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Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Twelve killed by lightning in Odisha

Bhubaneswar: At least twelve people were killed and several injured in separate lightning incidents in different places of Odisha which was lashed by heavy rains together with thunder on Monday afternoon. Deceased were from Khordha, Cuttack and Sundargarh districts. While 6 people died in Khurda district, five died in Cuttack district in lightning strikes.

It was a clinical performance from West Indies A featuring a century from Jonathan Carter and some fine bowling which helped them to defeat India A by 55 runs in the second unofficial ODI on Tuesday. In reply to 279, India A were bowled out for 224.

Chasing a score of 280 wasn’t an easy task, but the Indian batting undoubtedly had the firepower to conquer it. The opening partnership which did well against New Zealand A faltered for the second time here with
dismissed in early in the innings. The Karnataka player edged the ball which rolled back on to his stumps.

LONDON: Rights group Amnesty International announced on Tuesday it had awarded its highest honour to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teen shot in the head last year by the Taliban for campaigning for girls' education.

Malala will share the 2013 Ambassador of Conscience Award with American singer and human rights activist Harry Belafonte, the London-based NGO revealed.

Asserting that people had given him the mandate to improve ties with neighbours, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said Pakistan is keen to have a comprehensive dialogue with India for the resolution of all issues including Kashmir.

Sharif said he is committed to a "serious, sustained and constructive engagement" with India that must include the issue of Jammu and Kashmir.

Curfew continued to be in force in Shopian town for the sixth consecutive day on Tuesday, following clashes after the killing of five persons in CRPF firing since September 7.

“Curfew will remain imposed in Shopian township for today as a precautionary measure,” a police spokesman said.

Curfew was first clamped in Shopian district on September 8, following wide-spread clashes after the killing of four persons in CRPF firing a day earlier.

KARACHI: At least six persons, including a political party worker, were killed in various incidents of violence whereas Rangers and Police personnel arrested 30 suspects and recovered weapons during targeted operations conducted in Karachi.

At least three persons were killed in a gunfiring incident in Orangi town area of Karachi on Tuesday.

Unknown motorcylce-riding gunmen opened fire near Islam chowk in Orangi town area of Karachi killing three persons including an office bearer of a political party.

Washington: Several online jihadists have claimed Islamic extremists were involved in the deadly shooting incident at the Naval Sea Systems Command office in Washington on Monday that killed a dozen people and left another dozen injured.

US officials have, meanwhile, ruled out the involvement of any terrorist group in the attack, the Washington Times reports.

Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif received 62 percent approval of the masses across the country for his performance during his first 100 days in office.

The poll, conducted by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), is a performance-tracker of the new federal government led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported.

Islamabad: Pakistan police have arrested a Taliban militant allegedly involved in the killing of former Minister for Minorities' Affairs Shahbaz Bhatti, who was shot dead for speaking against the blasphemy laws.

Around two weeks ago, Hammad Adil was arrested in a raid, along with Muhammad Tanveer, an alleged Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan ringleader.

US authorities probing the shooting spree at Washington's Navy Yard, which left 13 people dead and eight injured, have said that a lone gunman carried out the killings.

Authorities said military contractor Aaron Alexis, 34, of Texas, launched the attack on Monday inside a building at the US Navy complex, spraying gunfire on office workers in the cafeteria and in the hallway at the heavily secured installation.

A Turkish fighter jet shot down a Syrian military helicopter on Monday after it entered Turkish airspace and ignored repeated warnings to leave, an official has said.

The helicopter strayed 2km into Turkish airspace, but crashed inside Syria after being hit by missiles fired from the jet, according to Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister, Bulent Arinc.

The teams of National Investigation Agency visited Goa along with IM co-founder Yasin Bhatkal to probe his links in the coastal state where he had earlier visited, police sources said.

The teams, which were in the state for a day on Monday, took Bhatkal to places like Anjuna beach, Mapusa, Panaji and Vasco, which he had reportedly visited during the last decade.

BRUSSELS: European lawmakers have nominated several candidates for the bloc's top human rights prize, including Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai and US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.

The European Parliament said in a statement late Monday they were among seven nominees for this year's Sakharov prize.

