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Oil prices rebound in Asia

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New York's main contract, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in October, gained 46 cents to $97.08 a barrel and Brent North Sea crude for November added 31 cents to $114.10.



"We're potentially just seeing a little bit of a bounce based on the fact that the move yesterday was so vicious," said Jason Hughes, head of premium client management for IG Markets Singapore.



"A few speculators probably woke up this morning thinking it looks a lot cheaper than it did yesterday," he said.



WTI sank more than $4 in intraday New York trade Monday before closing $2 below Friday's closing price, while Brent dived more than $11 during the session before settling $3 lower.



Traders had been spooked by market speculation that US President Barack Obama's administration would release strategic supplies of gasoline to lower prices ahead of the November 6 election.



The market chatter on strategic petroleum reserves came as Obama faces a tight re-election race against Republican rival Mitt Romney, with the flagging economy one of the main concerns for voters. (AFP)


Suicide bomber

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The attack on a highway leading to Kabul international airport was the second suicide strike in the heavily fortified city in 10 days, renewing questions about stability as Nato accelerates a troop withdrawal and hands over to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.

Afghan insurgent group Hezb-i-Islami claimed responsibility for the blast, saying it was carried out by a woman to avenge the “Innocence of Muslims” film, deemed insulting to Islam.

The claim was made by spokesman Zubair Sidiqi in a telephone call to AFP from an undisclosed location. It is extremely rare for the faction to claim a suicide attack in Afghanistan. It is also rare for women to carry out suicide attacks.

Hezb-i-Islami is Afghanistan’s second-biggest insurgent group after the Taliban and is led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister.

An AFP photographer saw at least six bodies lying among the wreckage of a gutted minivan, and another vehicle destroyed by flames still burning in the middle of the highway, with debris flung all around.

“At around 6:45 am a suicide bomber using a sedan blew himself up along the airport road in District 15. As a result, nine workers of a foreign company and three Afghan civilians are dead, and two police are wounded,” police said in a statement.

An Afghan and a Western security official said nine foreigners were killed.

“The foreigners were from a private company working at the airport,” the Afghan official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Kabul police chief Mohammad Ayoub Salangi told AFP the bomber blew himself up alongside a minivan, carrying foreigners.

The attack came a day after protests turned violent for the first time in Afghanistan over “Innocence of Muslims”, as hundreds of angry men hurled stones at a US military base, clashed with police and shouted “Death to America”.

The movie, believed to have been produced by a small group of extremist Christians, has sparked a week of furious protests outside US embassies and other American symbols in at least 20 countries, killing 19 people.

A spokesman for Nato’s US-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) confirmed an explosion near the airport, but said there was no current report of casualties among its personnel.

Nato, which is helping the Afghan government fight a Taliban-led insurgency now in its 11th year, is gradually withdrawing its 112,600 remaining troops.

The United States, which leads the force, has 77,000 US troops in the country.

The attack took place on the eight-lane highway in front of a wedding hall, which would have been deserted at the time.
Witnesses said there was smoke spewing into the sky and a heavy police deployment at the scene of the attack,  contributing to a major traffic snarl-up on the busy road.

On September 8, a suicide bomber killed at least six people, most of them children, outside ISAF headquarters in Kabul in an attack that the Taliban claimed targeted the CIA to avenge US moves to blacklist its Haqqani network as a terrorist organisation.

Tuesday’s attack came after a devastating few days for Nato in which six of its soldiers were shot dead by suspected Afghan police, the Taliban destroyed six US fighter jets in an unprecedented assault on a major base in the south and one of its air strikes killed eight Afghan women.

Nato insists the insurgency in Afghanistan is on the back foot, with Afghan forces taking the lead for security over 75 percent of the population, as part of the phased departure of most Western troops.

