WORLD IN FOCUS (September ‘October 2013)

News From National & International Press

National

Sep 16: Sindh Prosecutor General Shahadat Awan resigned from his office.

Sep 16: Malala Yousufzai and an American singer, human rights and social justice activist Harry Belafonte were jointly announced as the recipients of Amnesty International’s ‘Ambassador of Conscience Award’ for 2013.

Sep 17: The Peshawar High Court directed the federal and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments to make laws before withdrawal of troops from Malakand.

Sep 17: Pakistan and Turkey agreed to intensify cooperation in diverse fields, including trade, energy, infrastructure development, security, education, culture and science and technology and to enhance efforts for peace in the region.

Sep 17: Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan ordered that passports be issued for a ten-year period rather than five years.

Sep 17: After a two-year delay, the Planning Commission of Pakistan launched the National Nutrition Survey (NNS) 2011.

The findings of the NNS-2011 reveal that 58.1 per cent of households are food insecure and only three per cent of children receive a diet that meets the minimum standards of dietary diversity. Sep 17: Turkish President Abdullah Gul awarded Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with Turkey’s Order of The Republic Jumhuriyet Nishan.

Sep 18: The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) approved the draft of a resolution recommending to the government to amend the blasphemy law proposing death penalty for people levelling false allegations. The resolution also proposed that DNA tests results be used as primary evidence in rape cases.

Sep 18: The Sindh Witness Protection Act, 2013 was passed by the provincial assembly. The law promises complete government security to witnesses in criminal cases that along with life protection could lead to a reasonable accommodation, financial assistance and even compensation to legal heirs if the protected person is killed or dies during the process.

Sep 19: Pakistan’s Defence Secretary Lt. General (Retd) Asif Yasin Malik, was inducted into the National Defence University International Fellows Hall of Fame. He is the first Pakistani to be so honoured.

Sep 19: Russia offered Pakistan to export up to 5,000 megawatt electricity through the Kyrgyzstan-Afghanistan route during a high-level Russian energy delegation visit to Pakistan.

Sep 20: The federal cabinet approved a proposal to allow the Rangers to shoot at, or issue orders to shoot at, terrorists in Karachi after giving a warning.

Sep 21: The government freed senior Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar to help revive the faltering Afghan reconciliation process.

Sep 21: Punjab University Institute of Quality and Technology Management Assistant Professor Dr Muhammad Usman Awan won the ‘Best Young Research Scholar Award’ of HEC in the category of Management Sciences.

Sep 22: The capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was shaken once again by a heinous attack on churchgoers. This inhumane act killed 78 people.

Sep 23: The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) formally relegated the DNA test to supporting evidence in rape cases. CII Chairman Maulana Mohammad Khan Sherani said that ‘the DNA test is not acceptable as primary evidence in rape cases, but it could be considered as supporting evidence’.

Sep 23: Nasir Khan Durrani was appointed the Inspector General of Police (IGP) for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in place of Ihsan Ghani.

Sep 24: Awaran and several other districts of Balochistan were struck by a massive earthquake of 7.7 magnitude, leaving at least 60 people dead, bringing down houses and buildings and causing widespread destruction.

Sep 24: The earthquake that struck parts of Balochistan and Sindh was followed by the emergence of an island about one and a half kilometres away from the coastline, off the coast of Gwadar.

Sep 24: The US and Pakistan signed an agreement under which the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Bureau of the State Department will provide $23.5 million for building capacity of law enforcement agencies to combat illicit narcotics.

Sep 25: Top religious scholars of the country demanded an immediate ceasefire by the government and TTP to save the country from further bloodshed and to ensure that the dialogue process reaches its logical conclusion.

Sep 25: At the conclusion of 9th round of dialogue between the Parliamentarians of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Parliamentarians of both countries agreed to take further mutual steps in promoting people-to-people contacts to boost bilateral friendship.

Sep 26: Militants dressed in Indian army uniform stormed a police station and an army base in India-held Kashmir.

Sep 26: Malala Yousafzai stood by world leaders and called for books not guns as she took part in the first anniversary of the Global Education First initiative at the United Nations in New York.

Sep 26: Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah stripped the provincial minister Owais Muzaffar of the health portfolio.

Sep 26: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a loan agreement for additional $100 million for the 969-megawatt (MW) Neelum-Jhelum Hydropower project. Saudi Arabia is already providing $81 million for the project.

Sep 27: In his address, the PM Nawaz Sharif told the UN General Assembly that he had offered dialogue to the Taliban to end violence and to wean young extremists away from terrorism. The prime minister also raised the drone issue inside the UNGA, telling world leaders that the attacks were a continued violation of Pakistan’s territorial integrity.

Sep 28: Malala Yousufzai was honoured with Harvard University’s Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award of 2013.

Sep 28: The government set up ‘Prime Minister’s Balochistan Earthquake Relief Fund 2013’ for the relief and rehabilitation of people hit by the powerful quake.

Sep 29: After an hour-long meeting between their prime ministers, India and Pakistan agreed to reduce tensions along the Line of Control in Kashmir as the first step towards a comprehensive peace in the region. Respective DGMOs were tasked to come up with a clear plan to restore ceasefire along the LoC.

Sep 30: World Rabies Day was observed on the theme ‘Rabies; understand it to defeat it’.

