United Nations give warning of second wave of Pakistani flood deaths

Pakistan  The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $459 million in aid for flood-hit Pakistan, warning of a second wave of death among sick, hungry survivors unless help arrived quickly.Roiling floods triggered by unusually heavy monsoon rain have scoured Pakistan’s Indus river basin, killing more than 1,600 people, forcing 2 million from their homes and disrupting the lives of about 14 million people, or 8 percent of the population.President Asif Ali Zardari, whose government has come in for harsh criticism for its perceived sluggish response to the disaster, defended a decision to travel abroad as the floods began, saying he helped focus international attention on the plight of the victims.The floods, the worst in the region in 80 years, have raised fears for the prospects of the nuclear-armed U.S. ally already battling a deadly Islamist militancy.U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday the U.S. military was tripling the number of helicopters in Pakistan to 19 from six and sending in a landing platform to be used off the coast of Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city.

Washington, which had already committed $55 million to Pakistani flood relief efforts, also announced it was contributing a further $16.2 million to the U.N. refugee agency and International Red Cross for emergency assistance to flood victims.Aid agencies have complained of a lackluster donor response to the crisis, while a U.N. spokesman said help was needed soon.”If we do not respond soon enough to the urgent needs of the population, if we do not provide life-saving assistance as soon as is necessary, there may be a second wave of death caused by diseases and food shortages,” said U.N. humanitarian operations the spokesman Maurizio Giuliano.Hundreds of roads and bridges have been destroyed from northern mountains to the plains of the southern province of Sindh, where the waters have not yet crested, meaning the situation could get worse.

Countless villages and farms have been inundated, crops destroyed and livestock lost. In some places, families are huddled on tiny patches of water-logged land with their animals surrounded by an inland sea.On the outskirts of the city of Sukkur, in Sindh, hundreds of people waited for food supplies at a tent camp.”I can’t find my 12-year-old son. I’ve been to my village with soldiers on a boat but there was no sign of him,” said farmer Mohammad Hassan.”I’m so worried. I don’t know what to do. Should I take care of my family here or go and look for my son?” Hassan, a father of 10, told Reuters before rushing into a throng jostling around a truck that arrived with rations of cooked rice.

ECONOMIC DAMAGE

The International Monetary Fund has warned of major economic harm and the Finance Ministry said the country would miss this year’s 4.5 percent gross domestic product growth target, although it was not clear by how much.Pakistani stocks ended 0.17 percent down at 9,875.68 as the economic costs of the disaster rattled investors. the market has lost 5.37 percent since the floods began.The United Nations says the disaster is the biggest the country has faced and it would cost billions of dollars to rehabilitate the victims and rebuild ruined infrastructure.Giuliano said he was optimistic aid would arrive and $150 million had already been pledged. The U.N. World Food Program needs $150 million to feed 6 million people for three months.Zardari defended his decision to travel to France and Britain at the end of last month.

“Some have criticized my decision, saying it represented aloofness, but I felt that I had to choose substance over symbolism,” he said in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal.The British government had pledged $24 million in aid, following his meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron, the Pakistani leader said.

Pakistan’s military, which has ruled the country for more than half of its 63-year history, has taken the lead in relief efforts, reinforcing the faith many Pakistanis have in their armed forces and highlighting the comparative ineffectiveness of civilian governments.Analysts say the armed forces would not try to take power as they have vowed to shun politics and are busy fighting militants.U.S. military helicopters have been airlifting survivors in an effort that may win Washington some supporters in Pakistan, where anti-American sentiment runs high.

