Wednesday, 4 February 2015

Everyone Follow Me ;)

Wednesday, 2 July 2014

Abbas clarifies statement on NWA operation

ISLAMABAD: Former DG ISPR Maj Gen (retd) Athar Abbas Wednesday clarified that his words that made headlines recently were said in response to a question in connection with North Waziristan during an interview.

Addressing a seminar organized by SAFMA on the ongoing operation Zarb-e-Azb in North Waziristan, Athar Abbas said in his view the Taliban had been isolated during the operation in South Waziristan.

He said that it had occurred to everyone that after South Waziristan the next stronghold of the terrorists would be North Waziristan.

“No one should expect that terrorists would be killed in big numbers in the ongoing military offensive,” he said, predicting that the terrorists would go into hiding.

However, the former DG ISPR said the Pak Army needs support and that Zarb-e-Azb is not just a military operation; it is a ‘national operation’.

ISI pulls back petition from SC for acquisition of land in Karachi

KARACHI: The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has withdrawn its petition filed in the Supreme Court (SC) of Pakistan, regarding the acquisition of public land in Karachi – ARY News reports.

According to details, ISI withdrew its petition after no

objection on the transfer of land by the Government of Sindh. It was said in the judicial remarks that a state

institution may transfer land to the other and there is no restriction in that.

Justice Asif Saeed said that the court’s verdict in this regard is clear; it seems that someone used the other party in achieving his goal.

The counsel of the ISI elaborated that the land was used for sensitive, yet apparently its purpose was set to be residential.

Terrorism a threat to regional, international peace: Pervaiz Rasheed

ISLAMABAD: Federal Information Minister Pervaiz Rasheed opined on Thursday that North Waziristan had become a nursery for terrorists and their elimination became necessary for country, region and world peace, ARY News reported.

In an interview, the federal minister said that terrorism is a threat to peace in South Asian region and operation had become a necessity in the prevailing circumstances adding that Afghanistan, instead of playing the blame game should focus on mutual cooperation in this regard.

About the Model Town incident, he clarified that once determined, those responsible for the incident will be dealt with iron hand.

Government, military on same page: Asif

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s government and military are on the same page said the country’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif.

Speaking to the media outside parliament, the defence minister added that the operation in FATA was being made more effective so that Karachi remains safe from any reaction.

Khawaja Asif further said the operation in Karachi was successfully underway for 3-4 months.

NSA spying on PPP ‘unacceptable’: Khursheed Shah

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) stalwart and opposition leader in Pakistan’s National Assembly, Syed Khursheed Shah expressed displeasure over the recent revelation that America’s National Security Agency (NSA) was spying upon PPP, ARY News reported.

The alleged spying of 193 countries by NSA is being condemned around the world.

Khursheed Shah said that his party will write a letter to US consulate after consulting party leaders over the issue.

Shah maintained that US has no right to spy upon any Pakistani individual or organization and his party will also ask the government to protest with US over the issue.

It must be remembered that a classified document on Monday revealed that NSA is spying upon 193 foreign governments as well as different factions and political parties and PPP was among the list.

Wednesday, 24 April 2013

Man’s hands severed after accusing of theft in DG Khan

DERA

GHAZI KHAN: An act of brutality was observed in Chotibala area of Dera Ghazi Khan where a man’s hands were chopped off after accusing him of theft Wednesday, Geo News reported.

According to police, the victim who was identified as Tufail was kidnapped and tortured before his hands were amputated.

After getting the news of the incident, police reached the spot and shifted the victim to District Hospital, DG Khan for treatment.

Tufail told that theft allegations against him are baseless, however, he had a minor clash with the culprits ten year ago.

Police have registered the case against four accused and also claimed of arresting the two, however, none of the key accused has been held so far.

