Weekly EHTASABI AMAL Lahore ھفت روذھ احتسابی عمل لاھور

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai says trying to talk peace with insurgents is futile and that neighboring Pakistan – not the Taliban – needs to be the other party in the peace talks. The president's remarks came on a video recording that his office released on Saturday. Karzai has been pushing for years to reconcile with the Taliban. He says that effort is no longer viable since a suicide bomber claiming to be a peace emissary from the Taliban killed former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani at his home on Sept. 20. Rabbani was leading Karzai's effort to broker peace with the Taliban. Karzai says the only way forward is for Afghanistan to negotiate with Pakistan. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – NATO captured a senior leader of the al-Qaida- and Taliban-allied Haqqani network active inside Afghanistan, the alliance said Saturday, describing it as a "signi...

Death sentence for Pakistan governor's killer (AFP) ISLAMABAD — A Pakistani court found a police commando guilty of murder and sentenced him to death for killing a liberal governor who had urged reform of a blasphemy law, a defence lawyer said. Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, one of Punjab governor Salman Taseer's bodyguards, on Saturday was charged with terrorism and murdering the man he was supposed to be protecting on an Islamabad street on January 4 this year. Qadri confessed to killing Taseer, saying he objected to the politician's calls to amend the blasphemy law, which mandates the death penalty for those convicted of defaming the Prophet Mohammed. "The court has awarded my client with death. The court announced the death sentence for him," Shuja-ur-Rehman, one of Qadri's lawyers, told AFP by telephone. Judge Pervez Ali Shah announced the verdict at an anti-terrorism court behind closed doors in the high-security Adiyala prison in Rawalpindi, the lawyer sai...

By Associated Press, Saturday, October 1, 12:11 AM WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is declining to endorse strong criticism of Pakistan leveled by the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while saying Pakistan must do more to deal with insurgents. Obama was asked on a radio show Friday about Adm. Mike Mullen’s claim that the Haqqani network “acts as a veritable arm” of Pakistan’s intelligence agency. The president said Mullen’s statement “expressed frustration” over the insurgent safe havens in Pakistan. But Obama said “the intelligence is not as clear as we might like in terms of what exactly that relationship is.” Obama added that whether Pakistan’s ties with the Haqqani network are active or passive, Pakistan has to deal with it. The administration had already sought to tone down Mullen’s claim. Obama spoke on “The Michael Smerconish Program.”

Islamabad blast injures Pakistan airline passengers: police (AFP) ISLAMABAD — A gas cylinder exploded on the top floor of a Pakistani hotel in Islamabad late Thursday, injuring three women and a child in a city always on guard against feared terror attacks, police said. The blast struck the Citi Hotel in the Blue Area, the Pakistani capital's ordinarily bustling district of shops and restaurants around 11 pm (1800 GMT) at a time when people still linger over dinner in the cool breeze of evening. "It appears to be a gas cylinder blast," city police chief Bani Amin told reporters. "It does not appear to be explosives," he added. He said four passengers whose Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight was delayed and who were staying in the hotel, were injured. "They were staying in a room," Amin added. Another police official said three women and a child were taken to hospital with minor injuries. An AFP correspondent saw shattered windows at the scene...

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s intelligence chief on Thursday denied US accusations that the country supports the Haqqani network, an Afghan militant group blamed for an attack on the American embassy in Kabul. “There are other intelligence networks supporting groups who operate inside Afghanistan. We have never paid a penny or provided even a single bullet to the Haqqani network,” Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha told Reuters after meeting political leaders over heavily strained US-Pakistani ties. Pasha, one of the most powerful men in the South Asian nation, told the all-party gathering that US military action against insurgents in Pakistan would be unacceptable and the army would be capable of responding, local media said. But he later said the reports were “baseless”. Pakistan has long faced US demands to attack militants on its side of the border with Afghanistan, but pressure has grown since the top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, accused Pasha’s Inter-Services Intelligence ...

