Sunday 30 September 2012

Pakistan win toss, bat against India





COLOMBO: Pakistan captain Mohammad Hafeez won the toss and elected to bat against their arch rivals India in the World Twenty20 Super Eights group two here at the R Premadasa Stadium on Sunday.

Pakistan made no change in their team which defeated South Africa by two wickets in Colombo on Friday while India on the other side made two changes.

Dashing opener Virender Sehwag was back for India.He was surprisingly left out of the Indian team which lost to Australia by nine wickets in the first Super Eights match on Friday.

Sehwag and fast bowler Lakshmipathy Balaji were brought in for Harbhajan Singh and Piyush Chawla.

If Pakistan win this match they will qualify for the semi-finals along with Australia from the group. In case of an Indian victory, all four teams will go into the last matches on Tuesday with a chance to reach the last four.

Australia moved closer to the semi-finals after recording their second win in as many matches by thumping South Africa by eight wickets earlier in the day.

India: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain), Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, Irfan Pathan, Ravichandran Ashwin, Zaheer Khan, Rohit Sharma, Lakshmipathy Balaji.

Pakistan: Mohammad Hafeez (captain), Imran Nazir, Nasir Jamshed, Shoaib Malik, Umar Akmal, Kamran Akmal, Shahid Afridi, Umar Gul, Saeed Ajmal, Raza Hasan, Yasir Arafat.

Umpires: Rod Tucker (AUS) and Richard Kettleborough (ENG), Tv umpire: Kumar Dharmasena (SL)

Match referee: Jeff Crowe (NZ)

Saturday 29 September 2012

10 infants die in Larkana hospital


LARKANA: Ten newborn babies have died in Children Hospital Larkana due to suspension of electricity during last 24 hours, .

According to the reports, four children died while the condition of several turned severe in the ICU after electricity suspension last night. Six more children died in the morning today.

It is said that diesel was also not available for generator in the hospital.

Meanwhile, Medical Superintendent of Children Hospital Afsar Bhutto said four children were brought in serious condition. They were provided treatment but could not be saved, however, six more died due to late delivery.

Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad Khan and Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah have sought report of the incident while Deputy Commission Asadullah Bhutto has convened emergency meeting of the concerned staff including MS hospital   { Geo News reported.}

Syria rebels struggle in fresh Aleppo assault



An injured rebel fighter is helped to safety in Aleppo, Syria, 27 September


There has been heavy fighting in Syria's biggest city of Aleppo, with state media saying rebels have suffered big losses in their latest assault.

Rebel commanders had announced a major offensive on Friday to secure control of the whole of the city.

Both sides reported clashes across Aleppo but state media said counter-attacks had inflicted heavy losses.

Activist groups say 150 people were killed across Syria on Friday, 40 of them in Aleppo.

The signs are that the rebels simply lack the firepower and the manpower to score a significant breakthrough, the BBC's Jim Muir reports from Beirut.

By contrast, the government side has made full use of its heavy weapons, tanks and monopoly of air power, our correspondent says.

Activists estimate more than 27,000 people have died in the violence since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began last year.

'Non-stop'
State television reported attacks on what it called "terrorist centres" in 10 different locations, saying heavy losses had been inflicted.

Residents of Aleppo neighbourhoods previously spared the worst of the fighting told AFP news agency on Friday that the violence was unprecedented.

"The sound from the fighting... has been non-stop," said a resident of the central district of Sulamaniyeh, who identified himself as Ziad.

"Everyone is terrified. I have never heard anything like this before."

Abu Furat, one of the leaders of the rebels' al-Tawhid Brigade, admitted fighters had had to retreat from because they were out-gunned.

"To win a guerrilla street war, you have to have bombs and we don't," he said.

Despite all their advantages, government forces have clearly not been able to dislodge the tenacious rebel fighters from many parts of the city, where the destruction has been massive as the stalemated struggle goes on, our correspondent adds

damascus

Missing British schoolgirl, teacher found in France: police





BORDEAUX: A British schoolgirl and a maths teacher who triggered a Europe-wide manhunt after running away together have been found in Bordeaux, France, police said on Friday.
Megan Stammers, 15, and the teacher, Jeremy Forrest, 30, were filmed boarding a cross-Channel ferry on September 20 but had not been heard of since, despite appeals from their parents for them to get in touch.

Rangers operation in Shah Faisal, Lyari





KARACHI: Rangers carried out targetted operation in various areas of Shah Faisal Colony and Lyari, apprehending 18 suspects late on Friday.
The operation was carried out in the areas of Shah Faisal colony including Sadaat Colony and Natha Khan Goth where ten suspects were taken into custody.
Meanwhile in Lyari, ten suspects were detained in the operation that was conducted in Aath Chowk area.
According to the sources, weapons were also recovered from the possession of the accused and all the detained suspects were taken to undisclosed location.

