London—Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Friday he has “concerns” about serious allegations of fraud in last month’s Afghanistan presidential elections. “We will not be party to any whitewash when it comes to the elections,” Miliband told BBC television. That’s why the United Nations established the electoral complaints commission, it’s why they’ve dismissed the results from 83 polling stations, so of course we have concerns about very serious allegations of fraud.” The vote monitoring body on Thursday ordered for the first time that ballots

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Taipei—A Taiwan court on Friday sentenced ex-president Chen Shui-bian to life in jail after a corruption trial he claimed was political revenge for his lifelong push to declare independence from China. Chen, the first former leader to be convicted in a criminal case, boycotted the verdict in the Taipei district court, which also handed a life term to his wheelchair-bound wife Wu Shu-chen. A court official said 58-year-old Chen — held at a detention centre on the out-skirts of Taipei since December — was found guilty of embezzling state funds,

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Washington—The United States has said the new offers from Iran are “not really responsive” to concerns about its nuclear program, dampening hopes for new talks aimed at breaking a three-year impasse. It was the most negative reaction so far to Wednesday’s package of proposals submitted by Tehran to the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany, which want Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program. A US non-profit investigative journalism group, Pro Publica, said it obtained a copy of Iran’s closely-held five-page proposal, in

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Tokyo—The number of Japanese centenarians has doubled in the past six years to a record high of more than 40,000, with women dominating the list of those whose lives have spanned more than a century, the government said Friday. Japan will have 40,399 people aged 100 or older this month, surpassing the pre-vious record of 36,276 last year, the Health and Welfare Ministry said in an an-nual report marking a Sept. 21 national holiday honoring

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Aijaz Zaka Syed Comment

AFTER the endless circus over the release of Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi, Britain now wants Libya to compensate the families of Irish Republic Army victims. Why? Because, you see, the Irish Republican Army terrorists had been once supported by Libya. Poor Gordon Brown, already under fire over his “collusion” with Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi for the release of Al-Megrahi, the terminally ill, al-leged planner of Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, has been hauled over the coals by the Sunday Times suggesting the prime minister had “failed to press” Tripoli for

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