29 survivors so far in Nigeria boat sinking
lagos: Twenty-nine people, including two who survived by clinging to a cooking gas cylinder, have been rescued after a boat capsized off Nigeria last week with an estimated 128 people on board, an emergency official said on Thursday. “We have 29 survivors so far from the (Friday) boat accident,” the head of Cross Rivers State Emergency Management Agency, Vincent Aquah, told AFP. He said that the total number of bodies recovered so far remained at nine.
Clash between Hindus & Sikhs in Pak averted
Islamabad: A clash between Hindus and Sikhs over objectionable photos in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province was averted after community leaders helped broker a compromise, according to a media report on Thursday. Despite the understanding reached by the two sides, the Sikhs, who are a smaller minority in the Shikarpur area of Sindh, felt threatened by local Hindus, the Dawn newspaper quoted its sources as saying. The trouble began after Sikh students shared some photos of a recent mela in Jai Samadha Ashram in Shikarpur.
Pak daily pleased to see Malala back at school
Islamabad: Teen activist Malala Yousufzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban, has begun to attend a school in Britain, prompting a Pakistani daily to laud the “beacon of hope in a country where girls’ education is desperately needed and under siege”. “That renders all the more welcome the new pictures of Malala in the global media, taken as she and her father headed to her first day at the Edgbaston High School for Girls in Birmingham on Tuesday,” it said.
Imran Khan elected Tehrik-e-Insaf chairman
lahore: Imran Khan has been elected unopposed as chairman of the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf during intra-party polls held ahead of the upcoming general election. No other candidate contested against the cricketer-turned-politician during the polls in lahore on Wednesday. Khan told the media that no one will be eligible to hold the post of the chairman of the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf for more than two terms.
lufthansa cancels 670 flights due to strikes
Frankfurt: German airline lufthansa said Thursday it has cancelled more than 670 European flights owing to warning strikes by ground staff and other divisions within the group. Already on Wednesday, lufthansa had said it would cancel most of its domestic and short-haul flights between 5 am.
Blast in northwest Pak kills 12
Islamabad: Twelve people, including women and children, were killed and more than 30 injured when a powerful car bomb went off at a refugee camp at Nowshera in Pakistan’s restive northwest on Thursday, officials said. The blast occurred shortly before noon near the administration block of the sprawling Jalozai camp, which houses both Afghan refugees and people displaced by recent fighting in the northwest. Noor Akbar, the official in-charge of the camp, told reporters that 12 people were killed.
Web revolution awaits Google chief in Myanmar
Yangoon: For years Myanmar’s paranoid junta blocked websites such as Gmail and YouTube. However, when Google chairman Eric Schmidt visits this week, he will find a small but flourishing Internet community. long cut off from the rest of the world by sanctions and repressive laws imposed by the generals who ruled it for decades, Myanmar still has poor Internet penetration — and connections are painfully slow.