ICC corruption hearing overshadows NZ v Pakistan test series

HAMILTON: Pakistan captain Misbah-ul-Haq says his team are focused on the upcoming test series against New Zealand and will not be distracted by an anti-corruption hearing that could mete out life bans to three suspended players.

The International Cricket Council will open a hearing in Doha against former test captain Salman Butt and pace bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir later on Thursday, less than 24 hours before the first of a two-test series at Seddon Park.

“We are just focused on cricket. We have nothing to do with what’s happening (in Doha),” he told reporters on Thursday. “Everyone who is here is focused on what’s happening here and to do well here.”

In addition to the spot-fixing claims levelled against three players during their series in England last year, Pakistan have been dogged by other controversies over the

MQM, ST leaders hold meeting

Staff Report

KARACHI: Leaders of MQM and Sunni Tehrik (ST) held a meeting to maintain law and order in Karachi on the occasion of Eid ul Adha.

Sunni Tehrik leader Shakil Qadri visited MQM’s Headquarter Nine Zero and met MQM leader Raza Haroon.

Later, Qadri told reporters that contacts have been established with MQM and all other parties to discuss issues regarding collection of sacrificial skins to avoid any unpleasant situation during Eid ul Adha. Trend Pk

Dhoni bats for struggling Gambhir

Under-fire opener Gautam Gambhir earned sound backing from skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni ahead of the second Test against New Zealand starting on Friday.

The left-handed opener has struggled with the bat of late, aggregating 86 runs from his last 10 Test innings.

Gambhir, 29, missed India’s Test against Australia in Bangalore last month with a knee injury and his replacement Murali Vijay scored a solid 139, putting pressure on his more experienced team-mate to perform.

“Players do go out of form,” Dhoni told reporters at a pre-match press conference on Thursday.

“It happens to everyone in cricket. Gambhir has set the benchmark so high that expectations of him have grown. With Gambhir, it is more about the pressure to perform than the fear of failure.

“The kind of innings he has played in the past shows how good a cricketer he is. He

Clinton says Israeli building plans not productive

WASHINGTON: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday Israel’s plan to go ahead with more settlement building in the West Bank was counterproductive to peace negotiations.

Clinton told reporters a peace deal in the Middle East was still possible and necessary and said the United States was continuing to work to resume negotiations. AGENCIES

No, Pentagon says, Obama will not be guarded by 34 ships

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama will not be protected by a vast armada of 34 US warships when he visits Mumbai this weekend, officials said, calling reports from India on security preparations “comical.”

The claim that many of the 288-ship US naval fleet would be deployed to waters off Mumbai was “absolutely absurd,” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters on Thursday.

US officials usually decline to discuss details about security precautions for the president, but the media accounts circulating out of India were so off the mark that press officers at the Pentagon and the White House said they felt compelled to speak up.

“I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd this notion that somehow we were deploying 10 percent of the Navy — some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier — in support of the president’s trip to Asia,”

In-form India train guns on New Zealand

AHMADABAD: India will look to extend their dominance of Test cricket when they take on a struggling New Zealand in a three-match series starting on Thursday.

The world number one Test side go into the contest on the back of a 2-0 defeat of Australia at home last month and look primed for another triumph in the traditional format of the game.

Daniel Vettori’s Black Caps, who are languishing at number eight in the Test rankings, hope to recover from an embarrassing 4-0 one-day series loss to minnows Bangladesh.

“The Bangladesh tour was extremely disappointing,” Vettori told reporters in Ahmedabad. “We will try to rectify that in India. It’s a fresh start for us.

“It’s Test cricket and we have new players here and they have not been affected by what happened in Bangladesh,” said Vettori, who will be playing his 100th Test for the Black

Adarsh Scam: Ashok Chavan Meets Sonia, offers to Resign

New Delhi: Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan today offered to resign from the post after a meeting with Congress President Sonia Gandhi, becoming the first political casualty to the embarrassing housing scam in Mumbai.

“I offer my resignation to you. I leave it to you take a final view on this,” he told reporters about what he told Gandhi after more than an hour-long meeting with her at her 10, Janpath residence here.

51-year-old Chavan, son of late Union Home Minister and former Chief Minister S B Chavan, became chief minister on December 8, 2008 after Vilasrao Deshmukh made his way out in the wake of 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai.(PTI)

Australia will be massively motivated, says Strauss

SYDNEY: Australia will be “massively motivated” to regain the Ashes when the five-match series starts next month, according to England captain Andrew Strauss.

The former world number ones have dropped to fifth in the rankings, one place below England, after suffering a 2-0 series defeat in India this month.

“To expect Australia to be any less competitive than they have been in every other series out here would be a bad way of playing things,” Strauss told reporters at Perth airport on Saturday.

“We expect them to be very strong, very determined and clearly massively motivated to win back the Ashes and we are going to have to be good enough to overcome it.”

Key to England’s chances of keeping the Ashes – and improving on their 5-0 drubbing in Australia in 2007 — will be their bowling unit.

“One of the things I have liked about our bowling

Japan, China ministers meet, agree to improve ties

HANOI: Japan and China have agreed to improve ties, Japan’s foreign minister said on Friday after talks with his Chinese counterpart likely to set the stage for fence-mending between the leaders of Asia’s biggest economies.

Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara told reporters after meeting China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi that the leaders of both nations, whose ties have been strained by a dispute over islands in the East China Sea, were likely to hold one-on-one talks on the sidelines of an Asian summit in Hanoi.

“I think that Japan-China leaders’ summit will probably take place,” Maehara said, adding his talks with Yang, which lasted for about an hour, were held in a “very good atmosphere, in a calm and in a forward-looking manner.”

Speculation has swirled over whether Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, would hold direct

US ‘concerned’ about Iran influence in Afghanistan: WHouse

WASHINGTON — The White House said Monday the world has “every reason to be concerned” about Iranian influence in Afghanistan, after President Hamid Karzai admitted receiving bags of cash from Tehran.

Bill Burton, the White House deputy spokesman, told reporters traveling with President Barack Obama that the administration had seen the reports about the payments made to Karzai’s chief of staff.

“And I think the American people and the global community have… every reason to be concerned about Iran trying to have a negative influence on Afghanistan,” he said.

He added Iran had a responsibility to exert “a positive influence on the formation of a government there, and to ensure that Afghanistan is not a country where terrorists can find safe harbor, or where attacks can be planned on their soil.”

Karzai acknowledged that his chief of staff had received

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