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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s parliament prepared Monday to elect a new
prime minister as the coalition government gears up for a
confrontation with key US ally President Pervez Musharraf. Yousuf
Raza Gilani, the candidate nominated by the party of slain
opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, is favored to win because the
party and its allies have a huge majority in the national assembly.
Former parliament speaker Gilani, 55, was named by Bhutto’s
Pakistan People’s Party on Saturday, more than one month after
general elections in which backers of the embattled Musharraf lost
heavily.
THIMPHU: Bhutan was set to bring a century of
absolute monarchy to an end Monday with the election of the remote
Himalayan nation’s first democratic government. The polls are the
culmination of an initiative by Bhutan’s royal family to
peacefully transform the small Buddhist kingdom into a
constitutional monarchy. The country’s young Oxford-educated King
Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck made a strong pitch at the weekend
for his subjects, many of whom view the concept of democracy with a
mixture of excitement and alarm, to take part.
WASHINGTON: Democrats came under mounting
pressure Monday to close ranks behind a single candidate, as Hillary
Clinton struggles to wrest the lead from Barack Obama to win their
party’s nod for the White House. The bitter presidential campaign
faces weeks of harsh confrontation ahead of next month’s crucial
primary clash in Pennsylvania, one of 10 remaining contests to
decide who will face off against Republican John McCain in
November’s election.
BAGHDAD: The death toll of US soldiers in the
five-year Iraq conflict has hit 4,000 in what the US military said
Monday was a “tragic” loss of lives after four troops were
killed in a Baghdad bombing. The four soldiers died when their
vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb while on patrol late Sunday in
southern Baghdad, bringing the overall toll to 4,000, according to
an Agence France-Presse tally based on independent website www.icasualties.org.
CHICAGO: Researchers have developed a genetic
mapping tool that could allow for better diagnosis and treatment of
common tumors, according to a study published Monday. The study was
focused on mapping the molecular features of the most common and
deadly primary brain tumor so that its various subtypes could be
recognized in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. But the same
method could be used to better identify other tumor types, said lead
author Michael Kuo of the University of California at San Diego.
KABUL: Gunmen killed five Afghan mine clearers
in an ambush on their convoy in northern Afghanistan, their
UN-funded company said Monday, in one of the bloodiest attacks on
non-government workers in months. The attackers halted a convoy of
workers for Afghan Technical Consultants (ATC) in the northern
province of Jawzjan as they drove back to their base camp after
mine-clearing operations in a remote area, their director said. It
was not known who the attackers were, he added.
-- AFP
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