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Shelling, shaky truce challenge UN in Syria
Pak jailbreak: Terrorist had access to cell phone, Facebook
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Islamabad, April 16 Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari today called off his visit to the avalanche site in Siachen sector due to harsh weather even as rescuers backed by Swiss and German teams continued to search for 138 people buried under the snow for over a week. President Zardari had to call off a planned visit to Gyari today due to unsuitable weather conditions, presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said. India warns UK on tough visa norms
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Shelling, shaky truce challenge UN in Syria
Beirut, April 16 Charged with overseeing an end to 13 months of violence, the unarmed multinational squad of six professed their optimism. "We are going to organise ourselves in order to be ready to do our task as soon as possible," the leader of the advance guard, Colonel Ahmed Himmiche of Morocco, told reporters at a Damascus hotel before meeting Syrian officials in the capital. "All peacekeepers are optimistic," he added when asked if he was hopeful an observer mission that will be expanded to 250 could cement a truce marked by persistent, sporadic violence. Activists trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad reported four people killed in the city of Idlib on Monday in a gunbattle between troops and army defectors. They said two were killed in the city of Hama when their car came under fire. The army shelled targets in the battered city of Homs for the third day in a row, despite its promise to U.N. peace envoy Kofi Annan to withdraw from cities and silence heavy weapons. Amateur video posted on the Internet at the weekend showed an army mortar crew encamped in countryside with mortars of various calibers, calmly firing rounds at some unseen target. Security forces in armoured vehicles stormed the village of Khattab in Hama province and carried out raids on Monday, the activist Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, and dozens of people were detained. Activists said the army on Monday once again shelled the Bayada and Khalidiya districts in Homs with heavy mortars. A video posted by them on YouTube showed explosions followed by clouds of smoke and dust. A previous monitoring mission, by the Arab League, which has suspended Syria's membership and called for Assad to step aside, ended in failure in January after a just a month.
— Reuters
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Pak jailbreak: Terrorist had access to cell phone, Facebook
Over 380 other prisoners along with Rashid had escaped from the Central Jail at Bannu in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province yesterday. Security officials have told the media that the Pakistani Taliban carried out the attack primarily to free Rashid, who was sentenced to death by a military court for the attempt on the life of Musharraf in 2003. Rashid had used mobile phones inside death row cells of different jails where he was held after his conviction, the Dawn newspaper quoted its sources as saying today. A former junior technician of the Pakistan Air Force, Rashid also contributed to several social networking sites like Facebook and to blogs from inside prison, the report said. He was in contact with persons outside the prison, including several journalists, through his mobile phone and even sent SMSs to the reporters, the report said. A total of 384 prisoners, including 21 who were on death row, escaped when hundreds of Taliban fighters stormed the jail in Bannu before dawn yesterday. The attackers focused on the barrack where the death row prisoners were being held, officials said. A resident of Chota Lahor area of Swabi district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Rashid is fluent in English, Pashto and Urdu. He joined the PAF in 1997 and was around 24 when he was arrested in early 2004. Interviews of Rashid, conducted when he was in prison, were uploaded on Facebook. In these interviews, he argued against what he described as flaws in the Army Act, Pakistan Air Force Act and Navy Act and urged the Supreme Court to intervene in such cases. He sent several letters to the Supreme Court Chief Justice, requesting him to look into flaws in cases. In one letter to the Chief Justice, Rashid claimed that at the time of the assassination attempt, he was on duty in Quetta and was picked up by intelligence personnel on January 9, 2004. When Rashid was transferred to a civil detention facility, he was initially held in a death row cell at Haripur prison, from where he was shifted to Peshawar jail. In September last year, he was shifted to the jail in Bannu. A reporter who had received messages from Rashid said that in almost all the prisons, Rashid had access to cellular phones. Rashid had to change his number several times as he was deprived of his phone during search operations in the prisons.
