Farmer jailed in Hong Kong for burning flag

A man has been jailed in Hong Kong for burning the national flag, in the first sentence of its kind.

S Korea suspends savings banks citing weak finances

South Korea has suspended seven local savings banks citing the weak state of their finances.

Japan urges mass evacuation ahead of Typhoon Roke

More than a million people in central and western Japan have been urged to leave their homes as a powerful typhoon approaches.

Burma begins swap scheme for cars over 40 years old

Owners of some of Burma's most antiquated cars have been queuing in Rangoon to exchange their old vehicles for permits to import newer models.

Polio strain spreads to China from Pakistan

Polio has spread to China for the first time since 1999 after being imported from Pakistan, the World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed.

Showing posts with label secret. Show all posts
Showing posts with label secret. Show all posts

Thursday, October 13, 2011

15 Years On, the Secret of Fox News's Success

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The media world might have been shocked when a recent Pew Research poll named Fox News Channel the public's top news source: In the July poll, 19 percent of Americans said they turned to Fox as their main source of national and international news, followed by CNN with 15 percent. But Fox exec Brit Hume wasn't surprised by the results. Thinking back 15 years to the Oct. 7, 1996, debut of the cable news channel, he recalls how nobody outside Fox thought it would even survive. "It wasn't that reports of our demise were exaggerated," he says, "nobody even thought we'd get far enough to have a demise." Now, he wonders, why aren't the other news programs following Fox's lead?

[Check out U.S. News Weekly, now available on iPad.]

"Our competitive advantage in the cable news field has persisted because of the fact that they didn't change their ways," says Hume, Fox's former managing editor and former host of the evening Special Report, now run by Bret Baier. "So here we are in first place, and polls are showing that more people trust us for news than trust the networks," says Hume. "That's amazing, when you think of where we started."

It all started as an idea hatched by Fox honcho Rupert Murdoch, who hired GOP campaign strategist Roger Ailes to run the new channel. Ailes set out to build from scratch a network that resembled a newspaper: news and opinion. And, says Hume, the formula hasn't changed.

[See our slide show in opinion: 5 Ways New Media Are Changing Politics.]

But it was slow going. Baier says when he arrived in 1998, he'd have to explain to sources that, no, he didn't work for the "Simpsons Fox," a reference to the entertainment channel. He and Hume agree the transformation occurred around the 2000 election, when Fox parked correspondents in Florida to cover the recount while many in the media were suggesting that George W. Bush was stealing the election. "We were not slow to understand that there were two ways to look at that," says Hume.

Though Fox is slapped for being conservative, Hume says its goal is covering a side that's often ignored in the more liberal mainstream media. "I had long believed that, as somebody who worked in the mainstream media [ABC], that there were two sides of the street and the mainstream were basically working one side," he says. "And that there was a journalistically legitimate set of opportunities on the other side of the street that if anybody ever worked would have a distinctive product, and that a lot of people would like it." Baier adds that being the public's top choice hasn't gone to Fox's head. "We still have that early scrappiness Roger wanted at the beginning," he says.

Cartoon by Ed Wexler



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Thursday, October 6, 2011

The Taliban secret of success

5. October 2011 booth 02: 28 GMT by M Ilyas Khan BBC News, Islamabad Defecting Taliban fighters drive through the front line in the village of Amirabad, northern Afghanistan, Saturday Nov. 24, 2001. (AP Photo/Dusan Vranic) the Taliban hit back with a vengeance after the US-led invasion in 2001 Taliban fighters to thousands a decade ago abandoned makes, fled their military posts and melted into the countryside, so that to capture Western-led Afghanistan troops without a fight.

This colorful mixed militia has today developed into a sophisticated guerrilla force, taken recently by several high-quality objectives and all but derailed American plans for a smooth and successful use of troops.

Clearly, they have achieved this despite the lack of a charismatic leader, a single chain of command and a political and economic vision.

How did they do it?

Until three years after their Government in October 2001 by coalition forces ousted was there was little activity of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"Taliban were initially welcomed by the Afghan people to bring civil war, but when they began to implement their strict Islamic code for four years long, the people got fed up," Brig says Mehmood Shah, a former head of security for North West Pakistan tribal areas (in retirement).

"People welcomed the Americans as they saw it as their liberators." "There was no place for the Taliban immediately to stage a comeback."

Until 2006, the Taliban had infiltrated however large parts of the South - in particular the provinces of Zabul, Kandahar and Helmand.

Until 2008 were from the direction North to Kabul spreading.

Brig Shah says, that the Americans made two errors, wasted the advantage.

"she are focused on military targets rather than stabilisation and development." "And she soon went renunciation of the war of the need that had brought them to Afghanistan choice against a war in the Iraq."

The lack of reconstruction and rampant corruption among government officials at a time when the millions of refugees from Iran and Pakistan were again, led to widespread disappointment and operated uprising, he says.

