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Thursday, April 23, 2009

Afridi sends Australia to defeat

First one-day international, Dubai: Pakistan 171-6 (44.1 overs) bt Australia 168 (38.5 overs) by four wickets Leg-spinner Shahid Afridi took 6-38 as Pakistan beat Australia by four wickets in Dubai to take a 1-0 lead in the five-match one-day series.Australia looked in command as Brad Haddin (40) and Shane Watson (40) dominated the Pakistani attack.But they both fell to Afridi and their side were dismissed for 168 with James Hopes (48no) the other scorer of note.Kamran Akmal (48) and Misbah-ul-Haq (30) then helped the hosts, who reached 171-6, to their comfortable victory.

Team Standings - IPL2009


MPWLRRP
Mumbai210+0.953
Hyderabad220+2.8494
Chennai211+1.832
Delhi110+3.1672
Bangalore211-0.432
Kolkata211-1.5082
Rajasthan201-3.751
Punjab202-1.7790

Today Matches

Deccan Chargers shine at Newlands

Adam Gilchrist rolled back the years with a dominating display with both the bat and glove as he lead the Chargers to a 24 run win over the Royal Challengers.On Wednesday at Newlands, Deccan Chargers skipper Adam Gilchrist became the latest veteran to shine as his 45-ball 71 propelled his team to an imposing 184/6 and a convincing 24-run victory over the Bangalore Royal Challengers.The victory, the second of the competition for Gilchrist's men, pushed the Chargers to the top of the IPL table.Gilchrist, who retired from international cricket 12 months ago, illustrated through a flurry of boundaries last night that he remains the whirlwind force that terrorised opening bowlers the world over for the last decade.

Afghans get first national park

Afghanistan has established its first national park in a spectacular region of deep blue lakes separated by natural dams of travertine, a mineral deposit.Band-e-Amir is visited by thousands of Afghans and pilgrims, though foreign tourism stalled with the increase in violence since 1979.Declaring Band-e-Amir a park should help protect its fragile environment.The new park is near the Bamyan Valley, where 1,500-year-old giant Buddha statues were destroyed by the Taleban.Afghanistan's National Environmental Protection Agency (Nepa) said the creation of the park would help the region attract international tourism and obtain World Heritage Status."The park will draw people from Herat to Kabul to Jalalabad... to be inspired by the great beauty of Afghanistan's first national park, Band-e-Amir, " said Mostapha Zaher, Nepa's director-general.

Military defends conduct during Gaza incursion

The Israeli army says an internal investigation has proved that its forces operated "in accordance with international law" during an assault on the Gaza Strip earlier this year. Several Israeli human rights groups have cast doubt on the findings.The Israeli army on Wednesday defended its conduct during a devastating war against Hamas in Gaza earlier this year, rejecting claims it had violated international law.Five investigations carried out by the military found that the army "operated in accordance with international law," the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said in a statement.The military "maintained a high professional and moral level" while facing an enemy that deliberately fought from within civilian areas, it said."The enemy booby-trapped its houses with explosives, fired from the schools attended by its own children and used its own people as human shields while cynically abusing the IDF legal and ethical commitment to avoid injuring uninvolved civilians."A group of Israeli human rights organisations said that the results of the army's internal investigation were "problematic" and that an independent probe was the only way to investigate the allegations."Data collected by Israeli human rights organisations shows that many civilians were killed in Gaza not due to 'mishaps' but as a direct result of the military’s chosen policy implemented throughout the fighting," the 10 groups said in a statement."The only way to investigate violations of human rights committed in Gaza is by establishing an external, extra-military investigation mechanism."Israel has come under a barrage of criticism in the wake of the 22-day war in Gaza that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, with rights groups and some UN officials saying that the Jewish state could be guilty of war crimes.The UN has set up a commission headed by former international prosecutor Richard Goldstone to probe allegations of crimes during the offensive. Israel has said it would not cooperate with the inquiry.The military statement said that its investigations "revealed a very small number of incidents in which intelligence or operational errors took place during the fighting."Among these was an attack on a residence in the Zeitun neighbourhood in southern Gaza City in which 21 people were killed when forces mistakenly targetted a home rather than a nearby weapon storage facility, deputy chief of staff Major General Dan Harel told reporters."These unfortunate incidents were unavoidable and occur in all combat situations, in particular of the type which Hamas forced on the IDF by choosing to fight from within the civilian population," he said.