Sep 30: The counsel for Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh was granted asylum in Sweden along with his family.

Oct 01: The Supreme Court observed that the increase in power tariff was illegal and no one would be allowed to run a ‘Nadir Shahi system’ in the country.

The chief justice observed that the government was not authorised to issue the notification regarding an increase in power tariff, saying that the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) was the competent authority to do so.

Oct 02: The Supreme Court scrapped a land deal between the DHA Lahore and the ETPB which caused an estimated loss of Rs 1.934 billion to the latter.

Oct 03: A Greek judge dismissed a case against a British Pakistani architect who was arrested in connection with the Margalla Towers collapse during 2005 quake because Pakistan failed to make a formal request for his extradition within the time required to do so.

Oct 03: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif inaugurated a $150 million dollars Latif Gas Field project injecting a precious 3 per cent into the national gas grid.

Oct 04: The FBR imposed 2% additional sales tax at the level of the manufacturer on several items, to be worked out on the basis of actual value-addition.

Oct 04: The governor promulgated the Punjab Transparency and Right to Information Ordinance, 2013, allowing people to open up secrecy doors of the government for the first time in history.

Oct 04: Pakistan, like rest of the world, observed the World Teachers Day 2013 with the slogan ‘A Call for Teachers’.

Oct 05: A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between Punjab government and British company Pan Africa for 100-MW power project.

Oct 07: The government is not allowing international humanitarian aid agencies to go into earthquake-affected districts of Balochistan.

France based Doctors Without Borders resented the government’s reluctance to allow its medical care providers to enter Awaran.

Oct 07: The Punjab government terminated the contracts of four Punjab Service Tribunal (PST) members, Mr Kareem Bakhsh Abid, Mr Tariq Ayub Chaudhry, Mr Abdul Majeed Chaudhry and Mr Shafiq Hussain Bokhari, in compliance with a Supreme Court order

Oct 08: Pakistan Army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani assumed the additional charge as the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee.

Oct 09: Alleging that the government has not taken any substantial step for holding peace talks, Tehreek1-Taliban Pakistan`s notorious chief Hakimullah Mehsud said that his outfit would not hold dialogue (with the government) through the media.

Oct 09: After over six months of being in detention, former president and army chief retired Gen Pervez Musharraf was granted bail by the Supreme Court

Oct 09: Balochistan Assembly adopted a resolution demanding the federal government to write off bank loans obtained by farmers in the province.

Oct 09: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa launched Madadgaar, a helpline for women and children, for free legal counselling and aid. The number of the helpline is 1098.

Oct 09: Parliamentary Assembly of ECO Member States (PAECO) was granted observer status in the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). This decision was taken in the 129th General Assembly of the IPU held in Geneva.

Oct 10: President Mamnoon Hussain promulgated the Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Ordinance, 2013, an anti-terrorism ordinance giving shoot-at-sight powers to civil armed forces for maintaining peace.

Oct 10: The government appointed retired Maj Qamar Zaman Chaudhry as chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, Pakistan Muslim League-Q and Jamaat-i-1slami rejected the decision.

Oct 10: Maldives President Mohamed Waheed Hassan conferred, Nishaan Muleege Sharafge Izzaiy, one of the highest ranking honours, on Admiral Mohamed Asif Sandila, the Pakistan Navy chief, in recognition of valuable assistance in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. At the time of the tsunami, Sandila was the mission commander of the two Pakistan Naval Ships, PNS Tariq and PNS Nasr, which were on a goodwill visit to Maldives.

Oct 11: The Lahore High Court Bar Association sent a reference to the Supreme Judicial Council against Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and three other judges.

Oct 12: Malala Yousufzai urged US President Barack Obama to reconsider his drone policy, telling him that drones are killing innocent people and fuelling terrorism. She met President Obama at the White House.

Oct 12: The Sindh government carved out Sujawal district from Thatta. The new district encompasses Sujawal, Kharochhan, Mirpur Bathoro, Jaati and Shah Bunder talukas and it would be Sindh’s 28th district.

Oct 12: The Interpol quashed the red warrant against former accountability chief Senator Saifur Rehman on persuasion of the government of Pakistan.

Oct 13: Ameer Bux Bhutto, son of PML-N leader Mumtaz Bhutto, was made adviser to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Oct 13: The police like Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and the rangers were given access to Call Data Record (CDR) of the all the five cellular companies operating in Pakistan.

Oct 13: The high-profile Pakistani origin Conservative Party MP for Bromsgrove, Sajid Javid, was appointed as Britain’s new Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

Oct 13: Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif appointed Imtiaz Ahmed Shaikh as his Special Assistant with the status of Minister of State.

Oct 14: Eleven new ministers of Balochistan government took oath of their offices, bringing the strength of the provincial cabinet to 14.

Oct 14: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared a state of emergency in the country’s ailing energy sector and ordered the accelerated installation of two power plants in Gadani and Port Qasim.

Oct 15: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif approved appointment of Barrister Zafarullah Khan as Federal Secretary Law and Justice Raza Khan as Special Secretary Law and Justice.

International

Sep 16: Gunmen dressed in military-style uniform shot dead at least 11 people and wounded 14 at the Washington Navy Yard.

Sep 16: A powerful typhoon, Man-yi, packing wind speeds of 162 kilometres per hour, lashed Japan with torrential rain.