“Let’s not talk about politics. We were trapped here and they came to evacuate us,” said Abdul Rehman, 37, rescued by a U.S. helicopter after being stranded with a new-born baby and wife.”They’re doing good. Let’s appreciate them.”The United States needs a stable Pakistan to help it end a nine-year war by the Taliban in Afghanistan.(Reuters)

The U.S. military discovered "the untapped mineral reserves worth U.S. $ 1 billion

The U.S. military discovered “the untapped mineral reserves worth U.S. $ 1 billion” or more than Rp 9 trillion in Afghanistan. This report placed New York Times on the main page edition Monday.These findings, according to Yahoo! News, Tuesday, June 15, 2010, almost like an adventure in the Indiana Jones films: Geologist, Geological Survey geologist Afghan guard who had made the Soviet Union showed reserves of copper, lithium, iron and gold worth billions of dollars.According to the New York Times, this survey was collected in 2007. In 2009, the Pentagon and then learn the “translation of technical data to measure the potential economic value of mineral reserves that.” And was found number of Rp 9 trillion.

And these findings fit with that quoted by the Associated Press last month, Afghan President Hamid Karzai launched the mineral wealth of his country to reach three times that amount, U.S. $ 3 billion.John Cook, a writer for Yahoo!, Questioned why the data was out at the same time. According to him, this is an effort to Karzai to extend the United States intervention in his country.

“It is easier to imagine an end to a democratic and stable Afghanistan when you will get billions of dollars of minerals to be played,” said Cook.Mineral reserves has become the last way to get American aid Afghanistan due before U.S. President George W Bush, said no mining would develop oil in Afghanistan for fear of huge cost. Now the question is, who will benefit from copper and gold mineral reserves of this?

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said that in March next year it will spread-made unmanned aircraft /KhAI-112 aircraft

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, on Saturday (04/24/2010), said that in March next year it will spread-made unmanned aircraft in the country capable of conducting air strikes.”Super-sophisticated unmanned aircraft is made by the Revolutionary Guards and will be operated in the second half of this year,” said the Guard Commander Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, which refers to the end of Iranian year falling on March 20, 2011.

He did not give detailed explanation about the flight was unmanned. Iranian unmanned aircraft technology has raised concerns in the U.S..U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates recently warned they would make it harder for the military presence in Afghanistan.In February, Iran opened two production lines to manufacture the unmanned aircraft.Tehran said the unmanned aircraft will be capable of doing high-precision attack.

earthquake has rattled northern Pakistan and Afghanistan but there are no reports of injuries or damage

ISLAMABAD A moderate earthquake has rattled northern Pakistan and Afghanistan but there are no reports of injuries or damage.Pakistani government meteorologist Qamar Zaman Chaudhry says the quake happened at 4:21 a.m. Pakistan time on Sunday (2321 GMT; 6:21 p.m. EDT on Saturday).It was felt in northern Pakistan and in Kabul, the capital of neighboring Afghanistan.

The U.S. Geological Survey says it was magnitude 5.7, and was centered in the Hindu Kush mountains 110 miles (175 kilometers) northeast of Kabul.Earthquakes often rattle the region. A magnitude 7.6 quake on Oct. 8, 2005, killed about 80,000 people in northwestern Pakistan and Kashmir and left more than 3 million homeless. (AP)

bomb blast at a mosque in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt killed 29 people including some militants

PESHAWAR, Pakistan A bomb blast at a mosque in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt killed 29 people including some militants Thursday, underscoring the relentless security threat here even as Pakistani-U.S. cooperation against extremism appears on the upswing.The attack in Khyber tribal region came as U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke met with Pakistan’s prime minister in Islamabad, the capital. It also followed revelations that Pakistani authorities have been picking up Afghan Taliban leaders on their soil, a longtime U.S. demand.

The explosion tore through a mosque in the Aka Khel area of Khyber, killing at least 29 people and wounding some 50 others, local official Jawed Khan said. Earlier reports had said the blast occurred in the Orakzai area at a cattle market.The two areas border one another, and the market is apparently near the mosque.Officials were still investigating whether the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber or a planted device.No group claimed responsibility, but Khan said the dead included militants from Lashkar-e-Islam, an insurgent group in Khyber that has clashed with another militant outfit known as Ansarul Islam. Both espouse Taliban-style ideologies.Earlier this week, officials confirmed that a joint CIA-Pakistani security operation had captured the No. 2 Afghan Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.On Thursday, an Afghan official told The Associated Press that around the same time — some two weeks ago — two Taliban leaders from northern Afghanistan also were arrested in Pakistan by Pakistani authorities.The U.S. and Pakistan have said very little on the record about the arrests, but they could signal a shift in Pakistani policy. Pakistan has long frustrated the Americans by either denying that the Afghan Taliban use its soil or doing little to root them out.

