Pak cricketers more professional after punishments: Waqar

ST. LUCIA: Coach of Pakistan cricket team Waqar Younis has said that the punishments imposed on Pakistani cricketers in March this year after the disastrous tour of Australia, have made Pakistan cricketers more professional.

Seven Pakistani cricketers were punished by Pakistan Cricket Board over the recommendations of inquiry committee formed to probe the reasons behind the poor performance of Pakistan cricket team in Australia. These players include Mohammad Yousuf and Younus Khan (indefinite ban), Shoaib Malik and Rana Naveed (one year ban and 2 million fine), Kamran Akmal and Shahid Afridi (3 million fine) and Umar Akmal (2 million fine).

It was also learnt that it was the Waqar Younis report which prompted PCB to take action against these players. Waqar Younis was part of Pakistan cricket team’s tour of Australia as a Bowling coach and after the tour; Waqar also appeared before the inquiry committee and submit his recommendations to them. In his meeting with Chairman PCB, Waqar Younis advocated the stern actions against these players.

While talking to the newspaper at St. Lucia, Waqar said “Australia, the boys were a little laidback, not really bothered; they have really started pushing themselves. I wouldn’t say they’re scared but they’ve probably started thinking it’s a professional game and they get paid for it, it’s a country at stake, so I think they’ve started realising that.”

“What we went through in the last three or four weeks, some of the boys are banned, it wasn’t easy to take over this job, it was difficult but I’m managing it OK,” I’ve seen the change from Australia to Pakistan, the boys have really started responding.”, he added.

Waqar also praises Afridi as captain of National team and said “”I think he has probably realised that he wants to do more, and I think he is the best choice as captain, he is an all-rounder and he leads from the front. In the past three years he has been the key for the one-day and Twenty20 side because of his bowling. He is bowling superbly; he is a match-winning bowler. And with his quick 30-odd off 10 balls or whatever, that really puts the game in your favour. Since he has become captain he’s taken the responsibility, he has become more of a leader.”

This column is taken from Sportsencounter.com

Top Indian Maoist leader arrested

KOLKATA, Kurrent News: Indian police have arrested a senior Maoist rebel blamed for an attack on a police camp in the east of the country last month that killed 25 people, officials said Wednesday.

The man, known by the names Deepak and Venkateswar Reddy, is a close associate of the rebels’ top commander Kishenji, West Bengal government official Raj Kanojia told AFP.

A special police team arrested the 45-year-old Reddy late on Tuesday in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal state and one of the many areas across India afflicted by Maoist violence.

“Reddy is a key aide of Maoist leader Kishenji,” Kanojia said, adding that intelligence officials had been shadowing him for several days.

“He is an explosives expert and we think he had a major role in the Silda attack that claimed the lives of 24 policemen and a civilian in a western district of West Bengal,” Kanojia said.

The official was referring to the February 15 attack in restive Midnapore district, in which around 20 rebels attacked a police camp using guns and landmines.

‘Ethiopia aid diverted for rebel arms in 1980s’

LONDON, Kurrent News: Millions of dollars of international aid for victims of the mid-1980s famine in Ethiopia was diverted to rebels to buy weapons in the African country, a BBC investigation reported on Wednesday.Citing former rebels and CIA documents, it said militant leaders posed as merchants in meetings with aid groups who flooded into Ethiopia to help relieve the famine, highlighted by the global Live Aid charity concert in 1985.

“Some funds that insurgent organisations are raising for relief operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes,” said a 1985 CIA assessment cited by the broadcaster.

The BBC quoted a Christian Aid worker, Max Peberdy, as saying he took nearly 500,000 dollars into Ethiopia in 1984 to buy grain from merchants, who he believes were genuine.

“It’s 25 years since this happened, and in the 25 years it’s the first time anybody has claimed such a thing,” he told the broadcaster.

But the merchant he dealt with, Gebremedhin Araya, claims he was in fact a senior member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

Chileans protect, feed themselves

TALCAHUANO(Chile), Kurrent News: One man swings a thick metal chain. Other grips an ax. An older gentleman favors a wooden pole. And a20-year-old spoiling for a fight has prepared a garrote - a menacing wire tied between two handles - to confront any intruders.

These and hundreds of other survivors of Chile’s devastating earthquake have organised neighborhood watch groups, arming themselves and barricading streets to protect their damaged homes from looters. The groups have stepped in as police were overwhelmed by looting and soldiers were slow to restore order after an earthquake and tsunami.