Protesters release two Iraqi soldiers

FALLUJAH: Anti-government protesters released two Iraqi soldiers they had seized near Ramadi, west of Baghdad, a protest organiser and a doctor said on Wednesday.
The soldiers were taken after deadly clashes between security forces and demonstrators in north Iraq left dozens dead and sparked a wave of revenge attacks.
Abdulrazzaq al-Shammari, one of the organisers of the protests near Ramadi, said the two soldiers were turned over to a hospital in the city on Tuesday.
He also said the demonstrators were demanding that Iraqi soldiers withdraw from all cities in Anbar province, where Ramadi is located, and remain in their main bases.
Dr Ahmed al-Ani, the director of the emergency department at the Ramadi hospital, said the facility had received two soldiers. One was wounded and still in hospital, while the second was released.
Police First Lieutenant Ibrahim Faraj said on Tuesday that armed protesters killed six Iraqi soldiers near Ramadi and burned two armoured personnel carriers, but put the number of kidnapped soldiers at one instead of two.
Protesters have taken to the streets in Sunni-majority areas of Iraq for more than four months, calling for the resignation of Maliki and decrying the alleged targeting of their minority community by the Shiite-led authorities.
Clashes and attacks involving security forces, protesters and their supporters left 54 people dead country-wide on Tuesday, the worst protest-related violence since the demonstrations began.

Blast in Quetta leaves two policemen injured

QUETTA: Two policemen have been injured in a blast that occurred near the Kechi Baig police station in the Sariab area of the city on Wednesday, Geo News reported.

According to police the blast occurred when explosives planted on a bicycle blew up. Police say a child left the bicycle near the police station and left the scene, adding that a car was also damaged as a result of the blast.

This is the sixth blast to occur in Quetta in the past 24 hours.

Earlier this morning thirteen people including two children were injured in a blast near a private hospital in Satellite Town, Quetta. Meanwhile six people were killed and 40 sustained injuries after four successive blasts rocked the provincial capital on Tuesday evening.

Musharraf’s bail extension plea dismissed in Benazir murder case

RAWALPINDI: Lahore High Court Rawalpindi Bench has dismissed former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf’s petition for an extension of his interim bail in the Benazir Bhutto murder case.
The Lahore High Court has also dismissed Musharraf’s lawyer’s request for protection.
Earlier the court had granted interim bail to the former president on April 17 till April 24 against two surety bonds of Rs 0.5 million each.
On Tuesday, Musharraf appeared before the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) for the first time over the murder of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. During proceedings the ATC directed Pervez Musharraf to be part of the murder investigation and adjourned the hearing till May 3.

Sunday, 17 February 2013

Azarenka beats Serena to retain Qatar title

DOHA: Victoria Azarenka avenged the loss of her world number one ranking to Serena Williams by beating the American for only the second time in 13 attempts to successfully defend her Qatar Open title on Sunday.

The Belarusian's 7-6 (8/6), 2-6, 6-3 win over the legendary American also completed back-to-back title defences, as last month she also defended the Australian Open title in Melbourne.

She was helped by Williams making the worst of starts. She was twice break point down in her opening service game, but held on. She followed it with two double faults and two unforced errors to drop serve in her second service game.

Unforced errors continued to spray from Williams' racket, especially on the forehand, and by the fourth game she was showing signs of fretting, looking repeatedly at her camp and grimacing.

At that stage Azarenka had won 12 straight points and was hitting the ball well, with a clear game plan to strike as early and as far up the court as possible, often targeting the Williams forehand. Williams responded by ditching her racket.

The new one soon brought improvements but Azarenka had advanced to 4-2 before Williams broke back. She also complained to the umpire about Azarenka repeatedly putting her hand up before receiving serve, affecting her rhythm.

Williams' aura of frustration continued into the tie-break even though by then she was bombarding Azarenka far more heavily.

She came from 2-5 down to earn a set point at 6-5, only for Azarenka to save it with an excellent combination of a solid return and a heavy backhand drive.

When Azarenka immediately bettered it with a spectacular inside-out return of serve winner to reach 7-6, she converted her set point at once.

Nadal casts off injury woes to triumph in Brazil

SAO PAULO: Rafael Nadal showed he is back in business by clinching his first tournament title since ending a seven-month knee injury layoff, winning the Brazil Open here Sunday.

