Word: abdullah
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...days last week, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi set aside his responsibilities as the nation's leader and took up another, more difficult role: that of a grieving husband. Abdullah's wife of four decades, Endon Mahmood, died on Oct. 20 at age 64 after a four-year battle with breast cancer. In a relatively conservative country with a Muslim majority, the couple were known for their public displays of affection, often hugging or bestowing pecks on each other's cheeks. During the funeral, Abdullah, 65, did his best to appear stoic. Wearing a traditional black songkok...
...Because Abdullah and Endon, the daughter of a Japanese woman and a Malay civil servant, were so close, and because the Prime Minister openly acknowledged his wife as his savviest political adviser and most trusted confidante, Malaysians are fretting over how her death might affect his leadership. For months, as Endon's condition deteriorated, political speculation in the capital Kuala Lumpur has centered on whether Abdullah has the resolve to go it alone, or if the loss of his wife might lead him to resign...
...Such concerns come at a critical time for Abdullah, who became Prime Minister two years ago, taking over when his long-serving predecessor Mahathir Mohamad retired. The two men could not be more different. The soft-spoken, affable Abdullah is noted for his non-confrontational, consensus-seeking style, while Mahathir was more blunt and autocratic. When general elections were held a year ago, Abdullah campaigned on a platform of change, promising to root out corruption and to introduce greater transparency in government; he and his political party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), won a landslide victory. Abdullah quickly...
...power, Assad, 40, has sought to cast himself as a reformer by allowing a degree of political openness and putting economic policy in the hands of free-market technocrats. "The President wants an open, prosperous, stable Syria that is fully integrated in the global economy," says Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Dardari. But observers of the regime say Assad has been unable--or unwilling--to curb the excesses of the country's security apparatus. Though he has gradually replaced his father's Old Guard, the new faces still run fiefdoms and amass wealth through corruption in exchange for loyalty to Assad...
...TIME that three Indonesian militants arrested on June 9 in the Malaysian Borneo state of Sabah revealed to interrogators that they were intending to die as suicide bombers in the Philippines' troubled, Muslim-majority south. A senior Philippine security official has told TIME that after the arrest of militant Abdullah Sunata on July 2 in Indonesia, the authorities recovered e-mails between Sunata and Umar Patek, a fellow Indonesian and suspected bombmaker; in them, Patek allegedly asked for two recruits to be sent to the southern Philippines for training as suicide bombers, and also requested help in raising money...