” said Additional Secretary Najibullah Khan during a meeting of the committee on Tuesday.

Senator Muhammad Talha Mehmood, chairman of the committee, presided over the meeting and senator Sardar Ali Khan, Syed Tahir Hussain Mashhadi, Pervaiz Rashid, Begum Najma Hameed, additional secretary interior Najibullah Khan, the Pakistan Coast Guard director general, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) of Islamabad Traffic Police (ITP) Dr Moen Masood and other senor officials attended the meeting.

The Pakistan Coast Guard DG told the committee that PCG is currently very much under-staffed and has no reserved unit.

“PCG has sent a summary to Ministry of Finance through Ministry of Interior for recruitment of two battalions, but the summary is pending with Ministry of Finance for the last several months”, he said. 50 percent of the PCGs are performing their duties without ammunition, he added.

“We do not have practice ammunition for the last many years”, he said. The PCG release human smugglers after their arrest in few days due to lack of space in the prison. He requested the committee that its service structure should be improved in the line with FC.

“A number of PCG troops comprise soldiers beyond 45 years of age. Health and medical problems affect their efficiency and render them only for administration duties,” he said.

He requested the committee to allow PCG to recruit doctor on contract bases as army medical crops is unable to provide doctors to the PCG on deputation due to excessive commitments. On this senator Talha Mehmood directed secretary committee to call secretary ministry of Finance, representative of Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) in the next meeting.

The committee expressed serious concern over the absence of minister for interior and secretary interior in the meeting. Senator Tahir Mashhadi said that under the rules even the PM could not call a Minister when parliament calls him. The minister is bound to attend standing committee meeting, he said.

Senator Sardar Ali Khan asked the chairman to take stern action against the Minister and secretary interior for not attending the meeting. “If minister for interior is busy then it was the responsibility of minister of state for interior to attend the meeting,” he said.

While discussing the bill titled, ‘The Provincial Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill, 2012’, moved by Rehman Malik, the committee also expressed concern over the amendment in Section 116-A by addition of Sub Section 6. Dr Moen Masood said that some of the traffics violations by the drivers have been accepted internationally as hazardous and potentially dangerous. Therefore these violations are necessary to be included in the list of declared traffic violations, which are being enforced in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT). “Due to lack of law, ITP are facing many problems”, he said.

Source  http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\11\21\story_21-11-2012_pg7_19

Weird news: Iranian news agency reposts Onion article

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses the 67th United Nations General Assembly, at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)(Credit: AP)

 

A major Iranian news agency, the Fars News Agency, is evidently not familiar with America’s most popular parody news source. Without attribution, the news site affiliated with the Islamic Revolutions Guards Corps reprinted an Onion story, which read, “According to the results of a Gallup poll released Monday, the overwhelming majority of rural white Americans said they would rather vote for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than US President Barack Obama.”

The Onion’s made-up poll was accompanied by made-up comments, reprinted in full by the Fars News Agency, including: ”[Ahmadinejad] takes national defense seriously, and he’d never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does.”

Source  http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/weird_news_iranian_news_agency_reposts_onion_article/

1985 D.C. murder convictions will stand, judge rules

Seven men who sought to have a judge overturn their convictions for the high-profile 1984 murder of a Northeast D.C. woman failed to prove their innocence during a series of hearings that reexamined the case earlier this year, a judge ruled Monday.

The ruling by D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick H. Weisberg means that six of the men — Kelvin Smith, Levy Rouse, Clifton Yarborough, Timothy Catlett, Russell Overton and Charles Turner — will serve out their sentences from their 1985 convictions on charges of felony murder in the beating death of Catherine Fuller. A seventh man already has been released from prison.

The ruling formally ends a process that began in the spring. During three weeks of hearings in April, prosecutors squared off against defense attorneys, who argued that authorities, pressured by city residents and elected officials, rushed their investigation and arrested the wrong men; purposely withheld important evidence that hurt the defendants’ case; and threatened witnesses into lying. Prosecutors maintained that the seven men were responsible for the killing.

Weisberg ruled that the defense attorneys had failed to produce evidence that their clients were innocent.

“After considering all of the evidence, both at trial and at the hearings, the court concludes that petitioners have not come close to demonstrating actual innocence,” Weisberg wrote in his ruling.

Attorneys for the seven men said they plan to appeal.

“We are disappointed that the fight to clear the names of these defendants will have to continue, but we continue to believe that there is overwhelming evidence that Catherine Fuller was not murdered by these defendants,” Barry J. Pollack, one of the lead attorneys for the men, said in an interview Monday.

