We have a wide practice of holding people for years without being given access to their families and lawyers, with facilities of torture used often. We have the death penalty for a variety of offenses.”The Amnesty team arrived in Tripoli two weeks ago in a visit not reported by media in the country. General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan President has become a staunch ally of the US war on terrorism, attracting criticism from Islamic fundamentalists. He narrowly escaped two assassination attempts in December.”Obviously, the purpose of this attack was to create unrest,” Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told AP.

“This is a very sad incident and we condemn it.”The violence occurred hours after a series of coordinated blasts in Iraq struck major Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, killing scores of religious pilgrims. There was no indication the attacks were connected.Mayor Abdul Rahim Kakar told AP that he had imposed an immediate curfew in the city of 1.2 million to maintain law and order. He said troops and paramilitary forces had been deployed and were bringing the situation under control.”I was present near the procession when we first heard an explosion and then some people fired shots,” he said. “We still do not know what kind of explosion it was.”Meanwhile, two people – one Shiite and one Sunni – were killed and 40 other people wounded in a clash between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Phalia, a town in Punjab province, about 100 miles east of Islamabad.The shootout happened during a Shiite procession, and people from the two sides then set several houses on fire.. With its first access to Libya in 15 years, Amnesty International has detailed a number of serious human rights violations, including the disappearance of prisoners, use of the death penalty and intolerance of political activity.

If policyholders take up the offer to switch, they give up their guarantees, which is good news for Abbey and its shareholders, who ultimately pick up the tab.”But anyone wanting to leave with-profits will still have a slice taken off their funds. Although Scottish Mutual promised much, it has delivered very little. Scottish Provident has 24 per cent in equities, and made a return of just 4.43 per cent. Abbey offered its customers the chance yesterday to switch out of its with-profits funds into alternative investment funds free from early encashment charges that would normally apply.Ned Cazalet, an independent insurance analyst, said: “The guarantees have caused havoc with the fund as they are costly to finance. Abbey has drastically reduced the funds’ exposure to equities over the past two years to ensure it can meet the high guarantees it has promised customers. Abbey National’s woes with its life insurance businesses were felt by customers yesterday, as it scrapped bonuses to almost 1 million with-profits policyholders for the second year running.

Final bonuses, which are added when policies mature, are also being reduced and payouts have come down by as much as 20 per cent.”The stock market recovery has been insufficient in scale and of too short a duration to make up the shortfall from previous years,” the company said. Yesterday Mr Studzinski said he would cut the headcount to 800. Including equities research, the workforce in this division will be 1,000.HSBC, which wants to boost its investment bank so that it can take on more mighty Wall Street rivals, plans to offer research in six areas, including telecoms and financial services, rather than attempting to cover every company.. They are probably more valuable to our shareholders than I am,” Sir John said. He also hit out at allegations that HSBC’s earnings were another example of “excess profits” that consumer groups have accused Britain’s major high street banks of coining in at the expense of their customers.Pointing out that HSBC made only £70 in profits for each of its personal customers for the whole of 2003, Sir John denied that its products confused customers. Sir John also collected a further £2.1m from a long-term incentive plan.Renowned as the City’s most parsimonious financier, Sir John declared he was not “jealous” of the five unnamed members of his workforce – who work in HSBC’s investment bank and fund management business – who trounced him in the pay stakes.”I do not have the smarts to do what they do.