A Pakistani daily on Friday lauded the government for refusing to give in to US pressure and going ahead with the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline. It hoped that breaking the logjam with India will be the “icing on the development cake”.
A Pakistani court has sentenced a man to 14 years in prison for attacking his wife and two other women with acid.
An anti-terrorism court in Lahore yesterday convicted Irfan Younas for the attack on his wife Rehmana Liaqat, a nurse at Mayo Hospital.
Two other nurses were injured when they tried to stop Younas during the attack in August last year.
Liaqat told the judge that her husband entered the hospital’s emergency ward and began quarrelling with her for not responding to his phone calls.
Twelve people were killed and 20 injured in a massive explosion in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakthunkwa province, a media report said.
The huge blast took place in Pat Bazaar of Hangu, reported Geo News.
Police said the explosion occurred near a mosque in Pat Bazaar when people were coming out of the mosque after Friday prayers.
IANS
Sri Lanka continued its assault on civil society and failed to take meaningful steps towards accountability for war crimes during the armed conflict that ended in 2009, Human Rights Watch has said.
In its 665-page World Report 2013, Human Rights Watch said there was no fundamental progress on key human rights issues in Sri Lanka over the past year.
Broad detention powers remained in place under various laws and regulations, leaving several thousand people detained without charge, it said.
A Tibetan monk has been given a suspended death sentence and his nephew 10 years in jail for inciting eight people to self-immolate.
According to China’s Xinhua news agency, Lorang Konchok, 40, and Lorang Tsering, 31, were found guilty of “intentional homicide” by the court in Sichuan province, Xinhua news agency said.
Loran Konchok was based at Kirti monastery in Aba prefecture, an area in Sichuan province that has been a focal point for self-immolations.
The United States has ruled out the possibility of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad having any role in the future of the Arab country, asserting that he has no other option but to go.
“Syria’s future will not and cannot include Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian people have decided that,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters.
“His hands are drenched in blood, the blood of his own people… Assad has to go,” Carney said.
The US on Friday said that the world pressure on Iran would continue as long as Tehran refuses to live up to its international obligations on its controversial nuclear programme, warning that the window for diplomacy remains open, but not indefinitely.
“We judge Iran not by its words but by its actions. And they are consistently in violation of their United Nations obligations, their international obligations. And because of that, they are enduring the most intense sanctions regime in history,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.
Senior US intelligence officials have confirmed that al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa is aspiring to strike more US and other western targets in Mali.
The officials said that terrorists could strike ‘hardened’ targets such as diplomatic and military facilities, as well as ‘soft’ targets, such as American citizens working in North Africa.
The warning comes after the deadly terrorist strike on an Algeria gas plant in which dozens of hostages, including three Americans, were killed, Fox News reports.
The Turkish gunman who shot Pope John Paul II in his new autobiography has claimed that Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had personally told him to kill the pope.
In ‘They Promised Me Paradise’, which was released in Italy on Thursday, Mehmet Ali Agca wrote that he was trained in Iran by Khomeini’s forces after escaping from a Turkish prison.
He added that the Iranian leader himself told him to kill John Paul in the name of God, Fox News reports.
Agca shot and wounded John Paul on May 13, 1981, in St Peter’s Square.
A top American Tibetan leader has said that while people in China are enjoying comparatively more freedom, Tibet is increasingly being turned into one big prison and Tibetans are being treated as second grade citizens.
Bhuchung K Tsering, vice president, Special Programs of International Campaign for Tibet, asked Beijing to listen to the views of the people of Tibet at the earliest or else it could be too late for them.
UN Human Rights investigators have called on Israel to halt settlement expansion and withdraw all half a million Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank, saying that its practices could be subject to prosecution as possible war crimes.
A three-member UN panel said private companies should stop working in the settlements if their work adversely affected the human rights of Palestinians, and urged member states to ensure companies respected human rights, reports the Daily Times.
An explosion at the office headquarters of Mexico’s state-owned oil company has killed 25 people and injured 101 as it heavily damaged three floors of a building, sending hundreds into the streets and a large plume of smoke over Mexico City’s skyline.
A 35-year-old man has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a Delhi court for strangulating to death a person here in 2011.
The court sentenced Rudal, a resident of Chhapra in Bihar, relying on the statements of prosecution witnesses who had seen the convict with victim Madan Ram before he was found murdered in his house on May 23, 2011.
