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Sunday, December 4, 2011

Islamists win 65 percent of votes in Egypt


Islamist parties have won 65 percent of votes for party list seats in the first round of parliamentary elections, according to official figures obtained by AFP on Sunday. The moderate Muslim Brotherhood won 36.62 percent of the vote, followed by the hardline Salafist Al-Nur party with 24.36 and the moderate Al-Wasat with 4.27, according to a chart provided by elections committee secretary general Yusri Abdel Karim. Abdel Karim said that the committee would not provide percentages until the end of voting on January 10, but according to an official chart he provided the Muslim Brotherhood s Freedom and Justice Party list won 3.56 million out of 9.73 million valid ballots. The Al-Nur party won 2.37 million, and the Wasat party 415,590 votes. The liberal coalition the Egyptian Bloc received 13.35 percent, with 1.29 million votes. The percentages cannot be calculated into the number of seats each party list will receive until the final results for the whole country are in.

Controversial Pakistani actress Veena Malik’s nude shoot causes fury


A controversial Pakistani actress Veena Malik's photo on the website of FHM India, in advance of its publication in the magazine December issue, has been lighting up social network websites since earlier this week. Veena Malik however said the nude photo was published in violation of her agreement with FHM India and she was considering legal action against the magazine. She acknowledged having been photographed for a "bold but not nude shot." She said the editor of the magazine had promised that he would cover most of the photo with the ISI initials. In the published photo, ISI logo appears on the arm. The photo was intended to poke fun at the Indian fear of Pakistani spies, she said, adding "whatever happens (in India), people say ISI is behind that." Magazine editor Kabeer Sharma said Veena Malik had given full consent for the shoot and the picture. "We have all the record(s)," he told a television. "Veena was very excited about that ISI idea." Zubair Khan, a 40-year-old shopkeeper in the northwestern city of Peshawar, agreed, saying the photo had given rival India another opportunity to insult Pakistan. "She has earned a bad name for the entire Pakistan nation," he said. Others questioned the authenticity of the photo. "It seems to be an Indian attempt to malign Pakistan by faking her nude pics, or she might have done it to get a cheap publicity," said Lubna Khalid, 38, a housewife in the southern port city of Karachi. Whether Pakistan would "pursue the matter" legally, the country s Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Saturday, "First, let us see whether it is real or fake." Veena Malik does most of her work in India. Her ties to India have landed her in controversy in the past.

18 Syrian dead in fresh violence


Fresh violence in Syria left 18 people dead on Saturday, most of them killed in a battle between security forces and anti-regime military defectors in a restive northwestern city, activists said. The fighting came a day after the United Nations  human rights chief called on the international community to protect Syrian civilians. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the pre-dawn clashes in the city of Idlib killed seven soldiers and policemen, as well as five anti-government army defectors and three civilians. Security forces also killed a civilian in the southern province of Daraa and two others in the central region of Homs, the activist group said. The U.N. s top human rights official said this week that Syria is in a state of civil war, and that more than 4,000 people have been killed since mid-March. Until recently, most of the bloodshed in Syria was caused by security forces firing on mainly peaceful protesters, but there have been growing reports of army defectors and armed civilians fighting regime forces. The clashes came as activists reported a grim milestone in the 8-month-old revolt against President Bashar Assad s regime: November was the deadliest month of the uprising, with at least 950 people killed in gunbattles, raids and other violence. In the west of the country, Syrian troops detained at least 27 people in the village of Talkalakh on the border with Lebanon, and set on fire the homes of nine activists who were on the run, the observatory said. Talkalakh is within walking distance from Lebanon, and at least two Lebanese civilians were struck by bullets on their side of the border on Friday. Witnesses said that they had heard hours of explosions and heavy machine-gun fire coming from the village. The country s state-run news agency SANA confirmed the arrests in Talkalakh, saying that those detained were "terrorists" involved in smuggling weapons, drugs, and infiltrating fighters from Lebanon. The regime has consistently blamed armed gangs acting out a foreign conspiracy for Syria s troubles. The reports of violence, and the activist groups  death toll for November, could not be independently confirmed. The regime has sealed the country off from foreign journalists and prevented independent reporting. On Friday, Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva that "in light of the manifest failure of the Syrian authorities to protect their citizens, the international community needs to take urgent and effective measures to protect the Syrian people," A day earlier, Pillay characterized the conflict in Syria as a civil war.