Sep 16: A UN report on use of chemical weapons in Syria said the perpetrators of attack in Damascus had up to 350 litres of sarin gas.

Sep 16: A 13-year-old Indian girl Sushma Verma is pursuing a master’s degree in microbiology. She finished high school at 7 and undergraduate studies at 13 only.

Sep 17: The extraordinary righting of the Costa Concordia from its watery Tuscan graveyard gave Italy a boost of sorely-needed pride, helping erase the shame many felt after an Italian captain took the cruise ship off course in an apparent stunt, crashed it and then abandoned ship before everyone was evacuated.
The chief salvage master was from South Africa and his 500-member crew hailed from 26 different nations.

Sep 17: Bangladesh’s Supreme Court sentenced a senior Jamaat-e-Islami leader, Abdul Quader Molla, to death for mass murder, toughening the sentence originally handed down by the country’s war crimes tribunal.

Sep 18: Margaret Buckingham, a Scottish-born biologist, was awarded one of France’s top science prizes, the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) announced.

Sep 18: A Nigerian woman, Obabiyi Aishah Ajibola, won a beauty pageant exclusively for Muslim women held in the Indonesian capital.

Sep 20: US prosecutors dropped human trafficking charges against a Saudi princess Meshael Alayban, one of six wives of Saudi Prince Abdulrahman bin Nasser bin Abdulaziz al Saud.

Sep 20: Syria began supplying details of its chemical arsenal in a bid to a ceasefire in the 30-month war, which has reportedly killed more than 100,000 people.

Sep 21: Masked gunmen stormed a packed upmarket shopping mall in Nairobi, killing 39 people and wounding 150 more in a massacre claimed by Somalia’s Shebab rebels.

Sep 21: Syria handed over complete data on its chemical arsenal to the world’s watchdog. The Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical weapons said it was probing the Syrian information that was the focus of a US-Russian deal to head off strikes on Syria.

Sep 22: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing, vowing to strengthen the partnership established by his predecessor, deceased leader Hugo Chavez.

Sep 22: A Chinese court sentenced former leading politician Bo Xilai, a member of the Communist Party’s 25-strong elite politburo before his dramatic downfall, to life in prison after a sensational corruption trial. Bowas convicted of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power.

Sep 22: Sri Lanka’s main Tamil party won a landslide victory in landmark elections in the battle-scarred north.

The opposition Tamil National Alliance (TNA) won 30 out of 38 seats in the first elections for a provincial council in the former war zone.

Sep 22: The US Air Force launched an unarmed intercontinental ballistic missile, the Minuteman 3, from the California coast in a test flight. The missile blasted off from an underground silo at the Vandenberg Air Force, 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles. It was supposed to travel 4,200 miles to a predetermined target in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

Sep 22: Chancellor Angela Merkel clinched a surprise absolute majority in her winning bid for a third term in German elections.

Voters turned out in droves to reward Merkel, often called the world’s most powerful woman, with another four years at the helm.

Sep 23: An Egyptian court banned deposed President Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and ordered its funds to be seized.

Sep 23: Typhoon Usagi killed at least 25 people after crashing ashore in southern China leaving tens of thousands of airline passengers stranded in Hong Kong.

Sep 23: The UN’s climate panel warned that evidence was mounting each year of changes to Earth’s weather system as it began talks on a new global warming report. The world’s paramount authority on the greenhouse effect, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released the first volume of a comprehensive report on climate change, its impacts and ways to cope with the challenge.

Sep 25: The United States signed a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty regulating the $90 billion global trade in conventional arms.

The treaty, which relates only to cross border trade and aims to keep weapons out of the hands of human rights abusers and criminals, still requires ratification by the US Senate.

Sep 27: India’s Supreme Court recognised the right of voters to reject all candidates contesting in polls in a key reform ahead of elections next year. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam asked the national election commission to make changes in voting machines and ballot papers, giving voters a ‘none of the above’ choice.

Sep 29: Guinea voted in a parliamentary election touted as the completion of its transition to democracy after a 2008 military coup and the end to decades of political instability. The election is the first democratic parliamentary vote since independence from France in 1958.

Sep 30: An Indian court convicted Lalu Prasad Yadav, a former federal minister whose Rashtriya Janata Dal party supports the ruling coalition, making him one of the first politicians set to be disqualified from parliament under new rules barring criminal MPs.

Sep 30: Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan announced long-anticipated reforms seen as designed to salvage a fragile peace process with Kurdish insurgents, including changes to the electoral system and increasing language rights.

Oct 01: US President Barack Obama declared that his signature health-care law was ‘here to stay’, although Republican lawmakers forced the US federal government to shut down.

Oct 01: Sweden is the best place to grow old and Afghanistan the worst, according to a UN-backed study that warns many countries are ill-prepared to deal with the old age time bomb. The survey ranked many African and South Asian countries as the worst places to be retired, with Tanzania, Pakistan and Afghanistan rounding out the bottom three.

Oct 01: A Bangladesh court sentenced to death a top opposition MP, Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, for genocide, the first lawmaker to be convicted of war crimes during the 1971 war.

Oct 02: India’s Congress-led government withdrew a decree which would have allowed convicted politicians to run for elections while appeals were pending.

Oct 02: Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Indonesia on his first trip to Southeast Asia since taking power.