Philippines launches air strikes at Muslim rebels, says govt

ZAMBOANGA, Philippines :The Philippine military on Monday launched a helicopter assault on Muslim rebels who have occupied parts of a major southern city, as the crisis entered its eighth day.

"Targeted air strike by the Philippine Air Force (is) ongoing," the Zamboanga city government said in a statement.

RAWALPINDI: Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani vowed Monday that terrorists would not be allowed to take advantage of the military’s support to the political process.

“While it is understandable to give peace a chance through a political process…no one should have any misgivings that we would let terrorists coerce us into accepting their terms,” a statement issued by the Inter Services Public Relations quoted Kayani as saying. “(The) Army has the ability and the will to take the fight to the terrorists.”

A high velocity storm has left at least three people dead and over 50 injured in Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana, officials said Monday.

Himanshu, a final year student of S.D. College in Chandigarh's Sector 32, was killed Sunday evening when a portion of the college outer wall collapsed while he was passing by. Another student, Piyush, was injured in the incident.

The wind had speeds ranging from 70 to 105 km per hour.

They have got the green signal to compete in the Champions League Twenty20, but Faisalabad Wolves players were today forced to shift out of the city after it emerged that their visas were only valid for Mohali.

The team, captained by Pakistan Test skipper Misbah-ul-Haq, arrived on Saturday after finally getting the visa to travel to India to play in the event starting on Tuesday.

ISLAMABAD: Former President Asif Ali Zardari has warned against "appeasing" the militants, saying the attack by the Pakistani Taliban that claimed the lives of two top army officers shows the futility of the policy.

"If there has been any doubt about the futility of appeasing the militants, these must be removed by the incident in upper Dir on the eve of International Democracy Day," Zardari said yesterday.

His comments came on a day when the Pakistani Taliban killed Maj Gen Sanaullah, Lt Col Touseef and a Lance Naik in an IED blast in Upper Dir of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

ISLAMABAD: Relatives have shot dead three women in a lawless tribal area of northwest Pakistan after one of them left her husband, officials said on Monday.

The "honour" killings happened in Jawaki village in the Darra Adam Khel district, between the cities of Peshawar and Kohat.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, and vice president Rahul Gandhi will visit certain riot-affected localities in Muzaffarnagar district today.

"They will stay here for two hours during which they are expected to visit three relief camps where riot-hit people are taking shelter," District Magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma said.

Mr Sharma told PTI that they will also visit the residence of freelance journalist Rajesh Verma, who was among those killed in the violence.

KARACHI: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) issued a 10-million-dollar defamation notice to The New York Times' former Islamabad bureau chief, Declan Walsh, and the editor, printer and publisher of the newspaper for allegedly causing disrepute to Altaf Hussain in a 'baseless' report published, according to the official website of the MQM.

The notice was served by MQM's counsel Barrister Farogh Naseem which stated that the baseless reporting on behalf of the NYT had caused damage to the repute of MQM chief Altaf Hussain.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has once again thrown his backing behind the Syrian opposition while criticizing the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) for siding with the Bashar al-Assad regime.

Responding to criticisms that the government was taking a warmongering stance on Syria, the prime minister lashed out at the CHP. “Where were you when 110,000 people were killed in Syria? Where were you at when 7 million people were displaced? Historical artifacts, mosques, sanctuaries, tombs have been destroyed, where were you? Kids, women, mothers, fathers have been massacred, where were you?” Erdogan asked emotionally.

UN chemical weapons inspectors have handed their report into an alleged gas attack in Syria to Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.

The report into the incident, in which more than 1,400 people are reported to have died last month on the outskirts of Damascus, will be unveiled later on Monday.

BEIJING: A passenger bus collided with a truck and plunged into a riverbed in southwest China, killing 16 people including 11 students, authorities said.

The accident happened on Sunday afternoon in a village in Dazhou city in Sichuan province.

CAIRO: Security forces backed by armored vehicles and helicopters on Monday stormed a town south of Cairo that had been held for over two months by militants loyal to the ousted Islamist president, swiftly taking control despite some resistance from gunmen.

