0 Tahirul Qadri's long march sets positive traditions

PESHAWAR: While the Tehrik-e-Minhajul Quran’s sit-in at Islamabad has raised the political temperature in the country and forced the political friends and foes on joining hands, the historical long march and sit-in have also set some positive traditions of holding protests in a civilised way.

The track record of protests and long marches in the country has not been so pleasant in the past. Not only the protesters often turn violent but the law enforcing agencies lose patience on such occasions and resort to baton-charge and teargassing.

In the mid-1990s, participants of the PPP long march were severely baton-charged by the Nawaz Sharif government and besides other leaders and workers the party co-chairperson Begum Nusrat Bhutto was beaten to the extent that the head injury she suffered paralysed the elderly lady for the whole of her life.

The PPP government adopted the same way for dispersing the Jamaat-e-Islami Dharna and police severely manhandled the party Amir Qazi Hussain Ahmad along with his supporters. The worst example of violence during protests was the recent violence by the religious parties’ activists against the blasphemous movie produced and released in the United States.

However, Dr Tahirul Qadri’s long march and sit-in set a precedent in the history of Pakistan and gave a positive message not only to the people in the country but to the world that ours is a peaceful nation and protest can be held without damaging public and private properties.

It also gave a message that Pakistanis can render any kind of sacrifice for the just cause right from facing harsh weather and bearing the expenditures of boarding and lodging on their own against the wrong perception of being beggars. The third positive message is of holding such a long and big protest in a disciplined way.

Another positive outcome of the sit-in is the union of all the political forces either in the government or opposition for defending democracy against any unconstitutional move. It was probably for the first time that the parties in power and opposition including those who always welcomed dismissal of elected government in the past put their heads together to defend democratic process at all costs.

Raising a united voice for defending democracy could be termed a good omen, but the political forces should at least learn a lesson from Qadri’s sit-in that protest can be held in a civilised way and breaking and setting on fire public and private properties was not the solution to problems. It is also a lesson for the religio-political parties, if their claim about the participants of the long march and sit-in is accepted, that how the students of seminaries could be guided to follow the instructions of their leaders and not resort to violence.

0 Long march ends: Tahirul Qadri, govt agree on terms for electoral reforms

ISLAMABAD: Prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf has signed the agreement reached between the government’s delegation, and Dr Tahirul Qadri, bringing to an end the “million-man” march Express News reported on Thursday.

Ashraf signed on the Islamabad declaration with the agreed terms. President Asif Ali Zardari also approved the document.

Qadri and Naek then read out the terms of the Islamabad Long March Declaration in Urdu and in English respectively. It states that assemblies will be dissolved at any time before March 16, 2013 and elections will be held within 90 days thereafter.

The terms agreed to unanimously include a provision of 30 days for pre-clearance and scrutiny of nomination papers by the Election Commission per Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution.

The treasury benches will submit two names for the caretaker prime minister who will be honest and impartial candidates for the post.  Further deliberations on the composition of the Election Commission will be held on January 27, 2013 in Lahore.

It was also agreed to implement electoral reforms as contained within the Constitution and Supreme Court order of June 8, 2012.

The terms agreed to also ensured the end of the long march and sit in and an amnesty for long march participants.

Earlier in the evening, after an agreement was reached between the government’s delegation and Qadri, three of the members returned to prime minister house to have the document signed.

“Just give them some space, Khurshid Shah, Qamar Zaman Kaira and Mushahid Hussain are going to prime minister house to have it [agreement] signed by all the leaders. They will be  right back with the signed document and then the Islamabad declaration will be read out.”

Qadri had accepted the government’s request for negotiations with talks beginning at 3:45pm.

The committee was headed by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain includes Farooq Sattar, Afrasiyab Khattak and Khurshid Shah.

The government ordered the deputy commissioner Islamabad to ask Qadri for more time to respond to his demands.

An hour before the government announced the decision to form a committee, the Minhajul Quran International (MQI) chairman had given a final deadline for his demands to be fulfilled.

