The 2009 World's Most Powerful Women

Forbes most powerful women list 2009 revealed.
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The Fccount women in politics, business, the news, and even the entertainment industry in order to decide the world's most powerful women. The Forbes most powerful women list is comprised using a number of factors, including visibility and the size of the organization or country these women lead. For the fourth consecutive year, the most powerful woman in the world is German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Leader of the worlds' fourth largest economy, Angela Merkel is a well-respected leader, and again chosen as the Forbes most powerful woman in the world.
The second most powerful woman in the world is Sheila Bair, who is the Chairman for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the United States. Being Chairman of the FDIC is no easy job, and Sheila Bair has not only had to fight for respect, but for the FDIC to retain power in a struggling economy. Following Bair in the list of most powerful women in the world is Indra Nooyi, who serves as Chief Executive Officer at PepsiCo. Cynthia Carroll is the fourth most powerful woman on the list, serving as the Chief Executive Officer of Anglo American in Britain. The large mining company is one of the largest in the world, and Carroll oversees the company's interests in platinum, coal, gold, industrial minerals and diamonds.

Iran 'minister' on Interpol list

Iran's defence minister-designate is on an Interpol "wanted" list over the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Argentina, the agency has confirmed.
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BBC NEWS: It says it has had a "red notice" for Ahmad Vahidi since 2007 over the Buenos Aires attack that killed 85 people.
Interpol uses red notices to inform its 187 member countries that an arrest warrant has been issued for an individual by a judicial authority.
Israel and Argentina have expressed concern over Mr Vahidi's nomination.
"This is yet another of [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's actions that prove he is a person you cannot deal with," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Andy David told Bloomberg.
"It's significant, this nomination, but no surprising," Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman told the Associated Press.
"Iran has always protected terrorists, giving them government posts, but I think never one as high as this one," he said.
Tehran rejected the criticism as a "Zionist plot".
Iranian lawmakers still have to confirm the 21-member cabinet proposed on Wednesday by Mr Ahmadinejad - the declared winner of June's disputed presidential elections.
But the nomination of Mr Vahidi is another sign of Mr Ahmadinejad's defiance of the West, the BBC's Caroline Hawley says.
'Key participant'
Interpol says that Mr Vahidi has been on its "red notice" list since November 2007.
The move to publish the notice for Mr Vahidi - along with five other people - followed a request by the Argentine authorities.
Mr Vahidi - who was deputy defence minister during Mr Ahmadinejad's first term in office - is accused of involvement in the bombing of the Israeli-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires.
It was the worst attack on a Jewish target outside Israel since World War II.
Mr Nisman said that Mr Vahidi, who led a unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guard known as the Quds Force at the time of the attack, was accused of "being a key participant in the planning and of having made the decision to go ahead with the attack" against the AMIA.
"It has been demonstrated that Vahidi participated in and approved of the decision to attack AMIA during the meeting in Iraq on 14 August 1993", the prosecutor said.
Iran on Friday rejected Argentina's allegations.
"How come they didn't bring it up in the past?" President Ahmadinejad's press adviser, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, told the AFP.
"Mr Vahidi was a deputy defence minister and this is very senior political position. Therefore it seems that this is a new trick being planned and is basically a Zionist plot," he added.
Interpol says it uses "red notices" - or international-wanted persons alerts - to inform its members that an arrest warrant has been issued for an individual by a judicial authorities.
Interpol says that the individuals concerned are wanted by national jurisdictions and Interpol's role is to assist national police.
It stresses that its notices are not international warrants.

CIA operated drones from two Pakistan air force bases: Experts

Washington : The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is alleged to have operated Predator drones out of two bases in Pakistan.
According to the New York Times and The Guardian newspapers, the CIA had in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of al-Qaida.
Current and former government officials have reportedly confirmed that remotedly drones were moved out of a remote base in Shamsi and an air base in Jalalabad with the help of Blackwater.
From a secret division at its North Carolina headquarters, Blackwater assumed the role of Washingtons most important counter-terrorism program.
The divisions operations were carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the companys contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by CIA employees.
They also provide security at the covert bases, the officials said.
The role of the company in the Predator program highlights the degree to which the C.I.A. now depends on outside contractors to perform some of the agencys most important assignments.
A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article.
CIA officials, however, said that the spy agency did not dispatch Blackwater executives with a license to kill. Instead, it ordered the contractors to begin collecting information on the whereabouts of Al Qaedas leaders, carry out surveillance and train for possible missions.
The actual pulling of a trigger in some ways is the easiest part, and the part that requires the least expertise, said one government official familiar with the canceled CIA program.
Its everything that leads up to it thats the meat of the issue, he added.
Any operation to capture or kill militants would have had to have been approved by the C.I.A. director and presented to the White House before it was carried out, the officials said.
The agencys current director, Leon E. Panetta, canceled the program and notified Congress of its existence in an emergency meeting in June.
The extent of Blackwaters business dealings with the C.I.A. has largely been hidden, but its public contract with the State Department to provide private security to American diplomats in Iraq has generated intense scrutiny and controversy.
The company lost the job in Iraq this year, after Blackwater guards were involved in shootings in 2007 that left 17 Iraqis dead. It still has other, less prominent State Department work.

More unmarked graves discovered in held Kashmir

SRINAGAR: A rights group has discovered several unmarked graves containing about 1,500 unidentified bodies in held Kashmir valley.
Members of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) said that at least eight of the graves had more than one body likely of the innocent people killed by Indian paramilitary forces.
"We've found that at least eight are mass graves as they contain more than one body," the APDP’s lawyer, Pervez Imroz told media men here.
"We have found more graves of about 1,500 people buried as unidentified persons in three remote districts during our ongoing survey," Pervez Imroz, said.
The latest report from the districts of Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipore is part of the APDP's ongoing survey of the northern parts of the held Kashmir . Last year, in a report titled, "Facts Under Ground", the APDP had reported discovery of unmarked graves of about 1,000 people near Uri in Baramulla district.
After that report, the Amnesty International had called for an independent probe into the unnamed graves.

Ramadan starts Saturday for most Arabs

DUBAI- Saudi Arabia,the birthplace of Islam, will start the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan on Saturday along with most other GCC and Arab countries.
Senior religious councils in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Algeria and Iraq said the moon's crescent was not sighted after nightfall on Thursday, and so Friday would be the 30th day of Shaaban, the month preceding Ramadan.
The start of the ninth and holiest month of the Muslim calendar is traditionally determined by the sighting of the new moon, often dividing rival Islamic countries and sects over the exact date. More than one billion Muslims worldwide fast from dawn to dusk during the holy month.
Because it follows the lunar cycle, Ramadan comes 11 days earlier every year on the Gregorian calendar, bringing the fasting month this year in the summer.