Unanimously, the lawmakers have passed the measure, which would have charitable gifts made before 15 April 2010 counted vis-a-vis taxes in 2009. But the measure would first be approved by the US Senate before it could reach the desk of US President Barack Obama.

The legislation, patterned on a bill that was approved following the devastation of a tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004 to augment giving, carries a similar provision that aims to provide assistance to quake-struck Haiti.

Democrat Sander Levin, the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, said: “After seeing the immense devastation caused by the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti, we all want to ensure that the American people can join together to express our support and our alliance with the people of these two countries”.

“I hope it will be promptly passed by the Senate and get the president’s signature”, Representative Dave Camp, the top Republican member of the panel, added.

Moreover, the US Congress had also approved a legislation providing for the similar benefits to the donors of the Haiti earthquake through 1 March 2010, which President Obama eventually signed into a law.

P.J. Crowley, the spokesman of the US State Department, stated the election laws, which were established to impose limits on political involvement, demean US initiatives to enhance relations with the nation.

In a news briefing, Crowley said: “Given the tenor of the election laws that they’ve put forward, there’s no hope that this election will be credible”. He added that such move by the military government is a step towards an incorrect direction, and that it “makes a mockery of the democratic process”.

Martin Nesirky, spokesperson for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, has also emphasised his concern regarding the new laws. He said: “The indications available so far suggest that they do not measure up to our expectations of what is needed for an inclusive political process”.

The measures are being implemented in preparation for the first elections of the country after 20 years. Because no date has been set for the polls, political observers have expressed their scepticism over the electoral process.

As the new laws provide, the military government is obliging political parties, including Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), to re-register within 60 days, and failure to do so means closure.

The parties to register will be compelled to leave out members who have prison terms. This implies that Suu Kyi, who was given an 18-month term for breaking laws on security, will be excluded from participating.

The freeze, which will generate £3 billion of savings for the government, will be affecting those in the Scottish Government, including Permanent Secretary John Elvidge and Scottish judges.

The step was made known by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, going along with the desire of Alex Salmond to hold the wages of highly-paid employees of the public sector located north of the Border.

The prime minister’s announcement will be affecting the highest-paid officers of the Scottish Government, senior members of the HM Revenue and Customs, judiciary members and senior officials of the Scotland Office. These workers’ salaries are set aside for Westminster.

In Wales and England, the freeze will also affect dentists, GPs and NHS managers.

Moreover, Scottish ministers have the authority to identify the pay of various organisations, and these include the Crown Office, Transport Scotland, the Scottish Prison Service, VisitScotland and Scottish Water.

On the other hand, this move by Brown has received criticisms from professional and union groups.

The FDA union has condemned the UK government for refusing ‘modest’ structural enhancements to the salary arrangement of senior civil employees, and said that the move by the prime minister was an offence against the hard-working servants.

General Secretary Jonathan Baume said: “We recognise the grave fiscal crisis facing the country as public expenditure has spiralled out of control”.

“However, the SCS comprises dedicated senior public servants whose professionalism will be essential to lifting Britain out of the economic quagmire over the coming years”, he added.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, in a statement he delivered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, has urged Afghan President Hamid Karzai to equal international measures by strengthening the pursuit for a political concord.

The foreign secretary said: “My argument today is that now is the time for the Afghans to pursue a political settlement with as much vigour and energy as we are pursuing the military and civilian effort”. He added that there was a need for the political arrangement to be both internal and external, requiring the involvement of all the neighbours of Afghanistan.

He stressed that the arrangement needed to include “those parts of the insurgency willing permanently to sever ties with Al-Qaeda, give up their armed struggle and live within the Afghan constitutional framework”.

He also reiterated that the contributions of the international forces were inadequate to make the country stable after of being involved in war for over eight years. He said: “While violence of the most murderous, indiscriminate and terrible kind started this Afghan war, politics will bring it to an end on the back of concerted military and civilian effort”.

It was also made known during the conference that Kai Eide, who was then the UN special representative to Afghanistan, has already talked with the Taliban rebels in Dubai to open up the possibility of conducting peace negotiations.

The decision of the peace initiative committee of the league is only a suggestion and an ultimate decision will have to be formulated by the Arab nations’ foreign ministers.

The 3 March decision by the foreign ministers to support the US-backed indirect negotiations with Israel endowed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas the political shield he needed to resume peace talks after a 14-month break.

The statement of the committee said: “In case of the failure to stop the Israeli measures immediately… the committee concludes that the proposed talks are irrelevant”.

The Palestinians and visiting US Vice President Joe Biden condemned the approval of Israel for the building of 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem. This move by Israel happened after Abbas concurred to continue the peace talks.

The committee also proposed connecting the termination of the plans to build the housing units to any recommencement of negotiations.

The Israeli settlement plans have glossed off the visit of Biden, which was intended to endorse the new set of US-backed negotiations. The move of Israel has also triggered the Palestinians to accuse that Israel is not committed to the peace process. Israel has expressed its apology to Biden; however, it clarified that it will not be reversing the plan.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has given conditional backing for Palestinian sovereignty. He expressed that he desired to keep control of the key areas of the West Bank, and this includes Jewish settlements.

P.J. Crowley, the department’s chief spokesman, stated that he lamented any offense triggered by his answer to the media’s question regarding Gadhafi’s intention to declare a ‘jihad’ against Switzerland. Last week, Libya stressed that it might impose critical response against the business interests of the US if an apology will be not issued.