“We take care of ourselves here,’’ said 51-year-old Maria Cortes. She stood watch in Poblacion Libertad – “Freedom Community’’ - a gritty collection of small duplexes along an industrial road in the port town of Talcahuano. About 2,000 people live here around a common area three football fields long.

Most of Talcahuano was destroyed by Saturday’s magnitude-8.8quake and tsunami, which ravaged a 700-kilometer stretch of Chile’s Pacific coast. Downed bridges and damaged or debris-strewn highways made transit difficult if not impossible in many areas. The official death toll reached 799 on Wednesday.

But Poblacion Libertad largely escaped damage. Here, residents talk about the “human earthquake’’ - a growing desperation of people without power, water, cooking gas and food. Many of its residents join the looting, taking food, drinks and anything else they can use from ruined stores - but return home fearful that others will do the same to them.

Others say they’re forced by need to leave their damaged homes for food and water, only to find what little they have left has been stolen.

And so they have organised.

The men got planks of wood from a nearby lumber yard and nailed them to block entryways to the clusters of homes. They erected a barrier along an access road. The crime watch runs 24 hours.

“Each one organizes and protects his own entrance,’’ said Cecilia San Hueza, 28. ``We whistle to advise if there is anythingsuspicious.’’

So far, Poblacion Libertad has had only false alarms. Someone blew a whistle in the middle of the night, prompting hundreds of residents to run into the common. Nearby soldiers enforcing a 6 pm-to-noon curfew fired shots in the air to make everyone go back inside.

Elizabeth Ocampo, a 21-year-old resident of Poblacion Libertad, said firefighters arrived late this week to fight a blaze in the complex because they were busy combating looting and arson elsewhere. Five units burned to the ground.

Throughout the quake zone, survivors live in fear and feed on rumors of roving mobs. Gunfire has punctuated the night in Concepcion, Lota and other towns.

The eruption of banditry shocked the nation and put President Michelle Bachelet on the defensive. Chile’s much-praised urban rescue teams were hampered by slow-to-arrive equipment - and the looting of their local base in Concepcion. Almost everywhere, citizens have banded together to eat, get water and protect damaged or destroyed homes while they wait for the military to restore order and deliver aid.

In Hualpen, a poor community on the outskirts of Concepcion, Sonia Garrido and her neighbours felled trees across a street to protect their neighbourhood.

Volunteer guards sit around bonfires at night. Collectively, neighbours make bread and share it. Some draw brackish, smelly water from a lagoon and grumble about the lack of government aid.

“We’re bad off,’’ said Garrido, 46. “No water, no electricity. They care nothing about us.’’

Garrido’s son armed himself with a garrote and joined a local crime watch whose other members wielded knives and pistols. But it didn’t make Garrido feel much safer. She worries they’ll kill someone.

She also worries that criminals will get in anyway, simply by wearing twisted plastic bags that patrol members use as armbands to identify themselves.

“I’m destroyed,’’ Garrido said. “Last night I heard gunfire all around me. They’re looting things and walking around with rifles doing anything they want. Nowhere is safe.’’

European Union calls for a ‘clear response’

VIENNA, Kurrent News: The United States said on Wednesday there was “no choice” but for “further, deeper sanctions” against Iran over its controversial nuclear drive, as the European Union also called for a “clear response”.

“We hope that Iran will change its current course and seek the path of negotiations,” Washington’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Glyn Davies, told the UN watchdog’s 35-member board of governors.

“Not doing so leaves the international community no choice but to pursue further, deeper sanctions to hold Iran accountable,” Davies said. Earlier, the European Union also called for a “clear response” to Iran, saying it was ready to support a further round of sanctions against the Islamic republic.

“Iran’s persistent failure to meet its international obligations require a clear response, including through appropriate measures,” according to a statement read out by Spain to the closed-door meeting.

“The European Union would support action by the UNSC (UN Security Council) if Iran continues not to cooperate with the international community over its nuclear programme. The European Union stands ready to take the necessary steps to accompany this UNSC process.”

The Iranian nuclear dossier was the main focus of debate on the third day of the board’s traditional spring meeting here, after a toughly worded report by the IAEA’s new chief Yukiya Amano two weeks ago. The United States, in particular, is currently spear-heading a campaign for a further fourth round of UN sanctions against Iran.

