Karachi: Malik orders increase in patrolling of Rangers, police

The interior minister in a statement has directed to increase the patrolling of Rangers, FC and police in the sensitive areas of Karachi to maintain law and order situation in the provincial capital.

He also appealed to the masses to immediately inform the nearest police station about any suspicious activity. The interior minister also issued instructions to enhance security of foreign diplomats as well as the courts.

Gaddafi still a threat, says Libya council chief

DOHA: Muammar Gaddafi, who has not been seen since rebels took over the Libyan capital of Tripoli a week ago, is still a threat to the country and the world, the chairman of the National Transitional Council (NTC) said on Monday. 

Speaking at a meeting in Doha, Qatar, of defence ministers from countries supporting the insurgency against Gaddafi’s rule, NTC Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil called on NATO to keep supporting the movement.

“I call for continued protection from NATO and its allies from this tyrant,” Abdel Jalil said.

The NTC, which is hunting Libya’s deposed leader and pushing to take over his hometown of Sirte east of Tripoli, said on Saturday it had no firm information on his whereabouts. It has offered a $1.3 million reward and amnesty from prosecution for anyone who kills or captures Gaddafi. AGENCIES

Police calm London, but riots flare across UK

LONDON: Thousands of extra police officers on the streets kept a nervous London quiet Wednesday after three nights of rioting, but looting flared in Manchester and Birmingham, where a murder probe was opened when three men were killed after being hit by a car.

An eerie calm prevailed in the capital, where hundreds of shops were shuttered or boarded up as a precaution, but unrest spread across England on a fourth night of violence by brazen crowds of young people.

Scenes of ransacked stores, torched cars and blackened buildings have frightened and outraged Britons just a year before their country is to host next summer’s Olympic Games, bringing demands for a tougher response from law enforcement. Police across the country have made almost 1,200 arrests since the violence broke out over the weekend.

In London, where armored vehicles and convoys of police vans patrolled the streets, authorities said there were 16,000 officers on duty — almost triple the number present Monday night.

The show of force seems to have worked. There were no reports of major trouble in London, although there were scores of arrests. Almost 800 people have been arrested in London since trouble began Saturday.

“What happened in London last night was, when community leaders and the police came together, there were significant arrests,” said police deputy assistant chief constable Stephen Kavanagh. “We used buses to make sure some looters were taken away before they got into doing anything, but it was that joint action that made the difference.”

Outside the capital, some looting erupted, but not on the scale of the violence that hit several areas of London on Monday.

In the northwestern city of Manchester, hundreds of youths rampaged through the city center, hurling bottles and stones at police and vandalizing stores. A women’s clothing store on the city’s main shopping street was set ablaze, along with a disused library in nearby Salford.

Manchester assistant chief constable Garry Shewan said it was simple lawlessness.

“We want to make it absolutely clear — they have nothing to protest against,” he said. “There is nothing in a sense of injustice and there has been no spark that has led to this.”

Britain’s soccer authorities were talking with police to see whether this weekend’s season-opening matches of the Premier League could still go ahead in London. A Wednesday match between England and the Netherlands at London’s Wembley stadium was canceled to free up police officers for riot duty.

Britain’s riots began Saturday when an initially peaceful protest over a police shooting in London’s Tottenham neighborhood turned violent. That clash has morphed into a general lawlessness in London and several other cities that police have struggled to halt.

While the rioters have run off with goods every teen wants — new sneakers, bikes, electronics and leather goods — they also have torched stores apparently just for the fun of seeing something burn. They were left virtually unchallenged in several neighborhoods, and when police did arrive they often were able to flee quickly and regroup.

With police struggling, some residents stood guard to protect their neighborhoods. Outside a Sikh temple in Southall, west London, residents vowed to defend their place of worship if mobs of young rioters appeared. Another group marched through Enfield, in north London, aiming to deter looters.

One far-right group said about 1,000 of its members were taking to the streets to deter rioters.

“We’re going to stop the riots — police obviously can’t handle it,” Stephen Lennon, leader of the far-right English Defense League, told The Associated Press. He warned that he couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be violent clashes with rioting youths.

Anders Behring Breivik, who has confessed to the bombing and massacre that killed 77 people in Norway last month, has cited the EDL as an inspiration.