Moscow police have detained four suspects for cheating hundreds of elderly customers of a total of 50 million rubles (over $1.6 million) by selling them dietary supplements under the guise of costly pharmaceuticals.
At least 2,000 people fell victim to the alleged scam by the suspects from Russia and Ukraine, police said.
The suspected con artists – who were charged with fraud – placed advertisements in local media for a non-existent medical centre, police said.
The ruse attracted mostly senior citizens.
Former Noida SP Mahesh Kumar Mishra told the special CBI court, hearing the double murder case of teenage girl Aarushi and domestic aide Hemraj, that he found the behaviour of Rajesh and Nupur Talwar “suspicious” when he reached their residence on the day of the crime.
Mishra, who appeared before the Special CBI Judge S Lal yesterday, said, “When I reached the Talwars’ residence on May 16, 2008, I found their behaviour suspicious.”
Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde was apprised of the “highhanded” behavior of the police in arresting and dragging former minister Dr P. Shankar Rao om Thursday in Hyderabad.
Congress MP G. Vivek said he had provided all the details to the Union Home Minister regarding the humiliation meted out to Congress MLA Shankar Rao by the police. He charged that Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy was the main architect in the police drama enacted in Hyderabad. The Union Home Minister was also urged to institute a high-level inquiry into the incident, he added.
The PCC chief Botcha Satyanarayana has announced expulsion of nine party MLAs supporting YSR Congress chief Y S Jaganmohan Reddy for their anti-party activities.
Speaking to the media here on Friday, Botcha said the party would not bother about leaders, who sold themselves to others for money. He said his party was not like the TDP, which he said, talks differently every day about its leaders. He said the party expelled these nine MLAs as they were aligning with Y S Jaganmohan Reddy. He said Speaker Nadendla Manohar would look into the need for disqualifying them.
The Bharatiya Janata Party activists on Friday held demonstrations, rallies and burnt effigies of Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde all over Telangana districts in protest against “deceiving” the people of Telangana. It may be mentioned here that Sushil Kumar Shinde had assured after the all-party meet that a decision on formation of separate Telangana will be announced within a month.
The Congress High Command will soon convene a meeting with the Chief Minister, APCC president and senior party leaders to take a final decision on the Telangana issue.
Various dalit organizations protested against the way in which former minister Dr P Shankar Rao was whisked away from his residence by police.
Dalit organizations tried to storm Secretariat in protests against the manhandling of the senior Congress leader.
Members of the dalit groups were taken into custody.
Dr Shankar Rao was accused in a land scam case and police took him for questioning to Neredmet police station, where he fell ill. He was later shifted to a government hospital from where he was shifted to a corporate hospital.
Lauding India’s “Look East” policy, outgoing US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that America supports New Delhi’s move to weave it into the fabric of Asia Pacific region.
“We’ve encouraged India’s ‘Look East’ policy as a way to weave another big democracy into the fabric of the Asia- Pacific,” Clinton said yesterday in her last foreign policy speech as the Secretary of State at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a Washington-based think-tank.
India’s human rights situation took serious turns for the worse with respect to civil society protections and sexual violence against women, Human Rights Watch said on Friday.
In its 665-page World Report 2013, it also found fault with India’s failure to hold public officials accountable for abuses.
India did make progress in some areas, including new legislation to protect children from sexual abuse and stronger support for international resolutions to protect human rights in other countries, it said.
Tension along the Line of Control (LoC) had reduced but India could not relax its vigil until it was convinced that Pakistan’s promises were “actually translated into action”, Defence Minister AK Antony said on Friday.
Following the series of talks at the level of the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMO), tension along the LoC, which divides Jammu and Kashmir between India and Pakistan, was much reduced, Antony said.
President Pranab Mukherjee today said food deprivation should not be allowed to continue in India and was hopeful of early passage of the proposed Food Bill.
Mukherjee expressed concern over declining growth in the farm sector but felt confident that agriculture will soon return to higher growth path.
He also emphasised on doubling food production to meet rising demand and called for ushering of second Green Revolution, which should be more widespread.
Dense fog and dip in temperature on Friday disrupted the normal life, affecting air, rail and road traffic today morning.
The maximum and minimum temperature were recorded 21.9 degree celsius and 7.8 degree celsius.
Operations of more than 50 flights were affected at the Indira Gandhi International Airport due to low visibility.
Due to the poor visibility flight operations were delayed for hours. On the other hand, several Delhi-bound trains are also reported to be running late due to which passengers have to suffer a lot.