The Spanish former world number one, who has been complaining of nagging knee pain, beat Argentine David Nalbandian in straight sets 6-2, 6-3 in 78 minutes.

Currently the world number five, Nadal went on the attack from the start, breaking his opponent's service before racing to take the first set.

The 31-year-old Nalbandian, a former world number three who now languishes in 93rd place in the ATP rankings, fought back early in the second set but Nadal came from behind to win the match, sparking wild cheers from the crowd.

The Spaniard pocketed a check of $82,300 for his win and thanked the public for "the great support" he received throughout the tournament.

Nadal was the top seed in this $455,775 tournament, his second comeback event following his long absence.

He competed in the Vina del Mar Open in Chile earlier this month, losing the singles and doubles finals last Sunday.

Considered by many to be the best ever clay-court player, Nadal was back on the court in Chile for the first time since suffering a surprise second-round exit at Wimbledon in June.

Since then he has been sidelined by a torn tendon and inflammation in his left knee, with his return this year further delayed by a stomach virus.

The world number five, who has 11 Grand Slam titles under his belt, also won the Brazil Open in 2005, when it was held in Costa do Sauipe in eastern Bahia state.

Last year, the tournament, Brazil's premier tennis event, was moved to Sao Paulo.

Pakistan beaten again after giving tough fight to Proteas

CAPE TOWN: Pakistan lost the three-Test series after South Africa recorded their second consecutive win by four wickets here at the New Lands on Sunday.
Chasing 182, South Africa completed their victory before the end of the fourth day, losing six wickets.

For South Africa, Hashim Amla was the top scorer with 58 while AB de Villiers made 36 and captain Graeme Smith scored 36.
Off-break bowler Saeed Ajmal bagged four wickets for 51 runs finishing the match figures of ten for 147. This was his third ten-wicket haul in Test cricket.
However, South African Robin Peterson was adjudged the Man-of-the-Match for his allround performance as he made a valuable 84 in the first innings and five wickets in the match.
South Africa, who had won the first Test by a huge margin of 211 runs at Johannesburg last week, lead the series 2-0 with the third and final Test to be played at Centurion from February 22.

Case of Quetta tragedy lodged after 30-hour delay

QUETTA: The case of one of Pakistan's worst bomb blasts in Quetta has been registered 30 hours after the tragic incident, said police here on Sunday.

According to police, the FIR of the remote controlled bomb blast at Karani Road on Saturday has been registered.
It may be noted here that the massive explosion executed through a remote controlled devise killed 83 people including women and children and injured over 180 injured.

Quetta blast: Solidarity strike to be observed in Karachi

KARACHI: The Shia Ulema Council (SUC) has called a strike today (Monday) to express solidarity with Quetta's bereaved Hazara families, which lost 80 of their loved ones in one of the biggest bombings in the history of Pakistan, Geo News reported.

Several political, religious, social, transporters, and trade & business groups have confirmed full support for the strike called, which means major markets in the city will remain closed, while no transport will be available to commuters and public at large today.

Reportedly, private schools have also announced a holiday on Monday.

Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Pakistan Sunni Tehrik, Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (Fazal), Karachi Transport Ittehad, All Karachi Tajir Ittehad, and Goods Transporters Association are among those groups which have put their weight behind the shutter-down wheel-jam strike.

Monday, 21 January 2013

Snow, ice cause travel chaos across Europe

FRANKFURT: Roads, railways and air travel across much of Europe were plunged into chaos Monday as heavy snow and arctic weather conditions gripped the continent.

Disruptions in air travel were particularly severe, with the cancellation of more than a quarter of all flights at Frankfurt airport, Germany's busiest, and one in 10 flights at London's Heathrow airport, Europe's busiest, following even more widespread cancellations the day before.

And air travellers faced long delays and disruptions at other airports across Germany and in France and Britain as well.

In Frankfurt, Europe's third-busiest airport, 325 take-offs and landings were cancelled Monday, a spokesman for operator Fraport.