Crowley told reporters: “I understand that my personal comments were perceived as a personal attack. The comments do not reflect US policy and were not intended to offend. I apologize if they were taken that way. I regret that my comments have become an obstacle to further progress in our bilateral relationship”.

He said that his remark regarding the speech of Gadhafi to the UN General Assembly in 2009 was not a personal assault. Last week, he met with the ambassador of Libya to the US in an attempt to clear the issue; however, he did not make his apology until Tuesday.

Crowley made the remark on 26th February when he was questioned regarding the position of the US on the Libyan leader’s appeal for a holy war against Switzerland, following the country’s prohibition of the construction of mosque minarets. He said that he recalled how Gadhafi ripped some pages of the UN Charter when he delivered a speech before the UN in September.

When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was informed of the issue, Crowley and Jeffrey Feltman, a high-ranking US ambassador to the Middle East, met with Libya’s ambassador on Friday to explicate that President Obama’s administration is ‘strongly committed’ to the US-Libyan relations. However, Libya still insisted that an apology should be made.

Eliza Manningham-Buller, who has retired from the service in 2007 and now a House of Lords’ member, stressed that the US intentionally restrained details regarding its unkind treatment of detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The spy agencies of Britain have been under intense censure for their suspected conspiracy in the torture of suspected terrorists overseas, including those under the custody of the US.

In a current court ruling, one of the country’s senior judge probed MI5’s record regarding human rights, and said that the organisation might have misinformed the courts and the Parliament regarding the extent of the agency’s knowledge on the maltreatment of detainees.

The ex-spy head has criticised how the US became successful in providing her country with intelligence gathered from Sheikh Mohammed.

“I said to my staff, ‘Why is he talking?’ because our experience of Irish prisoners, Irish terrorists, was that they never said anything”, she said. “They said, well, the Americans say he is very proud of his achievements when questioned about it. It wasn’t actually until after I retired that I read that, in fact, he had been water boarded 160 times”.

In February, Master of the Rolls David Neuberger noted that the agency’s position in a court case wherein it stressed that it was not aware of the maltreatment of a number of detainees under the CIA’s custody was untrustworthy.

Manningham-Buller affirmed on Tuesday that her country knew about the cases of maltreatment before she vacated her post. On the other hand, Jonathan Evans, her successor, rebuffed the claims, stressing that the courts are in danger of being used by those who desire to undermine Britain’s counter-terrorism work.

The aid, which is equivalent to $1.5 million or €1.1 million, is set to expand the host nation’s supplies of condoms, a step which health officials expect will be essential amid the competition’s ‘spirit of festivity’.

Britain noted that the aid, which was made known following the visit to London, England of South African President Jacob Zuma, would support the nation’s goal to purchase one billion pieces of the contraceptive at a period when the campaign against AIDS has been affected by the economic crisis.

Gareth Thomas, Britain’s international development minister, said: “As a consequence, we face the very real prospect that progress on tackling HIV will go into reverse. That is why (Britain) is supporting South Africa’s leadership and drive to turn the tide on their epidemic”.

According to the data of the UN AIDS Agency, about 5.7 million people in the country have HIV. This number includes an alarming 280,000 children.

Affirming the need for South Africa to boost its campaign against the disease, Victor Ramathesele, general medical officer for the country’s organising committee in 2010, said: “There’s going to be a large number of people who will be descending onto the country… There could be a more than usual demand for measures such as condoms”.

The Political Parties Registration Law disallows individuals who are sentenced by a court of law from taking part in the elections.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been detained for 14 years, was sentenced in August 2009 of breaking the conditions of her house arrest by temporarily keeping an American who went uninvited to her residence. Because of this, she was given a new condition of house arrest which is set to culminate in November.

The sentence, however, was identified as a means to restrain Suu Kyi during the length of the election campaign. In February, the Supreme Court rejected her appeal to be freed.

The election decree states that political parties are given 60 days, starting on Monday when it was promulgated, to enlist with an Election Committee, of which members will be named by the junta.

The decree also prohibits civil servants and members of religious groups from getting involved with political parties.

Meanwhile, the government made known in 2008 that the elections will be conducted in 2010. However, the date of the electoral process has not been declared, and the National League for Democracy, the political party of Suu Kyi, has not issued any statement if it will challenge the balloting.

Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, who is set to face a liberal Democratic primary opponent and the opposition of GOP, noted that those comments did not manifest a shift of conviction regarding her position against the contentious majority vote procedure which is called ‘reconciliation’.

She told reporters: “I don’t support reconciliation! All I said was I want to see what’s in it”.

US President Barack Obama’s health care reform’s fate is greatly dependent on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s dominating with votes to have the legislation passed, most probably in the coming three weeks. During last year’s Christmas eve, there was a great need for the majority leader to sustain the number of Democrats supporting the health care legislation.

As for Lincoln, the controversy positions her in a political crossfire as she attempts to defeat a challenger and maintain her post in the Republican leaning state. Her victory this fall could be influential in determining whether Democrats will preserve their majority number in the Senate.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which expects to take the Senate post of Lincoln, has taken advantage of the senator’s comments and asserted that her “shifting positions and constant equivocations are completely politically motivated”.

Some weeks ago, the senator forwarded a statement stating that she was against the majority vote procedure.

Lincoln will be challenged by Democratic Lt. Gov. Bill Halter in the 18 May primary election.