But concerns are growing about how to halt so-called insider attacks, in which Afghans turn their weapons against their Nato colleagues. At least 51 Western soldiers have been killed in 36 such incidents so far this year alone.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Monday sought to downplay such fears, calling the attacks a “last-gasp” tactic from Taliban who have lost ground in the last two years since a surge of Nato troops, now being withdrawn.


The report that explains what US is doing to Fata people

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LONDON: ‘Living Under Drones’, a new report from Stanford and New York universities, was a difficult piece of fieldwork — I was with the law students in Peshawar as they tried to interview victims of the CIA’s drone war. But it has made an important contribution to the drone debate by identifying the innocent victims of the CIA’s reign of terror: the entire civilian population of Waziristan (roughly 800,000).

Until now, the dispute has revolved around how many drone victims in the Pakistan border region are dangerous extremists, and how many children, women or men with no connection to a terrorist group. Until the area is opened up to media inspection, or the CIA releases the tapes of each Hellfire missile strike, the controversy will rage on.

However, there can be no sensible disagreement over certain salient facts: first, the US now has more than 10,000 weaponised drones in its arsenal; second, as many as six Predator drones circle over one location at any given time, often for 24 hours a day, with high-resolution cameras snooping on the movements of everyone below; third, the Predators emit an eerie sound, earning them the name bangana (buzzing wasp) in Pashtu; fourth, everyone can see them, 5,000ft up, all day — and hear them all night; fifth, nobody knows when the missile will come, and turn each member of the family into what the CIA calls a “bugsplat”.

The Predator operator, thousands of kilometres away in Nevada, often pushes the button over a cup of coffee in the darkest hours of the Waziristan night, between midnight and 5am. So a parent putting children to bed cannot be sure they will wake up safely.

Every Waziri town has been terrorised. We may learn this from the eyewitness accounts in ‘Living Under Drones’, or surmise it from the exponential increase in anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication across the region. Sometimes it is difficult for those in the west to understand. But for me, it brings to mind my mother, Jean Stafford Smith. In 1944 she was 17. She had left the safety of her school in the countryside to do a secretarial course in London. Each evening she took the bus home from Grosvenor Place, behind Buckingham Palace, to her digs off Tottenham Court Road. Back then, darkness would truly descend on the city, as the blackout was near total.

Sixty-eight years on, my mother retains vivid memories of the gathering gloom. When the doodlebugs (as V1s — Hitler’s drones — were called) came over, she knew that she was safe so long as she could hear the engine; only when they fell silent did she have to worry where they might fall.

In 1944, two doodlebugs hit the environs of Buckingham Palace, near where my mother learned shorthand. One blew out the secretarial school’s windows. A second killed more than 100 people who had been singing hymns in the Guards Chapel on Birdcage Walk. It was a weekend, so my mother was back at her digs.

My mother, an eternal optimist, never really thought she was going to die, even when — on June 30 1944 — a drone struck Tottenham Court Road. Perhaps reminiscent of the tragedy of 7/7 (the tube and bus attacks in 2005), a witness described “a bus, still packed with people sitting in all the seats, but all the glass blown out and all the skin blown off their faces”.

Many suffered far more than my mother. Indeed, fear for those you love can be more devastating than facing danger yourself: my grandmother Vera, a formidable woman, lived 60 miles north of London near Ely, and worried constantly about her youngest daughter. The ripples of anxiety spread wide.

So little changes. Current RAF doctrine tells us, euphemistically, how “the psychological impact of air power, from the presence of a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) to the noise generated by an approaching attack helicopter, has often proved to be extremely effective in exerting influence…” Perhaps they mean “terror”, as described by David Rohde, a former New York Times journalist held by the Taliban for months in Waziristan.

Rohde describes the fear the drones inspired in ordinary civilians: “From the ground, it is impossible to determine who or what they are tracking as they circle overhead. The buzz of a distant propeller is a constant reminder of imminent death.”

I hope that this report reminds us all what the US — with British support — is doing to the people of Pakistan. Maybe then there will be less surprise at the hatred the drone war is engendering in the Islamic world — and a chance that we will reconsider what we are doing.













