Upmarket Pakistan district votes again as Imran Khan decries killing

By Katharine Houreld and Syed Raza Hassan

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - An upmarket constituency of Pakistan's violence-plagued city of Karachi voted again under tight security on Sunday, a day after gunmen killed a senior politician from a reformist party in the district and a week after general elections.

It was not immediately clear who killed Zara Shahid Hussain, a leading member of the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) party of former cricket star Imran Khan.

Imran blamed the killing on the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) party, which has a stranglehold on the city. MQM leaders denied responsibility, condemned the killing and demanded a retraction from Imran.

The attack in the upscale Defence area, the family neighborhood of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, capped a bloody election campaign in which around 150 people were killed nationwide.

Last Saturday's elections handed a landslide victory to opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

But results from a handful of constituencies across the country are still uncertain amid accusations of vote-rigging. There is re-polling in a few others where security issues prevented voting.

Last week's election gave the MQM 18 of 19 national assembly seats in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city. The constituency, known blandly as NA-250, where Sunday's re-poll is taking place is thought to be a stronghold of the PTI.

The re-vote took place at 43 of 180 polling stations. The MQM, which wanted re-polling of the whole constituency, boycotted the vote.

Whatever the result, Sharif's national landslide win is assured. But as Pakistan's financial center, Karachi generates around half of government revenues and stability in the city is key to stability of the whole country.

For the first time, each ballot box was guarded by a ranger and a soldier inside and outside the booths to ensure security and no violence had been reported by early afternoon.

CONTROVERSIAL PARTY

Police said that two gunmen shot Hussain on Saturday outside her home in Defence.

"Her death has sent shockwaves across the rank and file of the party," Khan said in a statement.

"I hold (MQM leader) Altaf Hussain directly responsible for the murder as he openly threatened PTI workers and leaders through public broadcasts," Imran, recovering in hospital from a fall during campaigning, added in a tweet.

"I also hold the British government responsible as I had warned them about British citizen Altaf Hussain after his open threats."

Altaf Hussain is accused of murder in Pakistan and leads his party remotely from exile in England. His party is designated a terrorist organization by Canada, a charge it strongly denies.

In recent days he gave a speech which many Pakistanis felt was an incitement to attack political rivals. British police are investigating whether or not it constituted a hate speech.

The MQM, a secular party, is locked in a battle with various rival contenders for influence in Karachi, including Pakistan's Taliban movement, which has sought to gain a foothold in various districts on the outskirts of the city in recent years.

Imran's election campaign electrified many Pakistanis, pushing the PTI from a marginal party to Pakistan's third largest.

Karachi, the nuclear-armed country's key port, is home to 18 million people. It typically sees about a dozen murders a day, a combination of political killings, attacks by the Pakistan Taliban and sectarian militant groups, and street crime.

(Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/upmarket-pakistan-district-votes-again-imran-khan-decries-062119635.html

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Sunday afternoons talking about Enlightened Society | Shambhala ...

May 03

Friday

Northeastern States

Sunday afternoons talking about Enlightened Society

Post a Comment May 3, 2013 ? 4:32 pm | Permalink |

It all comes down to arranging radishes, really. There have now been five gatherings in our center parlor, five unstructured Sunday afternoons, discussing Enlightened Society. As the open invitation says ?What is it? Is it possible? Who cares?? Each time we meet there are some of the same people, and some different people, sometimes five people, sometimes 10. The discussion evolves freely, from personal stories to workplace and social situations. Some of us are Shambhalians, some have received the lung ? the Enlightened Society Treatise ? some are going to, some not.

And the radishes? A local farmer, just getting into his hectic Spring season, told us about a helper who insisted on arranging radishes to his own ideas instead of following instructions. The helper?s been instructed maybe seven times on how the farmer wants these done. So now what? Like the song ?50 Ways to Leave Your Lover? there are probably 50 ways to deal with the radish situation. Each will have some result and some residual emotional fallout over time for both farmer and helper! Society in a microcosm.

Everyone who comes either already knows how to listen, or soon picks up that it?s an important part of the gathering. Like songbirds, we each have our own refrain, buried in the general discussion. When you listen you hear again and again from one person the underlying song of how to belong, from another, how to be patient. From another how to have wisdom, another how to be brave. It feels like we are working on a jigsaw puzzle, helping each other put in the pieces. The picture we?re making is of Enlightened Society. And it looks a lot like radishes.

From: White River News Magazine

Source: http://shambhalatimes.org/2013/05/03/sunday-afternoons-talking-about-enlightened-society/

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Paltrow: 'Most beautiful' title 'not true'

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Gwyneth Paltrow says she's thrilled to be picked by People magazine as "World's Most Beautiful Woman" for 2013 but it's "obviously not true."

Paltrow questioned her own selection as she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of "Iron Man 3" Wednesday night.

"It's funny, these things, because it's like obviously not true. But it's very sweet to be named that," Paltrow told The Associated Press. "Because I mean you can't say that, you know! But it's been wonderful. It's been very wonderful. And as my friend said, it's so nice that someone who has kids and is a mom and is not like 21 is named that. It's really an honor."

Paltrow said her two children weren't aware of the news in this week's edition of the magazine, but she'd been getting plenty of congratulatory emails from friends and family.