The deadline ended at 3pm Thursday. Rangers were deployed around the Parliament House and President House to heighten the security.

Qadri asked President Asif Ali Zardari to send a delegation to hold talks over his demands or  “lose the last chance of saving peace”. “We have already given too many chances to law, to democracy and to peace”.

Qadri also announced that he will end the sit-in in Islamabad by Thursday night.

He criticised the government for not sympathising with the women and children present at the long march. “I had asked the women to not participate, but they insisted and debated with us. They have come here on their own will.”

Qadri’s protest rally, which began from Lahore on January 13, has threatened to destabilise the nuclear-armed country as it inches towards what would be the first democratic transition of power between two civilian governments at elections due by May this year.

The government has not announced any date for polls other than saying that parliament will disband in mid-March to make way for a caretaker government and elections within 60 days under the constitution.

Qadri wants parliament dissolved now and a caretaker government set up in consultation with the military and judiciary to implement key reforms such as setting up a new election commission and banning corrupt candidates.

0 Was Manti Te'o a schemer or prey?

Serial liar Lance Armstrong will supposedly bare part of his soul on Thursday evening. Eventually, Manti Te'o will be asked to do the same. Television cameras will become their separate confessionals and, once both have spoken, they'll have told their versions of the truth.

Armstrong, the disgraced cyclist and career cheater, we were prepared for. His deceit was decades in the making.

But until the mushroom cloud of a Deadspin report enveloped his life Wednesday, Te'o was considered to be all that was right and good about college football. He was more than an All-American linebacker from Notre Dame; he was an ideal, a template for integrity, compassion and humility.

Te'o might still be all of those things. Or none of them. We still don't know for sure.

We do know he issued a statement saying that he was the victim of an elaborate online and telephonic deception. We know that his "girlfriend," and her death from leukemia, were the figments of someone's depraved imagination. What we don't know is whether Te'o's imagination was involved in the deception.

Notre Dame says it wasn't. ND athletic director Jack Swarbrick did more than vouch for Te'o's reputation; he all but dared anyone to question it. The victim, said Swarbrick, wasn't simply Te'o himself, but also Te'o's innocence, his unconditional desire to help others.

"There's a lot of tragedy here," said Swarbrick in a Wednesday evening news conference. "There's a lot of sorrow here. But the thing I am most sad of, sad about -- sorry … That the single most trusting human being I've ever met will never be able to trust in the same way again in his life. That's an incredible tragedy."

Swarbrick had to compose himself during the middle of that statement. Such is the level of his admiration for Te'o and the level of contempt for those whom he said did this to the Notre Dame star.

There was no wiggle room in Swarbrick's comments. He gave his unequivocal support and did so after citing the results of a private investigation commissioned by the university. In the end, said Swarbrick, Te'o was on the wrong end of a "very sophisticated hoax perpetrated for reasons we can't fully understand, but had a certain cruelty at its core."

I sat across from Te'o in the fall and listened to him tell his story of heartbreak. You know the details by now: On the same horrific day, he had learned that his grandmother had died, followed hours later by what he said was the news that his girlfriend -- the apparently fictitious Lennay Kekua -- had also passed away.

If he was lying, it was a performance for the ages. And if he wasn't, then clearly he believed, with all his heart, that both his beloved grandmother and Lennay had died within six hours of one another.

There remain those who simply can't believe that Te'o wasn't somehow complicit in the hoax. Nobody, they say, could be that naive, that trusting.

And despite Swarbrick's reasoned, passionate and mostly convincing defense of Te'o, there remain more than a few questions about the details of this bizarre, surreal story. Swarbrick's explanations were plausible, even believable, but in some instances, the Notre Dame AD said he couldn't comment on certain questions. Instead, he deferred to Te'o.

This can play out only two ways. Either Te'o is telling the truth or he's a Lance Armstrong-caliber liar. Either he is a victim of a pitiless hoax or part architect of it.

I want to believe Swarbrick. I want to believe Te'o. I want to believe there is a special place in hell for those who would prey on a person's better angels.

This is a story like no other. Armstrong … Te'o. You can't make this stuff up.