Sanctuary in Pakistan

But you many analysts also point to the role of Pakistan, from where the Taliban emerged in 1994 and where most of them fled in 2001.

Many believe that the current Afghan rebels in the tribal Pakistani Waziristan was born.

While the rest of Afghanistan quietly, they say was Waziristan lived with Taliban activity, which then made banner headlines around the world.

Pakistan Army troops prepare to leave for patrolling during a curfew in Bannu, a town on the edge of Pakistan's lawless tribal belt Waziristan, Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009.Sent but not replace Pakistan troops at the border the militant

In the year 2002 and 2004 there were skirmishes between the Taliban and Pakistani troops, followed by a series of peace deals with the army were, which the Taliban virtually control over most of Pakistan's tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.

Most analysts agree - whether public or private, that Pakistan's security establishment the Taliban to Waziristan in a militant sanctuary, although the ability to remove them.

"I think the military in question was divided." It tolerated it, and also helped, "says Dr. Hasan Askari Rizvi, a defense analyst."

Coalition forces suffered her earliest casualties in South Eastern Afghanistan, shortly behind the border of Waziristan.

Pakistan-Afghan border map

It was the fighting in the South-East and later in the North-East - province in Afghanistan Kunar, the Pakistani tribal districts of Bajaur and Abdul Ahad Mohmand - which took most of their attention during 2002-06 next to.

The concentration of Taliban fighters in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan, to infiltrate the quiet Zabul, Kandahar and Helmand provinces of Toba Kakar, Chaman, Quetta and Chaghai obscured these developments.

This development remained unattended by both the Pakistani armed forces and coalition troops in Afghanistan.

The results were predictable enough.

Western officials admit that until 2008-09, Coalition forces were in the not in a position to hold that the areas, the Helmand important for the Taliban - like large parts of Central Kandahar and southern were, where the Taliban bomb factories, arms caches, and defensive positions - and set up at the same time, protect their own lines of communication.

'Punjabi Taliban'

Since the "troop surge" announced by President Obama in 2010 troops could evict the Taliban from their fixed positions in Kandahar and Helmand.

Read the main story emerged in Afghanistan in 1994Mainly, which is supported by ethnic PashtunsToppled, after the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan 2001Fugitive wanted leader Mullah Omar, residence UnknownBut has spread the insurgent areas around the capital Kabul, and even the formerly quiet province of Nord-Afghanistan now wider.

The Taliban now seems more on suicide bombings will leave, and spectacular weapon and bombings, to meet the objectives of the psychological cheapest.

And there is an endless supply of neuen-and better trained - fighter, the Afghanistan from Pakistani areas, in particular the Waziristan in.

Credible sources the BBC say that these mainly Pakistanis, the Punjabi Taliban fighters are called, which specialized in gun and bomb attacks and form a large part of the Haqqani Waziristan-based network.

According to these sources, these fighters have been for 2009 to the border in Pakistani military vehicles, probably migrating rocket to avoid strikes by CIA operated drone.

Pakistan's military source in the region is cooperation with these fighters.

Spokesman of the army, Maj Gen Athar Abbas, rejects this as "malicious and manufactured".

"Nothing is further from the truth," he wrote in a current text message me back.

But since the recent accusations by US officials, who ordered several attacks in Kabul of Pakistani ISI intelligence service, questions about the military are actual role in the Afghan insurgents now trigger in various quarters in Pakistan.

Many in the West fixed long that is the key to peace in Afghanistan with the Pakistani forces.

The coming months will show if this really is the case, and whether Pakistan agrees, the demands of the international community to comply with.



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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Tantawi in secret Mubarak hearing

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24 September 2011 Last updated at 13:00 GMT Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of Egypt's ruling military council, speaks with visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (not pictured) in Cairo May 3, 2011 Field Marshal Tantawi's evidence is thought to be crucial to the trial The head of Egypt's ruling military council has testified at the trial of former President Hosni Mubarak.

Field Marshall Tantawi gave evidence in a court session that lasted about an hour and a half, a lawyer said.

The questioning of the man who served as defence minister for almost 20 years took place behind closed doors due to national security concerns.

His testimony is likely to be key in determining Mr Mubarak's guilt or innocence, says the BBC's Bethany Bell.

She was reporting outside the court in Cairo, where small groups of demonstrators gathered - anti-Mubarak protesters calling on Field Marshall Tantawi to tell the truth, with others chanting in support of the former president.

Mr Mubarak, 83, denies charges of ordering the shooting of protesters during the dying days of his regime.

Lawyers representing some of the 850 people killed complained Field Marshal Tantawi gave evidence earlier than usual and left the courthouse without allowing them to cross-examine him, Reuters news agency reported.

"The measures were unusual... The session started very early," it quoted attorney Wael Zekri as saying. "By the time the lawyers arrived, the testimony was over," he added.

Tantawi was initially set to testify on 11 September, but failed to attend the session citing a busy schedule and instead offering to submit a written testimony - raising opposition suspicions that he was deliberately foot-dragging.



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