Friday 28 September 2012

Syria's internally displaced languish in squalor at Turkish border

On the northern edge of this war-torn country, barely 100 meters from the Turkish border, thousands of desperate Syrians slept in the dirt.
They were hard to spot at first, hidden among ancient olive groves.
But as the sun rose, bodies stirred beneath filthy blankets, next to pitiable shelters of plastic sheets strung up between olive trees.
Children began scavenging in surrounding fields for twigs to use for cooking fires. Women lined up next to a water tank pumping milky, chalky water presumed to have given many residents of this make-shift camp diarrhea.
A month ago, there was no camp here.
Syrian refugees living in olive orchards
Britain's world view on Syria
Two huge explosions rock Damascus
Syrian kids' reality stark, shocking
But now rebels from a local Free Syrian Army group that slept in a tent with the words "police office" spray-painted on it estimated there were between 5,500 and 6,000 people living here, with more arriving every day.
More: War marks highest daily death toll
"I came here because my house was destroyed," said Youssef Dabul, an English-speaking 30-year-old man who said he used to manage a KFC restaurant in Aleppo.
"I never imagined in all my life to come here and live under the olive trees."
Many of the residents told similar stories of rockets and airstrikes pummeling their villages and towns, forcing them to flee their homes.
Ousama Hamdou sat on a plastic mat under a tree holding his 2-year-old daughter, Maram. Long, wide scars stretched across her chest, still pink from the explosion last month that left her badly burned.
"I don't know what exploded, whether it was a rocket or a bomb," Hamdou said. The blast destroyed his home in the battleground city of Aleppo, in a flashpoint neighborhood called Sakari.
When a reporter asked "how are you?" in Arabic to Maram, she didn't respond. Hamdou explained that the explosion left the little girl deaf.
In his other arm, he held Maram's one-and-a-half-month old brother, whose face was covered with insect bites.
"He's being bitten by mosquitoes, and he has diarrhea and fever," Hamdou said, adding that he and his family of eight had already spent more than two weeks waiting here by the border for the Turks to let them in.
"Every day that we stay here we come closer to dying."
For more than a year, Turkey maintained what it described as an "open door policy" for Syrian refugees fleeing their government's military assaults.
Turkish border guards met families who escaped to the border fence with vans and buses that transported them to camps that foreign dignitaries have frequently described as clean, well-managed and orderly.
More: Witness says scores killed in massacre south of Damascus
But over the last month, the refugee population in Turkey has swelled to more than 87,000 people, prompting Ankara to at least partially shut its "open door" policy as the Turkish government struggles to build more camps.
"Our speed of constructing camps... cannot compete with the pace of the violence of the Ba'ath regime against its own people," said Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal, in a phone interview with CNN.
"There is no policy change," another Turkish official insisted, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We intend to continue this policy of open door as long as we can. The thing is, our capabilities are being strained."
"We've started to extend humanitarian aid, food, medicine, to the zero point on the border," the official added. "That's the best we can do at the moment."
There were signs of food distribution and delivery of basic supplies at the olive orchard camp.
But no international aid organizations appeared to have a presence here.
As parents have watched their children succumb to disease due to the filthy conditions, tempers have periodically flared.
"I'm ready to beg (Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip) Erdogan to help us," said a man dressed in a track suit who called himself Abu Saleh. He showed a laminated card that identified him as an FSA fighter. But Abu Saleh explained he quit the rebel movement after his wife was killed by a government airstrike last month. Now the former rebel was trying to transport his surviving children to safety in Turkey.
An hour later, Abu Saleh led a procession of about 100 men and boys past piles of burning garbage, to the barbed wire border fence. There, under the eyes of Turkish gendarme officers watching from a guard tower that overlooked the camp, the refugees held a futile protest, begging the Turks to let them in.
"Erdogan, Erdogan, today we sleep in Turkey," the crowd chanted.
More: Report details Syrian children's horror stories
"We want to send a message to the leaders of the Arab world, of the Islamic world, they abandoned us," Abu Saleh yelled. "And the first one who let us down was Obama."
As the crowd chanted, a lone Turkish municipal employee worked a few meters away on the Turkish side of the fence, spreading mortar onto a recently constructed cinder block wall.
In the Syrian village below the camp, hundreds of other displaced families had taken shelter in schools and a village mosque.
There were new arrivals every day.
A pickup truck loaded with at least 30 people and their belongings rolled up outside of one of the schools Wednesday. A woman who only gave the name Um Mohamed said this wasn't the first time her family vacated their homes in the village of Kafr Zeita, near the city of Hama.
"We fled our homes many times before to neighboring villages," she said, still sitting in the back of the loaded truck. "But now we can't stay there... the situation is very, very bad. Rockets and bombs, falling day and night."
Um Mohamed's family also wanted to go to Turkey.
Since Turkish authorities were only allowing a few hundred refugees to enter every day, some Syrians resorted to desperate tactics to escape their country.
Under the cover of pre-dawn darkness, a family of at least 10 stood quietly in fields not far from the Turkish border fence. With a signal from a smuggler, they then walked single-file toward the border, carrying suitcases and bags on their heads.
The family then began crawling, one by one, through the barbed wire fence. Suddenly, flashlights flared in the darkness.
A squad of Turkish gendarme soldiers ran along the fence toward the refugees, bellowing at the top of their lungs. Moments later, the family members came stumbling back to Syria, still clutching their suitcases.

