Max Havelaar fair trade football
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Migros supermarket chain Friday 5 March starts selling a fair trade football made in Sialkot, in northeastern Pakistan, which has Max Havelaar fair trade certification. The men and women who produce the balls will receive a fair trade premium that gives them better access to healthcare and can be used to help send their children to school, says Migros.
India and Pakistan are holding talks for the first time since the Mumbai attacks in November 2008. India blamed Pakistan for harbouring the terrorists who killed 166 people and it cut diplomatic relations. Expectations for substantive agreements are not high for this week’s talks, but they are widely considered a significant step towards improved relations between the two countries which both have nuclear arms and which are vying for influence in Afghanistan. Disputes over Kashmir remains one of the tough issues and India is wary of the US role in supporting Pakistan.
Links to other sites: Reuters UK, Tehran Times, Times of India, Xinhua
The Taliban in Afghanistan are denying it, but a senior US official says that American military forces captured Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, considered the number two man in the Taliban. US and Pakistani military personnel are reportedly taking turns interrogating him. His arrest, if confirmed, comes at a time when 15,000 Afghan and Nato troops are in heavy battles with the Taliban in an offensive in the country’s south.
Four foreigners are reportedly among seven people killed when a bomb exploded near a school in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, but initial reports are contradictory. The bomb may have hit a convoy, in the Lower Dir district, traveling to the opening of a girls school but other reports say the blast came during the opening ceremony of the school. Two of the dead may have been schoolgirls, but it seems clear that many of the nearly 50 injured were students. The BBC reports that the four Westerners killed were aid workers, citing police, but other sources say there were three Westerners and they may have been US soldiers. The district is a Taliban stronghold.
Newlands, Capetown, South Africa (GenevaLunch) - The English bowlers made a dramatic start to the second day of the third Test against South Africa when the last four South African wickets fell in16 balls. Graham Onions took the most important wicket when he dismissed Jacques Kallis for 108 with his first ball. James Anderson took the next three to end with five for 63. South Africa ended on 291.
The South African bowlers quickly struck back, dismissing Andrew Strauss, Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen in the opening session.
Pakistan ended the second day of the Melbourne Test well on top. After dismissing Australia for 127 they ended on 331 for nine.
Links to other sites: Yahoo cricket, BBC, Times
Durban, South Africa (GenevaLunch) - The England captain showed a previously unseen side to his game when he scored 50 runs in only 49 balls in reply to South Africa’s score of 343 all out in the second test at Durban. The home team made that many largely thanks to the late assault on Graeme Swann’s bowling by Dale Steyn. England ended the second day on 103 for one.
The main interest of the day was focused on the system of referring umpiring decisions to television replay: this led to Mark Boucher being given out lbw to Swann after the umpire’s “not out” was reversed.
Two bombs have killed 49 people, unofficial sources report, with the death toll rising as many of the scores of injured are in critical condition, in Lahore Pakistan. It is unclear if the blasts were two suicide bombs or one, followed by a remote-control device exploding in the heart of Lahore’s commercial centre. One bomb went off in a crowded market, where shops and motorcycles quickly caught fire, and the other near a bank, late Monday 7 December.
Hamid Karzai’s inauguration for a second term as president of Afghanistan has come with unusually high security in the capital Kabul, and renewed pleas to step up the fight against corruption, from former US President Bill Clinton and other world leaders. Regular flights in and out of the city have been cancelled, citizens urged to take a holiday and stay home, and heavier than usual patrols are out on the streets to ward off a possible Taliban attack.
Pakistan attack kills 15
Over the border in Peshawar, Pakistan, a suicide bomber killed 15 people and injured scores at a court building not far from the Pearl Continental Hotel where nine people died in June. Al Jazeera links the latest blast to a new military push: “The military launched its offensive nearly three weeks ago, pitting about 30,000 Pakistani troops against an estimated 10 to 12,000 Taliban fighters in South Waziristan.”
Links to other sites: Aljazeera,
The latest in a string of attacks in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province that have targeted military, police and intelligence services took place early Friday 13 November in Peshawar, where a gunfire was followed by a bomb blast at the Inter-Services Intelligence’s provincial headquarters. Ten people died, at least 60 are wounded and several are believed to be buried under the rubble of the building, according to government officials. In another attack in the province’s Bannu District a suicide bomber drove into a police station and killed six people, injured 23.
India has announced it will withdraw about 15,000 troops from Jammu and Kashmir, in the country’s far north, in a bid to defuse tensions with Pakistan. The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has just concluded a two-day visit to the region, where the Indian army has been battling a separatist insurgency since 1989. Singh told a regional summit in New Delhi Friday 30 October that the countries of the region had “to overcome the burden of history” to achieve peace.
