Thursday, February 12, 2009

Fatima Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto, the daughter of Benazir's brother Murtaza, is intelligent, opinionated and feisty. A political writer, Fatima has penned two books and writes a hard-hitting newspaper column. A close lieutenant to her more politically ambitious mother, Fatima is a politician in training.
But speaking to The Guardian, Fatima says she has no political ambitions and is unlikely to overshadow Bilawal, her now famous cousin, anytime soon.
Speaking to The Guardian in October 2007, days before Benazir's return to Pakistan, the pair was somber at the prospect of her aunt's imminent return. "If she didn't sign the death warrant, then who had the power to cover it up? She did," alleges Fatima, speaking about her father's death. In terms of political ideology, what we read, how we think, we are very different. I don't think that I'm anything like her," says Fatima when compared to her aunt.
Benazir, however, clearly loved her niece, which is evident in her autobiography Daughter of the East, which has several warm references. Fatima, though, maintains that she tried to split the family apart. She belittled Ghinwa, Fatima's stepmother, as a 'Lebanese belly dancer', and soon after Murtaza's death, convinced Fatima's biological mother, Fauzia, to seek parental custody.

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin by working to limit the number of tourists visiting the Galapagos Islands or Antarctica to protect their spectacular wildlife The Galapagos in the Pacific Ocean gave Darwin insights into evolution on his famed voyage around the world aboard The Beagle. Many species — from mockingbirds to tortoises – differ from those on the South American mainland.
Among nightmare scenarios for Antarctica, first sighted in 1820, penguins might get bird flu. Or new seeds unwittingly brought by tourists might thrive and displace lichens and mosses found nowhere else on earth. A big cruise liner might run aground, spilling oil and coating beaches used by seals. But a group of environmentalists, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, wants the numbers capped — it hasn’t proposed an exact figure, but says it shouldn’t be too far above current levels.
And the unique wildlife is of the Galapagos is similarly under threat from people with both tourism and immigration from the South American mainland. See a BBC report here, for instance, saying that tourism rose to more than 173,000 last year. The United Nations in 2007 added the Galapagos to its list of world heritage sites in danger. AATO says the numbers are tiny — enough people to fill a football stadium across a continent bigger than the United States.

Elgin Baylor

Elgin Baylor, the former Los Angeles Clippers general manager who left the team last fall after 22 years, has sued the franchise, the NBA and team owner Donald Sterling alleging employment discrimination. Baylor plans to hold a news conference Thursday to discuss the lawsuit, which also names club president Andy Roeser, Douglas said in a fax sent Wednesday.
The lawsuit maintains that Baylor was "discriminated against and unceremoniously released from his position with the team on account of his age and his race" and that he was "grossly underpaid during his tenure with the Clippers, never earning more than $350,000 per year, when compared with the compensation scheme for general managers employed by every other team in the NBA."
The NBA is named in the lawsuit, according to Douglas' fax, as "a joint venturer/partner of condoning, adopting and ratifying this discriminatory practice since the league is fully aware of salaries paid to all of the general managers." Clippers attorney Robert H. Platt said in a statement Wednesday night that he had not seen the lawsuit and couldn't comment on Baylor's specific allegations.
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