Anti-Muslim filmmaker arrested: prosecutor

LOS ANGELES: Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the filmmaker behind the video that sparked protests across the Muslim world, was arrested Thursday, the Los Angeles district attorney's office said.
"I can confirm he's in custody, scheduled to make a court appearance as we speak, in federal court in downtown LA," Thom Mrozek of the United States Attorney's Office told AFP, giving no further details.
The exact nature of the court appearance is unclear, because the federal court documents have been sealed. Officials have been investigating whether he may have violated probation terms for a previous offense.
The alleged filmmaker was expected to make his appearance via video-conference, local media reported.
Nakoula -- allegedly the real identity behind the pseudonym Sam Bacile, the director of "Innocence of Muslims" -- was briefly taken into custody earlier this month for questioning by his probation officer.
He was traced to a home address in Cerritos, south of Los Angeles, after international protests erupted against the video, a 14-minute trailer for which was posted online.
In February 2009, a federal indictment accused Nakoula and others of fraudulently obtaining the identities and Social Security numbers of customers at several Wells Fargo branches in California and withdrawing $860 from them.

Wednesday 26 September 2012

Police: Pakistani teen innocent of blasphemy, but case continues

14-year-old Pakistani girl who had faced life in prison for allegedly burning the Quran will have her case heard in juvenile court, the girl's lawyer told CNN.
A local court ordered the transfer on Monday, Tahir Naveed Choudhry said.
Pakistani police told CNN their investigation concluded Rimsha Masih is innocent and was framed by an imam.
"There was no legal evidence against Rimsha," officer Munir Jafri told CNN.
Teen blasphemy suspect speaks out
Cleric accuser arrest in blasphemy case
Locals react to girl's blasphemy arrest
Girl arrested on blasphemy charges
These developments could mark an end to the Christian teen's nightmare since she was accused of blasphemy in August.
"This is a precursor to the case ending, and that is quite unprecedented in the 25-year history of Pakistan's blasphemy laws," said Ali Dayan Hasan, the Pakistan director of Human Rights Watch.
Police have submitted the findings to the court. Pakistan courts usually go with what police recommend.
There is a lot of evidence implicating imam Khalid Jadoon Chishti for framing the teenager and for himself tearing pages out of the holy book, Jafri told CNN.
This is significant, said Human Rights Watch's Hasan, because "never before has a false accuser been held accountable."
The teen's case sparked international outcry against the Pakistani government, some saying the blasphemy laws are used to settle scores and persecute religious minorities.
Blasphemy laws have been a part of life in Pakistan for 25 years, first instituted primarily to keep peace between religions, Hasan said.
But a military leader in Pakistan in the middle 1980s tightened the laws, introducing amendments that "essentially made blasphemy a capital offense," Hasan said.
"They were vaguely worded ... and became an instrument of coercion and persecution," he said. "The laws were disproportionately used against the weakest and most vulnerable in society -- religious minorities, women, children and the poor."
There have been 1,400 blasphemy cases since 1986, according to Hasan. There are more than 15 cases of people on death row for blasphemy in Pakistan, and 52 have been killed while facing trial for the charge, Hasan said.
Rimsha was arrested on August 16.
She and her family spoke to CNN in early September from an undisclosed location, in hiding after Rimsha was released on bail -- a move that appeared to be in reaction to the global condemnation of her jailing.
The teen said she was happy to be with her family, but feared for her life.
"I'm scared," she said by phone. "I'm afraid of anyone who might kill us."
The teen spoke in short sentences, answering "yes" or "no" in a shy and nervous voice.
In Pakistan, people accused of blasphemy are often attacked and sometimes killed by vigilantes.
During CNN's interview with her, Rimsha said, "No, no," when asked if she burned pages of the Quran.
She wouldn't answer questions about what happened on August 16.
Pakistani investigators said Rimsha's neighbor accused her of burning pages of the Quran to use as cooking fuel. The neighbor began to shout in protest, drawing a crowd that grew angry. Some neighbors said the teenager was beaten. Others said she ran back home and locked herself inside. When police arrived, they arrested her.
Rimsha's lawyers said the neighbor wanted to settle a personal score with the girl because the two didn't get along. They said it's likely that he liked the teen and she didn't feel the same.
While the latest turn in her case this week appears largely positive, her ordeal is far from over.
The next hearing in Rimsha's case is set for October 1 in juvenile court.
Most victims of Pakistan's blasphemy laws belong to minority Muslim sects like the Ahamadis, who many of Pakistan's majority Sunnis perceive as nonbelievers, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and Human Rights Watch.
Rimsha's father, Mizrak Masih, is a Christian. He paints houses for a few dollars a day.
He was adamant that no one in his family would dishonor the Quran.
"We respect the Quran just like we respect the Bible," he said. "We couldn't imagine committing blasphemy, let alone doing it. Our children would never do this either."
A family representative said that aid groups in the United States, Italy and Canada have offered to the teen and her family a home outside Pakistan.
But no matter how her case pans out, it's unclear what kind of life she might be able to have. She told CNN in September that she wanted to stay in her home country.
People will believe what they want to believe, no matter what the courts or police say, Hasan said.
"She is certainly in grave danger," he said. "It's the accusation that endangers your life, and can endure."