The arrests could mean that Pakistan has decided to turn on the Afghan Taliban, a group that it helped nurture as a strategic ally against longtime rival India, though some suspect the Pakistanis were forced to act because the U.S. had solid intelligence on Baradar that it could not deny.The arrests came as Western and Afghan troops fight the Taliban for control of Marjah town in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province.Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told Holbrooke that the U.S. should take into account Pakistan’s concerns that the Marjah offensive could lead to Afghan refugees and militants heading to Pakistan’s southwest and northwest, according to Gilani’s office.

The pair also discussed U.S. humanitarian aid efforts, with Gilani pressing for a quicker release of funds. The U.S. has pledged $7.5 billion in aid to Pakistan over the next five years.Talking with reporters in Kabul on Wednesday, Holbrooke said the U.S. was restructuring the way it doles out aid to Pakistan and intends to consult more with the Pakistanis and pursue more visible projects.”It is very, very time consuming work because of the huge, long lead times of contracts, because of the congressional role,” he said.

Pakistani court has ordered the noses and ears of two men cut off

LAHORE, Pakistan  A Pakistani court has ordered the noses and ears of two men cut off after they did the same thing to a young woman whose family spurned one of the men’s marriage proposal, a prosecutor said Tuesday.The anti-terrorism court in the eastern city of Lahore said it was applying Islamic law by ordering the punishment.Lahore prosecutor Chaudhry Ali Ahmed said one of the accused, Sher Mohammad, was a cousin of the 19-year-old woman and wanted to marry her. Her parents refused his proposal.

Sher Mohammad and a friend, Amanat Mohammad, were accused of kidnapping the woman and cutting off her ears and nose in late September in the Raiwind area of Lahore.
The court on Monday also sentenced each man to 50 years in prison and told them to pay fines and compensation to the woman amounting to several thousand dollars, the prosecutor said.

Pakistan’s legal system has Islamic elements that sometimes lead to orders for harsh punishments, but the sentences are often overturned and rarely carried out. Serious crimes are often referred to anti-terrorism courts in Pakistan because they move faster.

Violence against women, especially attacks by spurned lovers, also occurs frequently in this impoverished South Asian nation.The men have seven days to appeal the ruling, Ahmed said.

Five young American Muslims detained over alleged terrorist links in Pakistan,deported

Islamist militant

Five young American Muslims detained over alleged terrorist links in Pakistan are most likely to be deported, a local police chief said Friday.The men have allegedly told investigators they tried to connect with Islamist militant groups in Pakistan and were intending to cross the border into Afghanistan and fight U.S. troops there.

They were reported missing by their families in the Washington D.C. area a week ago after one of them left behind a militaristic farewell video saying Muslims must be defended. Pakistani police detained them this week in the town of Sargodha in eastern Pakistan.

Regional police chief Javed Islam said the men had yet to be charged with any crime.”They are American citizens. I think most probably they would be taken to America, that’s what I feel,” he told The Associated Press.

U.S. officials, including some from the FBI, have visited the men in custody.
The men used the social networking site Facebook and the Internet video site YouTube to try to connect with extremist groups in Pakistan, said S.M. Imran Gardezi, the press minister at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington. When they arrived in Pakistan, they took that effort to the street.

Islamist militant

American Muslims over alleged terrorist links are most likely to be deported

Javed Islam

ISLAMABAD  Pakistani police say five young American Muslims detained over alleged terrorist links are most likely to be deported.
Regional police chief Javed Islam said Friday the men have yet to be charged with any crime.Islam did not say how long officers were expecting to detain the men.

The young men apparently first tried to contact jihadist groups in Pakistan through Facebook and YouTube, then traveled to Pakistan to attempt personal meetings.