MAHATHIR: DECISION LIES WITH PARLIAMENTMalaysia's interim leader Mahathir Mohamad on Thursday said Parliament willpick a new Prime Minister next week following the collapse of the rulingalliance and that snap elections will be called if the vote ends in animpasse.Mahathir, who met the king earlier on Thursday, said the monarch couldn'tfind a candidate with a clear majority to lead the nation after consultingall 222 lawmakers over the last two days. As such, he said the king decidedto have the lower house of Parliament vote on a new leader on March 2."If the lower house fails to find a person with the majority, then we willhave to go for a snap election," he told a news conference."The king is being very cautious. He decided not to give Anwar or Mahathirto form a government and let the MPs decide," said James Chin, head of theAsia Institute, Australia's University of Tasmania.GERMAN COURT UPHOLDS HEADSCARF BAN FOR TRAINEE LAWYERSGermany's highest court on Thursday upheld a ban on headscarves for Muslimtrainee lawyers in courts, finding that the requirement of maintainingreligious neutrality was justified. The Federal Constitutional Court'sruling came after a Frankfurt-born German-Moroccan legal trainee filed achallenge to Hesse state's rules. In the western state, trainees who keeptheir headscarves on are not allowed to take on tasks in which they may beseen to be acting as representatives of the judiciary or the state.