Former PM Bhutto assassinated at Pakistan rally

Former PM Bhutto assassinated at Pakistan rally
Last Updated: Thursday, December 27, 2007 | 1:27 PM ET
CBC News

Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was gunned down Thursday by an attacker who then blew himself up, killing at least 20 others.

The assassination of Bhutto sparked riots across the country, with at least six people reported killed in the ensuing violence.

Bhutto had just finished addressing thousands of supporters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, about 18 kilometres south of Islamabad, when a man stepped from the crowd and fired. Bhutto was hit in the neck and chest.

The killer then blew himself up.

Bhutto died around 6:16 p.m. local time (8:16 a.m. ET) at Rawalpindi General Hospital after undergoing emergency surgery.

Her body has been flown to the southern Pakistani province of Sindh, where she'll be buried in the family graveyard alongside her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, on Friday.

In a brief televised address, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf condemned the attack and announced three days of mourning for Bhutto. During that time, all schools, commercial centres and banks will remain closed.

Meanwhile, paramilitary forces were put on "red alert" across the country, Reuters reported.

"This cruelty is the work of those terrorists with whom we are fighting," Musharraf said.

Bhutto escaped an assassination attempt in October when twin explosions ripped through crowds in Karachi welcoming her home from eight years of exile. Nearly 150 people died in the attacks.

One of the doctors who attended to Bhutto said she had a bullet in the back of her neck that damaged her spinal cord before it exited from the side of her head.

Another bullet pierced the back of Bhutto's shoulder and came out through her chest, the doctors said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Bhutto was given an open-heart massage, but the main cause of death was damage to her spinal cord, he said.


Upon hearing reports of her death, thousands of Bhutto's supporters gathered outside the hospital in Rawalpindi chanting "Dog, Musharraf, dog."

"I can see outside, now, the massive amounts of people," Babar said from inside the hospital.

I can't say I was too surprised. She has guts to return to Pakistan; RIP.

My Last Final

I liked my last final. It was the kind of final that I like; the kind of final that I missed from not taking anymore analytical math. It lack the long and repetitive isolate x and then substitute it into equation (1) to solve for y crap. If you know what is going on, the process is simple, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and you are done.

Oh how I wish the 425 final was like that. That final felt ridiculously long, though it really wasn't overly long; I had about twenty minutes left in the end. However the whole exam has a lot of questions that were essentially boring. In REAL math exams, like the one I took today, you actually go, "Oh how neat!" If you know exactly what is going on and did not make any mistakes, that exam could have been finished in under an hour. Otherwise, you would just be BSing.

Maybe I'm destined to return to academia in the future... we'll see.

Bye SFU--assuming I did not fail Stat450 or Acma490!

The US Congress is a big f-ing joke

H. Res. 847:
Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith

Dec 11, 2007: This bill passed in the House of Representatives by roll call vote. The vote was held under a suspension of the rules to cut debate short and pass the bill, needing a two-thirds majority. The totals were 372 Ayes, 9 Nays, 50 Present/Not Voting.

Full Text

RESOLUTION

Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith.

Whereas Christmas, a holiday of great significance to Americans and many other cultures and nationalities, is celebrated annually by Christians throughout the United States and the world;

Whereas there are approximately 225,000,000 Christians in the United States, making Christianity the religion of over three-fourths of the American population;

Whereas there are approximately 2,000,000,000 Christians throughout the world, making Christianity the largest religion in the world and the religion of about one-third of the world population;

Whereas Christians identify themselves as those who believe in the salvation from sin offered to them through the sacrifice of their savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and who, out of gratitude for the gift of salvation, commit themselves to living their lives in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Bible;

Whereas Christians and Christianity have contributed greatly to the development of western civilization;

Whereas the United States, being founded as a constitutional republic in the traditions of western civilization, finds much in its history that points observers back to its roots in Christianity;

Whereas on December 25 of each calendar year, American Christians observe Christmas, the holiday celebrating the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ;

Whereas for Christians, Christmas is celebrated as a recognition of God's redemption, mercy, and Grace; and

Whereas many Christians and non-Christians throughout the United States and the rest of the world, celebrate Christmas as a time to serve others: Now, therefore be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world;

(2) expresses continued support for Christians in the United States and worldwide;

(3) acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith;

(4) acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;

(5) rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians, both in the United States and worldwide; and

(6) expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world.

SFU Website - Resolved

wtf is this?!? Oh it's SFU.ca in Firefox 2.0!

When the new SFU website first came out, I was pissed off that it was completely unusable in Firefox 2.0--yes I know, it works fine in Firefox 1.5, the version of Firefox installed in the computers of SFU. I thought, no biggie, they are going to fix it eventually.

Man was I naive!

Being in my final year, I decide to do SFU a favour and submit to them some feedback on their website. I even sent them a screenshot of sfu.ca loaded up in Firefox 2.0, which is nothing but a useless array of red, white, and grey boxes. In addition, I also commented on their navigational menu system. I hate this type of menu system as much as I hate bananas. The gist of the concept is this: first, hover your pointer over a part of the main menu and a new sub-menu will open up. You then move your pointer to the sub-menu, click on a link and be sent merrily on to your destination. Except sometimes, while moving your pointer to the sub-menu, you accidentally move your pointer to an adjacent item on the main menu, thus changing the sub-menu to another one.

Okay, maybe it's just me; maybe my ability to move a mouse pointer horizontally sucks. However, having met a lot of computer illiterate adults, I bet this absurd game of "chase the sub-menu" happens quite frequently. This menu style sucks and SFU should not be using it.

Looking at the site in IE7, I think there is a fair bit of mystery meat navigation on the main page. There isn't any consistency on the font-style of links. It also should conduct a complete site audit to pick out all the pages that are still using the old template. Like this.

Edited on 12/5/2007:
After an email exchange with Steve, my year long problems with the new SFU website is finally resolved. It turns out it has to do with the Adblock extension and a badly named script file on SFU's part. The javascript file located at /js/dynamic/banner.js got blocked by adblock. Whitelisting the SFU domain solved the problem.