Oh, wait -- apparently you can.

0 Poisoned Lottery Winner's Kin Were Suspicious

Urooj Khan had just brought home his $425,000 lottery check when he unexpectedly died the following day. Now, certain members of Khan's family are speaking publicly about the mystery -- and his nephew told ABC News they knew something was not right.

"He was a healthy guy, you know?" said the nephew, Minhaj Khan. "He worked so hard. He was always going about his business and, the thing is: After he won the lottery and the next day later he passes away -- it's awkward. It raises some eyebrows."

The medical examiner initially ruled Urooj Khan, 46, an immigrant from India who owned dry-cleaning businesses in Chicago, died July 20, 2012, of natural causes. But after a family member demanded more tests, authorities in November found a lethal amount of cyanide in his blood, turning the case into a homicide investigation.

"When we found out there was cyanide in his blood after the extensive toxicology reports, we had to believe that ... somebody had to kill him," Minhaj Khan said. "It had to happen, because where can you get cyanide?"

In Photos: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners

Authorities could be one step closer to learning what happened to Urooj Khan. A judge Friday approved an order to exhume his body at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago as early as Thursday to perform further tests.

Moments after the court hearing, Urooj Khan's sister, Meraj Khan, remembered her brother as the kind of person who would've shared his jackpot with anyone. Speaking at the Cook County Courthouse, she hoped the exhumation would help the investigation.

"It's very hard because I wanted my brother to rest in peace, but then we have to have justice served," she said, according to ABC News station WLS in Chicago. "So if that's what it takes for him to bring justice and peace, then that's what needs to be done."

Khan reportedly did not have a will. With the investigation moving forward, his family is waging a legal fight against his widow, Shabana Ansari, 32, over more than $1 million, including Urooj Khan's lottery winnings, as well as his business and real estate holdings.

Khan's brother filed a petition Wednesday to a judge asking Citibank to release information about Khan's assets to "ultimately ensure" that [Khan's] minor daughter from a prior marriage "receives her proper share."
Ansari may have tried to cash the jackpot check after Khan's death, according to court documents, which also showed Urooj Khan's family is questioning if the couple was ever even legally married.

Ansari, Urooj Khan's second wife, who still works at the couple's dry cleaning business, has insisted they were married legally.

She has told reporters the night before her husband died, she cooked a traditional Indian meal for him and their family, including Khan's daughter and Ansari's father. Not feeling well, Khan retired early, Ansari told the Chicago Sun-Times, falling asleep in a chair, waking up in agony, then collapsing in the middle of the night. She said she called 911.

"It has been an incredibly hard time," she told ABC News earlier this week. "We went from being the happiest the day we got the check. It was the best sleep I've had. And then the next day, everything was gone.

"I am cooperating with the investigation," Ansari told ABC News. "I want the truth to come out."
Ansari has not been named a suspect, but her attorney, Steven Kozicki, said investigators did question her for more than four hours.
"Absolutely, positively, you know, she had nothing to do with her husband's death," Kozicki said.
Despite the legal battle over the estate, Minhaj Khan said the family "can't really point fingers or we can't really speculate until a further investigation is done."
"When they are exhuming his body, I really hope the truth does come out, and our family finds some peace and we get to the bottom of this," he said. "Because everybody has to go one day, but the way that he died was not the way to go."
Urooj Khan won $1 million in a scratch-off Illinois Lottery game in June, though he elected to take the lump sum payout amounting to $425,000 after taxes. He said he planned to use the money to pay off his bills and mortgage, and make a contribution to St. Jude Children's Research Center.
Minhaj Khan remembered his uncle as that sort of giving person.
"He had a successful business, he was a great father, he was a great uncle to us and we knew him since the late '80s, since he came here [to the United States]," he said. "We lived with him. My kids used to play with him too, you know? I have two little girls. He was a really big family man and everybody loved him.
"He was the life of the party," he said, "always joking around, always joking with us and the family."

ABC News' Susanna Kim contributed to this report.