By Lucas Shaw Thu Sep 29, 2011 2:57pm EDT NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Shazam, a mobile app that helps users identify music, has removed limits on the numbers of songs one can tag in its free version for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Shazam already had removed the limit on Android devices, and on Thursday extended the new strategy to the Apple devotees. Previously, users with the free version could only tag five songs a month. While Shazam began as an app known exclusively for tagging music, it recently expanded its mission to include tagging TV shows and TV ads, and has also added a great deal of new content. When you tag a song, he or she may see merchandise available for that artist or a tour date. If you tag a TV ads, you can go to the website for that product. "Shazam is essentially becoming a media company, a mobile media discovery company," said David Jones, Shazam's EVP of Marketing. "This might seem like a subtle change, but we want people to be free to do al...

ISLAMABAD (AP) – Carrots haven't worked with Pakistan. Neither have sticks. Now the U.S. has enlisted the power of jazz music to improve relations with Pakistanis at a time when the important alliance has hit rock bottom. By B.K.Bangash, AP Members of the New York jazz band, from left, Ari Roland, Zaid Nasser and Chris Byars perform at a concert sponsored by the American embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Tuesday. Enlarge By B.K.Bangash, AP Members of the New York jazz band, from left, Ari Roland, Zaid Nasser and Chris Byars perform at a concert sponsored by the American embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Tuesday. The Ari Roland Jazz Quartet certainly faced a daunting task. The U.S. has spent billions of dollars over the past 10 years to win Pakistan's support in fighting al-Qaida and Taliban militants and turn around rampant anti-American sentiment in the country. Now, Congress is threatening to cut off funding given the lack of results. The performances are part of a recent s...

Computerworld - Google's smartphone payment app, Google Wallet, has brought the ease of paying for goods with the tap of a phone to America. Google has officially launched its Google Wallet application. This first rollout works great, but only if you can receive the over-the-air update of the app to a Nexus S 4G smartphone from Sprint. Then you need to find a store with a MasterCard PayPass payment terminal, which initiates a funds transfer from your credit or debit card when you tap a phone on it. The Nexus S has a built-in near-field communication (NFC) chip and is equipped with special security technology, which makes it capable of safely supporting the short-range radio communications necessary to make in-store payments. In the future, NFC's two-way capability will allow Google and other companies to send coupons and special offers to Google Wallet users. Since Google rolled out the app gradually, I had to wait five days to receive Google Wallet over the air in a 14.3MB...

UNITED NATIONS: United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon formally called on the international community to help Pakistan respond to the humanitarian needs of around six million people in flood-hit areas. “The secretary-general calls for solidarity of the international community in support of disaster management and risk reduction in Pakistan,” his office said in a statement on Thursday. The statement followed Ban’s discussions with Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon on the worsening situation in Sindh and Balochistan, and his consultations with concerned UN officials. In Sindh, the World Food Programme, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs completed the first joint assessment of the affected areas. The rapid assessment was conducted in over 10,600 villages in 17 out of the 22 affected districts a week ago. The findings show that 73% of food crops have been inundated and food losses are est...

MIRPURKHAS: Monsoon floods that sunk Pakistan’s arable belt for a second year running have piled farming losses clocking up to nearly $2 billion on top of a humanitarian catastrophe facing up to eight million people in the south. Crops of grain, cotton, sugarcane, fruit and vegetables have been submerged and experts say the disaster could worsen the country’s already dismal growth and inflation prospects. “It could (also) increase inflation by two to three percent by the end of this calendar year – from 13 to a maximum of 16 percent,” the official said. Exports are likely to be hit as Pakistan struggles to provide enough food to feed its own population in the wake of the floods, said independent economist Rauf Nizamani. “The floods will certainly affect the trade and may cause a loss of at least $3 billion to the Pakistani exchequer,” Nizamani said, leaving export receipts at $25 billion for the fiscal year. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that nearly three q...