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40 dead, 100 hurt in Turkey car bombings near Syrian border
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Iran quake kills child
Mubarak’s retrial begins
special to the sunday tribune
New WTC building stands tall
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Islamabad/Karachi, May 11 Thirteen persons were killed and over 40 others injured in three bomb attacks in the southern port city of Karachi. The first blast went off near the election office of Amanullah Mehsud, an Awami National Party candidate contesting polls to the Sindh Assembly. Mehsud escaped unhurt though several ANP workers were among the dead and injured. The second blast went off minutes later near a polling station and an ANP office in the same area as rescue teams were busy rushing the victims of the first attack to hospital. The second blast triggered a stampede at the polling station and disrupted voting. Two persons were killed and several injured when a bus was targeted by the third blast at Qasba Colony in Karachi. Two policemen were killed and four others injured in an explosion at Toorghar in Peshawar. In Peshawar, a bomb attached to a motorcycle went off outside a women's polling station, injuring eight persons. Five persons were wounded when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest after he was intercepted by police outside another polling station in a suburb of Peshawar. Several persons were injured in a blast in Quetta, the capital of the restive southwestern province of Balochistan. No group claimed responsibility for the attacks though the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has repeatedly targeted the ANP and other secular-leaning parties like the Pakistan Peoples Party and Muttahida Qaumi Movement during the campaign period. Several ANP and MQM members, including candidates, were killed in Taliban attacks. Days before the polls, the Taliban threatened it would carry out attacks, including suicide bombings, on election day. The threat heightened concerns about security for the polls, which mark the first democratic transition of power in Pakistan's history. — PTI
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180 m ballot papers weighing 650 tonnes used
Islamabad: A total of 180 million ballot papers weighing 650 tonnes were used for Saturday's General Election in Pakistan. Security personnel transported the ballot papers to the polling booths across the country. Some 50 army helicopters flew for 347 hours to transport the ballot papers. Security cover had been provided to five printing presses where the ballot papers were printed, a military officer said.
— PTI
Lahore: Women were stopped from voting at some of the polling stations in Punjab and the Taliban stronghold in the northwestern tribal district of North Waziristan. "Not a single woman cast her vote in Sahiwal's polling station number 15 where a total of 645 women were registered. It is a tradition of the villagers to bar women from voting, one which was started by tribal elders 35 years ago," the Dawn reported. —
PTI
75,000 security personnel deployed
Islamabad: A staggering 75,000 security personnel, including 5,000 troops for sensitive polling stations in restive areas, were deployed across Pakistan for the landmark elections, threatened by the Taliban. Aerial surveillance was also in place for sensitive polling stations apart from installation of security cameras, a military official said. Armoured Personnel Carriers and Army's sniffer dogs were also made available for security purposes. — PTI |
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40 dead, 100 hurt in Turkey car bombings near Syrian border
Istanbul, May 11 The bombings in the town of Reyhanli, just a few kilometres from the main border crossing into Syria, come amid increasingly bellicose criticism by Ankara of the regime in Damascus. Interior Minister Muammer Guler said the explosions were caused by car bombs that blew up near the town hall and the post office in Reyhanli, according to the Anatolia news agency. Guler told NTV television that the death toll had climbed to 40 and that 100 persons were wounded, updating an earlier toll given by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Twenty-nine survivors were in a serious condition, Guler said. Rescuers were hunting for possible survivors buried underneath the rubble of buildings destroyed by the blasts. Over a dozen ambulances and several air ambulances rushed to the scene to tend to the victims, Turkish NTV television said, adding that the town hall had suffered major damage. A number of cars were also completely wrecked in the attacks whose force caused a power cut in the area around Reyhanli, local media reported. Guler said the regional governor had been sent to Reyhanli "to put the necessary security measures in place" following the attack. The attack sowed panic among residents in Reyhanli, a town of about 60,000 people, leading to tensions between local youths and Syrian refugees living locally and forcing police to fire into the air to disperse the crowd. — AFP
