DHAKA, Bangladesh
Bangladesh opposition boycotts first session of new parliament
Associated Press
Opposition lawmakers boycotted the first session of Bangladesh's new parliament yesterday, saying the election that brought Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's four-party alliance to power had been rigged.
Legislators from the Awami League of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina instead joined about 30,000 demonstrators at a downtown anti-government rally.
"We don't accept this government, which has come to power by stealing the people's votes," Hasina told cheering supporters at Dhaka's Paltan Maidan, an abandoned soccer stadium.
Hasina said her party will stage nationwide street protests Nov. 5-11 to demand that the results of the Oct. 1 parliamentary polls be overturned.
Earlier yesterday, the 300-seat parliament met and unanimously elected Jamiruddin Sircar, a lawmaker from Zia's Bangladesh National Party, as the new house speaker.
The outgoing speaker, Abdul Hamid of the Awami League, opened the new session and then left the building after his successor was elected. Zia criticized the opposition boycott.
"We had hoped that all those who got the people's mandate would come here and exercise the responsibility bestowed on them," she said in her address.
The Oct. 1 parliamentary elections were Bangladesh's third since democracy was restored in 1991 after 16 years of military rule. The vote, which was certified as free and fair by international observers, gave Zia's alliance 214 of the 300 parliamentary seats.
Hasina's Awami League won 62 seats, down from the 146 seats it won in 1996. The remaining seats went to other smaller parties and
LOS ANGELES
Earthquakes rumble through Los Angeles area
Associated Press
A magnitude-3.7 earthquake rumbled through much of the Los Angeles area yesterday morning and was followed by a series of smaller aftershocks.
There were no reports of damage or injuries from the temblors. The shaking was felt from Compton 25 miles north to the San Fernando Valley.
The first quake struck at 8:27 a.m. and was centered four miles southeast of Inglewood and nine miles south of the Los Angeles Civic Center.
It was followed at 8:29 a.m. by a magnitude-3.0 aftershock centered just a mile away.
More than a dozen aftershocks were recorded. One, a magnitude-2.8 temblor, struck at 9:21 a.m. in an area one mile north of the Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
TUCSON, Ariz.
City push for rental repairs falls short
Associated Press
City housing officials say a program designed to force landlords to quickly correct dangerous housing problems is beginning to work, but has had limited success.
SABER, the Slum Abatement and Blight Enforcement Response project, brings together inspectors from building, fire, solid waste and other city departments in a unified effort to force timely improvement of living conditions for some of Tucson's poorest residents.
The program aims to crack down on six of the city's biggest offenders operating an estimated 1,300 substandard properties.
But unless the City Council authorizes funding when members discuss the program on Nov. 19, no more rental properties can be put on the SABER fast track, Community Services Director Karen Thoreson said.
The City Council approved SABER in February and had planned to identify six targets for correction of substandard housing conditions by April.
However, the project did not release a list of the six properties until early this month. One of the properties on the list had been issued its 61 violation notices ust four days before.
The six SABER targets represent a small percentage of substandard rental properties scattered across the city that are home to thousands of Tucson residents.
SABER was proposed as a much larger project. In April, City Manager James Keene included $750,000 for a full-scale SABER program in his proposed budget for this year.
But that funding hinged on $11.7 million in new taxes, which the City Council rejected. So SABER was lumped in with a number of other neighborhood programs that received a combined $700,000.
Thoreson said no additional funds have been given to SABER.
Gordon Packard, a member of the Metropolitan Housing Commission, said SABER has started to put some pressure on recalcitrant landlords, but the city has to be careful not to push too hard: Closing down all substandard housing would create a crisis of homelessness.
