LOS ANGELES - Pop giant Michael Jackson is dead, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday, citing city and law enforcement sources.
'Pop star Michael Jackson was pronounced dead by doctors this afternoon after arriving at a hospital in a deep coma, city and law enforcement sources told The Times,' the newspaper reported on its website. -- REUTERS

Pakistan: King of the world

Pakistan enjoy a fairytale Lord's victory

Pakistan erupts in celebration after Twenty20 triumph

Pakistan yesterday won the World Twenty20, proving that pure love for cricket and outstanding natural talent is enough to make them kings of the world.
Beating Sri Lanka by eight wickets allowed the horrors of a terror attack four months ago to be put to one side with cricket taking centre stage and Pakistan at the heart of it.

This brilliant, magical and mercurial nation of cricketers has had more heartache and heartbreak to deal with than most, but with the sun streaming over Lord's this was their tonic.
On the field they lost the last Twenty20 World Cup Final and off it they dedicated this win to the memory of their late coach and former England cricketer Bob Woolmer who died suddenly during the last 50-over World Cup in 2007.

They did it in 1992 in the 50-over World Cup and now 17 years later Pakistan used every inch of their talent and ability to turn themselves from pretournament no-hopers to champions in the blink of an eye.

Khan now hopes that this win will bring cricket back to Pakistan which has not hosted any international matches since the terror attacks and has been stripped of hosting any games during the 2011 World Cup.

Pakistan erupted in celebration last night as Younis Khan and his men won the Twenty20 World Cup defeating Sri Lanka by eight wickets at Lords, London. The city of Karachi reverberated with fireworks as people thronged onto the streets to celebrate the national team's victory in the Twenty20 World Cup, a rare moment of joy for Pakistani citizens amid continuous blood bath.
Heavy fireworks went off as soon as the last run was scored with people chanting 'Pakistan Zindabad' and 'Pakistan cricket team zindabad' as the national team won its first World title after 1992. It is a historic moment for all of us. Younis and his boys could not have given the Pakistani people a more appropriate gift at this time. Cellular companies said their SMS and call services had been flooded after the final with people exchanging congratulatory calls and text messages. and lines got choked but we expecting this.

Pakistan emerge from Lahore horror

Sri Lanka and Pakistan have emerged triumphant from the horror of Lahore last March when gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan team bus to stake a place in Sunday's Twenty20 World Cup final at Lord's (1400GMT).

Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara, one of six players wounded in the attack, told reporters on Friday after his team's semi-final win over West Indies the assault had reminded his team of their own mortality.

Pakistan, desperately short of practice, were outplayed by England in their opening match but rallied remarkably to thrash New Zealand and then upset a confident, well-drilled South African team in Thursday's semi-final.

Both sides have exhibited the imagination and technical expertise which have made the tournament so memorable with the latest form of the game evolving and changing daily before noisy sell-out crowds at Lord's, the Oval and Trent Bridge.

Pakistan pace bowler Umar Gul destroyed New Zealand with the first five-wicket haul in Twenty20 cricket, reverse-swinging the ball wickedly in the second half of the innings.

Pakistan then beat South Africa in the semi-finals through a devastating all-round performance from Shahid Afridi, who returned to his dynamic best with the bat before showing again just how potent his quick leg-spin can be.

"Afridi is a guy who can take the game away from you in a few overs," said Sangakkara. "But we can't really get caught up in just one player."

Afridi guides Pakistan to Twenty20 final

Pakistan's run to the final of the Twenty20 World Cup has helped lift the mood in the country following months of suicide bombings, militant attacks and economic hardships.

A fine all-round performance from Shahid Afridi has steered Pakistan into Sunday's World Twenty20 final, after they beat tournament favorites South Africa by seven runs at Trent Bridge, Nottingham on Thursday.

Pakistan captain Younus Khan won the toss and elected to bat and it was Afridi who gave their innings real impetus with a 32-ball half-century containing eight boundaries. South Africa eventually finished their innings on 142 for five to continue their miserable recent record of failing to deliver at the crucial stages in major tournaments. It is the fourth time they have gone out at the semifinal stage of a major competition.

Pakistan will now play the winners of the second semifinal between Sri Lanka and West Indies in Sunday's final at Lord's and will be looking to go one better than in 2007 when they lost the final to neighbors and rivals India in South Africa.

World hunger reaches the 1 billion people mark

One in six people in the world — or more than 1 billion — is now hungry, a historic high due largely to the global economic crisis and stubbornly high food prices, a U.N. agency said Friday.
Compared with last year, there are 100 million more people who are hungry, meaning they receive fewer than 1,800 calories a day, the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report.

The global economic crisis has compounded the problem for people dealing with pay cuts or job losses. Individual countries have also some lost flexibility in handling price fluctuations, as the crisis has made tools such as currency devaluation less effective.