President Barack Obama’s administration, which has all but abandoned its initial hope to engage diplomatically with Iran, has already increased pressure on a reluctant China to back fresh action. “While the United States has joined its international partners for more than a year in reaching out to Iran through direct diplomacy, Iran continues to resist all efforts to come to a negotiated settlement or to build any confidence in its intentions,” US ambassador Davies told the IAEA board.

“Iran continues to play a cat-and-mouse game with the IAEA,” Davies said. “Far from having resolved the international community’s long-standing concerns, Iran’s provocative actions in further defiance of its obligations have deepened concerns.”

Spain, speaking on behalf of the 27-nation EU, similarly said the European Union “remains ready to engage with Iran in order to reach a negotiated solution to the issue, should Iran take concrete decisions toward that end.” But it was ready to support further sanctions, if necessary.

Western nations fear Iran is covertly developing a nuclear weapon, but Tehran insists the programme is exclusively peaceful.

Spain said Iran’s announcement that it had begun enriching uranium to higher levels, ostensibly to fuel a research reactor that makes radioisotopes for medical purposes, “raise further concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions.”

Enriched uranium can be used to make reactor fuel, but can also be used for the fissile core of a nuclear weapon. And given the fact that Iran does not appear to have the necessary technology and cannot produce the fuel needed for the research reactor, “it follows that the reasons given for these enrichment activities are questionable,” the EU said.

US ambassador Davies criticised Iran for not signing up to an IAEA-brokered deal that would have seen Russia and France produce the necessary fuel for the reactor out of Iran’s own stockpile of low-enriched uranium.

“We see Iran’s unwilligness to accept the IAEA’s proposal as representing not only a lost opportunity for mutual confidence-building and progress towards a diplomatic solution, but also a missed opportunity for Iran to secure the ability to produce medical isotopes as expeditiously as possible,” Davies said.

Norway asks Iranian diplomat to leave

OSLO, Kurrent News: Norway has asked an Iranian diplomat to leave the country, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday, adding that the move came after Tehran last week requested the departure of a Norwegian diplomat.

“The foreign ministry has ... requested that an Iranian diplomat leave Norway,” it said in a statement without identifying the person in question.

Tehran had summoned the Norwegian ambassador in Iran on February 24, the ministry said, to protest the Scandinavian country’s decision to grant Iran’s former consul general in Oslo political asylum.

Mohammed Raza Heydari was granted asylum in Norway last month after he quit his job to protest the Iranian government’s violent repression of opposition demonstrators.

“In the same meeting, Iranian authorities asked that a Norwegian diplomat leave Iran. This was justified by the decision to grant Heydari asylum in Norway,” it said.

In early January, the diplomat announced he had resigned from his position after Tehran’s crackdown on opposition demonstrators on December 27 left at least eight people dead and hundreds of others either injured or imprisoned.

Heydari lost his diplomatic passport when he quit and said he was seeking political asylum in order to obtain documents that would allow him to travel freely.

“Norway reacts strongly to the fact that Iranian authorities have asked a Norwegian diplomat to leave Tehran due to an asylum case in Norway.

Desperate search for hundreds missing in Uganda mudslide

BUDUDA (Uganda), Kurrent News: Rescuers clawed through mud in driving rain on Wednesday in a desperate bid to find survivors from a huge landslide feared to have killed hundreds in villages in eastern Uganda. At least 80 bodies have already been found on the slopes of Mount Elgon and at least 300 people are missing in the villages.

More torrential rain fell as rescuers dug through the mud with spades and simple tools as mechanical diggers could not get up the slopes. Army helicopters flew up medical supplies to treat the injured.

Regional army spokesman Captain Henry Obbo said the steep terrain was making recovery efforts difficult.

“We are having trouble because of the very big rubble. The terrain is really so, so unfriendly,” he told AFP.” It is the local people and us (the army). We are trying all that we can.”

After days of heavy rain, the mudslide engulfed the villages near the Uganda-Kenya border late Monday. Olyamboka Sam was praying when the disaster struck.

“I was in the church when I saw the landslide coming carrying stones and trees. Everyone was running from the church,” said Sam, who was being treated for a fractured arm at a hospital in Bududa, the nearest town.

The 24-year-old man told how he saw two women, two children and a man carried away to their deaths.