International Women's Day, 8th March - Part 3

7) Hillary Rodham Clinton (October 1947 - )

She is the junior United States Senator from New York, and a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election. She is married to Bill Clinton—the 42nd President of the United States—and was the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001.

A native of Illinois, Hillary Rodham attracted national attention in 1969 when she delivered an address as the first student to speak at commencement exercises for Wellesley College.

She began her career as a lawyer after graduating from Yale Law School in 1973, moving to Arkansas and marrying Bill Clinton in 1975, following her career as a Congressional legal counsel; she was named the first female partner at Rose Law Firm in 1979 and was listed as one of the one hundred most influential lawyers in America in 1988 and 1991.

As First Lady of the United States, she took a prominent position in policy matters. Her major initiative, the Clinton health care plan, failed to gain approval by the U.S. Congress in 1994, but in 1997 she helped establish the State Children's Health Insurance Program and the Adoption and Safe Families Act.

She became the only First Lady to be subpoenaed, testifying before a federal grand jury as a consequence of the Whitewater controversy in 1996. She was never charged with any wrongdoing in this or several other investigations during her husband's administration. The state of her marriage to Bill Clinton was the subject of considerable public discussion following the Lewinsky scandal in 1998.

After moving to New York, Clinton was elected as senator for New York State in 2000; this was the first time an American First Lady ran for public office and she is the first female senator from that state.

In the Senate, she initially supported the George W. Bush administration on some foreign policy issues, which included voting for the Iraq War Resolution. She has subsequently opposed the administration on its conduct of the Iraq War and has opposed it on most domestic issues.

She was re-elected by a wide margin in 2006. Clinton is the first woman in U.S. history to win a presidential party primary, and as the 2008 race takes place, she is in a contest with Senator Barack Obama for the nomination of the Democratic Party.

8) Benazir Bhutto (June 1953 - December 2007)

She was a Pakistani politician who chaired the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), a centre-left political party in Pakistan. Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, having twice been Prime Minister of Pakistan (1988–1990; 1993–1996).

Bhutto was the eldest child of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Pakistani of Sindhi descent (Arain) and Shia Muslim by faith, and Begum Nusrat Bhutto, a Pakistani of Iranian-Kurdish descent, similarly Shia Muslim by faith. Her paternal grandfather was Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, who came to Larkana District in Sindh before the partition from his native town of Bhatto Kalan, which was situated in the Indian state of Haryana.

Bhutto was sworn in for the first time in 1988 at the age of 35, but was removed from office 20 months later under the order of then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan on grounds of alleged corruption. In 1993 Bhutto was re-elected but was again removed in 1996 on similar charges, this time by President Farooq Leghari. Bhutto went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998.

Bhutto returned to Pakistan on October 18, 2007, after reaching an understanding with President Pervez Musharraf by which she was granted amnesty and all corruption charges were withdrawn.

She was assassinated on December 27, 2007, after departing a PPP rally in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, two weeks before the scheduled Pakistani general election of 2008 where she was a leading opposition candidate.

9) Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (June 1945 - )

She is a pro-democracy activist and leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma, and a noted prisoner of conscience and advocate of nonviolent resistance. Aung San Suu Kyi was the third child in her family.

Suu Kyi won the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru peace prize by the Government of India for her peaceful and non-violent struggle under a military dictatorship.

According to the results of the 1990 general election, Suu Kyi earned the right to be Prime Minister, as leader of the winning National League for Democracy party, but her detention by the military junta prevented her from assuming that role.

She is frequently called Daw Aung San Suu Kyi; Daw is not part of her name, but an honorific similar to madam for older, revered women, literally meaning "aunt". Strictly speaking, she has only the one name, though it is acceptable to refer to her as "Ms. Suu Kyi" or Dr. Suu Kyi, since those syllables serve to distinguish her from her father, General Aung San.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991

International Women's Day, 8th March - Part 2

4) Margaret Hilda Thatcher (October 1925 -)

She is a former British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990.

She is the first and to date only woman to hold either post. She is also the oldest living British Prime Minister.

Born in Grantham in Lincolnshire, England, she went on to read Chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford. She was selected as Conservative candidate for Finchley in 1958 and took her seat in the House of Commons the following year.

Upon the election of Edward Heath in 1970, Thatcher was appointed Secretary of State for Education and Science.

In 1974, she backed Sir Keith Joseph for the Conservative party leader, but after falling short he dropped out of the race. Thatcher entered herself and became leader of the Conservative party in 1975.

Among other things, she defiantly opposed the Soviet Union, and her tough-talking rhetoric gained her the nickname the "Iron Lady".[1] As the Conservative party maintained leads in most polls, Thatcher went on to become Britain's Prime Minister in the 1979 General Election.