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Tehran, May 11 The US Geological Survey registered the quake at 0738 IST, measured at 85 km southeast of the town of Minab, located in the southern Hormuzgan province and off the Strait of Hormuz. The quake was registered at a depth of 36.44 km, the USGS said. A local emergency official said a two-year-old died of serious injuries. "The child passed away on route to hospital," Mohammad Shekari was quoted by the ISNA news agency. Iran's top quake rescue operations official, Mahmoud Mozafar, said at least 20 persons had been injured. Iran sits astride several major fault lines and is prone to frequent earthquakes, some of which have been devastating. Head of Iran's National Institute for Oceanography Vahid Chegini said today's quake was unlikely to spark a tsunami in the Gulf or the Sea of Oman. "The chances of a tsunami because of today's quake are remote as the quake was inland," Chegini told the Mehr news agency. — AFP
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Cairo, May 11 His two sons, Gamal and Alaa, along with former interior minister Habib El-Adly and six former aides were also in court to face the charges. Mubarak, 85, who was convicted in the case in 2012 was granted a retrial after he filed an appeal citing procedural irregularities in the earlier trial. Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for nearly 30 years, came into the courtroom sitting up on a stretcher dressed in white and wearing sunglasses. The first retrial which was to start in April fell apart after the presiding judge Mustafa Hassan Abdullah referred it to the Cairo Appeal Court, reported Ahram Online. Judge Mahmoud Kamel El-Rashidi will now take over the proceedings. — PTI
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Ambitious London Mayor sees India as bold as Jaguar
Shyam Bhatia in London He came and, like Caesar two centuries before him, Boris Johnson saw and conquered. But, unlike Caesar, who was addressing members of the Roman Senate, the Mayor of London’s audience on Thursday night was made up of accommodating NRIs, local British politicians, academics and top diplomats anxious to hear what Johnson had to say. In fact, there was not an empty seat at the Black Tie affair hosted by the Indian Journalists Association and attended by over 450 guests. It is not just what Johnson says but how he says it and the language he uses that so endears him to Indian audiences. Whether he is capitalising on his claim to be an Indian “gharjamai”, because of his Sikh mother-in-law Dip Singh, widow of former BBC New Delhi correspondent late Sir Charles Wheeler, or whether he refers to the pleasures of cricket on Mumbai’s beaches, he has a sure touch that many other politicians lack. Johnson was in India in November 2012 as the head of a trade delegation, an event that he describes as a “fantastic trip”, not a “jolly, freebie, boondoggle or junket of any description”. “My accommodation in the Taj hotels was so unashamedly over the top that I had an honour guard of six riflemen outside my door,” he told his London audience on Thursday night. “It took me about half-an-hour to turn off all the lights in my residential suite and I couldn’t remember in which one of my bathrooms I had left the toothpaste!” India’s interest in Johnson springs from the conviction that he is more than a mere mayor and that at 49, his political future knows no bounds. If Prime Minister David Cameron’s popularity continues to plunge, Johnson could easily emerge as the next leader of the Conservatives and future Prime Minister. What endears him above all to his supporters within the party and beyond is also his ability to swing the kinds of economic deals that could make a real difference to the UK’s economic future. On Thursday night, he cleverly referred to the economic ties between the UK and India by deliberately drawing attention to the famous Jaguar car that is currently manufactured by Tata. The Jaguar project is in Johnsonian language part of the “economic syncresis” between Britain and India. “What was the first thing I saw in India?” he asked his captivated audience. “What exotic beast? Not a sacred cow, not a snake, not a monkey or an elephant, but a giant black cat, sitting there at the traffic lights, bold as brass. Yes it was a Jaguar, with some sort of starlet and a chauffeur… a historic marque that has now been revitalised by brilliant Indian owners, and yet which is still made in Birmingham. Is it Britain or Indian or Brindian?” Against that backdrop, he added, his trade mission was “able to make progress on deeds that will deliver Indian investments in London - hotels, tech firms, even a university campus - 15 separate deals involving 1,000 jobs”. To build on these partnerships, Johnson concluded, British firms need to be bold in seeking India’s incredible markets “and we need Indian professionals to feel at home in the UK and especially London”. Striking a connection
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New WTC building stands tall
New York, May 11 The building has been built in the northwest corner of the site where the twin towers were destroyed in 9/11 terror attack. The 408-foot (124-metre) spire will serve as a world-class broadcast antenna. An LED-powered light emanating from it will be seen from far away, Xinhua reported. With the addition of the spire, it becomes the tallest building in the Western hemisphere and the third tallest in the world. — IANS |
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Polling in Pakistan's landmark General Election was today marred by a string of bomb blasts in Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar that killed at least 24 persons.
Two explosive-laden cars blew up in a small Turkish town near the border with Syria today, killing at least 40 persons and wounding 100 in one of the deadliest recent attacks.
