Babies given away live

REUTERS

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani television is screening what many call its most controversial content yet in a ruthless quest for ratings: a talk-show host who gives away babies live on air. Aamir Liaquat Hussain, a bespectacled 41-year-old with a neatly trimmed beard, gave away two abandoned infant girls to childless families last

month and plans to give away a baby boy this week. “If we didn’t find this baby, a cat or a dog would have eaten it,” Hussain proclaimed during one broadcast, before presenting a tiny girl wrapped in pink and red to her new parents. The audience erupted with applause. Hussain is one of Pakistan’s most popular talk-show hosts. During his marathon broadcasts he cooks, interviews clerics and celebrities, entertains children and hosts game shows. He usually gives prizes like motorbikes, mobile phones and land deeds to audience members who answer questions about Islam. The abandoned babies were rescued by the Chhipa Welfare Association, a Pakistani aid organisation.

New investment rules 

NEW DELHI: India eased investment rules for the retail sector on Thursday in a renewed attempt to attract foreign supermarket operators such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Tesco, a cabinet minister who did not wish to be named told reporters. No details of the measures were immediately available. India, which threw open its supermarket sector to foreign retailers in September 2012, has not yet received a single application due to ambiguity around existing entry rules.

Rabies menace 

TAIPEI :Taiwan has ordered tens of thousands of vaccine doses to protect people against the island’s first rabies outbreak in more than 50 years. Health officials have struggled to contain the Taiwan outbreak since July 17, when a ferret badger in the southern part of the island was confirmed rabid. Since then, 17 more

ferret badger cases have been confirmed, and the case of a rabid Asian house shrew reported Wednesday

indicates the disease is jumping species. No humans or dogs have yet been involved in the outbreak. Health Minister Chiu-Wen-ta says the new human vaccine doses are expected to arrive Friday and will supplement some 3,000 in stock. At a government animal protection facility in the Taipei suburb of Xindian, dozens of anxious dog owners lined up to have their pets inoculated. The animals ranged from well-coiffed poodles and French bulldogs to street mongrels, their mouths covered with muzzles.