Asia and the Pacific, the world's most populous region, has the largest number of hungry people at 642 million.
Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest hunger rate, with 265 million undernourished representing 32 percent of the region's population.
In the developed world, undernourishment is a growing concern, with 15 million now hungry, the report said.

Pakistan Snubs India
Zardari forgets NAM after Singh slap

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has opted out of the NAM summit in Egypt in an apparent bid to avoid meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who had delivered him a tough message on cross-border terrorism in Russia this week.Instead of Mr Zardari, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani will now attend the NAM summit.

This latest development, which could be translated as a snub to India, comes after Prime Mr Singh met Mr Zardari on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Russia this week and delivered a tough message on terror in full media glare.

Mr Singh had told Mr Zardari that his mandate was to deliver the message that Pakistan should not allow its soil to be used for terrorism against India. This statement was made in the full glare of the media much to the embarrassment of Mr Zardari.

Nevertheless, both India and Pakistan after the meeting had announced that the two leaders would have a repeat meeting on the sidelines of the NAM summit in Egypt.

But Mr Singh’s blunt message was clearly not well received in Pakistan. In an indication of the domestic pressure at play, members of the Pakistani Senate had said that Islamabad should react strongly to Mr Singh’s statement to Mr Zardari before the media. The Senate was also planning to move a resolution on the matter.

Karachi City ‘off lights’



The entire city plunged into darkness on Wednesday yesterday evening as the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) underwent an acute shortfall of around 750 megawatts, reportedly due to the tripping of the National Transmission Line at Jamshoro. KESC Public Relations Director Sadiq Jaffery blamed WAPDA for the breakdown, saying ‘the tripping occurred as heavy transmission lines fell due to gusty winds. KESC has so far restored up to 30 percent of the system. The remaining will be [restored] by midnight,’ Jaffery added. The fact is that power had not been restored to Karachi till the filing of this report at 11 AM Thursday.

Coke Studio an innovation to Pakistani music

A very innovative project by Coca cola, finally they did something better then there brrrRR commercial which is quite annoying. Any how apart from critics while browsing the tv i stumbled upon an episode of coke studio featuring ‘Ali Azmat’ and ‘Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’ singing Balaman [download here] a semi classical song mixed with the modern feel with guitars and immediately fell in love with the song. I am not a big fan of classical music but i guess with age this taste develops which is bad as it seems and feels like growing old which is one thing we really want to avoid.

Being into web i searched on the coke studio and for a moment was impressed with the website they had build although they used wordpress for there core system but no doubt a very nice job done and some body did work on details for it.
Thanks to them all of us who missed the performance on tv can download the songs in mp3, and can even watch the videos on YouTube. There are four episodes expected from them and first one has been released on there website from where you can download the songs or view the videos check them out

As New Delhi grapples, once again, with the question on when and whether to talk to Islamabad, here are four lessons that stand out from the recent history of Indo-Pak diplomacy.

The first lesson is that the Prime Minister of India must rely on his own instinct rather than the assessments of either the bureaucracy or his Cabinet colleagues. To generate progress with Pakistan, the PM must be prepared to defy the conventional wisdom within his own government.

The second lesson is that the formal mechanism for engaging Pakistan may be necessary but not sufficient to move forward. The so-called composite dialogue between India and Pakistan has produced many useful outcomes in the last few years, but has been difficult to sustain. It has been accident prone and an easy target for the opponents of the peace process in both countries. Every time there is a major terrorist attack on India, it has somehow become New Delhi’s political burden to decide whether to continue the dialogue or not. The only way out is to reduce the salience of the official negotiations.

The third lesson is that India can’t talk Pakistan out of supporting anti-India terrorist organisations. The composite dialogue for example was premised on a simple bargain. Pakistan would create a violence free atmosphere and India would negotiate purposefully on Kashmir. This bargain held for a couple of years during 2005-07, but has collapsed since.

The fourth lesson is to stop treating Pakistan as a coherent whole. The many institutions and political formations across the border have different views on the peace process with India.

Instead of being perpetually torn by the question whether we should engage Islamabad or not, India must maintain open contact with all the potential partners across Pakistan.

Partition happened so long ago. It was a result of distrust between the majority communities in these regions. Divide and conquer has often led to unfortunate consequences. The British perhaps sowed the seeds of distrust to maintain control on the colony. If we can somehow compute the cost both nations have suffered on account of the conflicts it would perhaps be many folds higher than cost of useful land in Kashmir and substantially improved the GDP of this region.

The top American diplomat for Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, said Friday that he would reinvigorate efforts to trace the sources of financing for the Taliban insurgency, with special scrutiny of private donations. Mr. Holbrooke said that private donors, including some from Persian Gulf countries, were increasingly believed to be a far more important source of money for the Taliban than even the opium trade, which the United Nations estimates to be about $300 million a year.

