Gilani holds CCI meeting to discuss flood situation

Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has pledged that there will be no discrimination in the rehabilitation of flood-ravaged people.

Chairing the Council of Common Interests (CCI) meeting on Monday, Prime Minister Gilani said all parties will have to rise above their political interests to work for the rehabilitation of flood victims.

He said that the floods had devastated 69 districts and 1.3 million acres of standing crops across the country.

Besides, 1,752 were killed and 2,697 injured by the unprecedented floods, he said.

Gilani said that the global community had promised to provide $950.37 million in response to an appeal of the United Nations.

All four chief ministers and members of the federal cabinet attended the meeting. SAMAA

Fresh suspicion over Pakistan-Australia Test

LONDON: Pakistan’s January Test defeat to Australia came under renewed scrutiny on Monday after it emerged an agent at the centre of a ‘spot-fixing’ scandal met players a few weeks after the match.

The Australian newspaper printed what it said was a photo of Mazhar Majeed, the London-based businessman who has been quizzed by police over the scandal, dining with several players at a Perth restaurant three weeks after the match.

The report comes after opening batsman Yasir Hameed claimed the Sydney Test, in which Australia recovered from almost certain defeat to record a rousing win, was fixed for illegal bookmaking syndicates.

“In the Sydney Test Match they made 1.8 million pounds (2.8 million US dollars),” Hameed told British newspaper the News of the World in an undercover video recording. “They gave away the match.”

Hameed has since insisted that

Twin Blasts in Islamabad, Death toll hits 6

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Twin Blasts in Islamabad, Death toll hits 6,  The death toll from two explosions at the Islamic University in Islamabad has affected six where two suicide bombers of women cafeteria and a school building Tuesday .

The explosion in the cafeteria on the left pieces of flesh splattered on the floor and broken glass. The second attack took place in the department of Islamic law.

At least 21 injured have been taken to PIMS hospital in the federal capital, where many of them are in critical condition, authorities said. The wounded included 14 girls between the four said to be in serious condition.

International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) was established in the 1980s. Its sprawling campus on the outskirts of the city, has more than 12,000 students, nearly half of them women. Many students come from abroad.

The police commissioner Abdul Ghafar Quaiserani said two suicide bombers blew themselves up almost simultaneously. Both attackers were also killed, he said.

Television footage showed a woman with a bloody left leg being carried on a stretcher and a red brick building with broken windows. Its ceiling was peppered with shrapnel from the explosion.

Security forces have cordoned off the area after the blasts.