Oct 02: Iran’s parliament strongly endorsed President Hassan Rouhani’s diplomatic bid to dispel mistrust at the United Nations during a visit which ended with a historic telephonic conversation with President Barack Obama.

Oct 02: The Empire State Building gone public. Shares of Empire State Realty Trust, whose office properties include the iconic 102-storey Art Deco tower, raised $929.5 million in one of the largest initial public offerings of a US real estate investment trust, or REIT. The 71.5 million shares priced at $13, at the low end of the expected range. The REIT will trade under the symbol ESRT on the New York Stock Exchange.

Oct 02: President Barack Obama cancelled two Asia stops and could also miss a pair of summits, after a government shutdown inflicted a new dent in his policy pivot to the Pacific.

Oct 03: Japanese and US foreign and defence ministers huddled to renew their security alliance.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera held the first review of the cornerstone alliance in 16 years.

Oct 03: A special court sentenced former chief minister of Bihar Lalu Prasad Yadav to five years in jail and ordered to pay a $40,000 fine for embezzling funds intended to buy food for cattle during his tenure as Bihar’s top elected official in the mid-1990s.

Oct 03: Indonesian anti-corruption investigators arrested Chief Justice Akil Mochtar, the constitutional court’s top judge, for allegedly accepting a bribe of more than $250,000, in the country’s latest high-profile graft case, an official said.

Oct 03: Energy-starved Bangladesh inaugurated the opening phase of work for its first-ever nuclear power plant using Russian technology. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina laid the foundation stone of the Rooppur nuclear power plant in the country’s northwest, which will have two 1,000 megawatt reactors costing up to $4 billion.

The impoverished South Asian nation signed a deal in November 2011 with the Russian state-owned nuclear giant Rosatom to build the power station and has secured soft loans from Moscow to finance 90% of the project.

Oct 04: Twitter revealed its highly anticipated stock offering, with the hugely popular messaging platform seeking to raise up to $1 billion on Wall Street.

Oct 06: Germany handed over command of its northern Kunduz camp to Afghan security forces.

Oct 06: China evacuated hundreds of thousands of people and issued its highest alert as Typhoon Fitow barrelled towards the east coast.

The storm was packing winds of up to 151 kilometres an hour.

Oct 06: Experts began the process of destroying Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal under the terms of a UN resolution that would see Damascus relinquish its banned weapons.

Oct 06: Irish voters rejected a proposal to abolish the upper house of parliament, delivering a blow to Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who had championed the measure.

Oct 07: Sri Lanka and India announced a finalised $512-million joint venture coal-powered electricity plant in the island’s former warzone.
The venture will see the construction of two power generators of 250 megawatts each in Sri Lanka’s north-eastern district of Trincomalee.

Oct 07: India test-fired its indigenously developed nuclear-capable Prithvi-II missile with a strike range of 350km from a test range at Chandipur.

Oct 08: The Eden Theatre, the world’s oldest movie theatre where the first films of the pioneering Lumiere brothers were screened in 1899, reopens in a sleepy southern French town after an extensive facelift.

Oct 08: Turkey lifted a ban on women wearing head scarf in state institutions, ending a decades-old restriction as part of a package of reforms meant to bolster democracy.

Oct 09: Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, won a third five-year term by a landslide in vote, extending decades of dynastic rule in the oil-rich Caspian Sea nation.

Oct 10: Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zidan was abducted by gunmen.

Oct 10: The United States suspended deliveries of major military hardware and cash assistance to Egypt, following a deadly crackdown against protesters and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Oct 10: The UN Security Council voted a final mandate for the US-led international military force in Afghanistan before it withdraws at the end of 2014.

Oct 11: Pakistan asked Iran to construct the Pakistani side of the gas pipeline as well because international sanctions were preventing Islamabad from raising funds for this project.

Oct 12: Venezuela detained a US-operated oil exploration ship sent from Guyana in disputed waters off its coast, in a fresh border spat between the two neighbours.

Oct 13: A stampede on a bridge outside a Hindu temple killed more than 90 people in India.

Oct 13: The United States and India agreed to step up cooperation to prevent the financing of ‘violent extremist movements’ linked to Pakistan.

Oct 13: India detained an armed ship operated by a US maritime security company and the 35 people on board for failing to produce papers authorizing it to carry weapons and ammunition in Indian waters.

Oct 14: Saudi Arabia’s top religious figure urged Muslims to avoid divisions, chaos and sectarianism, without explicitly speaking of the turmoil unleashed by the Arab Spring.

‘Your nation is a trust with you. You must safeguard its security, stability and resources,’ Sheikh Abdulaziz al Sheikh, who heads his country’s highest religious body, said in his Haj sermon.

Oct 14: A Malaysian court ruled that a Christian newspaper may not use the word ‘Allah’ to refer to God.

Oct 14: The Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, the world’s biggest individual prize, was not awarded for a fourth time in five years.

SPORTS

Sep 16: Portuguese Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo signed a contract renewal tying him to Real Madrid until 2018. He would earn 17 million euros ($23 million) a year.

Sep 17: Australia finished their tour to England by clinching the One-day International series.

Sep 22: Polish top seed Agnieszka Radwanska won the Korea Open, edging out Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

Sep 23: Javeria Mirza of Karachi Grammar School won the World Youth Scrabble Championship (WYSC).

Sep 25: Disgraced Indian Premier League (IPL) founder Lalit Modi was banned for life from holding any cricket post.

