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Al-Qaida No. 2 asks Pakistanis to revolt against their govt
This image provided by IntelCenter shows a television frame grab of Qaida’s No. 2 leader in a video posted on websites on Wednesday. — AP/PTI
Pak printers dishing out fake Afghan voter cards
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Special to
The Tribune Sibal wants Chinese as part of CBSE syllabus
US drone strike kills Haqqani’s cousin
Eiffel Tower evacuated after bomb scare
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Al-Qaida No. 2 asks Pakistanis to revolt against their govt
Cairo, September 15 Labelling President Asif Ali Zardari as a “thief too busy with mending his ties with the West”, Zawahiri charged the ruling class in Pakistan as well as the Pakistan army of filling their domestic and foreign bank accounts with dollars and paying scant attention to the people reeling under the floods. “It is a catastrophe that has befallen on Pakistan. Its ruling class and army are filling their bank accounts with dollars and as far as they are concerned: Pakistan and its people can go to hell,” Zawahiri, the deputy of Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, said in a 44-minute video that was released in Arabic, English, Pashto and Urdu languages. “The silence of our people in Pakistan towards these corrupt people is the obvious reason for their failure to get any relief,” said 59-year-old Egyptian-born Zawahiri. Zawahiri, along with his supremo Osama bin Laden, is believed to be holed up in Pakistan’s remote unruly tribal region, close to the border with Afghanistan. In the video titled ‘A Victorious Ummah, A Broken Crusade’, released on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Zawahiri asked Muslims to embrace jihad and to avoid compromising Islamic principles. Zawahiri also slammed pro-Western leaders including Zardari, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei and called them “corrupt”. Dubai: Nine years of fighting jihadists has weakened Western forces, Al-Qaida’s number two said in an audio clip four days after the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a US monitoring group said today. “The forces of jihad... have emerged victorious and the forces of the Crusader invasion have emerged weakened by their wounds and exhausted by the haemorrhage of human and financial losses,” said Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri said in the message released after Saturday’s anniversary of 9/11 that attacks had taken place “even on the Westerners’ own soil.” “Nine years after the beginning of the Crusade against Afghanistan and then Iraq, here is the Crusade reeling after being weakened by the blows of your devoted sons, the mujahedeen,” Zawahiri said, according to IntelCenter.
— Agencies
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Pak printers dishing out fake Afghan voter cards
Peshawar, September 15 The cards, some shown to The Associated Press, add to evidence that fraud could undermine the elections and further destabilise the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai. A fraud-marred presidential election last year threatened the credibility of the Afghan administration at home and with the Western nations waging war on the country’s resurgent Taliban. Regulation of voting has been improved, but an influx of fake cards raises the possibility of a person with multiple voter cards voting many times and could still cause problems in an insecure country where monitoring of polling stations will likely be spotty. Three printers in a dimly lit section of Peshawar’s Storytellers’ Bazaar said Afghan election candidates had travelled to the walled heart of the ancient city about an hour from the border and provided them with samples of Afghan voter registration cards. The printers said they had produced thousands of cards, along with plastic sheaths to laminate them, for roughly 20 rupees (23 cents) apiece. The fakes shown to the AP resembled genuine Afghan cards, but it was not clear if they would withstand close scrutiny. Two of the printers spoke on condition of anonymity because the activity is illegal. Tariq Khan, a 32-year-old printer, told the AP that times were tough for printers in Peshawar, and he had accepted the registration card requests because it was more profitable than ordinary work. “Several candidates from various parts of Afghanistan have purchased these cards,” he said. “Now it is their headache how they use them.” Afghan election officials say they have instituted safeguards that will keep falsified cards from being used. These include marking voters’ fingers with indelible ink, searching voters to make sure they are not carrying multiple cards and checking to make sure they are old enough to vote. — PTI Karzai arrives in Pak Islamabad: Afghan President Hamid Karzai arrived here today on a two-day state visit during which he will discuss with Pakistan’s top leadership a range of issues, including his fresh peace initiative with Taliban. Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said last week that Karzai will discuss his peace plan with Pakistani leaders during the visit. President Karzai was received at the Chaklala Air Base by Minister for Food and Agriculture Nazar Mohammad Gondal. Both countries will explore ways to expand cooperation in different fields, to further strengthen their strategy against terrorism and to enhance cooperation in the political, economic and cultural fields, the Afghan embassy said.