— PTI Adnan Rashid, on death row for an attempt to assassinate Pakistan
former President Pervez Musharraf, was in touch with the outside world through a mobile phone, Facebook and blogs
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We rehearsed attack for 2 months: Taliban
Kabul, April 16 Zabihullah Mujahid provided Reuters with a rare insight into how the group plans strategic high-profile attacks designed to deal a psychological blow to US-led NATO forces and their allies in the Afghan security forces. In the latest, a 30-member suicide squad was dispatched to launch simultaneous assaults on Parliament, NATO bases and Western embassies after two months of painstaking discussions on tactics. “Our military experts sketched maps of the targets and also created a mock-up of them where fighters carried out practice before carrying out the large-scale operations in four provinces,” Mujahid said in a phone interview. “The fighters also learned how to enter their targets and hold them.” His account could not be independently verified. Heavy street fighting between militants and security forces in the centre of the Afghan capital ended on Monday after 18 hours of gunfire, rocket attacks and explosions that bore strong similarities with an operation last year. In both assaults, insurgents occupied high-rise construction sites to use as firebases after smuggling weapons into central Kabul past police checkpoints.
— Reuters The Pakistan-based Haqqani network is suspected to have carried out the suicide attacks on Western embassies and Parliament in Kabul, the Afghan Interior Minister has said. Bismillah Mohammadi said that one of the militants arrested during the latest attacks had told the authorities that the Haqqani network was behind the assaults. Karzai blames it on NATO
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai blamed "intelligence failures" for the assault, particularly on the part of the
US-led NATO alliance. "The terrorist infiltration in Kabul and other provinces is an intelligence failure for us and,
especially, the NATO and should be seriously investigated", Karzai said in a statement.
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Smirking Norway killer Breivik pleads not guilty
Oslo, April 16 Anders Behring Breivik, 33, has said he acted in defence of his country by setting off a car bomb that killed eight people at government headquarters in Oslo last July, then killing another 69 people in a shooting spree at a youth summer camp organised by the ruling Labour Party. The trial will turn on whether Breivik is found guilty or insane. While he risks being kept behind bars for the rest of his life, the high school dropout has said being labelled insane would be a "fate worse than death". Listening impassively for hours as prosecutors read out an indictment detailing how he massacred teenagers trapped on a island resort outside Oslo, he only shed tears when the court later showed one of his propaganda videos. Wearing a suit and loosely knotted tie, Breivik entered the Oslo court in handcuffs. He smirked several times as the cuffs were removed, put his right fist on his heart then extended his hand in salute. "I do not recognise the Norwegian courts. You have received your mandate from political parties which support multiculturalism," Breivik told the court after refusing to stand when judges entered.
— Reuters
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Zardari calls off visit to avalanche site
Islamabad, April 16 President Zardari had to call off a planned visit to Gyari today due to unsuitable weather conditions, presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said. The President had wanted to go to the Siachen sector to express solidarity with the troops who were hit by the avalanche. “However, he was advised by the authorities that severe weather conditions in the area were not suitable for travelling,” Babar said. Meanwhile, the Pakistani military said the search operation at Gyari was continuing round the clock “against heavy odds” and amidst “very harsh” weather that was posing serious challenges to men and machines. The search teams had made controlled use of explosives in digging a tunnel through the compacted snow to reach a building where people were trapped by the avalanche.
— PTI
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India warns UK on tough visa norms London, April 16 The issue came up for discussion during meeting of Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma with UK Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Vince Cable and the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. However, Osborne assured Sharma that the British government has decided not to make any change in the 'Intra Company Transfers' for the next two years. The proposal had upset the Indian IT industry and the government as it meant that the professionals on intra company transfers to UK would be treated "prospective immigrants". Sharma said this rule has badly affected the performance of Indian companies operating in the UK. "Sharma also expressed concern that this move may force Indian IT companies to relocate to other European capital," an official statement said. — PTI
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73-yr-old in record Everest attempt 
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Islamabad, April 16