0 Evan Rachel Wood, Jamie Bell expecting first child

NEW YORK (AP) — Evan Rachel Wood is going to be a mom.

Wood's publicist, Amanda Silverman, said Friday the 25-year-old actress and her husband, Jamie Bell, are expecting their first child later this year. She said Wood and Bell are "thrilled."

The couple married last year. They first dated in 2005 but broke up the following year.

Wood's breakout role was in 2003's gritty film "Thirteen." In 2011, she co-starred with Kate Winslet in the HBO miniseries "Mildred Pierce." Both roles earned her Golden Globe nominations.

Bell, 26, is best known for his starring role in "Billy Elliott." His film credits also include "King Kong" and "The Adventures of Tintin."

Us Weekly first reported Wood's pregnancy.

0 6 Superfoods You're Not Eating

by SHAPE Diet Doctor Mike Roussell, phD
Power through your workout, boost your health, and lose weight with these common, yet oft-overlooked foods.

Seaweed
Perhaps most commonly eaten wrapped around a sushi roll, nori is loaded with iodine, a mineral essential for proper thyroid function. While iodized salt was introduced in 1924 to prevent goiter, the increased emphasis on low-sodium diets and the popularity of sea salt, which often doesn't contain iodine, have recently resurfaced concerns about getting enough iodine. This trace mineral isn't the only benefit of sea vegetables. Nori contains high levels of vitamin K and iron, micronutrients essential for proper cellular function. Look for nori pieces in the international section of your supermarket and crumble them on top of chili, soups, and salads. (This will add a little extra salty flavor, so if you are salt sensitive, use less in your recipe.)

Sauerkraut
Considering cabbage is low-carb, high-fiber, and contains cancer-fighting 3-indole carbinol and d-glucarate, a compound that works to clear excess estrogen, the veggie is already a superfood. Fermenting it into sauerkraut, however, puts it on nutritional steroids. The probiotics that drive fermentation also help repopulate your digestive system with healthy, hardworking good bacteria that lower inflammation, improve digestion, and maybe even aid in weight loss. Plus fermentation increases the bioavailablity of the antioxidants found in cabbage, and the longer cabbage ferments, the higher the levels of antioxidants become, meaning your body can better absorb and use them.

Hemp Seeds
No, these will not make you high. While hemp and marijuana are kissing cousins, the amount of THC in hemp is almost nonexistent. In 2004, the DEA's ban on hemp seeds and oil due to their trace THC content was overruled, and hemp is not considered a drug. The seeds are powerful, however, as two tablespoons contains 400 milligrams of anti-inflammatory gamma-linolenic acid and 2 grams of omega-3 fats, plus all nine essential amino acids, compounds that help maximize recovery from workouts.

Shirataki Noodles
Pasta lovers, it's time to throw an Italian feast: Now you can enjoy your noodles for 20 calories and 5 carbs (and some brands have even less of both!) per serving. Shirataki noodles are made from the konjac plant, the same plant that we get the fiber and satiety supplement glucomannan from-read: They keep you full. Shirataki don't have much flavor and come in every shape from angel to fettuccine to penne and more, so you can use them in any pasta recipe. Just take them out of the bag, rinse thoroughly, and heat, and they're ready to toss into stroganoff, primavera, or whatever you're craving.

Beets
After a study showed that beets can improve performance and reduce the amount of oxygen needed to complete a cardio session, the sports and fitness community has been raving about the root veggie and its juice. Beets contain nitrates, which are used in the production of nitric oxide, a compound that makes blood vessels dilate, allowing more blood and oxygen to flow to your working muscles. Enjoy them raw, cooked, or juiced.

Asparagus
Vitamin K is important for blood clotting and B vitamins are necessary for energy metabolism, and you can find both in asparagus. Not only is a stalk only three calories, but a recent study in the Journal of Food Science reported that asparagus can aid the body in accelerating the metabolism of alcohol. Next time you host a cocktail party, serve this superfood wrapped in prosciutto for tasty, low-carb, high-protein hors d'oeuvres that will help your guests wake up hangover-free in the morning.