SAN FRANCISCO: A private funeral was being held Friday for legendary Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, according to an

unconfirmed report in the Wall Street Journal.

Jobs died on Wednesday at the age of 56 after a battle with cancer. An intensely private man in life, his family was bidding

farewell to Jobs in an intimate gathering at an undisclosed location, the Journal reported.

Apple is planning a celebration of "Steve's extraordinary life" for employees but has indicated no plans for a public memorial.

(AFP)

Top Kurd killed in Syria, US calls on Assad to go
DAMASCUS: A top Kurdish activist and 16 other people were killed Friday as thousands rallied in support of a new opposition

front, activists said, as Washington called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to "step down now".

The latest violence came as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Assad will have to leave power if he fails to implement

reforms acceptable to the opposition, and Damascus again blamed "terrorists" for the unrest.

Kurdish activist and opposition spokesman Meshaal Tamo, 53, was killed when four masked gunmen stormed his house in

Qamishli in the north and opened fire, also wounding his son and another fellow activist in the Kurdish Future Party, activists

said.

Assad's regime is escalating its tactics against the opposition with bold, daylight attacks on its leaders, the US State

Department charged.

"This is a clear escalation of regime tactics," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters, referring to

reports of Tamo's murder, as well as the beating on Friday of former MP Riad Seif.

Nuland said both opposition leaders were attacked in broad daylight.

In a statement, White House spokesman Jay Carney condemned the attacks, saying they showed "again that the Assad

regime's promises for dialogue and reform are hollow".

France also condemned the Syrian regime's "brutal violence" in its crackdown on the opposition and said it was "shocked" by

Tamo's murder.

A foreign ministry statement said the violence "shows that the regime of Bashar al-Assad remains deaf to the appeals of the

international community".

The official SANA news agency reported Tamo's "assassination" but gave a different account of his death, saying he was killed

"by gunmen in a black car who fired at his car".

Tamo, a member of the newly formed Syrian National Council (SNC) opposition grouping, had been released recently after

three and a half years in prison.

Elsewhere, 11 civilians were shot dead in the central city of Homs by security forces, three in Douma and one in Zabadani

northwest of Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Another man died after being shot by security forces in the flashpoint northern town of Jisr al-Shughur near the Turkish border,

the Local Coordination Committees activist network reported.

Meanwhile, ex-MP Seif had to be given hospital treatment after being beaten outside a mosque in the capital's commercial

neighbourhood of Medan.

Mosques in Syria, as happens every week, again became springboards for Friday anti-regime protests, also this time in

support of the SNC, formed to represent the main opposition groups, activists said. (AFP)

Taiwan deploys 50,000 troops as typhoon hits
KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan: Taiwan deployed more than 50,000 troops on Monday and evacuated thousands of people as Typhoon Nanmadol pummelled some of the island’s most densely populated areas.

A soldier moved in to help flood-threatened residents, a motorcyclist was reported killed, and in one remote area more than 300 villagers were trapped by landslides.

The typhoon, which left at least 16 dead in the Philippines at the weekend, made landfall near the city of Taitung on the east coast of Taiwan in the early hours of Monday, according to the Central Weather Bureau.

“This is the worst typhoon to hit Taiwan since Morakot,” which left more than 700 people dead or missing in 2009, a bureau official said.

A motorcyclist was killed in north Taiwan’s Chungli city, after strong winds smashed a window on the fourth floor of a building, causing shards of glass to fall to the ground level, according to Cable network Eastern Television.

An official at the Central Emergency Operation Centre could not immediately confirm the report.

The typhoon was slowly moving northwest, packing winds of up to 126 kilometres (78 miles) per hour, and was 40 kilometres north of the island’s fifth-largest city Tainan as of 0600 GMT, the weather bureau said.

Across the island, authorities moved more than 8,000 people to safer places, according to the emergency centre, as the first typhoon to hit Taiwan this year bore down.

“We haven’t evacuated that many people since Morakot,” an official at the centre said.

The ministry of defence deployed more than 50,000 troops to assist in evacuations, some navigating flooded areas in armoured personnel carriers.

TV footage showed soldiers walking through village streets in Pingtung County in southern Taiwan, helping people from homes threatened by flooding and putting them on military trucks.

The defence ministry also said it sent two C-130 transport planes to rescue 140 tourists and servicemen marooned on the offshore island of Matsu.

More than 300 people were trapped by landslides in Wutai, a remote village in Pingtung county, the emergency centre said, adding all villagers were safe.

The typhoon brought torrential rain and some parts of Taiwan had received more than 500 millimetres since early Sunday.

The weather bureau urged the public to stay away from mountainous and low-lying areas due to the threat of flash floods and landslides.

As of Monday morning, the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau had issued landslide warnings for more than 300 areas.

The Taiwan Railway Administration suspended services on two rail lines from Taitung, the city where the typhoon had made landfall.

Businesses were closed in seven cities and counties in the south of Taiwan and in all but two of the island’s counties, classes were also cancelled at all schools.

Electricity was cut to more than 20,000 households, according to the emergency centre.

Attention was also turned towards China, with the typhoon expected to gradually grind its way towards the Taiwan Straits during the course of Monday.

Southeast China’s Fujian province called more than 25,000 fishing boats to port Sunday, amid warnings that moderate to heavy downpours would hit coastal areas from Monday morning, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

ISLAMABAD: The joint economic committee of Pakistan Muslim League-N and Government Wednesday agreed on formation of a one-member judicial commission comprising a retired judge, Geo News reported.

Federal Minister for Finance Abdul Hafeez Shaikh said this while talking to media men after the third meeting of the joint committee of PML-N and Government held here in Islamabad.

“A judicial commission in connection with sugar prices will soon be formed,” he announced.

He said progress regarding setting up of independent accountability commission will be made in the next meeting of the committee while inter-provincial meeting will be held Thursday over chalking out of price mechanism.

Dr. Hafeez Shaikh said a committee would be formed in connection with (formation of independent) election commission by the next week.

PML-N leader Ishaq Dar on the occasion said the State Bank told in its briefing that debts to the tune of Rs281 billion had been written off while loans amounting to Rs66 billion by government banks were still outstanding.

He said the Punjab government had started working on curtailing its Rs30 billion administrative expenditure and ‘so far Rs6 billion have been cut down