Indian Maoists briefly hijack train during national elections

Maoist rebels briefly took hundreds of train passengers hostage in the state of Jharkhand, before releasing them unharmed, police sources say. The hijacking came a day before voting was to begin in the second stage of national elections.A day before the second round of India’s national elections, Maoist rebels briefly hijacked a train with at least 300 people on board and drove it to a remote destination before fleeing into the forest.About 200 rebels boarded a train in the insurgency-hit eastern Indian state of Jharkhand Wednesday morning and forced it to Latehar district before fleeing, local police officials said.The hijacking drama lasted a few hours and no one was injured in the attack. "All the passengers have been released and they are safe," Sarvendu Tathagat, a local government official in Jharkhand, told the AFP. "They (the rebels) left the train and fled into the jungle."Latehar station is about 105 kilometres northwest from Jharkhand state’s capital Ranchi.India's been facing a Maoist insurgency since the late 1960s. The insurrection has been growing in recent years and is active in more than half of the country's 29 states.

Taliban claims victory near Islamabad

Taliban militants who implemented Islamic law in Pakistan's violence-plagued Swat Valley last week have now taken control of a neighboring district.Control of the Buner district brings the Taliban closer to the capital, Islamabad, than they have been since they started their insurgency. Islamabad is 96 kilometers (60 miles) from the district."Our strength is in the hundreds," said Moulana Mohammad Khalil, as heavily armed men openly patrolled the roads in pickup trucks, singing Islamic anthems.The militants had taken control of the area to ensure that Islamic law, or sharia, is properly imposed, Khalil said.The government called the advance into Buner a breach of a recently-signed peace agreement. "Now Taliban are violating the peace agreement, and if they continue the government will take strict action and not allow the Taliban to create a parallel government in that area," said Mian Iftikhar, a spokesman for the regional administration in the North West Frontier Province, where Buner is located.Last week, the Taliban imposed sharia law in Swat Valley as part of a peace deal with the government. Under the Taliban's strict interpretation, the law prevents women from being seen in public without their husbands or fathers.Earlier this month, the militant movement made forays into Buner and clashed with locals before withdrawing.Now the Taliban appear to have returned in force -- a move that indicates the recent government concessions may have emboldened the militants to expand their reach.The Pakistani government appears unable or unwilling to stop the Taliban's steady advance deeper into the territory of this nuclear-armed country.In the days after the government's April 13 decision to implement sharia law in Swat, pro-Taliban clerics have staged rallies in Swat and Islamabad. They have demanded the imposition of Islamic law across Pakistan and beyond.Speaking before an audience of tens of thousands in the Swat Valley town of Mingora on Sunday, cleric Sufi Muhammed declared democracy and Pakistan's judicial system "un-Islamic."A Taliban spokesman in Swat went a step further Tuesday, calling anyone opposed to his strict interpretation of Islam a non-Muslim."Let the judges and the lawyers go to Islamic university," Muslim Khan said. After "they learn Islamic rules, Islamic regulation, they can continue to work."The rise of the Taliban in Swat has alarmed and frightened some members of local civil society there."This is a time bomb for the country," said Aftab Alam, the head of the lawyers' association in Swat district.Meanwhile, in another Taliban-run region called Orakzai, details emerged of militants forcing a small community of Sikhs to pay a jaziya, or "minority tax," of 10.5 million rupees (roughly $130,000) earlier this month.Khan said if his vision of an Islamic society is fulfilled in Pakistan, terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden will be welcome to travel and live openly here. "Sure, he's a Muslim, he can go anywhere," Khan said.Khan added that he would like to see sharia law implemented beyond Pakistan, even in America, a country he knows intimately. For four years, the Taliban spokesman lived in the United States, working as a painter near Boston, Massachusetts.U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Wednesday that Pakistan is in danger of falling into terrorist hands because of failed government policies."I think that we cannot underscore the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan by continuing advances, now within hours of Islamabad, that are being made by a loosely confederated group of terrorists and others who are seeking the overthrow of the Pakistani state, a nuclear armed state," Clinton said in Washington.She added the international community is working closely to combat extremism in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, but Pakistanis themselves need to take responsibility. 

