Pakistan Information & News

Cricketers attending the national training camp have been restricted from speaking to the media by manager-cum-coach Talat Ali after captain Shoaib Malik was misquoted in a recent report.
“Only the captain, chief selector and myself can speak to the media that is also if it is absolutely necessary. When the matches start, obviously the top performer will attend the media conference. But for now no player is allowed to speak to the press,” Talat said on the sidelines of the camp in Lahore.
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A British court today sentenced to life in prison the five “Fertiliser Plot” men, mostly British-born and Pakistani-trained militants who were planning to blow up targets in London (including a nightclub, power plants and shopping mall) with half a ton of ammonium nitrate and other substances. As a consequence today the MI5, finally free to disclose its information without jeopardizing the case, released new information about the links (some of them already known) between the Fertiliser Plot and the 7/7 bombers.
The information is quite detailed, but, in a nutshell, the MI5 revealed that two of the 7/7 bombers, Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, had been seen with Omar Khyam and other Fertiliser Plot members in early 2004. Khan and Tanweer were taped discussing ways to raise money through fraudulent schemes but, since no specific mention of an attack was made, the MI5 decided not to investigate them. As the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Report into the London Terrorist Attacks has already pointed out, “in light of the other priority investigations being conducted and the limitations on Security Service resources, the decisions not to give greater investigative priority to these two individuals were understandable.” Given its limited resources, MI5’s decision not to divert human resources to investigate individuals that, while clearly interested in jihadi activities and intentioned in committing crimes to support them, did not constitute an immediate threat, was probably a sound one and second guessing it today is as easy as useless.
But here lies the problem: the MI5 should not have been stretched so thin. As the MI5 correctly points out, “when the fertiliser plot took place it was one of 50 networks of which the Service was aware” and the agency could not possibly start a new investigation. The MI5 was simply understaffed to deal with a [...]

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Finally West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has decided to hand over the captaincy to Ramnaresh Sarwan after a retirement of Brian Lara. With England tour coming up very soon, this announcement was long overdue. Though, I completely agree with the choice of Sarwan as a captain but my only concern is whether he will be able to motivate a team, which is so down on confidence after the dismal World Cup performance.
Adding to the woes, great Brian Charles Lara will not be there in the batting front to score heap of runs against the likes of Flintoff, Harmison and Hoggard. Coach Bennett King has also resigned from the post after World Cup and West Indies have to play with caretaker coach in the tour of England. Not an ideal preparation for such an important tour but this is generally the case with West Indies cricket for last few years or so. In addition to all that, contract dispute between players and board is once again cropping up. Tough time ahead Mr Sarwan. Best of luck!
Hard Beat

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The upcoming one-day series against India is likely to be the last for Bangladesh captain Habibul Bashar as he is ready to hang his boot in the shorter form of the game. The prolific middle order batsman has done wonders for Bangladesh cricket. In the recently concluded World Cup, Bangladesh defeated the likes of India and South Africa to enter the super eight round. However, he is struggling as a batsman for a long time.
According to report, Mohammad Ashraful will be the new captain of Bangladesh. Though, he is quite a brilliant player with the bat but it would be interesting to see how he cope with the vagaries of being a captain of the side who has dearth of super stars and regular defeats sap you down. With inspirational coach Dav Whatmore also decided to quit after a tour of India, Bangladesh has to start afresh under new coach and captain. Let’s hope, they continue their progress as a team in coming months.
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New Kerala

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The 2007 World Cup final played last Saturday had everything going good for it except for two incidents: One that was not in human control, was nature’s willingness in form of incessant rains. Two that was in human control, ICC umpires’ blunder moves in the end saw chaotic trappings galore, never happened in game’s history ever.
On field match umpires Aleem Dar and Steve Bucknor along with TV umpire Rudi Koertzen, fourth umpire Billy Bowden and match referee Jeff Crowe, exchanged a series of instructions, which resulted in a chain of events making mockery of a World Cup final, not many will forget in a long time to come.
In the truncated match where each side will play 38 overs, Australia won the toss and chose to bat. They scored 281 for the loss of 4 wickets. In reply, Sri Lanka, after rain interrupted the game again had a revised target with only 36 overs to be bowled. Three overs short of the allotted 36 overs, the umpires declared the play to stop due to bad light, hoping the remaining 3 overs would be bowled the next day.
Sri Lanka had already lost 7 wickets by then and there was no hope of their win with the required run rate hitting above 10 runs per over. However, what the umpires miserably failed to understand was Sri Lanka having played at least 20 overs in their response the match could not be taken forward to the next day and “Australia become the automatic winners”. Eventually, Aussies were ‘legally’ declared World Cup winners by 53 runs using Duckworth Lewis method.
Asked whether the umpiring officials would be disciplined for this, ICC CEO Malcolm Speed did not speak in the affirmative and he favoured the umpires.
ICC has apologized for the lapse. It said, “We [...]