Thatcher's tenure as Prime Minister was the longest since that of Lord Salisbury and was the longest continuous period in office since the tenure of Lord Liverpool who was Prime Minister in the early 19th century.

She was also the first woman to lead a major political party in the UK, and the first of only three women to have held any of the four great offices of state.

She currently has a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire, which entitles her to sit in the House of Lords. During her tenure as Prime Minister she was said to need just four hours' sleep a night.

5) Indira Gandhi (November 1917 - October 1984)
She was the Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and for a fourth term from 1980 until her assassination in 1984. She was India's first and to date only female Prime Minister.

Born in the politically influential Nehru dynasty, she grew up in an intensely political atmosphere. Her grandfather, Motilal Nehru, was a prominent Indian nationalist leader.

Her father, Jawaharlal Nehru was a pivotal figure in the Indian independence movement and the first Prime Minister of Independent India. Returning to India from Oxford in 1941, she became involved in the Indian Independence movement.

In the 1950s, she served her father unofficially as a personal assistant during his tenure as India's first Prime Minister. After her father's death in 1964, she was appointed as a member of the Rajya Sabha by the President of India and became a member of Lal Bahadur Shastri's cabinet as Minister of Information and Broadcasting.

The then Congress Party President K. Kamaraj was instrumental in making Indira Gandhi the Prime Minister after the sudden demise of Shastri. Gandhi soon showed an ability to win elections and outmaneuver opponents through populism. She introduced more left-wing economic policies and promoted agricultural productivity.

A crushing victory in the 1971 war with Pakistan was followed by a period of instability that led her to impose a state of emergency in 1975; she paid for the authoritarian excesses of the period with three years in opposition.

Returned to office in 1980, she became increasingly involved in an escalating conflict with separatists in Punjab that eventually led to her assassination by her own bodyguards in 1984.

6) Princess Diana (July 1961 - August 1997)

This lady is no doubt the most inspirational women of all, at least to me she was.

She was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales. Their sons, Princes William and Henry (Harry), are second and third in line to the thrones of the United Kingdom and fifteen other Commonwealth Realms.

In the late 1980s, the marriage of Diana and Charles fell apart, an event at first suppressed, then sensationalised, by the world media.

The Prince and Princess of Wales were separated on 9 December 1992, by which time her relations with some of the Royal Family, excepting the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, were difficult.

While she blamed Camilla Parker-Bowles for her marital troubles, as early as October 1993, Diana was writing to a friend that she believed her husband was now in love with Tiggy Legge-Bourke and wanted to marry her. On 3 December 1993, Diana announced her withdrawal from public life.

In April 1987, the Princess of Wales was one of the first high-profile celebrities to be photographed touching a person infected with HIV at the 'chain of hope' organization.

Her contribution to changing the public opinion of AIDS sufferers was summarised in December 2001 by Bill Clinton at the 'Diana, Princess of Wales Lecture on AIDS':

“In 1987, when so many still believed that AIDS could be contracted through casual contact, Princess Diana sat on the sickbed of a man with AIDS and held his hand. She showed the world that people with AIDS deserve no isolation, but compassion and kindness. It helped change world's opinion, and gave hope to people with AIDS."

—Bill Clinton

On 31 August 1997, Diana died after a high speed car accident in the Pont d'Alma road tunnel in Paris along with Dodi Al-Fayed and the acting security manager of the Hôtel Ritz Paris, Henri Paul, who was instructed to drive the hired Mercedes-Benz through Paris secretly eluding the paparazzi.

Her funeral which was held on 6th Sep 1997 was broadcast and watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide.

International Women's Day, 8th March - Part 1

This post is to commemorate all the great women in politics over the years. These women made a difference and left their mark in history. They had created hope and inspired a lot back then.

1) Bella Abzug (July 1920 - March 1998)

She was a well-known American political figure and a leader of the women’s movement. She famously said, “This woman’s place is in the House — the House of Representatives,” in her successful 1970 campaign to join that body.

In 1970, Bella Abzug was elected to the U.S. Congress from New York. In Congress, she was especially noted for her work for the Equal Rights Amendment, national day care centers, ending sex discrimination, and working mothers' priorities.

Bella Abzug also worked against American involvement in the Vietnam War and against the Selective Service System. She challenged the seniority system, ending up as chair of the House subcommittee on government information and individual rights.

Bella Abzug ran for the Senate in 1976, losing to Daniel P. Moynihan, and in 1977 was defeated in a primary bid for the office of mayor of New York City. In 1978 she again ran for Congress, in a special election.

In 1977-1978 Bella Abzug served as co-chair of the National Advisory Committee on Women. She was fired by President Jimmy Carter, who had originally appointed her, when the committee openly criticized Carter's budget for cutting women's programs.