Sep 29: The Olympic flame was lit in Ancient Olympia in Greece and began its long journey towards the opening ceremony of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games which begin on February 7.

Sep 29: Kenya’s Wilson Kipsang broke the marathon world record in Berlin in a new official best time of 2 hrs 3 mins and 23 seconds.

Sep 29: Unseeded Joao Sousa defeated fifth seed Julien Benneteau of France in the Malaysian Open final for his maiden career title ‘the first ATP win for Portugal.

Oct 04: Afghanistan reached the World Cup (WC) for the first time, completing a remarkable journey from refugee camp cricket to rubbing shoulders with the sport’s superpowers.

Oct 05: US champion Simone Biles powered her way to her first major gymnastics title by claiming the women’s all-around world gold.

Oct 06: Aliya Mustafina won Russia’s first gold medal of the gymnastics world championships.

Oct 06: Sachin Tendulkar’s Mumbai Indians trumped Dravid and the Royals by 33 runs in a high scoring and thoroughly entertaining Champions League T20 final at the Feroze Shah Kotla.

Oct 06: Russian President Vladimir Putin lit the Olympic flame on Red Square, starting an epic 123-day torch relay around the huge country.

Oct 06: The duo of Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Sajjad helped Pakistan to come from behind in the final against Iran to win the IBSF International Snooker Team Championship 2013 in Carlow, Ireland.

Oct 07: The United States won the Presidents Cup for the eighth time in 10 editions.

Oct 12: Nazmul Hassan was elected Bangladesh Cricket Board president unanimously, making him the first elected president of the board. Hassan had been serving as the president since October 17, 2012, when he was appointed by the government.

Oct 13: Cricket’s governing body officially launched the World Test Championship 2017 aimed at preserving the primacy of the longer format of the game.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) said the inaugural championship will be hosted by England and will feature the top four teams in the ICC Test rankings, with a total prize money of $10 million at stake.

Oct 13: Bangladesh all-rounder Sohag Gazi became the first cricketer to score a century and record a hat-trick in the same test.

Oct 13: World number two Novak Djokovic produced a magical display to overcome the ferocious hitting of Argentine Juan Martin del Potro and successfully defend the Shanghai Masters title.

Oct 14: Wapda won the 20th National Baseball Championship outclassing the Higher Education Commission (HEC).

Oct 14: Zulfiqar Baber became the second oldest cricketer of the country making a Test debut when he was given the cap to play in the opening match of the South Africa series. Miran Baksh was the first oldest Pakistani cricketer who got the Test cap at the age of 47 years and 224 days. Now Zulfiqar Babar has been given the Test cap at the age of 34 years and 308 days.

Oct 15: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif became the new Patron-in-Chief of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and he gave control of the PCB to an ad hoc committee namely the Interim Management Committee (IMC) for three months.
Economy

Sep 17: Microsoft announced a new $40 billion share buyback as part of an effort by the transitioning US tech giant to return more cash to stockholders.

Sep 17: The World Bank and Pakistan signed a grant agreement of $9 million for the competitive industries projects in the conflict-hit areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The grant will be financed through the Multi Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) ‘which is supervised by the World Bank.

Sep 18: French energy giant Total and its Pakistani partner PARCO reached a deal with American oil major Chevron to buy its fuel distribution network in Pakistan.

Sep 19: Scientists from the United States and Pakistan introduced and tested ‘NARC-2011’, a new variety resistant to the feared ‘UG-99’ wheat variety.

Sep 19: The International Monetary Fund asked Pakistan to introduce a full-fledged value-added tax (VAT), saying it ‘remains the first best option to raise tax revenue’.

Sep 19: Unemployment in Pakistan will rise to 9% by fiscal 2017-18 from 6.7% in 2012-13, said the IMF staff.

Sep 20: The European Union and Singapore submitted for approval one of the world’s most comprehensive free trade agreements, which the EU sees as a stepping stone towards a wider deal with Southeast Asia.

Sep 22: The government extended over Rs 2 billion worth of tax concessions and procedural facilitations to the business community by withdrawing several measures for documentation of economy announced in the federal budget 2013-14.

Sep 23: Microsoft unveiled two new versions of its Surface tablet, the Surface 2 and Surface 2 Pro, which have ‘significant updates, including improvements to processing power and battery life.

Sep 23: Islamic banking industry grew by nearly seven per cent during the second quarter of the calendar year 2013, revealed the Islamic Banking Bulletin of the State Bank.

Sep 28: The World Bank removed Iran from its list of deadbeat borrowers, saying the Islamic Republic had paid outstanding loan amounts.

Sep 30: Pakistan and Denmark signed a framework programme amounting to $50 million to mark the start of a new four-year programme cycle, covering the period 2013-16.

Sep 30: Coca-Cola lost its crown as the world’s best brand, a closely watched survey has said, unseated by the iconic iPhone and iPad maker Apple.
It marks the first time the soft drinks giant has missed the top spot on the ‘best global brand report’.

Oct 01: Nigeria announced two major initiatives aimed at improving its woeful electricity supply, entering a $1.3 billion (960 million euros) power plant deal with China and handing over state power assets to private investors.

Oct 02: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet approved a proposal to import 500,000 tonnes of urea fertiliser for the Rabi season from the open international market.