In the central England city of Nottingham, police said rioters hurled firebombs though the window of a police station, and set fire to a school and a vehicle but there were no reports of injuries. Some 90 people were arrested.

Some 250 people were arrested after two days of violence in Birmingham — where police launched a murder investigation after the deaths of three men hit by a car — some residents said the men had been patrolling their neighborhood to keep it safe from looters.

Police said a man had been arrested on suspicion of murder in the case.

In the northern city of Liverpool, about 200 youths hurled missiles at police and firefighters in a second night of unrest, and 44 arrests were reported.

There also were minor clashes in the central and western England locations of Leicester, Wolverhampton, West Bromwich, Bristol, and Gloucester — where police and firefighters tackled a blaze and disturbance in the city’s Brunswick district.

In London, hundreds of stores, offices, pubs and restaurants had closed early Tuesday amid fears of fresh rioting. Normally busy streets were eerily quiet and the smell of plywood filled the air as business owners rushed to secure their shops before nightfall.

In east London’s Bethnal Green district, convenience store owner Adnan Butt, 28, said the situation was still tense.

“People are all at home — they’re scared,” he said.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s government rejected calls by some lawmakers and citizens for strong-arm riot measures that British police generally avoid, such as tear gas and water cannons.

“The public wanted to see tough action. They wanted to see it sooner and there is a degree of frustration,” said Andrew Silke, head of the criminology department at the University of East London.

Cameron recalled Parliament from its summer recess for an emergency debate on the riots Thursday.

Other politicians visited riot sites Tuesday — but for many residents it was too little, too late. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was booed by crowds who shouted “Go home!” in Birmingham, while London Mayor Boris Johnson was heckled on a shattered shopping street in Clapham, south London.

Johnson said the riots would not stop London from “welcoming the world to our city” for the 2012 Olympics.

So far 770 people have been arrested in London and 167 charged — including an 11-year-old boy — and the capital’s prison cells were overflowing. Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said it had teams of lawyers working 24 hours a day to help police decide whether to charge suspects.

A total of 111 officers and 14 members of the public have been hurt.

The violence was triggered by the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four who was gunned down in Tottenham on Thursday under disputed circumstances.

Police said Duggan was shot dead when officers from Operation Trident — the unit that investigates gun crime in the black community — stopped a cab he was riding in. A Saturday protest demanding justice degenerated into a riot, which spread to neighboring parts of London on Sunday and by Monday had spread across the capital.

Duggan’s death resonated because it stirred memories of the 1980s, when many black Londoners felt they were disproportionately stopped and searched by police. Their frustration erupted in violent riots in 1985.

But the rioters who have taken to the streets since Sunday have been extremely diverse — those in central England appeared to be mostly white and working class. AGENCIES

Shallow quake hits southwest Pakistan: USGS

QUETTA: A shallow 5.7-magnitude earthquake hit southwest Pakistan on Wednesday, the US Geological Survey said.

The quake struck at 5:53 am (0053 GMT) around 330 kilometres (200 miles) southwest of Quetta, the capital of the province of Baluchistan, at a depth of eight kilometres.

A powerful 7.2-magnitude quake that hit southwest Pakistan in January sent people rushing from their homes in panic but did not cause significant casualties.

Pakistan was hit by a 7.6-magnitude earthquake on October 8, 2005 that killed more than 73,000 people and left about 3.5 million homeless, mainly in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. AGENCIES

Rainwater enters Parliament House in Islamabad

ISLAMABAD: Rainwater has entered Parliament House as heavy monsoon showers constantly pour in Islamabad today, TrendPK reported on Monday.

Heavy rain has converted most roads in the capital city into canals where routine life has been disturbed badly by the rapidly flowing rainwater.

According to the Meteorological Department, till now, more than 85 millimeters of rain has been recorded in Islamabad.

All meetings at Parliament House have been cancelled today as rainwater has entered many committee rooms and is constantly filling other areas as well.

Seeing no break in the ongoing heavy rain showers in the twin cities, authorities have put all rescue agencies on high alert to control all types of emergency situations in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. TrendPK

Protesters condemn Quran burning by US pastor

KABUL: Protesters in Afghanistan held a peaceful demonstration on Thursday in the capital Kabul, to further condemn the burning of a Quran at a small Florida church last month.

