Malaysian PM: Bhutto killing a 'cruel act'

Malaysia on Friday condemned the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, describing it as a "cruel act" and said the perpetrators must be brought to justice.

"I feel very shocked to hear the news that Benazir Bhutto has been killed while campaigning for the elections in Pakistan," Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said in a statement.

"I strongly condemn this cruel act which also killed many innocent people," he added.

Bhutto, 54, a two-time former prime minister and head of Pakistan's most powerful political party, was shot Thursday in the neck by her attacker before he blew himself up at a political rally in Rawalpindi, killing at least 20 people.

Abdullah said extremism and violence was unacceptable and could not be tolerated, adding that the "perpetrators must be brought to justice."

Urging the people of Pakistan to remain calm amid the violence that followed Bhutto's killing, the prime minister said he hoped the situation in the country would stabilise.

Agence France-Presse - 12/28/2007

Bhutto assassination plunges Pakistan into turmoil

The assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Thursday 27 December 2007 has triggered a wave of violence in the nuclear-armed country.

PAKISTAN opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated by a suicide bomber on Thursday, plunging the nuclear-armed country into one of the worst crises in its 60-year history.
Her killing after an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi triggered a wave of violence, especially in her native Sindh province, and could lead to the postponement of Jan 8 polls meant to return Pakistan to civilian-led democracy.

Ms Bhutto, 54, had hoped the huge popular following she enjoyed among the Pakistani poor would propel her to power for the third time as prime minister in an election meant to stabilise a country racked by Islamist violence.

But as she left the rally - where she spoke of threats to her life - she stood up to wave to supporters from the sun-roof of her bullet-proof vehicle. The attacker fired shots at her before blowing himself up, police and witnesses said.

She was pronounced dead in hospital in Rawalpindi, the home of the Pakistan army and the same city where her father, former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in 1979 after being deposed by a military coup.

'It is the act of those who want Pakistan to disintegrate,' said Ms Farzana Raja, a senior official from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party. 'They have finished the Bhutto family.'

Dec 28, 2007

10. Hunger and World Poverty

About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds, as you can see on this display. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often.

Yet there is plenty of food in the world for everyone. The problem is that hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. They lack the money to buy enough food to nourish themselves. Being constantly malnourished, they become weaker and often sick. This makes them increasingly less able to work, which then makes them even poorer and hungrier. This downward spiral often continues until death for them and their families.

854 million people across the world are hungry, up from 852 million a year ago.

Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes--one child every five seconds.

In essence, hunger is the most extreme form of poverty, where individuals or families cannot afford to meet their most basic need for food.

Hunger manifests itself in many ways other than starvation and famine. Most poor people who battle hunger deal with chronic undernourishment and vitamin or mineral deficiencies, which result in stunted growth, weakness and heightened susceptibility to illness.

Countries in which a large portion of the population battles hunger daily are usually poor and often lack the social safety nets we enjoy, such as soup kitchens, food stamps, and job training programs. When a family that lives in a poor country cannot grow enough food or earn enough money to buy food, there is nowhere to turn for help.

Giving A Hand :

www.worldforworld.org
www.ChangingThePresent.org
www.EndPoverty2015.org
www.GNNTDC.org
www.ProjectConcern.org
MercyCorps.org
www.friendsofwfp.org

7. Malaysian inflation reaches 2.3 percent in November 2007

Malaysia's annual inflation rate in November was 2.3 percent compared with 1.9 percent in October, official data showed Wednesday.

For the first 11 months of the year, the consumer price index rose 2.0 percent from a year earlier driven by food, transport and housing, the Statistics Department said.

Malaysia's central bank has forecast inflation would remain between 2.0 to 2.5 percent for the year. It has kept its key interest rate unchanged at 3.50 percent.

Inflation reached 3.6 percent last year due to high global oil prices.

Agence France-Presse - 12/19/2007

3. Study says over 12 million cancer cases diagnosed in 2007

More than 12 million new cases of cancer will have been diagnosed around the world in 2007 and 20,000 people a day, or 7.6 million people, will have died from the disease, a new study said Monday.

The projections are contained in the first ever report by the American Cancer Society, and are based on cancer and mortality rates in the Globocan 2002 database compiled by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Here the most common kind of cancers are prostate, lung and colon cancer among men, and breast cancer and lung and colon cancer among women.

Some 6.7 million cancer cases and 4.7 million deaths will take place in developing nations, with lung, stomach and liver cancer being most prevalent in men, and women suffering most from breast, uterine and stomach cancer.

The report also contains a special focus on smoking called "The Tobacco Epidemic" which predicts that more than a billion people will die from smoking-related diseases in the 21st century -- most in developing countries.

This compares to about 100 million deaths from smoking around the world in the 20th century.

About five million people died around the world from tobacco use in 2000, of which 30percent 1.42 million contracted cancer, of whom 850,000 had lung cancer, the report said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 84 percent of the world's 1.3 billion smokers live in developing nations.

In China alone, the WHO estimates that there are more than 350 million smokers, more than the entire population of the United States.

If the trend continues, there will be about two billion smokers around the world by 2030 of which half will die from smoking-related illnesses if they don't quit.