Local activists Adel Shafiq and Ezzat Ibrahim said a joint force of army and police rolled into the town of Dalga, about 300 kilometers south of the Egyptian capital, before dawn on Monday.

Five suspects arrested over raping five-year-old girl in Lahore

LAHORE: Police officials have detained 5 suspected persons over allegation of raping five-year-old girl in Lahore on late night of Friday (today).

All detained persons were arrested over suspicion basis while further investigation have been commenced, police sources said.

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister's Adviser on Foreign Affairs and National Security Sartaj Aziz on Friday met with Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, DawnNews reported.

Aziz is leading the Pakistani delegation to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in the Kyrgyz capital.

WASHINGTON: Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a speech marking the 12th anniversary of 9/11, called Thursday for attacks on the United States and a boycott of the world's largest economy.

A summary and translated English excerpts of the roughly 72-minute address was made available by the SITE Intelligence Group.

The speech was posted on jihadi forums a day after America held ceremonies in honor of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Pakistani cricket team Faisalabad Wolves, initially denied a visa to participate in the Champions League Twenty20 tournament this month, is now set to get the travel document at the personal intervention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, it is reliably learnt.

The decision comes weeks ahead of Singh's meeting with Pakistan's new Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

At least 14 people have been reported killed in a fire at a psychiatric hospital in Russia.

The fire happened on Friday in the town of Ramensky, in the Novgorod region.

The Russian Irar-Tass news agency reported 14 people dead, while an emergency situations official, Oleg Voronov, told the Reuters news agency that 37 people were unaccounted for.

The BCCI probe into the Indian Premier League spot-fixing scandal has found four Rajasthan Royals players guilty of spot-fixing during IPL 6. According to reports, the probe panel chief Ravi Sawani has recommended bans ranging from five years to life for the guilty players.

At least seven people have died and 17 others injured in an apparent Taliban attack targeting the United States consulate in Herat, Afghanistan.

Sayed Fazlullah Wahidi, the governor of Herat province, told the AP news agency that the attack began at about 6am local time (2am GMT) on Friday with a powerful car bomb explosion about 60m from the consulate compound,

ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office spokesman on Thursday said the government had prepared a case aimed at raising the issue of US drone strikes on Pakistani territory in the United Nations, DawnNews reported.

Speaking at the weekly media briefing, the spokesman said there was no secret agreement between Pakistan and the United States on drone strikes, adding that the government had no idea where the drones were flown in from.

Al-Shabaab men kill US-born militant in Somalia

MOGADISHU: A prominent US-born Islamist militant was killed in Somalia on Thursday after he fell out with senior commanders of the Al-Shabaab rebel group, witnesses said.

Residents in Al-Baate village in southern Somalia said Alabama-born Omar Hammami, commonly known as Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki or 'the American', and a British national known as Usama al-Britani, were shot dead in a dawn raid on their hideout.

Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif is scheduled to visit Turkey for three days on September 16, said an official press release on Thursday.

The two countries will sign several MoUs and agreements besides the highest state award to be conferred upon the Pakistani premier. Nawaz Sharif will visit Turkey on the invitation of his Turkish counterpart, said the press release received from Embassy of Pakistan in Turkey.

KARACHI: An anti-terrorist court in Karachi on Thursday ordered a seven-day-long physical remand of former Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) lawmaker Nadim Hashmi who was earlier arrested on murder and terror charges over the killing of two policemen.

Hashmi, in charge of the MQM’s North Nazimabad unit, was handed over to the police following the order of the ATC.

The former lawmaker was arrested for his alleged involvement in the Tuesday killing of two policemen in a North Nazimabad locality.

US secretary of state John Kerry has arrived in Geneva to meet Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov as the UN tries to forge an international plan to disarm the Syrian government of its chemical weapons.

Lavrov and Kerry will discuss efforts to agree a UN resolution on the issue, as well as the practicalities of finding, removing and destroying chemical stockpiles during a civil war in which more than 100,000 people have already died.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has directly appealed to the American people and to US politicians on Syria by writing an article in the New York Times warning that a military strike could unleash a new wave of "terrorism".

