Pakistan protests turn violent
LAHORE: Pakistan's opposition leader defied house arrest on Sunday to join anti-government protests that quickly descended into violence andAnti-government protest rally in Lahore Lawyer holds a picture of President Asif Ali Zardari in a military uniform during an anti-government rally in Lahore.
The power struggle between Pakistan's president and the opposition leader Nawaz Sharif threatens to paralyze the government and, alarmingly for the US, distract the nuclear-armed country from its fight against Taliban militants operating along the Afghan border.
Hundreds of police surrounded the Lahore residence of Sharif, a former prime minister, before dawn on Sunday and detained him along with scores of his supporters, a party spokesman said.
Officers in the eastern Pakistani city showed party officials an order placing Sharif and his politician brother Shahbaz under house arrest for three days, spokesman Pervaiz Rasheed said.
Sharif denounced the order as illegal and later left the house in a convoy of vehicles packed with chanting, flag-waving supporters, headed for a downtown rally that had already turned violent.
Mobs accompanying the swelling convoy smashed the windows of buses parked along the route. Others torched tires, sending plumes of black smoke into the blue sky over a usually bustling boulevard littered with stones and empty tear gas shells.
``These are the decisive moments,'' Sharif told supporters before he climbed into his car. ``I tell every Pakistani youth that this is not the time to stay home; Pakistan is calling you to come and save me.''
Rao Iftikhar, a senior government official, said authorities reconsidered the restrictions on Sharif to allow him to address the rally and return home afterward.
Washington worries that the crisis will further destabilize the shaky the year-old government and prevent it from being an effective ally in the fight against insurgents in Afghanistan.
Suspected militants attacked a transport terminal in northwestern Pakistan used to supply NATO troops in Afghanistan before dawn on Sunday and torched dozens of containers and military vehicles, police said.
Lawyers and opposition party supporters had planned to gather near Lahore's main court complex before heading toward Islamabad to stage a mass sit-in front of Parliament, in defiance of a government ban.
To thwart them, authorities parked trucks across major roads on the edge of the city, and riot police took up positions outside the railway station and government buildings.
Still, several thousands flag-waving demonstrators pushed past police barricades to reach the courts.
Protesters pelted some of the hundreds of riot police ringing the area with rocks, triggering running clashes. An Associated Press reporter saw one officer led away with a head wound.
Police repeatedly fired tear gas, scattering the crowd, and beat several stragglers with batons, only for the demonstrators to return with fresh supplies of sticks and stones.
Shahbaz Sharif and a host of other protest leaders went underground to dodge their own detention orders. Iftikhar said they had been issued for the head of Pakistan's main Islamist party and cricketer star-turned-politician Imran Khan.
Television images showed police commandos wearing flak jackets and armed with assault rifles apparently searching for Shahbaz in Rawalpindi, just south of the capital.
The political turmoil began last month when the Supreme Court disqualified the Sharif brothers from elected office, over convictions dating back to an earlier chapter in Pakistan's turbulent political history.
Zardari compounded the crisis by dismissing the Sharifs' administration in Punjab, Pakistan's biggest and richest province, of which Lahore is the capital.
The brothers then threw their support behind plans by lawyers to stage an indefinite sit-in in Islamabad - a move officials say would bring the government to a standstill and present a target to terrorists.
On Saturday, after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to both Zardari and Nawaz Sharif by telephone, the government announced it would appeal the Supreme Court ruling in the coming days.
Sharif's party welcomed the move but stuck by its demand for a shake-up of the judiciary.
Zardari refuses to reinstate a group of independent-minded judges fired by Musharraf.
Many observers suspect Zardari fears the judges could challenge a pact signed by Musharraf that quashed long-standing corruption charges against him and his wife, slain former leader Benazir Bhutto.
Skeptics suspect Sharif of hoping to force early elections, from which he and Islamist parties would likely profit.
Source From: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pak-in-turmoil-as-Nawaz-Sharif-begins-march/articleshow/4266386.cms
Bailed-out AIG to pay bonuses to employees
WASHINGTON: American International Group is giving its executives tens of millions of dollars in new bonuses even though it received a taxpayer
bailout of more than $170 billion dollars.