Thousands protest austerity measures in Greece

Thousands of Greeks took to the streets Wednesday to protest new austerity measures that critics described as draconian.
The protests -- the first general strike since Greece's new coalition government was formed in June -- come amid the nation's struggling economy and soaring debt.
Greece has agreed to a harsh austerity program and labor market reforms, which have led to violent street demonstrations and crippling unemployment in the past.
Give Greece more time, says French PM
Greeks take stand against austerity
Greece's disappearing middle class
Greek minister sees 'great sacrifices'
The Greek government is seeking new ways to implement budget cuts of 11.5 billion euros ($14.49 billion) to ensure the country receives another international bailout installment in October.
More than 25,000 people had gathered for peaceful protests in Athens by early afternoon, said Greek police spokesman Panagiotis Papapetropoulos.
But as large numbers began to assemble in Athens and other cities Wednesday, Constantine Michalos, president of the Athens Chamber of Commerce, said he hoped the strikes would not turn violent.
The strike is organized by the two biggest unions in the country and many are tired of years of government-imposed, belt-tightening measures that have not worked, according to Michalos.
"The Greek people have taken up tremendous sacrifices in this time period and it just has not delivered the desired results," Michalos said. "Where we need to concentrate today is not on further austerity measures, because there has been extreme sacrifices made Greek people in the last three years, what we need to is advance growth and stimulate the economy.

Obama on world stage: More hope than change?