The desecration of Islam’s holy book has inflamed days of protests across Afghanistan.

There have been almost daily protests across Afghanistan against the act last month at a small church in Gainesville, Florida.

Most have not turned violent, but 10 people were killed in two days of protests in the southern city of Kandahar.

Protesters on Thursday held banners reading “We strongly condemn the act of burning Quran”. AGENCIES

Syrian leader to address nation amid unrest

DAMASCUS: Syrian President Bashar Assad is to address the nation Wednesday for the first time since unprecedented protests erupted in this tightly controlled Arab country, a speech seen as a crucial test for his leadership and one that may determine Syria’s future.

Assad is expected to announce constitutional amendments and sweeping reforms, including an end to nearly 50 years of widely despised state of emergency laws that give the regime a free hand to arrest people without charges. On Tuesday, Assad fired his Cabinet in another move designed to pacify the anti-government protesters.

Syrian TV says Assad will speak at midday Wednesday.

While his overtures are largely symbolic, they represent a moment of rare compromise in the Assad family’s 40 years of iron-fisted rule.

They came as the government mobilized hundreds of thousands of supporters to take to the streets in rallies in the capital and elsewhere Tuesday, in an effort to show it has wide popular backing.

The coming days will be key to determining whether Assad’s concessions will quiet the protest movement, which started after security forces arrested several teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a wall in the impoverished city of Daraa in the south.

The protests then spread to other provinces and the government launched a swift crackdown, killing more than 60 people since March 18, according to Human Rights Watch. The violence has eased in the past few days and some predict the demonstrations might die out if the president’s promises appear genuine.

However, small protests in various cities have continued, according to reports, in addition to a sit-in by a few hundred people in the restive Daraa.

Videos posted on YouTube showed anti-government demonstration in the town of Douma, just outside the capital, and another in the southern town of Inkhil on Tuesday, but the videos could not be independently verified.

Since the protests erupted March 18, thousands of Syrians appear to have broken through a barrier of fear in this tightly controlled nation of 23 million.

“Syria stands at a crossroads,” Aktham Nuaisse, a leading human rights activist, said Tuesday. “Either the president takes immediate, drastic reform measures, or the country descends into one of several ugly scenarios. If he is willing to lead Syria into a real democratic transformation, he will be met halfway by the Syrian people.”

Assad, who inherited power 11 years ago from his father, appears to be following the playbook of other autocratic leaders in the region who scrambled to put down popular uprisings by using both concessions and brutal crackdowns.

The formula failed in Tunisia and Egypt, where popular demands increased almost daily — until people accepted nothing less than the ouster of the regime.

The unrest in Syria, a strategically important country, could have implications well beyond its borders, given its role as Iran’s top Arab ally and as a front line state against Israel.

Syria has long been viewed by the U.S. as a potentially destabilizing force in the Middle East. An ally of Iran and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, it has also provided a home for some radical Palestinian groups.

In London, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Tuesday on the Syrian government and Assad to prove they can “be responsive to the needs” of their own people.

In January, Assad, a 45-year-old British-trained eye doctor, said his country was immune to the kind of unrest roiling the Mideast because he is in tune with his people’s needs.

So far, few in Syria have publicly called on Assad to step down. Most are calling for reforms, annulling emergency laws and other stringent security measures and an end to corruption. AGENCIES

Coalition hit areas in Garyan, Mizdah: Libyan TV

TUNIS: Western coalition air strikes hit civilian and military areas in the towns of Garyan and Mizdah, Libyan television said on Monday, quoting a military official.

Air strikes hit Sabha in central Libya: Libya TV

TUNIS: Western air strikes have targeted military and civilian areas in the town of Sabha, Libyan state television reported on Saturday, quoting a military source.

Lahore chamber beats Indian HC in friendly tie

ISLAMABAD: Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) thrashed Indian High Commission in a friendly Twenty20 clash in the capital city of Islamabad on Sunday.

Opting to bat first, Indian team was bundled out for 106 in 16.3 overs.

In reply, Lahore Chamber chased down the target in just nine overs at the loss of only one wicket.

Speaking on this occasion, Indian High Commissioner Sharat Sabharwal welcomed Pakistan Prime Minister’s visit to India to watch the semi-final clash.

He said that cricket would emerge as winner in the much-hyped encounter. TrendPK

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