Oct 03: Indonesia and China inked trade and investment deals worth $28.2 billion as Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a state visit to Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.

Oct 04: The Sindh government constituted the Provincial Finance Commission (PFC) under the Sindh Local Government Act, 2013.

Oct 07: The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) approved nine projects of Rs. 42.9 billion in energy, education, health, transport and communications, irrigation and water sectors.

Oct 07: India’s central bank announced a cut in a key short-term rate in a further rolling back of emergency measures introduced two months ago to shore up the struggling rupee.

Oct 08: Byco Terminal Pakistan Limited and Coastal Refinery Limited, operators of the first and only Single Point Mooring in the country, signed an agreement with MEKE A.S., of Turkey for coverage of Tier 3 oil spill eventuality.

Oct 08: The United States launched a new $100 bill that comes with, for the iconic greenback, a new touch of colour, as well as special features to foil counterfeiters. In its first remake since 1996, the $100 banknote features the traditional portrait of American Revolutionary War statesman Benjamin Franklin on the front.

Oct 10: Mohammad Zubair Motiwala resigned from the chairmanship of Board of Investment, Government of Sindh.

Oct 10: The federal government decided to issue next generation licence for 15 years.

Oct 10: The World Marketing Summit Malaysia 2013 (WMSM 2013) concluded with an engaging and insightful discourse, resulting in delegates exploring case studies, shared experiences and future direction on how social purpose can be injected into business objectives, elevating marketing to address and achieve the United Nations 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and at the same time, create a consumer market built from shared prosperity.

Oct 11: The United States will become the world’s largest oil producer next year, overtaking Russia, thanks to its shale oil boom which has transformed the global energy landscape.

Oct 11: Pakistan and the OPEC Fund for International Development entered into a loan agreement under which the OFID would provide $50 million for completion of the Neelum Jhelum Hydropower Plant Project.

Oct 14: The United States agreed to release $322 million for Pakistan from the Coalition Support Fund (CSF).

Oct 14: The US Overseas Private Investment Corporation agreed to increase its investment support for Pakistan from half a billion to $1.5 billion.

Oct 14: The World Bank committed $700 million to Dasu hydro power project, and also pledged $1 billion from its international development assistance funds.

Oct 15: EU finance ministers took a key step towards a ‘Banking Union,’ the new regulatory framework meant to prevent any repeat of the financial meltdown which plunged Europe into crisis.

Everyday Science

Sep 20: NASA gave up on the Deep Impact space craft, which suddenly fell silent after nearly nine years of exploring comets.

The US space agency declared an end to Deep Impact, which in 2005 smashed a comet with a projectile to give scientists a peek of the interior.

Sep 20: At the Sept 16-20 annual gathering of the IAEA’s 159 member states, China outlined plans for more nuclear power plants despite safety worries around the world in the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima disaster.

Sep 24: Scientists believe that man has reached his speed limit in throwing a ball and it will not be easy to cross the limits set by legendary fast bowlers such as Shoaib Akhtar.

Glenn Fleisig, the research director at the American Sports Medicine Institute, was quoted in The Times, London, as saying that major league baseball pitchers are now at their absolute physical limit with the current fastest pitch of 105.1 miles per hour.

Sep 25: American engineers built the first computer made entirely of microscopic carbon ‘nanotubes’ a big step in the quest for faster, ever-smaller electronic devices. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are rolled-up, single-layer sheets of carbon atoms tens of thousands can fit into the width of a single human hair.

Sep 29: Samples of coral, seashell, coralline algae and a number of dead fishes, crabs and shrimps have been collected during a survey of the newly-formed island off the coast of Gwadar.

Oct 1: For the first time, a chemical essential for the creation of plastic on Earth has been found in a far-off part of the solar system: Saturn’s largest Titan.
The discovery was made by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn.

Oct 1: Astronomers using NASA’s flagship space telescopes have spotted what appears to be densest nearby galaxy ever seen, with stars packed so tightly that they are likely 25 times closer to each other than the stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.
The super-crowded galaxy is called M60-UCD1 and is located about 54 million light-years away from Earth and the sun.

Oct 2: A nearby alien planet six times the size of the Earth is covered with a water-rich atmosphere that includes a strange “plasma form” of water, scientists say.
Astronomers have determined that the atmosphere of super-Earth Gliese 1214 b is likely water-rich.

Obituaries

Sep 16: Jack Britto, who represented Pakistan at the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games hockey event, passed away. He was 89.
From 1954 onwards, Britto represented Malawi and later became coach to the Malawi hockey team.

Sep 17: Eiji Toyoda, who helped steer Toyota Motor Corp’s global rise and pioneered the automaker’s vaunted production system, died. He was 100.

Sep 19: Former boxing champion Ken Norton, considered one of the greatest heavyweights of his era, died. He was 70.
The fighter was best known for beating Muhammad Ali in 1973, breaking the Hall of Famer’s jaw in the process.

Sep 23: Senior journalist Ejaz Ghani passed away at 75.

Sep 28: Renowned Sindhi poet and writer Shah Mohammad a.k.a. Shahan Badahi died. He was 63.

Oct 02: Best-selling US author Tom Clancy, whose thrillers about spies and submarines fascinated readers with their high-stakes plots and enthralled military experts with their precise detail, died aged 66.

Oct 04: Vietnam’s legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap, whose guerrilla tactics defeated the French and American armies, died at the age of 102.