In the past there was a kind of a feeling that the money all came from drugs in Afghanistan.That is simply not true.

American intelligence officials have expressed concerns about financing for terrorism from gulf countries in the past, but Mr. Holbrooke’s remarks indicate that the United States may now seek to put more pressure on the countries to stanch the flow of money .

Pakistan: Obama ’seems to know more about Islam than our own leaders’

President Obama’s speech was broadcast live on Pakistan’s plethora of private TV channels (there are dozens) and dissected by analysts throughout the night. The morning’s newspapers, both Urdu and English, carried previews as their lead stories.

The TV speech attracted a mostly educated, middle- to upper-class audience, and it wasn’t exactly the show-stopper in the tea shops and bazaars that it might have been had he been speaking from Pakistan, but the US president’s words were widely followed nonetheless.

Pundits and politicians alike welcomed Obama’s quotations from the Koran, references to Islamic history, and the conciliatory tone. Though Obama made a few direct references to Pakistan, much of the talk focused on Obama’s declaration of an “unbreakable” bond with Israel.

One taxi driver was particularly impressed when Obama quoted the Koran on how killing one person is equivalent to killing humanity. “He seems to know more about Islam than our own leaders,” said Imtiaz.

Muslims credit Obama for new tone
Obama invokes Quran in key points of Cairo speech


U.S. President Barack Obama won praise from many Muslim leaders Thursday for a speech crafted to repair America's tainted image in the Islamic world, but more skeptical reactions showed he still has a mountain to climb.

His call for a "new beginning" with the Muslim world based on mutual interest and respect struck a chord with many who heard the speech the U.S. leader delivered at Cairo University.
But some said they had heard nothing new regarding specific policies, especially on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that symbolizes injustice for many Muslims around the world.

"America for the first time is adopting a very wise strategy in acknowledging the other and that was clear in every word chosen by President Obama," said Randa Achmawi, diplomatic editor for Egypt's Al-Ahram Hebdo.

Obama Seeks Common Ground, 'New Beginning' Between West and Muslim World

Highlighting his own Muslim roots and embracing Islamic culture, President Obama defined himself as the linchpin in a "new beginning" between the West and Islamic world.
The U.S. president delivered a sweeping, hour-long address Thursday in Cairo, aimed at reaching out to the world's 1.5 billion Muslims, an address he promised during the presidential campaign.
Obama's speech cycled through the most contentious of issues between and among Western and Islamic societies -- from Iraq to Afghanistan to democracy and religious freedom.
"I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world -- one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition," Obama said.
The president sought to highlight Muslim contributions to the modern world and stress common ground between his country and Muslim states, drawing heavy focus to his early life in Muslim Indonesia as well as his Muslim family members. He noted that while he is a Christian, his father came from a Kenyan family that "includes generations of Muslims."
Obama quoted the Koran and greeted the Cairo University audience with the Arabic, "assalaamu alaykum." He used his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. The audience applauded thunderously when the president cited lessons from the Koran and at one point someone shouted, "We love you."

Olive Branch to the Muslim World:

Can Obama Improve U.S. Reputation?

Obama prepares to embrace Muslim world

President Obama held talks with Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian President, in Cairo this morning as he prepared to deliver a keenly-awaited speech reaching out to the world's 1.5 billion Muslims.

The US President is due to give a 45 minute address at Cairo's Al-Azhar University at 10.10GMT, in which he will talk candidly about issues that have caused tensions between the United States and the Muslim world.

His audience will be listening carefully as he explains his views on Afghanistan and Iraq to see how far he differs from his predecessor, President Bush, whose policies were deeply unpopular.

‘Jilted lover saved Pakistan's nuke programme from sabotage’

While many people take credit for saving our nuclear programme, no one actually knows how an unsung jilted girl had actually ended up saving Pakistan’s nuclear project out of sheer vengeance.

An “unsung jilted” lover saved Pakistan’s nuclear programme from a major “sabotage” three-decade back after a whirlwind romance with a nuclear scientist who was jailed by Benazir Bhutto and military ruler Pervez Musharraf, a top former ISI official has revealed.

The woman lecturer, who felt betrayed after a romance with a nuclear scientist of the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP), gave the lead to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 1978, which in turn led to the dramatic arrest of 12 Pakistani scientists and engineers, planning to sabotage the country’s nuclear sites, claims Brig (retd) Imtiaz Ahmed, the then head of the spy agency in Sindh. “The expose led to the arrest of Pakistani scientists who were later given death and life imprisonment sentences by the special tribunal set up by the then president General Ziaul Haq,”

The News daily reported on Thursday. “While many people take credit for saving our nuclear programme, no one actually knows how an unsung jilted girl had actually ended up saving Pakistan’s nuclear project out of sheer vengeance,” Ahmed, who broke his silence of over 30 years, was quoted as saying by the Pakistani daily.

