Kuwaiti FM appointed as new prime minister

KUWAIT CITY, July 13 -- Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah on Sunday appointed former Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah as the emirate's new prime minister, the official KUNA news agency reported.

In his decree, the 75-year-old emir instructed the prime minister-designate to name his cabinet and submit the list for approval.Sheikh Sabah's nomination to the post of prime minister came a week after the ailing Crown Prince and Prime Minister Sheikh Saad al-Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah submitted his resignation following last Saturday's National Assembly (parliament) elections.

Sheikh Saad's resignation was a procedural step as the Kuwaiti government has to win the confidence of the new parliament. For the first time since Kuwait's independence in 1961, the postof prime minister would be separated from the role of heir to the throne.

Sheikh Saad, 74, became the crown prince in 1978 and has since held the post of prime minister.In 2001, the emir suffered a brain hemorrhage that required months of hospitalization. His cousin and chosen successor Sheikh Saad also fell ill with colon troubles.

With the emir and the crown prince both having health problems, the emir's brother, Sheikh Sabah, has become the de factor ruler ofthe oil-rich Gulf stateLast week's voting results showed that Kuwaiti voters ousted most Westernized Liberals in the parliament in favor of fundamentalist Muslims and supporters of the royal-led cabinet.

Blix says Blair made a fundamental Mistake in Iraq

LONDON, July 13 -- Former chief of UN weapons inspectors Hans Blix said British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a"fundamental mistake" in claiming that Iraqi ousted President Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, Britain's Independent newspaper reported on Sunday.

Asked whether he thought Blair was wrong about the "45 minute" claim made in the government's Iraq weapons dossier last September,Blix told the paper, "I think that was a fundamental mistake. I donot know exactly how they calculated this figure of 45 minutes...This seems pretty far off the mark to me."

"It seems to me highly unlikely that there were any means of delivering biological or chemical weapons within 45 minutes," the paper quoted Blix as saying.Commenting on whether Blair had relied on flawed intelligence in the run-up to the US-led war against Iraq, Blix told the paper,"They overinterpreted the intelligence they had."

Blix, who retired last month as head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), also called for the UN inspectors to return to Iraq to research the country's banned weapons, saying there would be "greater credibility in having international inspectors rather than national ones."

The UN inspectors left Iraq in March before the United States launched war against Iraq on March 20. They have been denied to resume their work in Iraq as the United States and Britain have set up the Iraq Survey Group to search for evidence of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

The United States and Britain launched war against Iraq on the grounds that Iraq's banned weapons posed a serious threat, but the failure so far to find those weapons has caused a turmoil over the case made for war.

Critics have accused the Bush administration and Blair's office of misleading the public by exaggerating the weapons of mass destruction threat posed by Iraq.

World’s biggest condom covers hotel in China

Beijing, July 12: One size fits all? A bright yellow condom covered the facade of a 20-storey, phallic-shaped hotel in the southern Chinese city of Guilin to mark UN World Population Day in the most populous nation on the globe, the hotel manager said on Saturday.

"Our hotel is very round," said the manager of the three-star Fragrant River Hotel, who declined to give her name.

"The initial plan was to cover the whole building, but because the wind was so strong they could only cover the front half," the Reuters quoted her.

The Guilin Latex Company has applied to the publishers of the Guinness Book of World Records to recognise their giant condom, 260 ft tall and nearly 330 ft around, as the world’s biggest, the Xinhua news agency said.

The Guilin Latex Company joined local birth control officials in Guilin on Friday to promote contraception, distributing free condoms and brochures to passers-by, it said.

The semi-official China News Service said the condom had cost more than 200,000 yuan ($24,000) to display and carried the message: "Control population growth, pay attention to sexual health, prevent AIDS."