Pak to compensate drone strike families

MIRANSHAH: Pakistan will pay compensation to the families of 39 people who died in a US drone strike in North Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan, an official said Saturday.

Civilians and police were among those killed when missiles hit a compound in Datta Khel, 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan on March 17.

Tribal administration official Asghar Khan said a compensation package was ready for the victims” families. “Three hundred thousand rupees ($3,530) each will be paid to 39 families, while 100,000 rupees will be paid to six injured,” Khan said, adding that payments would commence from Monday.

Pakistan pays compensation to police and civilians who get killed in bomb blasts or terror attacks but this will be the first time that compensation has been paid to US drone attack victims.

Pakistan”s civilian and military leaders have condemned the strike, demanding an apology and an explanation from the United States.

Missile attacks doubled in the area last year to more than 100, killing over 670 people in 2010 compared with 45 strikes that killed 420 in 2009. Most have been concentrated in North Waziristan.

Blast hits school bus in Peshawar, one killed

PESHAWAR: An explosion hit a school bus in Peshawar on Monday, killing a passer-by and three others including a school girl..

The dead and injured have been shifted to a nearby hospital for emergency treatment.

Police teams reached the scene and cordoned off the targeted area.

A senior police official said that the bus driver was also killed.

Speaking to reports at the blast site, senior minister Bashir Ahmed Bilour condemned the barbaric attack and confirmed that one child and bus driver were killed. Trend Pk

Saudi Leadership Urged US to Attack Irans Nuclear Facility

Wiki leaks has released 0.25 million confidential documents unveiling that Saudi Leadership urged US to attack Irans nuclear facility.

A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: Since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said that if the local media got word of the fuel removal, they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistans nuclear weapons.

Afghanistan drops charges against Karzai aide

KABUL: The Afghan government has dropped corruption charges against a top aide to President Hamid Karzai who was indicted by a US-backed task force for taking a bribe, an official said Tuesday.

Mohammad Zia Salehi, a senior official in Karzai’s National Security Council, was arrested by the Major Crimes Task Force, a US-funded anti-graft body, in July after he was caught on a wiretap soliciting a bribe.

In return, Salehi reportedly held up an investigation into a company suspected of moving money for Afghan leaders, drug traffickers and insurgents.

At the time, Karzai ordered Salehi to be released, saying that his arrest was unconstitutional and violated human rights.

Rahmatullah Nazari, Afghanistan’s deputy attorney general, told AFP that Salehi had been cleared of the charges, seemingly on a technicality.

“Under Afghanistan’s laws,

Cyclone hits Myanmar, weakens as it moves northeast

YANGON: A cyclone that hit the west coast of Myanmar was moving northeast through the country but was expected to weaken on Saturday, a meteorological official said, adding there was no news yet of casualties or damage.

State television said on Friday that Cyclone Giri had struck the coast near the town of Kyaukphyu, with winds reaching 160 km per hour (100 miles per hour ), and could trigger a tidal surge of up to 12 feet (3.7 metres) in some towns on the Bay of Bengal coast.

Telephone contact with the area was interrupted when the cyclone hit and had not been re-established early on Saturday.

An official at the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology in the capital, Naypyitaw, described Giri on Saturday as an inland storm, but had no details on the impact on coastal areas.

Coastal and delta regions in the Southeast Asian country are often hit by

Security row threatens Afghan reconstruction: report

KABUL: The US-funded reconstruction effort in Afghanistan is coming to an end because of an upcoming ban on foreign companies using private security guards, The Washington Post said quoting US officials and aid workers.

A US official said ending the reconstruction effort would have “catastrophic” consequences.

“If these projects grind to a halt, we might as well go home. They are essential to the counterinsurgency strategy,” added the unnamed US official involved in the issue.

The ban, enacted by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, goes into effect on December 17, but many US-funded development firms are beginning to shut down their projects refusing to be guarded by Afghan police and military they deem corrupt, ill-trained and too few.

The ban on private security guards, Afghanistan says operate with little oversight or accountability and often function

Three soldiers killed in South Waziristan

Militants attacked a Pakistani military convoy on Tuesday, killing three soldiers in the tribal badlands of Waziristan on the Afghan border, a security official said.
The attack took place in the Kalundar Keley area of South Waziristan, about 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of the district’s main town Wana.
Militants attacked a security force patrol on Tuesday in Kalundar Keley area, killing three troops and wounding two others, a senior security official in the area told.
The official said an earlier roadside bomb attack in the same area wounded two more soldiers. A second security official confirmed the deaths.

Violence erupts in Haiti jail, leaving 3 inmates dead

HAITI: An apparent riot by prisoners at Haiti’s largest penitentiary left three inmates dead and led to a brief hostage crisis on Sunday.

The causes of the unrest and hostage-taking were not immediately clear.

UN peacekeepers cordoned off the area and stood guard around Port-au-Prince’s national prison after Sunday’s violence.

A Justice Ministry official said three inmates were killed, including two who were trying to escape.

Seven non-Haitian hostages were held briefly by prisoners, according to a UN police spokesman.

He also said the hostages were freed and suffered only minor injuries but gave no further details.

There are approximately 1,500 prisoners in the jail. AGENCIES

Pakistan reforms needed for flood aid -World Bank

BRUSSELS: Pakistan needs funds for at least one year of reconstruction after its devastating floods, but in turn it must assure donors it will revamp tax and subsidy regimes, a senior World Bank official said on Friday.

“What is important is to pledge at least the entire amount that is needed for the first eight-to-12 months. … That cannot wait,” Rachid Benmessaoud, World Bank country director for Pakistan, told Reuters in an interview.

Such initial funding could help to rebuild livelihoods and put cash into rural economies as villagers return to the flood-hit plains.

But a donors’ conference scheduled for next month should also present “the opportunity to secure the balance” of support needed for reconstruction, Benmessaoud said.

The World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) have estimated the cost of recovering from the worst natural disaster in

Nearly 30 NATO tankers torched in Bolan

BOLAN: Gunmen set fire to nearly 30 tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops in Afghanistan on Saturday, an official said, two days after the United States apologized to Pakistan for a cross-border air raid that killed two Pakistani soldiers.

Suspected militants have stepped up attacks on convoys carrying supplies for NATO forces since the September 30 NATO air strike in northwestern Pakistan described by the U.S. ambassador as a terrible accident.

About 20 gunmen set fire to around 30 tankers parked outside at a roadside restaurant in Bolan in a pre-dawn attack, the official said.

The tankers were on their way to the border town of Chaman.

“The attackers first fired shots and then fired small rockets at the tankers. Twenty-eight to 29 tankers caught fire,” local government official Naeem Sherwani told a foreign news agency. He said one of the

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