Oct 06: A.S. Nathaniel, who served as the Quaid-i-Azam’s nurse during his last days at Ziarat residency, died.

Oct 07: Eminent scholar, writer, poet, musician and thinker Daud Rahbar passed away. He was 86.

Oct 14: Oscar Hijuelos, the Cuban-American author best known for his Pulitzer-prize winning novel ‘The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love,’ died in New York age 62.

People in News

Michael Morrow
On Sep 24, Michael Morrow, a California prison inmate, who escaped 36 years ago while serving time for armed robbery, was recaptured in Arkansas, becoming California’s longest-sought fugitive inmate to be caught.

A French Climber
On Sep 26, a French climber scaling a glacier off Mont Blanc got more than satisfaction for his efforts when he stumbled across a treasure trove of emeralds, rubies and sapphires.
The jewels, estimated to be worth up to 246,000 euros ($332,000), lay hidden in a metal box that was on board an Indian plane that crashed in the desolate landscape some 50 years ago. The mountaineer wants to remain anonymous.

Mark Gee
On Sep 30, an Australian space photographer Mark Gee has won top spot in a global space photography competition, with a spectacular “star-riddled” photo of the Milky Way galaxy, a jaw-dropping image beat out more than 1,200 other entrants in this year’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich and National Maritime Museum.

Abdul Haji
After an attack on Nairobi mall on 21 September 2013, a 4-year-old girl was running toward a man who was reaching out a hand to pull her to safety.
The man was Abdul Haji, a 39-year-old real estate executive who rushed to the mall as the attack got underway. He managed to evacuate scores of people to safety, including that young American girl, Portia Walker, and is being hailed in Kenya as a hero.

Herman Wallace
Herman Wallace, Louisiana man freed from jail less than a week ago after 41 years in solitary confinement died on Oct 4, 2013.
Wallace was one of three inmates who were convicted in the 1974 slaying of a prison guard. The men became known as the ‘Angola 3’.

Vice Admiral Tim Giardina
A career three-star submarine officer and the deputy commander of US nuclear forces was fired from his post after being investigated for allegedly using counterfeit chips at a casino. The move was highly unusual against such a senior officer in US Strategic Command, which oversees the country’s nuclear-armed missiles, submarines and bombers.

Megan Young
On Sep 28, Miss Philippines, Megan Young, was crowned Miss World amid tight security on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali.

Jahangir Khan Tareen
Jahangir Khan Tareen, an industrialist and landlord from South Punjab, was appointed as secretary general of PTI after Parvez Khattak, the chief minister of KPK, resigned from the post.

Zafar Baloch
Zafar Baloch, a key figure of the outlawed Peoples Amn Committee lost his life in an incident of targeted killing.

Natalie Rojas
Facebook has over 1.2 billion users, and a new web project from programmer Natalie Rojas has brought them all together as a mosaic of user pics on The Faces of Facebook.

Visually impressive, the site loads up as a supposed view of Facebook’s 1.2 billion users. You can select any area of the picture to zoom in for a closer look at clusters of individual profile images, all chronologically ordered, according to Rojas. Hovering over a user’s picture will give you their name and “FACE #,” representing the order all profiles were created. Clicking a user’s picture will even launch their full profile page on Facebook.

Gen. James Amos
In a rare move, Gen. James Amos, the commandant of the Marine Corps, forced two generals, Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus and Maj. Gen. Gregg A. Sturdevant, into retirement after concluding that they “did not take adequate force protection measures” at Camp Bastion, a sprawling British-run airfield in southwestern Afghanistan that was the Taliban target.

Anglia Ruskin University
A two-day conference on international education was organised by Anglia Ruskin University at their Cambridge campus in the United Kingdom attended by the vice-chancellor (VCs) of public and private sector universities from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and other countries.

Places in News

San Francisco
Software titan Adobe Systems warned that hackers stole credit card numbers and other information relating to nearly three million customers.

Hackers are believed to have taken information relating to 2.9 million Adobe customers.

Lahore
The City District Government Lahore (CDGL) started Datchi Express for children to view buildings and markets along The Mall.

United Nations
Ministers from 113 countries signed a declaration pledging new action to end sexual violence in conflict. The declaration prohibits amnesties for sexual violence in peace agreements and allows suspects to be apprehended wherever they are in the world. It also pledges to adopt a new International Protocol in 2014 to help ensure that evidence collected can stand up in court.

Hong Kong
A white diamond the size of a small egg sold for $30.6 million at an auction in Hong Kong, although a blue diamond that was the night’s other highlight with a $19 million estimate failed to sell.

Karachi
A ladies’ entrepresenurship conference was held at a hotel on Sep 21. The day-long moot was organized under the auspices of the Dawood Global Foundation (DGF) in collaboration with the HEC and French, German, Turkish and Indonesian Consulates as well as British Deputy High Commission.

Cape Canaveral, Florida
On Sep 22, a brand new commercial cargo ship making its orbital debut experienced trouble with a computer data link, and its arrival at the International Space Station was delayed at least two days.

Bushehr
On Sep 23, Iran took control of its civilian nuclear reactor, a 1,000-megawatt plant, at Bushehr, a project begun 37 years ago by West Germany, and finished by Russia.