In 1985, a jury found eight neighborhood friends — then between 16 and 21 years old — guilty of first-degree murder in connection with Fuller’s death. The men were sentenced to 35 years to life in prison. One of them, Steven L. Webb, died in prison after a brief illness. Another, Charles Turner’s brother Christopher, was paroled in 2010 after more than 25 years behind bars.

Prosecutors outlined a horrific scenario during the 1985 trial: Fuller, 48, a cleaning woman, wife and mother of six, left her K Street NE home on a rainy afternoon to fill a prescription. The suspects were smoking marijuana and listening to go-go music at a nearby park.

A group of about 30 people confronted Fuller, prosecutors said. She was grabbed from behind and pushed into an alley, where she was beaten; a 12-inch-long metal pole was shoved into her rectum. Her liver was shattered, a lung was punctured and four of her ribs were broken, according to authorities. Her body was found in a garage in the same alley that evening.

In all, 17 people were charged in the murder. Five indictments were dismissed, two defendants pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and two others were acquitted.

During the April hearings, defense attorneys presented four witnesses who told Weisberg that detectives had forced them to lie about seeing the men in the alley when Fuller was killed. In his ruling, Weisberg said there was no evidence that the witnesses made up their accounts and called the recantations “incredible.”

Weisberg also highlighted the failed testimony of Melvin Montgomery. Defense attorneys had expected Montgomery, 45, to testify that he had been pressured into lying when he said he saw the men in the alley at the time Fuller was killed.

Instead, in a surprise turn that sent defense attorneys scrambling, Montgomery took the stand and told Weisberg that he had been truthful during his 1985 testimony.

Weisberg called Montgomery’s testimony a “bad turn of events. Whatever else can be said of Mr. Montgomery’s ‘recantation,’ it certainly cannot be said that his testimony helps petitioners to meet their burden of proving actual innocence,” the judge wrote.

In the hearings, defense attorneys also argued that prosecutors during the trial had withheld key evidence, including information about other possible suspects. For example, several witnesses told authorities they had seen another man, James McMillan, in the alley at the time of the attack. McMillan, 46, whose house was located on the alley where Fuller was killed, is serving a life sentence in a Virginia prison for a deadly attack on another woman.

Weisberg agreed that prosecutors should have disclosed the information about other possible suspects, but ruled that even if McMillan had been in the alley, it did not mean the other men were not there. McMillan, Weisberg said, “could have been a participant” in the attack.

After a 2001 Washington Post article, attorneys from the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and nearly a dozen volunteers began petitioning for a new trial.

Weisberg had ordered a retrial in another case in 2009, ruling that a prosecutor deliberately withheld information in a murder trial. On Monday, he declined to do the same for the seven men convicted in the Fuller killing.

“Unquestionably, they have not proved by clear and convincing evidence that they are actually innocent, and just as surely they have not established their innocence by a preponderance of the evidence,” Weisberg wrote.

Source  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/1985-dc-murder-convictions-will-stand-judge-rules/2012/08/06/9ebf106a-dfc8-11e1-8fc5-a7dcf1fc161d_story.html

Modi bats for ‘clean, innocent’ Sangma

Backing the candidature of P A Sangma for the Presidential election, Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Friday showered praise on the former Union minister and said the time has come for him to become the first tribal President. 

“From Gujarat, no leader has been elected as MP nine times. He (Sangma) has served as Union minister for 18 years and also served as the CM of Meghalaya. And in his long career, no agency, be it CBI, CAG or any other, has ever tried to touch him. He has not got any black spot in his long career,” Modi said with Sangma on his side at a function organised by the Netaji Subhas Bose’s INA Trust. 

“Tribals of the country are waiting for a tribal in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Fourteen parties have supported him and I believe that miracles do happen today,” he said. “The sun rises in the east and the time has come that Sangmaji, who hails from North-East, becomes the first tribal President... We wish an innocent tribal leader be the First Citizen of India,” Modi added. 

Sangma, who was “overwhelmed” by the colourful reception he got right from his landing at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Airport where Sidi tribals and others performed, avoided speaking on his candidature at the function. 

Later, at a press conference, he said, “I have come hear to request all the tribals, Dalits, OBCs and minority MLAs from all the parties to support my candidature like they had supported the first SC President, K R Narayan.” 

Source  http://www.indianexpress.com/news/modi-bats-for-clean-innocent-sangma/971477/

WCC demands repulsion of blasphemy law

The World Council of Churches (WCC) on Monday demanded the repulsion of blasphemy law, with the WCC general secretary asking the government to repeal Section 295C of the penal code.

Addressing a press conference, Rev Dr Olav Fykes Tveit said WCC expressed its serious concern on several occasions and urged the Pakistani government to repeal Section 295C of the Pakistan penal code, which carries a mandatory death penalty for anyone found guilty of blasphemy.

