Three supporters of Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto were killed yesterday when gunmen attacked her party's office in a town in southwestern Pakistan, police said, in the first reported deaths in the current election campaign.
Officers were investigating the early morning incident, which occurred in Naseerabad, about 250km east of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province, said Wajid Akbar, the district police chief. Police had no immediate information about the motive for the attack or who was behind it, he said.
Although killings and other violence were common in past elections, the bloodshed in Naseerabad was the first such incident in the campaign for parliamentary elections scheduled for Jan. 8.
Pakistan has been engulfed in a political crisis since Nov. 3, when President Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency rule and fired Supreme Court justices who were preparing to rule on the validity of his October reelection.
He then replaced the fired judges with his loyalists, who promptly dismissed all complaints against the former general's election.
Attorney General Malik Mohammad Qayyum said yesterday that Musharraf would lift emergency rule and restore the suspended Constitution on Dec. 15, a day earlier than planned.
It was not immediately clear why Musharraf had decided to end the emergency a day early, though some opponents had been toying with the idea of demanding he bring forward the date to avoid a boycott of the general election next year.
"It will be on the 15th," Qayyum said by telephone, adding he did not know why. "Everybody says the emergency must be lifted, so earlier the better."
"Maybe it's because Dec. 16 is a Sunday," he said.
Musharraf's spokesman said he did not know if the date had been brought forward.
Meanwhile, Bhutto and another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif -- whose government was ousted by Musharraf in a coup in 1999 -- have been trying to reach an agreement on a set of demands that would allow their two parties to participate in the ballot. Both have accused Musharraf, who retired from the army last month before being sworn in as a civilian president, of planning to rig the elections.
Sharif, who leads the conservative Pakistan Muslim League-N party, has been pushing for a boycott of the vote, a move that would undermine Musharraf's US-backed efforts to transform his military dictatorship into a democratic, civilian administration.
He has insisted that the Supreme Court judges fired by Musharraf be reinstated before the vote.
But Bhutto, a two-time prime minister who also recently returned to her homeland after nearly eight years in exile, has indicated she would prefer to reinstate them after the elections.
Authorities have detained three former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TMSC, 台積電) employees on suspicion of compromising classified technology used in making 2-nanometer chips, the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. Prosecutors are holding a former TSMC engineer surnamed Chen (陳) and two recently sacked TSMC engineers, including one person surnamed Wu (吳) in detention with restricted communication, following an investigation launched on July 25, a statement said. The announcement came a day after Nikkei Asia reported on the technology theft in an exclusive story, saying TSMC had fired two workers for contravening data rules on advanced chipmaking technology. Two-nanometer wafers are the most
Tsunami waves were possible in three areas of Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Services said yesterday after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the nearby Kuril Islands. “The expected wave heights are low, but you must still move away from the shore,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app, after the latest seismic activity in the area. However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in Hawaii said there was no tsunami warning after the quake. The Russian tsunami alert was later canceled. Overnight, the Krasheninnikov volcano in Kamchatka erupted for the first time in 600 years, Russia’s RIA
CHINA’s BULLYING: The former British prime minister said that he believes ‘Taiwan can and will’ protect its freedom and democracy, as its people are lovers of liberty Former British prime minister Boris Johnson yesterday said Western nations should have the courage to stand with and deepen their economic partnerships with Taiwan in the face of China’s intensified pressure. He made the remarks at the ninth Ketagalan Forum: 2025 Indo-Pacific Security Dialogue hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Prospect Foundation in Taipei. Johnson, who is visiting Taiwan for the first time, said he had seen Taiwan’s coastline on a screen on his indoor bicycle, but wanted to learn more about the nation, including its artificial intelligence (AI) development, the key technology of the 21st century. Calling himself an
South Korea yesterday said that it was removing loudspeakers used to blare K-pop and news reports to North Korea, as the new administration in Seoul tries to ease tensions with its bellicose neighbor. The nations, still technically at war, had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung. It said in June that Pyongyang stopped transmitting bizarre, unsettling noises along the border that had become a major nuisance for South Korean residents, a day after South Korea’s loudspeakers fell silent. “Starting today, the military has begun removing the loudspeakers,”
RSS