The 40-year-old actress stars as Pepper Potts, Tony Stark's love interest and assistant-turned-business partner in the "Iron Man" trilogy. Her co-stars in "Iron Man 3" praised People's proclamation.

"Completely justified. Completely justified. She's gorgeous," said Guy Pearce.

"Let me tell you: She is as gracious and beautiful inside as she is outside. She's got a good heart. She's got a good heart. A lovely girl," said Ben Kingsley.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/paltrow-most-beautiful-title-not-true-062620447.html

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A simple solution to air pollution from wood-burning cookstoves

Apr. 24, 2013 ? Billions of people worldwide burn animal dung, crop residues, wood and charcoal to cook their meals. And the chemicals produced and inhaled sicken or kill millions. At particular risk are women who prepare their families' food and children 5-years-old or younger.

Up to now, most interventions have focused on improving the cookstove to lower emissions. And that would be fine, if there were enough improved cookstoves to go around. But there aren't. In 2012, only 2.5 million improved cookstoves were distributed, improving the household air pollution situation for exactly one-half of 1 percent of the world's biomass burners.

So an interdisciplinary team of Michigan Technological University students took a different tack. They decided to look for ways to improve the cooking environment, not just the stove. And they found a low-cost, highly effective way to reduce the impact of cooking over biomass fires without designing and installing high-tech, costly stoves.

Better ventilation.

The cookstove project was born in small town on the Guatemalan border with Mexico, where Michigan Tech environmental engineering graduate student Kelli Whelan was working on an Engineers Without Borders project. She noticed that the kitchen of a family who had built an attic to insulate their house from a hot aluminum roof was much cooler than others she had visited, although they all used the same kind of wood-burning cookstove.

"That made me wonder if the temperature difference helped clear the smoke out, either by a draft or the greater temperature differential between the fire and the surrounding space," she explains.

When she returned to Michigan Tech, Whelan and several fellow environmental engineering graduate students started work on a project to explore the situation. They built both a working model of a biomass cookstove and a computer model to test different kitchen and cooking conditions.

After receiving the EPA P3 grant, they surveyed Peace Corps Master's International and Pavlis Global Technological Leadership Institute students at Tech who had worked in countries where biomass-burning cookstoves are used. They also conducted more physical and computational model tests, 57 of them, testing for the presence and transport of particulate matter, carbon monoxide and carbon, as well as comparing wind speed, temperature, humidity, roofing materials, wall height, cookstove placement and windows and doors open or closed.

"Our focus was not on ventilation, but on trying to determine which factors really influence the air quality in a kitchen and which do not," said Whelan.

They discovered that ventilation is very important. "The improved cookstoves, which are supposed to reduce emissions, actually made the air quality worse under completely enclosed conditions," she said. "In contrast, we saw the greatest reduction in ambient particulate matter and carbon monoxide with an improved cookstove and with windows and doors open."

They also learned that not all ventilation helps. "Having two windows open on opposite ends of the kitchen was best, whereas having all the windows and doors open was worse," Whelan said. "This is because having all outlets open creates turbulence inside the kitchen, and the smoke is not forced out."

The Michigan Tech students took the results of their field and computer modeling analysis of cookstove air pollution to the EPA Sustainable Design Expo in Washington, DC, last week.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/ya1upMZgLtM/130424132635.htm

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Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) Had Emergency Surgery For Hernial Tears

Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) Had Emergency Surgery For Hernial Tears

Dwayne Johnson, who many of us know as “The Rock”, tweeted fans a photo of himself in a Superman tee from his hospital bed, following his emergency hernia surgery. Johnson, who was unable to attend the LA premiere for his new film “Pain & Gain”, had to have an emergency operation to repair three hernial ...

Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) Had Emergency Surgery For Hernial Tears Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News

Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/04/dwayne-johnson-the-rock-had-emergency-surgery-for-hernial-tears/

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The 12 Types of People Who Use Social Networks

At this point, you're almost weirder if you don't use any social networks than if you were a social media obsessive who tweets, Facebooks, Instagram and hashtags the hell out of your vocabulary. It's how weird the world is now. Social networks are real life. But who are the people who make up these worlds? If there are 12 personality types in social networks, which one are you? More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/jmXEGyxvTCk/the-12-types-of-people-who-use-social-networks

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100 years later, a time capsule is opened

The First Lutheran Church of Oklahoma City dug up and opened its Century Chest, a time capsule that was buried under the church 100 years ago.

The artifacts inside the copper chest were remarkably well intact. Credit for that goes to the church's Ladies Aide Society, the group that buried the capsule a century ago. The group buried the chest in double concrete walls and under 12 inches of concrete, according Fox News. It also left guidelines on how to unearth the capsule.

The chest was full of treasures. Among the finds: a newspaper from the day the capsule was buried (April 22, 1913); a dress; a telephone; a flag; a pen used by President William McKinley; a camera; and a pair of women's shoes that still had their shine. Perhaps most remarkable was a phonograph record featuring voices of citizens from the era.

The Oklahoma Gazette reported that the project was the brainchild of Virginia Sohlberg. Her great-granddaughter, Virginia Eason Weinmann, was especially moved by a book that contained family photos and poetry.

Experts from the Oklahoma Historical Society worked with the church to make sure the objects were handled with care. All of the items will be displayed at the Oklahoma History Center.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/100-years-later-time-capsule-opened-185852550.html

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