“On behalf of the member churches of WCC in different parts of the world, the WCC urged the government of Pakistan on several occasions to guarantee the rights of all-religious minorities in the country,” he said, adding that it was a matter of encouragement that there was a voice of dissent against acts of discrimination and violence against minorities coming from the Pakistani public. Ordinary citizens and key religious scholars of this country do speak of reform and maintaining their view that the Islam was a religion of peace that prohibited compulsion and persecution, Dr Olav said.

Encouraging the liberal forces in Pakistan, he said it was also encouraging that there had also been a positive civil response to engage various stakeholders in conversations about the blasphemy law and other discriminatory laws that are targeted against the minorities.

Demanding of the government of Pakistan to provide security to minorities rights, he said that for some years, the WCC had been receiving reports of discriminatory practices and persecution of religious minorities in Pakistan, including Christians, Ahamadis, and Hindus.

During the past several years, the WCC had been following the situation of the human rights violation of minority religious communities in the country, he said, adding that there had been many incidents of violence, killings and other forms of persecutions against Christians in the country and at a number of times, the WCC responded to such situations and wrote to authorities in Pakistan, Dr Olav said. He said the international community as well as civil society organisations in Pakistan had deplored such actions from time to time through various means.

“However, we are extremely disappointed that in spite of all such urges, the authorities in Pakistan could not prevent human rights violations and persecutions against religious minorities in the country,” he said.

Source http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2011/10/wcc-demands-repulsion-of-blasphemy-law/

Albany businesses, church burglarized

Someone threw a large rock through the front door of the Rainbow Music at 208 South Jackson about 2:00 AM. Police riding by saw the broken window and stopped a person walking away. Nothing taken, but the door will cost about $300 to repair.

Willie Tom Green was caught by Police, and charged with burglary.

Also burglarized about 4:00AM, the OK Beauty and Fashion Store in the 300 block of South Slappey Boulevard.

Someone broke a front window, broke a board wall and snatched the cash register, and some cash inside.

Also someone pushed a window air conditioner out of the window of one of the Sunday School rooms at the River Road Church of Christ on Martin Luther King Junior Drive about 3:00AM.

The alarm sounded, and the burglar never went inside. Church deacons are upset by the break in at their worship center.

The Bethany Temple Church of God in Christ on Odom Avenue was broken into early Sunday morning.

Source http://www.walb.com/story/15142175/albany-businesses-church-burglarized

Anna: Corruption more serious threat than Pakistan

Terming corruption a threat “more serious than Pakistan”, social activist Anna Hazare demanded that the corporate sector, too, be brought under the purview of the forthcoming anti-corruption ombudsman, the lokal. The suggestion to include the corporate sector is new. It’s a reaction to the government side’s move in the second draft to include non-government organisations (NGOs) in the purview of the lokpal.

“By bringing in voluntary organisations under the lokpal, the government is trying to target movements. Such organisations have done much more than the government has,” Hazare said. Rejecting the draft legislation as a betrayal, Hazare said he would restart his fast from August 16, and it would be non-negotiable this time. “The second freedom struggle is beginning.” 

He said, “There will be no talks, no negotiations. The government must accept our proposals in entirety. Otherwise, I will fast unto death. I am willing to die for the country.” Campaigner Arvind Kejriwal said the government draft did not suggest an autonomous and transparent lokpal.

“The government is trying to control appointments, removal and functioning of the lokpal … We demanded financial autonomy for the lokpal, but it will depend on the government for everything. How will it be autonomous or independent?”

Former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, another campaigner, said some “intelligent and informed civil society activists” also must be made part of the lokpal selection process.

Hazare refuted the allegation that the lokpal, as proposed by his team, would amount to creating a parallel and police state, since one of the Hazare team’s demands was sweeping powers for lokpal officials to listen in to any phone conversation that they want to and search and seize documents.

“There is an election commission, there is a judiciary and there is a comptroller and auditor general. Does any one of them make for a parallel state?” he asked.

On the charge that the proposal to allow the lokpal to discipline government officials would make them unaccountable to the government, Hazare said, “That is what we want.

The alliance between politicians and officials is the root cause of corruption. We want a lokpal that would break that nexus.”

On the accountability of the lokapl as envisaged by the activists, Kejriwal said, “It is accountable to the ordinary citizen. Anyone can file a complaint against the lokpal.”

Hazare said he had withdrawn his fast in April after the government promised to accept all the demands. “But they betrayed me. Therefore, now there will be no negotiations. We will mobilise people across the country and force the government to concede to our demands,” he said.