Recalling the event, the former ISI officer of ‘Operation Midnight Jackals’ fame, said he had first met the lecturer of a Karachi Memon family while she was undergoing treatment for “secret concealment”, a disease wherein a patient could not be cured unless he or she shared a secret kept with her. Later when the credential of Rafique Munshi, an engineer with KANUPP came under suspicion, Brigadier Ahmed, who served as director-in-charge of Internal Security ISI for many years, again traced the lecturer after he came to know that woman was linked to the scientist. Though the woman felt “cheated” by Munshi she was still dating the nuclear engineer. She led the ISI officer to Munshi’s secret safe and official files related to Pakistan’s nuclear sites along with “piles of dollars”.

'China assisting Pakistan's
plutonium nuke programme'


China is providing assistance to Pakistan in developing its plutonium-based nuclear weapons programme, a Congressional report has told US lawmakers.

Besides the conventional uranium-based nuclear weapons, said Pakistan has also pursued plutonium-based warheads since the 1990s and continues to produce plutonium for weapons, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) said in latest its report on the country's nuclear programme.

"Pakistan has received Chinese assistance for its plutonium programme," said the report by CRS, the research wing of the Congress that regularly prepares reports in issues of interest by the US lawmakers.

The 40-50 megawatt heavy water Khushab plutonium production reactor has been operating since 1998. "It appears that Islamabad is constructing two additional heavy water reactors, which will expand considerably Pakistan's plutonium production capacity, at the same site," the report said. "The continued expansion of the complex and production of weapons materials could indicate plans to increase its nuclear weapons arsenal in the near future," CRS said.

The committee had last week confirmed reports that Pakistan, with about 60 nuclear warheads primarily targeted towards India, was continuing production of fissile material for weapons and adding to its weapons production facilities and delivery vehicles.

Pakistan's
nuke quest
pre-dated
India's 1974 test: US report


Pakistan began its pursuit of nuclear weapons in 1972 soon after the 1971 war with India, a new US Congressional report has said, challenging the conventional (and Pakistani) narrative that India's first nuclear test in 1974 was the trigger for its weapons quest.

In a May 15 report to US lawmakers, the Congressional Research Service says Pakistan's nuclear energy program dates back to the 1950s, "but it was the loss of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in a bloody war with India that probably triggered a political decision in January 1972 (just one month later) to begin a secret nuclear weapons program." Observers point to the peaceful nuclear explosion by India in 1974 as the pivotal moment which gave additional urgency to the program, it adds. Pakistan has long argued, and falsely represented to the international community, that it was forced to take the nuclear weapons path because it was provoked by India's first nuclear test in 1974. While many credulous observers buy into this narrative, other experts point out that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's famous call to nuclear arms in 1972 pre-dated India's test.

One such expert, White House insider Bruce Riedel, who recently co-authored the Obama administration's Af-Pak policy, offered the following sequence in a recent op-ed, broadly concurring with the CRS report: "The origins of the Pakistani nuclear program lie in the deep national humiliation of the 1971 war with India that led to the partition of the country, the independence of Bangladesh and the destruction of the dream of a single Muslim state for all of south Asia's Muslim population. The military dictator at the time, Yahya Khan, presided over the loss of half the nation and the surrender of 90,000 Pakistani soldiers in Dacca. The Pakistani establishment determined it must develop a nuclear weapon to counter India's conventional superiority. "The new prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, convened the country's top 50 scientists secretly in January 1972 and challenged them to build a bomb. He famously said that Pakistanis would sacrifice everything and "eat grass" to get a nuclear deterrent.

The 1974 Indian nuclear explosion only intensified the quest. "Mr. Bhutto received an unsolicited letter from a Pakistani who had studied in Louvain, Belgium, Abdul Qadeer Khan, offering to help by STEALING sensitive centrifuge technology from his new employers at a nuclear facility in the Netherlands. Over the next few years—with the assistance of the Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI)—Mr. Khan would STEAL the key technology to help Pakistan produce fissionable material to make a bomb.

" Both the CRS report and Riedel point to the help China gave Pakistan in its nuclear weapons quest, a subject successive US administrations are leery of broaching for fear of angering Beijing. "Islamabad gained technology from many sources," says the CRS report, adding, "This extensive assistance is reported to have included, among other things, uranium enrichment technology from Europe (stolen by Khan, according to Riedel), blueprints for a small nuclear weapon from China, and missile technology from China." Riedel concurs, writing, "China also helped the nascent Pakistani program overcome technical challenges. According to some accounts by proliferation experts, it allowed Pakistani scientists to participate in Chinese tests to help them learn more about the bomb."