ONE NEWS

Holder Seen as Obama choice for justice post: WASHINGTON: President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has signaled to Eric H. Holder Jr., a senior official in the Justice Department in the Clinton administration, that he will be chosen as attorney general, but no final decision has been made, people involved in the process said Tuesday.As a top adviser to Obama, he has long been considered the front-runner for the job of attorney general because of his extensive record as a prosecutor and a judge and a well-honed reputation inside Washington. Obama’s advisers appear to have overcome concerns that Holder’s involvement in a presidential pardon scandal as President Bill Clinton left office in 2001 might cloud his nomination for the job.Word that Holder was likely to be nominated as attorney general leaked out as Obama also began settling on other members of his team and signaling his policy priorities upon taking office. Obama is set to hire Peter R. Orszag, the director of the Congre...

LAHORE: A District and Session Judge and Home Secretary on Thursday allowed Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to take Munaf Kalia and Javed Khanani to Karachi.Earlier, they were produced before a Judicial Magistrate, Faisal Jameel who sent them to jail on judicial remand. According to reports, Munaf Kalia and Javed Khanani accused of being involved in financial scam were presented in the court of District and Session Judge, Syed Nasir Ali Shah who granted permission to hand over them to FIA Karachi. It may by recalled here that FIA Karachi, on the directive of DG FIA, had registered one more F.I.R. against the accused after finding more evidences against them and sent a team to Lahore for further interrogation.

Hijacked supertanker drops anchor RIYADH: A hijacked Saudi-owned supertanker carrying more than $100 million worth of crude oil was anchored off the coast of Somalia on Tuesday and the ship's owner said it was working to free the ship and its 25-member crew.The owner, Vela International, a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabia-based oil giant Saudi Aramco, said in a statement that the company was awaiting further contact from the pirates who seized the vessel about 480 miles off the coast of Somalia. Earlier reports had said that the 1,080-foot-long ship, Sirius Star, had been hijacked off the Kenyan coast.The company did not say specifically that it had begun negotiations with the hijackers. The supertanker, about the same length as an American Nimitz class aircraft carrier, is the largest ship known to have been seized by pirates, and it was fully loaded with two million barrels of oil."Our first and foremost priority is ensuring the safety of the crew," Salah Ka'aki, the...

ISLAMABAD: Islamabad High Court (IHC) has reserved the decisions on the cases filed for the recovery of Dr. Aafia and the petition for including the name of Pervez Musharraf in the ECL list. IHC Chief Justice, Sardar Aslam completed the hearings of both the cases filed by Barrister Javed Jaffery, who in his two separate petitions had prayed for bringing back Dr. Aafia from US custody and putting General ® Pervez Musharraf’s name in the ECL list besides Governor, State Bank, Dr. Shamshad Akhtar’s eligibility has also been challenged.The court is expected to announce the reserved decisions on both the cases any time today. IHC CJ also dismissed the filed petition challenging the detention of Dr. Abdul Qadeer by one citizen, Pir Ali Imran, who had challenged the detention of Dr. Abdul Qadeer. IMF agrees 518 mln dlr loan with crisis-hit Serbia: WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund has agreed to provide a 518 million dollar loan to Serbia to help the country weather the global financ...

LOS ANGELES – James Bond's quantum of the weekend box office: $70.4 million. "Quantum of Solace," with Daniel Craig returning as Bond for the first direct sequel in the spy franchise, pulled in nearly $30 million more over opening weekend than its predecessor, 2006's "Casino Royale," according to studio estimates Sunday. The debut also topped the previous opening-weekend record for a Bond flick, $47 million for 2002's "Die Another Day." Adjusting for inflation, Sony's "Quantum of Solace" easily drew a bigger audience than that installment, the last Bond adventure featuring Pierce Brosnan. Based on 2002 admission prices, about 8.1 million tickets were sold for "Die Another Day" in the first weekend, compared to 9.8 million for "Quantum of Solace." Two years ago, Craig was an unknown quantity as Bond, a stage-trained actor with little action experience and a resume that tended toward small, artsier films. Many fa...

NEW DELHI – India rejoiced Saturday at joining an elite club by planting its flag on the moon as the country's space agency released the first pictures of the cratered surface taken by its maiden lunar mission. A probe sent late Friday from the orbiting mother spacecraft took pictures and gathered other data India needs for a future moon landing as it plummeted to a crash-landing at the moon's south pole, said Indian Space Research Organization spokesman B.R. Guruprasad. The box-shaped probe was painted with India's saffron, white and green flag, sparking celebrations in the country that is striving to become a world power. "The tricolor has landed," the Hindustan Times said in a banner headline, while The Asian Age proclaimed "India is big cheese." As India's economy has boomed in recent years, it has sought to convert its newfound wealth — built on the nation's high-tech sector — into political and military clout. The moon mission comes just m...

SINGAPORE – Oil prices fell below $56 a barrel Monday in Asia as news that Japan fell into recession highlighted investor fears of a global economic slowdown that will hurt crude demand. Light, sweet crude for December delivery was down $1.11 to $55.93 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midafternoon in Singapore. The contract fell $1.20 Friday to settle at $57.04. Japan, the world's second-largest economy, said Monday it slid into a recession for the first time since 2001 after gross domestic product contracted at an annual pace of 0.4 percent in the third quarter after a shrinking 3.7 percent in the second quarter. Japan now joins the 15-nation euro-zone in a recession, defined as two straight quarters of GDP contraction. "Markets are very worried about the international economic outlook, about oil consumption," said David Moore, a commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney. "As data is released in the U.S.,...