Editor's note: David Rothkopf is CEO and editor-at-large of the FP Group, publishers of Foreign Policy Magazine and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
(CNN) -- A couple weeks after attending his first United Nations General Assembly meeting as president, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What a difference three years makes.
Back in his first months in office, simply being Barack Obama was enough to bring cheering crowds into the street. Whether it was because he was not George Bush or because he was promising to end American policies that were widely despised or whether it was because -- as the first African-American to be elected U.S. president, he embodied an ideal of opportunity for all that was core to this country's appeal -- it hardly mattered. Convene a crowd, and they would find something to like about Barack Obama.
Back then, he seized the moment with great speeches that offered a vision for a new era in American leadership. In Cairo, he spoke of new relations with the Islamic world. In Prague, he spoke of eliminating nuclear weapons. He embraced the G-20 as a mechanism of coordinating the response to the global economic crisis. He didn't bully. He charmed.
Indeed, Obama is probably the first person ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize largely for his charm. Or, alternatively, he may be the first person ever to have won the Nobel Peace Prize for the simple achievement of not having been the guy who had the job before him. (This can be an important achievement. Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Pete Peterson once said one of the secrets to job success is picking the right predecessor.)
Obama to UN: No excuse for attacks
Obama warns Iran at UN
Obama: We cannot ban blasphemy
It was a great start. But the problem with great speeches of the kind Obama delivered then is that they contain promises and if those promises are not kept future speeches not only ring hollow, they are reminders of what has not been fulfilled. As President Obama prepared to deliver his remarks Tuesday to the U.N. General Assembly, the world that had been so supportive had turned less receptive. The echoes of his Cairo speech seemed very faint indeed as neither Obama nor Mohammed Morsy, Egypt's new president, seemed to know how to characterize the U.S. relationship with that country, once an important ally in the region. Further, the hope for a new relationship with Islam seemed deeply damaged in the wake of recent anti-American protests and the killings in Benghazi, Libya.
The Prague speech's promise of a world without nuclear weapons was predicated on the idea that the world's two most important nuclear powers, the United States and Russia, would move to a more constructive relationship. That has not happened. The relationship is deeply strained. And the threat of proliferation of nuclear weapons to Iran was a central subject of the president's remarks today. He said such a threat could not be contained and therefore the United States would not tolerate it arising. But clearly, the question mark associated with past unkept promises hung in the air over that firmly delivered assertion.
Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on the assumption that he would be the president who got the United States out of the wars in the greater Middle East that had cause so much dissent during the Bush presidency. But Obama subsequently chose to increase the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan. He serially violated national borders with special operations missions, drones and cyber-attacks. He changed U.S. doctrine but seemed to continue to embrace a "we'll do what we choose" American exceptionalism. The notion that the Middle East is itself somehow more peaceful today than it was when he received that prize is ludicrous.
The United States has turned away from the G-20 as the primary mechanism of global economic cooperation. Indeed, the president has turned away from the United Nations for campaign purposes, stopping only for a speech and campaign press appearances, not to meet with international leaders.
It would be wrong to suggest that President Obama is solely responsible for these developments. He could no more control the Arab street than he could the behind-the-scenes machinations of a tin-pot thug like Vladimir Putin. He has racked up some considerable foreign policy achievements as well. America is out of Iraq. Bin Laden is dead. So too is Ghadafi. The U.S. economy is slowly turning a corner. And the president has been blessed with an adversary in this campaign who responds to every potential crisis for the president with a bigger self-inflicted crisis for his own campaign. Indeed, it sometimes seems that the GOP would be better running with no candidate at all than the one they have got.
Speaking to the United Nations, President Obama tried to evoke the strength and promise of that first year. His language was soaring and his themes were resonant. He evoked the kind of understanding for international perspectives that were signatures of that first year in office. Of the costs to the Middle East of intolerance. Of the strength of American values like free speech and government for, by and of the people. It was apparent once again that this was a compassionate president and a man of good values. But for every strong assertion that echoed through the hall, the echoes of three years of past speeches added a question: Are good values enough? Can this president, any president, any man or woman, deliver the results that would have warranted that premature prize Barack Obama was awarded in 2009?
Was it not so much an award to a man as it was to an idea of the leadership we have ever since needed but have yet to find? Barack Obama right now has his sights clearly set on the challenge of winning the November election. But for him, that is a far smaller hurdle than what awaits if he wins: one last chance to live up to the hope that ushered him into office, one last chance to earn the prize he has already won.

Pakistan beat Bangladesh to reach Super Eight

PALLEKELE: Pakistan defeated Bangladesh by eight wickets in a high-scoring Group D match to qualify for the next stage of Super Eight in the ICC World Twenty20 Cricket 2012 here at the Pallekele International Cricket Stadium on Tuesday.
Chasing a rather difficult target of 176, Pakistan easily completed their second consecutive victory losing just two wickets with eight balls remaining.
Imran Nazir and captain Mohammad Hafeez batted brilliantly to make 124 runs. This was Pakistan’s second opening partnership and the fourth for any wicket in T20 International cricket.
Imran smashed 72 off 36 balls with three sixes and nine fours whereas Hafeez made 45 with six fours.
Nasir Jamshed and Kamran Akmal scored 29 and 22, respectively and both remained not out.
Earlier, allrounder Shakib Al Hasan smashed a 54-ball 84 to steer Bangladesh to 175-6 in the allotted 20 overs after captain Mushfiqur Rahim won the toss and decided to bat first.
This was the 25-year-old left-hander’s second Twenty20 fifty as he added 68 runs for the third wicket with skipper Mushfiqur Rahim (25).
Shakib, whose previous T20 best of 57 came against Ireland at Belfast earlier this year, smashed 11 boundaries and two sixes during his 54-ball knock, improving Nazimuddin's previous best of 81, against Pakistan at Nairobi in 2007.
Pakistan were sloppy in the field, with Sohail Tanveer dropping a sitter off Rahim and Shahid Afridi failing to hold on to a sharp chance off Hasan -- both in one Yasir Arafat over.
New Zealand had already qualified for the round of eight from Group D.
Now Pakistan will play their first match in Super Eight against South Africa on September 28. Later they will face India on September 30 and Australia on October 2.

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