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Saturday, January 15, 2011

Pakistan president in US

US President Barack Obama would meet his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari at the White House on Friday, where the two leaders would hold talks on issues of bilateral importance including combating terrorism. “President Obama will meet with President Zardari of Pakistan here at the White House on Friday,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters at his daily news conference on Thursday. “The two leaders will discuss aspects of the U.S.-Pakistan strategic partnership, including our mutual commitment to economic reform, support for democracy and good governance, and joint efforts to combat terrorism,” he said. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would join that meeting, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters later. Mr. Crowley said that this was a vitally important relationship for the United States. “This is a vitally important partnership that we’re building with Pakistan. The Vice President (Joe Biden) was just there and had the opportunity to talk to President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani,” he said. The president will have a chance to talk with President Zardari about the state of the relationship, what’s happening on the ground, and the US looks forward to the meeting, he added. Mr. Zardari is on an unofficial visit to Washington to attend the memorial service of top American diplomat late Richard Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan who died last month at age 69. “He’s in town for Holbrooke’s service, and we thought it was a good opportunity to add a meeting with President Zardari,” Mr. Gibbs said, adding that the meeting would be closed for the press.

Brazil mudslide

Grieving mudslide survivors carried the bodies of loved ones for hours down washed-out mountainsides on Friday as the death toll hit 514. They told of entire neighborhoods in a resort city destroyed and pleaded for food and water to reach those still isolated by Brazil's deadliest natural disaster in four decades. Officials said the death toll in four towns north of Rio de Janeiro was still rising and could jump further once rescuers can reach areas cut off by Wednesday's slides. They refused to even guess how many remain missing. Local reports put it in the hundreds. After morning rains caused delays Friday, rescuers resumed efforts, but manpower or resources had yet to reach many in Teresopolis, a mountain city of 163,000 alongside a national park that hosts a major training site for Brazil's national football team. It is the worst natural disaster to hit Latin America's biggest nation since flooding and slides in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo states killed 785 people in 1967, according to the Brussels-based International Disaster Database, which has records of deadly natural events in Brazil since 1900. Flooding and mudslides are common in Brazil when the summer rains come, but this week's slides were among the worst in recent memory. The disasters punish the poor, who often live in rickety shacks perched perilously on steep hillsides with little or no foundations. But even the rich did not escape the damage in Teresopolis, where large homes were washed away.