AIG is paying out the executive bonuses to meet a Sunday deadline, but the troubled insurance giant has agreed to administration requests to restrain future payments
.
The Treasury Department determined that the government did not have the legal authority to block the current payments by the company. AIG declared earlier this month that it had suffered a loss of $61.7 billion for the fourth quarter of last year, the largest corporate loss in history.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has asked that the company scale back future bonus payments where legally possible, an administration official said Saturday.
This official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that Geithner had called AIG Chairman Edward Liddy on Wednesday to demand that Liddy renegotiate AIG's current bonus structure.
Geithner termed the current bonus structure unacceptable in view of the billions of dollars of taxpayer support the company is receiving, this official said.
In a letter to Geithner dated Saturday, Liddy informed Treasury that outside lawyers had informed the company that AIG had contractual obligations to make the bonus payments and could face lawsuits if it did not do so.
Liddy said in his letter that "quite frankly, AIG's hands are tied" although he said that in light of the company's current situation he found it "distasteful and difficult" to recommend going forward with the payments.
Liddy said the company had entered into the bonus agreements in early 2008 before AIG got into severe financial straits and was forced to obtain a government bailout last fall.
The large bulk of the payments at issue cover AIG Financial Products, the unit of the company that sold credit default swaps, the risky contracts that caused massive losses for the insurer.
A white paper prepared by the company says that AIG is contractually obligated to pay a total of about $165 million of previously awarded "retention pay" to employees in this unit by Sunday, March 15. The document says that another $55 million in retention pay has already been distributed to about 400 AIG Financial Products employees.
The company says in the paper it will work to reduce the amounts paid for 2009 and believes it can trim those payments by at least 30%.
Bonus programs at financial companies have come under harsh scrutiny after the government began loaning them billions of dollars to keep the institutions afloat. AIG is the largest recipient of government support in the current financial crisis.
AIG also pledged to Geithner that it would also restructure $9.6 million in bonuses scheduled to go a group that covers the top 50 executives. Liddy and six other executives have agreed to forgo bonuses.
The group of top executives getting bonuses will receive half of the $9.6 million now, with the average payment around $112,000.
This group will get another 25% on July 14 and the final 25% on September 15. But these payments will be contingent on the AIG board determining that the company is meeting the goals the government has set for dealing with the company's financial troubles.
The Obama administration has vowed to put in place reforms in the $700 billion financial rescue program in an effort to deal with growing public anger over how the program was operated during the Bush administration.
That anger has focused in part on payouts of millions of dollars in bonuses by financial firms getting taxpayer support.
In his letter, Liddy told Geithner, "We believe there will be considerably greater flexibility to reduce contractual payments in respect of 2009 and AIG intends to use its best efforts to do so."
But he also told Geithner that he felt it could be harmful to the company if the government continued to press for reductions in executive compensation.
"We cannot attract and retain the best and brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses, which are now being operated principally on behalf of the American taxpayers, if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the US Treasury," Liddy said.
Source From: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Bailed-out-AIG-to-pay-bonuses-to-employees/articleshow/4267064.cms
Jeev tied 3rd after Rd3 at World Golf Championships
Sunday, March 15, 2009 (Doral, Florida)
Jeev Milkha Singh hopped back into contention after carding a roller-coaster four-under 68 in the penultimate round to grab a share of the third place at the $8.5 million World Golf Championships here.
The reigning Asian number one was four shots behind joint leaders Phil Mickelson (69) and Nick Watney (67) of the United States with a total of 12-under 204.
Off the blocks with an eagle on the first hole, Jeev's fortunes fluctuated slightly in between before he rounded off the day on a positive note.
"It was a great start. I holed a great putt on the first hole and eagled it. After that, up and down in between, but I came back," said Jeev.
After the first-hole eagle, the Indian dropped a couple of strokes but made amends with an equal number of birdies to make the two-under.
The back-nine didn't start as well and Jeev stumbled to a bogey on the 10th before getting his act together to stroke in his second eagle of the day.
"I think what got me going was on the 12th, I eagled it again. I made two eagles today, so that was good," he added.
He followed it up with a birdie on the 15th before parring the remaining holes at the Doral Golf Resort after starting the day tied for eighth.
Source From: http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/showsports.aspx?id=SPOEN20090087549
No comments:
Post a Comment