Indian authorities said the region’s security situation had improved to the extent that responsibility could increasingly be left to the police. The Indian army played down the move, saying it had more to do with sending a message to the main separatist group in Jammu and Kashmir, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, than relations with Pakistan. They pointed out that the redeployment was from the Jammu region, rather than the more conflictive Kashmir area.
Pakistan and India have fought three wars over the region since independence and division in 1947. Pakistan has been criticized for keeping most of its army on the border with India, and ignoring the threat posed to Pakistan itself by Taliban insurgents within its own frontiers. India has repeatedly accused Pakistan of arming and training militants to fight in Kashmir. Singh said 29 October that India was not satisfied with the investigation Pakistan had conducted into last November’s deadly attack on Mumbai, India which was launched from Pakistani territory. Daily Times, New York Times, Times of India
A day after a bomb ripped through a crowded popular market in the old town of Peshawar, capital of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, and killed over a hundred people, mainly women and children, rescuers were still pulling bodies from the rubble. Over 200 people were wounded in the attack. It was the worst such attack since 2007, and no one has claimed responsibility for it yet, although the Taliban denies responsibility.
October has been the bloodiest month in Pakistan, with casualties from bombings around the country reaching 300 dead and many more wounded. Most believe the bomb attacks are in retaliation for the Pakistani army’s ongoing incursion into South Waziristan, a stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban. Some commentators believe this latest attack could turn the people against the Taliban. Al-Jazeera, AP, BBC
People of Waziristan leave home again © 2009 Tariq Saeed/IRIN
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Thousands of people displaced by the two-week old conflict in South Waziristan, in Pakistan’s northwest, are arriving in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) districts of Tank and Dera Ismail Khan, sometimes fleeing the fighting by difficult, dangerous and expensive routes.
Their escape from the middle of a war zone, access to and from which is tightly controlled by the Pakistan military, is recounted in an article by Irin News. A local newpaper, Dawn, reports 20 October on a family, 12 of whose members were killed by a bomb while fleeing.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says about 125,000 people have fled since hostilities began, joining the 81,000 who had already left since August. Most find accommodation with friends and family, following Pashtun tribal customs of hospitality. The UN children’s agency, Unicef, says most of the displaced are women and children.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland will lead efforts to backup a major conference that opens 29 November in Colombia, the Cartagena summit on a mine-free world. The conference marks the 10th anniversary of the Ottawa Treaty entering into force and provides the opportunity for its second review conference to assess progress and how well the convention is being respected.
Iran says it accuses the US, Great Britain and Pakistan of involvement in the deadly suicide-bomb attacks in its Sistan-Baluchistan province on Sunday 18 October which killed 42 people, including several senior military commanders of the Revolutionary Guards. Suspicions were aroused because of the detailed intelligence reportedly needed in order to reach their targets. The US and the UK have denied invlovement. Iran has vowed a “crushing” response.
Iran has accused Jundullah, a Sunni radical group, of carrying out the attack, and accuses Pakistan of harbouring the leader of the group. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called his Pakistani counterpart to ask for help in arresting the group’s leaders, who he says are based in Pakistan. The group has carried out attacks in Iran before, and claims to represent the rights of Sunni Muslims in mostly Shiite Iran. BBC, The Times
Pakistani army troops are slowly advancing deeper into South Waziristan, in northwest Pakistan from three directions to fight an estimated 10,000 battle-hardened Pakistani Taliban fighters on their own ground, close to the border with Afghanistan. Official reports say over 60 militants and six soldiers have died since the operation began Saturday 17 October but claims by either side cannot be verified. The Pakistan Taliban militants are backed by up to 1,000 Uzbek fighters loyal to al-Qaeda.
The hostilities have caused almost 24,000 civilians from the area to flee in the past few days, and almost 100,000 since May according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In anticipation, the UNHCR has set up four reception camps for displaced people. By Sunday, over 21,000 people had been registered, according to a UN official. The government has sent almost 29,000 troops supported by helicopter gunships and jet fighters into an area of 6,600 km2, about the combined size of the cantons of Bern and Solothurn.
Pakistan has suffered several bomb attacks around the country in the past week that have left over 170 dead. General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command, which covers Afghanistan, Paksistan and Iraq, is meeting Pakistani generals in Islamabad, Pakistan on Monday 19 October. BBC, Christian Science Monitor, Reuters
An attack described by officers at “extraordinary”, on Pakistan’s military hedquarters in Rawalpindi, has killed six soldiers and four of the gunmen who attacked, but another four attackers are holding 15 hostages, Reuters reports late Saturday. The gunmen appear to be Taliban, and the attack occured just as a major offensive against the Taliban is scheduled to start.