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Panorama and its’ authoritatively grand theme tune, is covering Woolmer-gate tonight, on BBC1 at 20.30. For those of you who don’t live in the UK, tough bobbins. In fact, if you’re not living in God’s Own Country, you probably haven’t seen this either. You should.
bbc1, bob woolmer, panorama

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I have spent time with military officials and civilian DOD officials in different parts of the country in recent weeks, and found a disturbing consensus on events, which, if correct, will have long-term implications for our national security.
The first is the broad feeling that the military is being asked to do everyone else’s job in government, particularly the job of the State Department.
The public diplomacy wing of the State Department seems to have virtually disappeared (except for the little shop run by Shaha Riza, Paul Wolfowitz’s girlfriend, and a shop that has a $45 million annual budget but has made no grants in 18 months of existence).
Partly because of the security conditions and partly because the army is already on the ground, many of the leaders feel they are being ordered to do things they are not trained for, have no resources for, and that take them away from crucial missions.
The second is that, as a result of the massive strain on human and physical resources of the Iraq conflict, the military and the rest of the Intelligence Community are falling further and further behind in monitoring vital events in the rest of the world.
This is not entirely the fault of this administration, of course. The hollowing out of the military and the drastic reduction of human intelligence capabilities began under Bush I, was continued under Clinton and not adequately addressed by the current administration. So there are plenty of people responsible.
One area of acute concern in the intelligence community is Venezuela and its growing orbit in Latin America, thanks largely to the close ties of Hugo Chavez to Iran. My full blog is here.

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The final live was every bit as loony as it must have appeared on telly, but it was still a cracking day out. Indeed, given we were staring at rain covers for the first couple of hours, any action was good action. Gilchrist’s innings was worth the entry fee alone. I also loved the partnership between Jayasuriya and Sangakkara, as they drew colour from Aussie faces with every classy stroke. But no team, however plucky, could have maintained 8 an over against those bowlers in that light.
The ICC has yet again proved itself to be an ass, but it may have dodged a bullet on Saturday. It was lucky that Ponting won the toss and batted first. Had Sri Lanka posted, say, 230 runs for the Aussies to chase in the half-light, it would have been a tall order, even for them. If it had been the Lankans dragging their heels between deliveries to waste time and Malinga bowling 85 mph in the gloomy drizzle, it could have kicked off some ugly scenes in the crowd. Would Australia have accepted being dealt such a poor hand as graciously as Sri Lanka?
OK, so I’m stirring. The right team won and it would have been a travesty if Ponting’s men had been robbed by weather conditions. As my cabbie said the night before, “if you’re the best team, you’re the best team, and you deserve to win”. I’ll admit too that the Aussie supporters were excellent in our stand. Save, of course, for the shouts of ‘no-ball’ whenever Murali bowled – can you not just let it go?!
There is the temptation to dismiss the players as charmless automatons who grind out results, but that is a disservice. They have flair, instinct, guile and panache by the bucket load. [...]

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As you know my term in Rajya Sabha ends on June 14. After that I will be reelected.This is my fourth term from Assam. I have also visited this state 4 times.
Tiwari wanted to know why, for gods sake why, has AOL launched aol.in! A portal for India? Amazing! The only portal we want is which takes us outside the country…on anyones passport..

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Isn’t it astonishing that 2,600 years ago, when most of the world was living in tiny little human settlements, the Indus Valley civilization had well-planned cities of Harappa and Mohenjodaro?
“Some of these cities appear to have been built based on a well-developed plan. The streets of major cities such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were paved and were laid out at right angles (and aligned north, south, east or west) in a grid pattern with a hierarchy of streets (commercial boulevards to small residential alleyways), somewhat comparable to that of present day New York. The houses were protected from noise, odors, and thieves, and had their own wells, and sanitation. And the cities had drainage, large granaries, water tanks, and well-developed urban sanitation,” the Wikipedia article on urban planning says.
What is even more astonishing is that now, two and a half millennia later, most of the current inhabitants of land of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro civilization live not in well planned cities but in tiny little impoverished villages, and some in unplanned congested mega-slums. The shame of the whole thing is that as a collective not only have they lost the knowledge of what cities mean but they don’t even dream of building and inhabiting cities. One wonders when the regression started and what led to the death of the spirit that built those ancient cities. Something snuffed out the spirit, something killed those dreams, something made the inheritors of such great vision and accomplishment into myopic poverty-stricken masses living in misery, huddled into very primitive small villages.
The world – or at least some parts of it – has moved on. They have built many wonderful cities, much grander in scale than Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. Over the centuries, human civilization has progressed pari passu with the development of cities. Immense [...]

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The fractal nature of the generalization that education matters holds across time and space. Irrespective of the granularity of analysis, education aids development through the intermediate step of economic growth. At the finest level of detail, an educated individual anywhere in the world is more productive than an uneducated one. At the broadest level of analysis, the modern world is more productive arguably because it is more educated compared to the world that existed before. A cross-sectional study of the world today, or at any earlier time, reveals that the general level of education of the population is a good predictor of the success of the population.
The observed positive correlation between the macroeconomic variables of the level of general education and economic well-being has microeconomic foundations. There are two avenues, private and public. An educated person is simply more likely to make better-informed private choices regarding his or her production and consumption. Aggregated over the lifetime of the individual, that translates into greater individual production and therefore individual income. Individual incomes aggregated over the entire population determine the macroeconomic health of the economy. At the public level, an individual indirectly contributes to greater economic development by making informed choice among various public policies. An educated population is more likely to endorse enlightened public policy.
India’s present economic standing – both in its limited successes and its myriad failures – is to a large extent a reflection of its education system. It takes justifiable pride in the successes of its handful of elite institutions of higher education in turning out world-class super-achievers. But that exceptional success of the few is overshadowed by the dismal failure of the educational system as a whole. At the primary level, the enrollment is around 90 percent but studies have revealed that even after five years of [...]

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MB:
(Credit : Mishaone)
Looks like a clever pedestrian found an evil idea near near Khayaban-e-Ittehad : What could be his intent in removing “r” & “v”.

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