In 1990, she co-founded the women's environmental & development organization to m obilize women's participation in international conferences, particularly those run by the United Nations.

2) Emmeline Pankhurst (July 1858 - June 1928)

In 1889 Emmeline founded the Women's Franchise League, which fought to allow married women to vote in local elections.

In October 1903 she helped found the more militant Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) - an organisation that gained much notoriety for its militant activities and whose members were the first to be christened 'suffragettes'.

Emmeline's daughters Christabel and Sylvia were both active in the cause. British politicians, press and public were astonished by the demonstrations, window smashing, arson and hunger strikes of the suffragettes. Like many suffragettes, Emmeline was arrested on numerous occasions over the next few years and went on hunger strike herself, resulting in violent force-feeding.

In 1913 in response to the wave of hunger strikes, the government passed what became known as the 'Cat and Mouse' Act. Hunger striking prisoners were released until they grew strong again, and then re-arrested.

This period of militancy was ended abruptly on the outbreak of war in 1914, when Emmeline turned her energies to supporting the war effort. In 1918 the Representation of the People Act gave voting rights to women over 30. Emmeline died on 14 June 1928, shortly after women were granted equal voting rights with men (at 21).

3) Eleanor Roosevelt (October 1884 - November 1962)

She was an American political leader who used her influence as an active First Lady from 1933 to 1945 to promote the New Deal policies of her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as taking a prominent role as an advocate for civil rights.

After her husband's death in 1945, she continued to be an internationally prominent author and speaker for the New Deal coalition. She was a suffragist who worked to enhance the status of working women, although she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she believed it would adversely affect women.

In the 1940s, she was one of the co-founders of Freedom House and supported the formation of the United Nations. Eleanor Roosevelt founded the UN Association of the United States in 1943 to advance support for the formation of the UN.

She was a delegate to the UN General Assembly from 1945 and 1952, a job for which she was appointed by President Harry S. Truman and confirmed by the United States Senate. During her time at the United Nations she chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

President Truman called her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements.

This is really embarrassing ...

Jakarta: He won't be deported to S'pore

JAKARTA, INDONESIA - FUGITIVE terrorist Mas Selamat Kastari would not be deported to Singapore if he is arrested in Indonesia, according to a Foreign Ministry official here.

He said that Singapore would have to wait 'a long time' until an extradition treaty was ratified by the two countries to gain custody of Mas Selamat, according to front-page reports in the Indo Pos daily and the Sinar Harapan evening newspaper on Saturday.

Both dailies quoted the Foreign Ministry's director of political, security and territorial treaties, Mr Arif Havas Oegroseno, as saying that, based on international law, the only legal way for Mas Selamat to be deported is through an extradition treaty.

'Since the extradition treaty has yet to be ratified, Kastari cannot be returned to Singapore if he were arrested again in Indonesia,' he said.

He also said that the issue of terrorism-related crimes came under the extradition treaty between Indonesia and Singapore.

The treaty, which has not been ratified, has been held up by a Defence Cooperation Agreement.
Mas Selamat fled Singapore in December 2001 and was subsequently arrested twice in Indonesia - in 2003 and 2006 - for violating the country's immigration laws.

He was deported to Singapore in February 2006 despite the fact that there was no extradition treaty between the two countries.

At the time of his deportation, Indonesia's national police deputy spokesman Anton Bachrul Alam said Mas Selamat was escorted to Singapore by Indonesia's elite anti-terror police.

'He violated immigration laws and he is on the Singapore police's wanted list, and therefore we helped to hand him over,' he had said.

(Source: Asiaone.com)

Tourism industry attracting job seekers.

I am involved in the on-going career fair at Suntec City from 28th Feb to 2nd Mar.

I cannot help but notice that a lot of people are attracted to the tourism industry; be it jobs or furthering their studies.

Report from CNA: Tourism Industry players join hands to attract job seekers at Career 2008

Due to the upcoming IR and Formula 1, the tourism industry had all of a sudden become a hot spot to be in.

During the show, I happened to meet a friend who is also exhibiting for a private institution offering tourism courses. According to him, the used to be popular courses like IT and Business courses had dropped tremendously and now the in thing is tourism courses. In fact, a lot of students had opted for a transfer from their present course to tourism courses.

Don't you think that there is going to be a supply more than demand issue here? Was my question to the friend. He agrees with me thoroughly but of course when promoting courses as such they cannot be suggesting anything negative.

Another issue is... is IR going to employ all fresh grads? How can it be? Common sense will tell you that. Of course there will be a big chuck or at least a handful coming from overseas, that is yes, overseas talent.

They cannot be using a bunch of fresh employees with no prior experiences in this aspect to run the casino.

Hence, I felt that students when choosing for a course, should not just head for something that is popular or is going to be popular. Think of the consequences, think of your chances.