In Munich, Germany's number two airport, some 161 flights -- or more than 15 percent -- were cancelled.

In France, the civil aviation authority DGAC said it expected to cancel 40 percent of flights from and to Paris's Orly and Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airports in a preventive measure following heavy snowfall on Sunday.

However, snow was no longer falling at either airport and the cleared runways were able to handle the reduced volume of traffic, noted a spokeswoman for Aeroports de Paris.

In Spain, flights bound for Paris, Munich and Frankfurt were hit, leading to the cancellation of 16 flights to and from Barcelona.

Freezing rain and snow also led to treacherous conditions on railways and roads, causing countless accidents.

In the southwest of Germany, police recorded more than 1,000 weather-related accidents and in the northeast of the country, near Berlin, an entire section of motorway was shut to traffic.

In Beglium, three people died and two others were seriously injured when a mini-bus they were travelling in skidded off the road, overturned and caught fire at a motorway exit near Bruges, local authorities said.

In Britain, hundreds of schools remained shut due to the severe winter weather.

In Moscow, unusually heavy snowfall of almost 50 centimetres (20 inches) in Moscow caused traffic jams but did not affect flights at city airports, which are well equipped for snowstorms.

The snowfall over the last four days in Moscow exceeded the average for the whole month of January, Moscow Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov said.

Kabul forces, Taliban fight over, attackers killed

KABUL: NATO troops joined a fight against a Taliban suicide squad that stormed a Kabul police headquarters at dawn Monday, killing three police officers and unleashing a stand-off that lasted for more than eight hours.

The Taliban claimed the attack, which turned into the longest stand-off between the insurgents and security forces in Kabul since a major co-ordinated raid on the capital lasted 18 hours in April last year.
Three of the five attackers were killed in the early part of the assault while two others wearing suicide vests holed up in the five-storey building in west Kabul and fired on security forces, a police officer told AFP. They were later also killed. "It's over. The last two terrorists are dead and they were not even given the chance to detonate their suicide vests," Kabul police chief General Mohammad Ayoub Salangi told AFP.
The reason it took so long to overpower the last two men was "because our boys acted very carefully," he said. "There were lots of important documents so we acted very carefully to not cause any damage to those documents."
Four traffic police, two members of the special forces and half a dozen civilians were wounded, deputy interior minister General Abdul Rahman said.
An AFP photographer said Norwegian soldiers were seen firing at the police building. NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed its participation in the operation but insisted it was small.
"We do have a very small number of people assisting the Afghan security forces officials in the scene. It's primarily an advising role and absolutely the Afghan officials are in the lead," an ISAF spokesman told AFP.
NATO says the Taliban insurgency has been weakened and characterised the attack as a ploy to attract media attention, but the time it took to mop up the insurgents will be seen as an embarrassment. "They (the Taliban) are losing the fight," said General Gunter Katz, ISAF military spokesman. "They cannot fight face to face. These attacks are only to attract media. They carry out their attacks in the cities and crowded areas where civilians suffer." He praised the role of the Afghan security forces in countering the attack.
The assault began with a massive car-bomb explosion that shattered the windows of nearby homes. A local resident described the initial explosion as "very very big -- it was massive". It was followed by several other explosions and gunfire.
Taliban insurgents, who are waging an 11-year war against the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, claimed credit for the attack, which it said began at 5:00 am (0030 GMT). "A large number of fedayeen (suicide bombers) entered a building in Dehmazang and are attacking an American training centre, a police centre and other military centres and have caused heavy casualties on the enemy," a Taliban spokesman said.
There is no US or NATO-run training facility in the area and the Taliban are known to exaggerate when claiming attacks. Monday's attack came less than a week after a squad of suicide bombers attacked the Afghan intelligence agency headquarters in Kabul, killing at least one guard and wounding dozens of civilians. All six attackers were killed in the brazen attack on the National Directorate of Security (NDS), also claimed by the Taliban.
Afghan police and other security forces are increasingly targets of Taliban attacks as they take a bigger role in the battle against the insurgents before NATO withdraws the bulk of its 100,000 combat troops by the end of 2014.

