But as one Lahore journalist commented: “These sectarian extremists only go for each other – they’ve never done anything like put a bomb on a bus.”Fall-out from the civil war in neighbouring Afghanistan has also spilled over into Pakistan: an Afghan was suspected of exploding a car bomb last December in the frontier town of Peshawar, killing 43 people, and an Egyptian militant is thought to have blown up the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad last November, killing 16.In Lahore, police are on alert after receiving information that the unknown bomber’s next target might be a high government official.. Marion Barry has stunned his beleaguered city by announcing he plans to take time off for “rejuvenation,” and acknowledged signs of “spiritual relapse” which have kindled speculation that the once-disgraced Mayor of Washington DC may again be suffering from alcohol and drug problems. Mr Barry dropped his bombshell yesterday at an emergency meeting of his top aides, none of whom had been informed in advance of the Mayor’s intentions. He told them he was going to spend “at least a week” at a Maryland retreat to seek “personal renewal”.
The Mayor, who served six months in jail for cocaine possession in 1992 before staging a remarkable political comeback, gave no details. One factor is an over-hasty return to full-time work after his operation for prostate cancer last winter.

But a subsequent media statement, couched in religious language, contained several indirect references to the Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholic Anonymous programmes for addicts, which Mr Barry is known to have been attending.In an interview with the Washington Post yesterday, Corry Barry, the Mayor’s wife, insisted that her husband had not returned to his old ways, and Dave Clarke, the chairman of the DC Council, the city’s elected “parliament” declared he had detected no sign Mr Barry was using drugs or alcohol.Ostensibly, Mr Barry’s leave of absence could not come at a worse time, as the city confronts painful choices over spending reductions, impending redundancies, and cuts in services.. Some politicians, like friends, are only truly appreciated when they’re gone. So it will be with Nancy Landon Kassebaum, about to step down after 18 years as the junior Republican Senator from Kansas. Residents of her home state, handing her approval ratings in the mid-80s, have long understood the treasure in their midst. But only now are outsiders beginning to realise why Bob Dole is only the second most popular politician in Kansas. Kassebaum typifies a threatened species on Capitol Hill, thepragmatic centrist who works with voice lowered and rhetoric restrained, for whom one result is worth a million words, even if that result offends party orthodoxy. She has defended abortion rights, supported gun control, voted with Democrats to impose sanctions on South Africa in 1986 and earned Mr Dole’s special disfavour by voting for President Bill Clinton’s anti- crime bill two years ago.
Last week may have been her finest, as the Senate passed by 100 votes to nil a healthcare bill to allow people to take their insurance with them when they change jobs, and bar insurance companies from denying coverage to people who have health problems already.

Kassebaum, along with Democrat Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, was its author, a tandem demonstrating that only by compromise are legislative majorities crafted in the United States Senate.The Kassebaum/Kennedy bill must still overcome many hurdles. But if enacted it could provide medical coverage for half of the 40 million Americans currently without insurance – the largest extension of health care since Medicare and Medicaid became law three decades ago. Not bad for an unassuming lady who at first seems less a steely legislator than a wise and comforting village postmistress from a bygone English age.Politics is in the Kassebaum blood. Her father, Kansas Governor Alf Landon, was Franklin Roosevelt’s Republican opponent in 1936.

But Kassebaum did not enter politics until 1972, when she was 40 years old Six years later she was elected to the Senate. Even so, she acknowledges with a grin: “I’m probably still not in the club.”In her time in Washington, the rules have changed, and in Kassebaum’s view, not for the better. “Politics has become a spectator sport,” she said in a typically graceful departure speech last 21 November.Her departure may makethings worse. A dozen Senators are retiring this year, mostly moderates, as exasperated as Kassebaum by the institution they have served. And h er seat could easily pass to the strident Christian conservatives who now control the Republican political machine in Kansas.. Despite an 11th-hour injunction from the Quebec Superior Court aimed at blocking them, American promoters went ahead with a series of no-holds- barred human “cockfights” in a smoky hockey arena on a Mohawk reserve near Montreal on the weekend and broadcast them via satellite to North American audiences.

The promoters , who are allied with Penthouse magazine, and supporters among the local Mohawk leadership, defied the court order, claiming Mohawk territory is outside the ambit of both American and Canadian laws banning the brutal contests advertised as “Extreme Fighting, the most brutal event in the history of the sport”.
The matches are a mixture of boxing, wrestling and martial arts. Unlike boxing, which is tightly regulated, with matches being divided into a fixed number or rounds, an Extreme Fighting match continues without interruption until one of the competitors is knocked out or quits from exhaustion.At the Mohawk event there was a referee present and three doctors at the ringside, but they did not stop any of the matches which have no rules other than a prohibition against biting or eye-gouging.The fights are aimed at the lucrative pay-per-view television market where an estimated 500,000 people watched the spectacle on Friday evening. As the controversy over the event intensified, some of the Mohawk leaders apparently had a change of heart. As a result, Mohawk tribal police backed up members of the Quebec provincial police force in a raid on a hotel early on Sunday morning where the combatants were staying, and made seven arrests.Earlier, Guy Chevrette, the Quebec minister responsible for aboriginal affairs, called on the federal government to ensure another such event was never held on Quebec soil.”It is evident that when an American promoter is barred in 40 American states and chooses another site to commit their illegal acts, we have to reinforce the Criminal Code to prevent these situations,” he said.The location of the fights was kept secret until tickets went on sale a few days before the event in an attempt to avoid legal measures to block them. When the government prevented the local telecommunications company from transmitting from the arena, the promoters rushed in a satellite truck and transmitted the event directly.About 5,000 people paid up to C$200 (pounds 100) each for tickets to watch gladiators with nicknames like “The Iron Panther” and “The Iceman” punch and kick each other in the chest and buttocks. One match lasted only 44 seconds before one of the participants gave up but the other five fights lasted an average of 15 to 20 minutes each.Labelled Battlecade II, this was the second such event organised by a New York company called Battlecade Productions which uses “Extreme Fighting” as a registered brand name.Between each match, half-a- dozen Penthouse Pets in bikinis and high heels paraded around the ring waving at the mostly male spectators who shouted obscene propositions.One critic described Extreme Fighting as a purely American creation “not simply because it is barbaric and cruel …