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Young and at the helm

National Conference (NC) chief patron Farooq Abdullah endorsed his son Omar Abdullah as the party’s chief ministerial candidate in Jammu and Kashmir after many flip-flops on the decision. The NC emerged as the single largest party in the assembly polls and is looking to form a coalition government with the Congress. “My father Dr. Farooq Abdullah told me in the morning that he would like to play a larger role in national politics and also work for the peace process between India and Pakistan,” Omar Abdullah said. Farooq Abdullah said, “I had already thought of taking care of the party and playing a role in national politics. There is no confusion about Omar’s choice as the party’s chief ministerial candidate.”

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Sheikh Hasina win

Sheikh Hasina, the former prime minister of Bangladesh, will return to power after winning a landslide election victory, just months after spending a year in custody on murder, extortion and corruption charges that have been frozen but not quashed. Election officials said that Hasina’s Awami League had won a massive majority in the 300-seat Parliament. Only 32 seats had gone to Begum Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), another former prime minister and Hasina’s bitterest rival. The victory marks an astonishing turnaround in the chequered political career of Hasina, 61, the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh in its liberation struggle against Pakistan in 1971 and was assassinated in a military coup four years later. In 2001 she was toppled from office after suffering a landslide defeat at the hands of the BNP and was subsequently charged with corruption, extortion and murder. In June she was released from prison on parole to receive medical treatment in the US.

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Gaza violence intensifies

International pressure is mounting on Israel and the Palestinians to halt violence in Gaza, with the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and other countries all calling for an immediate restoration of calm. Angry protests also took place in several cities around the world against Israel after its air strikes in Gaza killed at least 270 people and wounded hundreds more. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the operation in Gaza “is liable to continue for some time, perhaps more than can be foreseen at the present time.”

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Somalia’s president resigns

Somalia’s President Abdullahi Yusuf resigned following a power struggle with Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, who parliament backed after Yusuf tried to sack him. Ethiopian soldiers, who support the government, are due to pull out this week, raising fears of a power vacuum. Last week, Mohamed Mahamud Guled, who Yusuf wanted to install as prime minister, resigned saying his appointment was destabilising the government. The parliament speaker is now supposed to take over leadership responsibilities. Yusuf was chosen by MPs four years ago at the end of a long process supposed to bring peace to Somalia, which has not had an effective national government since 1991.

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Huntington dies at 81

Political scientist Samuel Huntington, whose controversial book “The Clash of Civilizations” predicted conflict between the West and the Islamic world, died at age 81. Huntington, who taught for 58 years at Harvard before retiring in 2007, died at a nursing facility in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.“People all over the world studied and debated his ideas,” friend and Harvard professor emeritus Henry Rosovsky wrote on the Harvard website. “I believe that he was clearly one of the most influential political scientists of the last 50 years.” Huntington, who wrote, co-wrote or edited 17 books, served in the White House in 1977 and 1978 under President Jimmy Carter as coordinator for security planning for the National Security Council.

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Music and marriage

Before getting married, French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy had told Nicolas Sarkozy that she had no intention of giving up her music career just because she was to become the wife of the president. In an interview, she said, “I cannot choose between you and my music, it’s ridiculous. I’m not going to drop my job and iron my husband’s shirts for the next four years. I’m glad he didn’t ask me to choose. It would have been a wrench and a bad way of starting love. Love has nothing to do with sacrifice.”

Compiled by SUBAJAYANTHI

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