Japan tsunami stress may have brought on seizures: study

Tokyo: The number of seizure patients in a northern Japanese fishing community devastated by the March 11, 2011 tsunami spiked in the weeks following the disaster, according to a Japanese study.

The study, published in the journal Epilepsia, looked at 440 patient records from Kesennuma City Hospital, in a city that was devastated by the massive tsunami touched off by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake.

Thirteen patients were admitted with seizures in the eight weeks after the disaster, but only one had been admitted in the two months before March 11.

Previous research has linked stressful life-threatening disasters with an increased risk of seizures, but most case reports lacked clinical data with multiple patients.

"We suggest that stress associated with life-threatening situations may enhance seizure generation," wrote lead author Ichiyo Shibahara, a staff neurosurgeon at Sendai Medical Center in northern Japan.

But he added that stress itself is not a universal risk factor for seizures.

"Most of the seizure patients had some sort of neurological disease before the earthquake," he said.

His team examined medical records from patients admitted to the neurosurgery ward in the eight weeks before and after the March 11 disaster and compared them to the same time period each year between 2008 and 2010.

In 2008, there were 11 seizure patients admitted between January 14 and May 15. In 2009, there were seven and in 2010, just four.

Of the 13 admitted after the disaster, 11 had preexisting brain disorders that included epilepsy, head injuries or stroke. All the patients lived independently, and eight took anti-convulsive medication.

Shibahara noted that of the five patients admitted just days after the tsunami, it was "not because of a lack of anticonvulsants, but because of the stress."

One later patient, though, was unable to refill his medication weeks after the devastation.

"This is interesting, but I'm not 100 percent convinced," said William Theodore, senior investigator of the clinical epilepsy section at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland.

Theodore, who was not involved in the study, told Reuters health that because the number of patients was so small, random variation could explain the surge in seizures.

Upset patients may also have forgotten to take, or weren't able to find, anticonvulsant drugs.

There are also various ways that natural disasters might cause seizures, including head trauma, infections from polluted water or a lack of sleep, he added.

But the study did have a practical take home message, he said: "If you already have seizures and you're taking medication, always make sure you have a decent supply just in case some natural disaster occurs."

Emergency declared in parts of Egypt after polio spreads from Pakistan

CAIRO: A state of emergency has been declared in several cities across Egypt after the polio virus was transferred to the country from Pakistan.

The provincial governments of Egypt have been ordered to set up polio counters at airports and all internal and external routes across the country.

In a joint statement, World Health Organization, UNICEF and Polio Monitoring Cell have termed this situation as critical and alarming for the polio campaign in Pakistan.

The statement further adds that children under the age of five will not be allowed to leave Pakistan without having had polio drops.

Before this recent outbreak, Egypt had been polio free since 2004.

Warne slapped with new conduct fine

SYDNEY: Australian veteran c was Monday fined Aus$5,000 (US$5,250) for a code of behaviour breach in the domestic Big Bash League, his second penalty this month, cricket officials said.

Cricket Australia said Warne was fined following a disciplinary hearing into his failure to list himself as captain during the Melbourne Stars' semi-final against the Perth Scorchers in a bid to dodge a penalty for a slow over-rate.

Warne had previously been issued with one strike for a slow over rate violation and a second strike this season would have resulted in an automatic one-match suspension.

"Warne was found guilty of breaching Rule 5: Laws of Cricket and Spirit of the Game by Commissioner Arthur Lodge," said Cricket Australia.

The 43-year-old spinner was not present at the hearing and was represented by Melbourne Stars officials.

Warne apologised earlier this month after a foul-mouthed rant against West Indian all-rounder Marlon Samuels that earned him a ban and a Aus$4,500 fine.

He claimed 708 Test wickets in a celebrated career but has also courted controversy, notably when he was fined for accepting money from a bookmaker and sent home from the 2003 World Cup for taking a banned diuretic.

world news

Pageviews from the past week