Writing in the newspaper on Thursday, Putin said there were "few champions of democracy" in the 2-1/2-year-old civil war in Syria, "but there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all types battling the government."

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met Chief of the Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani on Wednesday and discussed with him the government’s strategy for talks with militants.

The meeting followed Monday’s all-party conference which had endorsed Mr Sharif’s plan for dialogue with the Taliban. The decision by political parties represented in parliament was subsequently ratified by the federal cabinet at a meeting held a day later.

A German federal court has rejected an appeal by a Muslim schoolgirl who wanted to skip swimming lessons because she was uncomfortable being close to bare-chested boys in the pool.

The Federal Administrative Court in the eastern city of Leipzig said on Wednesday the girl could wear a full-body swimsuit known as a “burkini” to help maintain her religious beliefs.

The members of the Senate Standing Committee on Defence and Defence Production of Pakistan and the Defence, Internal Security, and Local Administration Committee of Meshrano Jirga of the Afghan Parliament concluded rounds of dialogue in the Afghan capital Kabul with signing of a joint declaration.

"The two-day dialogue focused on issues including security and the defence cooperation between the two countries; existing and emerging challenges in Pak-Afghan relations; cross-border terrorism, narcotics smuggling; border management, challenges of 2014 NATO withdrawal and Afghanistan peace process and institutionalizing Pak-Afghan Defence Parliamentary Dialogue," the declaration said.

Thai policemen killed in separatist attack

Suspected separatist Muslim fighters have killed five police officers and later stole their weapons in an attack in south of Thailand, police say.

About five to six fighters followed a pickup truck carrying the undercover policemen and attacked them on a road in Thung Yangdaeng district in Pattani province, Police Colonel Kowit Rattanachote said on Wednesday.

He said the police pulled over their car and attempted to take cover after the armed men started firing into their vehicle.

The Dutch government has formally apologised for the mass killing of Indonesians during colonial occupation which ended in 1949.

The Dutch ambassador in Indonesia, Tjeerd de Zwaan, officially presented the state's apology at a Jakarta ceremony on Thursday.

"On behalf of the Dutch government I apologise for these excesses," De Zwaan said.

EL-ARISH, (Egypt) :A suicide bomber on Wednesday rammed his explosives-laden car into the military intelligence headquarters in a border town in Egypt’s volatile Sinai, killing at least three soldiers and wounding 10, security officials said.

The bomber drove into the one-story building at high speed, collapsing its front part and burying an unspecified number of troops under the rubble, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

In the pending case of shielding prominent Congressmen for their alleged involvement in the 1984 anti Sikh riots, radical Sikh rights group “Sikhs for Justice” (SFJ) on Tuesday, managed to serve the summons to Congress president Sonia Gandhi through hospital and security staff at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.

New Delhi:The order on the sentencing of the Delhi gangrape convicts has been reserved for 2:30 pm on Friday.

The convicts have also sought leniency on grounds of age. They say court should show mercy considering their young age.VK Anand, the lawyer for one of the convicts, Mukesh, had filed an application saying Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde has committed contempt of court by saying all accused will get death in the case. The court has dismissed the application.

A powerful blast has caused severe damage to a foreign ministry building in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, witnesses said.

It was not immediately known if Wednesday's blast resulted in casualties.

The explosion came on the first anniversary of an attack by armed men on the US consulate in Benghazi, which killed four Americans, including ambassador Chris Stevens.

KARACHI: Jamaat-i-Islami chief Munawar Hasan has described decisions of the All Party Conference as a step in the right direction and advised the government to assert itself while holding talks with Taliban.

He also urged all security institutions to coordinate and cooperate with the government over the matter.

Addressing a press conference at the Idara-i-Noor-i-Haq here on Tuesday, the Jamaat chief said there was dire need to pull the country out of the war on terror, claiming that the conflict was in the interest of the US and not that of Pakistan.

KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain on Wednesday condemned the arrest of Nadeem Hidayat Hashmi, a former provincial legislator belonging to the party, DawnNews reported.

In a statement issued from the MQM's London secretariat, Altaf asked the Sindh government to explain the reasons and clauses of the law under which the former Member of Provincial Assembly was taken into custody by law enforcers.

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