Obama to host Zardari, Karzai in May: US

WASHINGTON US President Barack Obama has invited his counterparts from Pakistan and Afghanistan to the White House early next month to remove misunderstandings between the two neighboring countries, a US official told reporters on Wednesday.The May 6-7 talks will elevate to summit level a trilateral exchange begun by the Obama administration in late February. Presidents Asif Ali Zardari and Hamid Karzai will meet Mr Obama separately before the three sit down together, the official said.The summit, first reported by Dawn on April 14, was initially denied by both the White House and the State Department but on Wednesday a senior US official told reporters that the second round of trilateral talks in Washington had been elevated to the summit level.The Afghan and Pakistani foreign ministers, who led their countries’ delegation in the February meeting, will also attend the summit along with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.President Obama’s special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke will also participate in these talks.US officials said the Obama administration considers cooperation between the two key allies in the fight against extremists crucial to the success of its new strategy for the region.

North and South Korea talks fail

The first official talks between North and South Korean officials have ended without progress.The meeting on Tuesday had been seen as a major step - the first government-to-government dialogue since Lee Myung-bak, the South Korean president took office in February last year.But the talks lasted only 22 minutes and started after a full day of arguing over how they should be conducted.A nine-member South Korean delegation entered the Kaesong Industrial park in the North, but talks floundered after differences between Seoul and Pyongyang over the venue and the format for the meeting.The meeting also comes amid rising tensions over Pyongyang's moves to pull out of six-nation talks aimed at nuclear disarmament,  following a statement issued by the UN Security Council condemning the North's rocket launch in early April.

Hayden: Chain of Interrogations Yielded Bulk of Intelligence Knowledge

Five years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, 60 percent of the knowledge of the U.S. intelligence community about Al Qaeda, its leadership structure and its operations came from enhanced interrogation techniques. Other U.S. officials told on Tuesday that they stand by a May 2005 memo that said that enhanced techniques used in interrogations "have led to specific, actionable intelligence as well as a general increase in the amount of intelligence regarding Al Qaeda and its affiliates."On Tuesday, President Obama's national intelligence director argued in a memo to staff -- and a public statement -- that it's impossible to know whether CIA interrogators would have gleaned the same information using techniques that are not deemed controversial. DNI Dennis Blair added that waterboarding and other approved methods that have now been abandoned damaged the United States' image abroad. "The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security," he said.

South Africans head to the polls

South Africans are voting in general elections which are expected to propel Jacob Zuma, the leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), to the presidency.Opposition parties are hoping to capitalise on voter frustration over corruption and crime, but Zuma has said he will tackle poverty in the country where almost half of the population lives on less than $2 a day.Unemployment, energy, Aids, mining, land laws and immigration are among the other big issues in the election.Polls opened at 7am (05:00GMT) on Wednesday at almost 20,000 voting stations nationwide, and are due to close at 7pm.Kgalema Motlanthe, the South African president, said after voting in Johannesburg on Wednesday: "It was simple and straightforward."I think it's important for all registered voters to cast their vote, because at the end that is going to matter - everyone who participates in this election strengthens our democracy."

Sri Lankans flee 'hellish' war zone

Sri Lankan refugees escaping the last remaining stronghold of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have described the "hellish" conditions they have endured.Talking David Chater at a reception centre in Pulmudai just south of the narrow strip of land held by the LTTE, some refugees said that they had been held on a beach and shot as they tried to flee."A lot of them are in a very distressed state. They are suffering from heat exhaustion, dehydration and all sorts of illnesses," our correspondent said on Wednesday."Diabetics have not had proper treatment for four months. These really are grim conditions.""I've been talking to the Tamils about the conditions they have been in - they described them as 'hellish'."The Sri Lankan military says its so-called hostage-rescue operations are continuing.Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, a Sri Lankan military spokesman, told that the army "rescued" 40,000 civilians from the northern conflict zone on Wednesday alone.