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India may hold key to tiger conservation
* 18 of world’s 42 core tiger sites traced to India * Focus on key sites & forget the rest, say experts Shyam Bhatia in London
India could play a critical role in preventing the extinction of tigers in the times to come. A new report says that India is home to 18 of the world’s 42 core tiger sites, but doubling funding to $82 million a year to protect these sites is vital.
The study published in American journal PLoS Biology adds that tiger populations are so low in countries like Cambodia, China, Vietnam and North Korea that there is little chance of them recovering to sustainable levels. It recommends abandoning the protection of tigers in the wild and using funds for “ruthless priority setting” to focus on the 42 core sites. Outside of India, these sites are in Russia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and
Laos.
The recommendation will be at the heart of the “tiger summit” in St. Petersburg scheduled for November when leaders of 13 countries come together to discuss how best to allocate resources. “It’s forcing hard decisions,” according to Simon Stuart, a co-author of the report. “There’s no way you can protect them across an entire landscape, because the costs are too high.” Wild tiger numbers have fallen from more than 40,000 in the 1950s to 7,000 a decade ago and to less than 3,500 currently. According to the US-based Wildlife Conservation Society, there are more tigers in captivity in Texas than in the Asian wilderness. Stuart and his fellow co-authors believe that well-meant but misguided early efforts by conservationists, which led to resources being spread too thinly, may have contributed to the continuing decline of wild tigers. “Beginning in the early 1970s, conservation initiatives helped establish a large number of tiger reserves, particularly in India, Nepal and, to a lesser extent, in Thailand, Indonesia and Russia,” says the report. “Probably the most successful of these, at least initially, was Project Tiger in India, which was launched in 1972 with the support of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. “With hindsight, it also became clear that protection and management of many reserves remained inadequate (the extirpation of tiger reserves in the Indian tiger reserves of Sariska reported in 2004, and Panna, reported in 2010, is illustrative).” Although loss of habitat and over-hunting has played a role, poaching remains a major factor in the tigers’ decline. Chinese medicine values tiger parts so highly that a dead tiger can fetch thousands of dollars on the black market. Tiger eyes are highly prized as a cure for malaria and epilepsy, the tiger penis is used in a soup for virility and its crushed bones are used to treat ulcers, rheumatism and typhoid.
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Sibal wants Chinese as part of CBSE syllabus
Beijing, September 15 “China is our powerful neighbour and emerging as the biggest consumer of global resources. We cannot wish it away. The best way to introduce China in India is to introduce its language at primary level," Human Resources Minister Kapil Sibal said. The issue figured during his talks with China’s Education Minister Yuan Guiren, who promised to work out modalities to train Indian teachers. “Let us get enough Indians to learn Chinese. Let us have a lot of Chinese trainers in India who will teach the young students in schools. That is how we evoke interest in our kids about China. There is no other way to do it," Sibal told Indian journalists here. Learning it at primary level is better than learning at tertiary level, which is more of acidic interest, he said. “I told Yuan I am willing to introduce Chinese in the CBSE system as a course. I cannot do that unless I have standards and there is a test. That cannot happen unless I collaborate with you,” said Sibal.
— PTI
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US drone strike kills Haqqani’s cousin
Miranshah, September 15 A US drone fired two missiles into a vehicle in Qutabkhel village in North Waziristan tribal district on Tuesday, killing four militants. "Afghan Taliban commander Saifullah travelled to the region from Afghanistan three days ago and was killed in yesterday's US missile strike," a senior security official in the area said. The information was based on intelligence intercepts, the official said. He described Saifullah as the first cousin of Sirajuddin Haqqani, who runs the Haqqani network created by his father, Afghan warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani. The network is based in North Waziristan, a known hub of Taliban and Al-Qaida linked militants just across the border from Afghanistan. The group is blamed for fuelling the nine-year insurgency in Afghanistan; attacking NATO troops and working to destabilise the Western-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Another Pakistani security official confirmed Saifullah's death. A sharp increase in US drone attacks targeting militants in North Waziristan has killed 80 suspected fighters since September 3. — AFP
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Eiffel Tower evacuated after bomb scare
Paris, September 15 Some 2,500 persons were on the tower and on the Champs de Mars, the green area surrounding it, when the alert was given. They were all taken outside a broad security area established by the police. The police said the call was made to the company that manages the Eiffel Tower. It was not immediately known if the bomb scares were related to the French Senate's approval yesterday of a ban on wearing the Islamic all-body veil in all public areas.
— DPA
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Cairo, September 15