Southern China
On Sep 23, typhoon Usagi killed at least 25 people after crashing ashore, throwing the region’s transport systems into chaos and leaving tens of thousands of airline passengers stranded in Hong Kong.

United Nations
On Sep 23, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened a historic UN meeting of world leaders ‘to break barriers and open doors’ for the more than 1 billion disabled people around the world.

The goal of the first-ever high-level General Assembly meeting is to spur international action to ensure that the disabled can contribute to the global economy.

Islamabad
On Sep 24, the Pakistan-Afghanistan Parliamentarians’ Dialogue was opened. From the Afghan side, Senator Farukh Shah Faryabi Jenab, Secretary Meshrano Jirga, and from the Pakistani side Senator Afrasiab Khattak, (ANP) Convener of Pakistan-Afghanistan Parliamentary Friendship Group in Senate of Pakistan chaired the Dialogue.

United Nations
On Sep 28, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution that demands the eradication of Syria’s chemical weapons. But the resolution does not threaten automatic punitive action against the Syrian regime if it does not comply.

London
On Sep 28, Former British PM Margaret Thatcher’s ashes were laid to rest in London at a service.

Greece
On Sep 28, a day after Golden Dawn threatened to pull its lawmakers out of parliament, Greek police cracked down on the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, arresting its founding leader and four other members in parliament, following the murder of a leftist musician allegedly by a party activist.

Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
On 10 Oct, the United States and Vietnam signed a pact that would allow the transfer of nuclear technology to the Southeast Asian nation and open the way for US investment in the burgeoning industry.

Hong Kong
First International Hong Kong Tattoo Convention was held in Hong Kong from October 4 to 6. Tattoo artists from around the world participated in the convention.

Lampedusa, Italy
On Oct 7, deep sea divers ‘unpacked a wall of people’ from the hull of a smuggler’s trawler on the seafloor near this Italian island, gingerly untangling the dead would-be migrants in the latest and most painstaking phase of a recovery operation.

London
According to the latest edition of the Anholt-GfK City Brands Index which measures a city’s brand image, power and appeal, London’s stock has gone up in the world as it took the top spot in the biennial ranking.

Here are the top 10 ‘best cities’ for 2013:
1. London    2. Sydney
3. Paris        4. New York
5. Rome        6. Washington D.C.
7. Los Angeles    8. Toronto
9. Vienna    10. Melbourne

Arica
Arica, Chile, is considered the driest city on the planet, with an average rainfall of just 0.03 inches. To give that number some perspective, consider that the driest place in North America, Death Valley, California, gets just under 2 inches of rain per year ‘or about 65 times more rain than Arica. Arica lies on the outskirts of the Atacama Desert, a place so dry that it gets about 4 inches of rain every thousand years.

And scientists think some uninhabited places in this desert haven’t seen any rainfall in over 4 centuries.

Iraq
On Oct 1, in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq archaeologists discovered an ancient city called Idu, hidden beneath a mound, located in a valley on the northern bank of the lower Zab River.

Davos
On Sep 13, a three-day World Economic Forum (WEF) Summer Davos session in Dalian came to a close. Most delegates walked away optimistic about China’s economic outlook and are looking forward to the policy reforms the government is expected to implement in the months ahead.

Seattle
A rare tornado damaged industrial buildings south of Seattle as an unseasonable storm dumped record amounts of rain and temporarily knocked out power for thousands in the Pacific Northwest.

Vatican
On Oct 1, the Vatican bank published its annual accounts for the first time in an attempt to boost transparency and distance itself from a string of scandals.

The bank – known as the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR – described 2012 as an “economically successful year” for its customers, as net profit shot up to 86.6 million euros ($117 million) – a 325 percent rise on the year before.

Interesting News

Life can be tough, especially when a judge says you’re dead in the eyes of the law.
That’s exactly what happened to Ohio resident Donald Eugene Miller Jr. on 7 Oct, when a judge upheld a 1994 court ruling declaring the 61-year-old legally dead. According to reports, a court in Hancock County declared Miller legally dead 19 years ago, eight years after he disappeared from his rental home.

Nose Implantation
After a Chinese man’s nose was irreparably damaged from infection, his doctors decided to ‘grow’ a second nose on the man’s forehead to replace the original nose.

The patient, identified only as Xiaolian, has his nose damaged from an infection following a car accident. His doctors decided the only way to reconstruct his nose was to surgically form a new one on the 22-year-old’s forehead.

Guinness World Records
Dog named Miracle Milly in Puerto Rico earns Guinness World Records title with a height of 3.8 inches.

The Antideficiency Act
Administration officials now live in fear of a 19th-century law that could get them fired, penalized or even imprisoned if they make the wrong choices while the government is shut down.

The Antideficiency Act, passed by Congress in 1870 (and amended several times), prohibits the government from incurring any monetary obligation for which the Congress has not appropriated funds.

Ferrari’s Record
A 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO has just sold for $52 million according to Bloomberg, snatching the record as the latest “most expensive car ever sold.”
WildCat

Under the US Department of Defense’s DARPA initiative, the WildCat, a wireless robotic speed freak that runs faster than most of us bipeds has been built by Boston Dynamics. The WildCat is a cousin of the terrifying ‘Cheetah’ robot unveiled last year. Though the Cheetah can hit speeds up to 28 mph, the WildCat manages a ‘mere’ 16 mph.