The UN Security Council voted unanimously 8 October to extend for an extra year the legal mandate it gives to Nato to deploy troops that provide assistance to the civilian government in Afghanistan. Nato currently has about 35,000 troops in the country. The US has more than 65,000, and the top US general in Afghanistan, Stanley McCrystal, has asked for 40,000 more US troops “in order to prevail.” The Obama administration is deliberating whether to increase the US presence in Afghanistan or to cut back and try to bring “reconcileable” Taliban forces into the political process, and concentrate military force on Al Qaeda on the border with Pakistan. BBC, CNN, Reuters
Update 13:00 Police in Islamabad believe the suicide bomber who blew up the World Food Program (WFP) office in Islamabad, Pakistan Monday 5 October walked into the building weraing paramilitary clothing, after asking if he could use the toilets. The bomb, which went off in the reception area, killed five WFP staff and has left several others in critical condition in hospital. THE WFP provides food for more than 10 million people in Pakistan, including 2 million who are receiving emergency aid in the Swat Valley, according to a statement from the head of WFP, Josette Sheeran. Security had been tight at the building, with anyone entering screened for weapons and some media are speculating that security guards must have been involved.The WFP reportedly received no advance warning of the attack.
The Taliban Tuesday claimed they were behind the attack.
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, Associated Press, Pakistan Observer, Washington Post
Johannesburg, South Africa (GenevaLunch) – New Zealand beat Pakistan by five wickets in their semi-final to set up a contest with Australia for the ICC champions trophy. Pakistan’s batsmen never really got going and only reached their modest total of 233 for nine, thanks to a half century by Umar Akmal and a late flourish by the tail enders.
South Africa (GenevaLunch) – The English batsmen put on a rare display as they beat South Africa in the ICC Champions Trophy. Andrew Strauss won the toss and decided to bat but lost the opening batsmen quickly. Owais Shah (98) and Paul Collingwood (82) then gradually took control and Eoin Morgan added 67 in just 34 balls. England reached an impressive 323 for 8: the second highest score in the tournament’s history.
Three men have been sentenced to life in prison in Britain for plotting a series of bombing on airliners between the UK and the US or Canada. Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain must serve at least 40, 36 and32 years respectively. The plots were well advanced when police arrested the men in 2006, the judge noted: “Had this conspiracy not been interrupted, a massive loss of life would almost certainly have resulted – and if the detonation was over land, the number of victims would have been even greater still.” He said in his concluding remarks that while the plot was directed from Pakistan the men in Britain where high-level “executives.” BBC, Times, UK and Reuters
India’s consumers have the world’s biggest sweet tooth, and are struggling with rising prices for sugar and a dramatic drop in domestic production. For 60 million Indians, sugary milky tea is the main source of carbohydrates. Poor rains in June in India and excess rains in Brazil contributed to the world sugar shortfall, estimated at nine million tonnes, in 2009. It is the second year running that demand outstrips supply. Domestic production in India dropped 43 percent to 15 million tonnes, reports Bloomberg.
The price of refined, white sugar increased four percent in trading 10 September on speculation that India, Indonesia and Pakistan were to import more sugar. The world price of sugar almost doubled in 2009. BBC, Bloomberg, Economic Times, India
At least 22 people were killed when a suicide bomber walked into a police station at the border in the town of Torkham, at the Khyber pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The bomber, a boy carrying water, entered the check point as the border guards were sitting down to Iftar, the traditional evening breaking of the fast of Ramadan. The Khyber pass is a crucial supply route for the coalition forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and has been the scene of many attacks on convoys. BBC, CNN
Children are slowly returning to school during August in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, scene of fighting in recent months. The CS Monitor in a feature about schools re-opening even though the buildings have often been destroyed, refers to “tenuous signs of a return to normalcy.” The Monitor says 80,000 girls are among the children whose educations were interrupted first by a Taliban ban early in 2009, then by fighting between Taliban and government forces.
US national security advisor Jim Jones said 9 August on ABC television’s “Meet the Press” programme that the US was “90 percent” certain Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistan militant Taliban insurgency, was dead. US and Pakistani officials have publicly said they are sure that Baitullah Mehsud was killed 5 August by a missile strike carried out by a US drone on his father-in-law’s house in the remote region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Initial reports said only that this had killed Baitullah Mehsud’s second wife. Later reports then said that an unidentified man had also been killed, leading to speculation it was Baitullah Mehsud.
Reports surfaced a day later that he was not actually dead. Another Taliban commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, said to be a rival of Baitullah Mehsud, called the BBC to say Baitullah was alive and well. Other reports said that Hakimullah Mehsud had been killed in a shoot-out with another top Taliban commander, Waliur Rehman, in a dispute for the leadership.
Sunday 9 August, Baitullah Mehsud’s top aide claimed in a telephone call with the BBC that Baitullah Mehsud was not dead but gravely ill. Pakistan’s leaders have called for physical proof of the deaths. BBC, CNN, Reuters