India imports raw sugar for first time in 2 years

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MUMBAI/SINGAPORE: Indian mills have signed deals to buy up to 450,000 tonnes of Brazilian raw sugar for delivery from October to December as a gap between domestic and overseas prices widens, making room for the first imports in more than two years, five dealers told Reuters.

Millers based in western and southern India and global trading firms bought sugar at around $500 per tonne on a CIF basis, as the price in the domestic market has jumped more than 23 per cent to $680 per tonne in the past three months, the dealers said on Tuesday.

India, the world’s No.2 sugar producer after Brazil, last imported the sweetener in 2009/10, sending global prices to 30-year highs. The south Asian country has been exporting sugar for two straight years as output has exceeded demand and the shift to imports could bolster overseas sugar prices.

Global benchmark New York raw sugar futures edged up on Monday as rains persisted in main producer Brazil, but an expected rise in the global surplus kept the market near a two-year low of 18.81 cents hit on Sept. 6.

“The price difference is so high that despite calculating processing and handling costs, importers can make profits of more than $60 per tonne,” said a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trading firm.

India is likely to produce a surplus for the third straight year starting from Oct. 1, but output is likely to drop sharply in the key producing state of Maharashtra, parched by drought.

“Mills in Maharashtra are unlikely to get enough sugar cane. That’s why they are seeking raw sugar for capacity utilization,” said Kamal Jain, managing director of sugar brokerage Kamal Jain Trading Services.

India, the world’s biggest sugar consumer, currently charges a duty of 10 per cent on imports of raw sugar, but that would be waived if a mill exported the same amount of sugar within three years, Jain said.

India’s sugar production in 2012/13 is likely to fall to 24 million tonnes, from 26 million a year ago.

“People who are doing this (imports) are ED&F Man and Renuka. They are parking the cargo, hoping that production will be down in Maharashtra and millers will take the raw sugar,” said a dealer in Singapore.

“They are bringing in four vessels … they have succeeded in selling about 22,000 tonnes to two mills in Maharashtra.”

THAI PRICES HIGHER THAN BRAZIL

Thailand is quoting very high prices compared with Brazil, prompting India to source her entire requirement from the South American country, dealers said.

Indian farmers are likely to seek higher prices for cane after the government cut the fertiliser subsidy and the season’s drought is set to trim yields per hectare.

“Sugar prices will remain firm in 2012/13 due to higher cane price. This will make room for more imports. India may even buy 1 million tonnes of raws in the entire year. Most will get refined in Maharashtra,” said another Mumbai-based dealer.

“There is a risk of local prices going down due to higher supply. But that is even true for the world market. While the difference between local and overseas prices stays, India will import.”

Total supply in India for 2012/13 is estimated at 30 million tonnes, against local demand of about 22.5 million tonnes.

Bumper crops and lower imports by major consumers Russia and China will help global sugar prices to fall further in the 2012/13 marketing year, consultant Jonathan Kingsman said this month.









گیڈر اور کسان

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  پیارے بچو ۔ ایک دفہ کا ذکر ہے کہ کسی گاوں میں ایک زمیدار رہتا تھا۔ وہ ہر روز اپنے کھیت میں صبح سے لکر شام تک کام کرتا تھا۔
 ہر روز ایک گیڈر آتا اور ایک پتھر پر بیٹھ کر زور سے کہتا۔ چاچا کیسے ہو۔ زمیدار جواب میں کہتا۔۔ ٹھیک ہوں۔ 
 گیڈر  پھر کہتا۔ کیا بیج رہے ہو؟ کسان کہتا۔ خربوزے اور تربوز۔۔ گیڈر بولتا رات کو اس کی حفاظت کون کرتا ہے ؟
کسان کہتا۔ موٹا تازہ کالا کتا۔ گیڈر یہ سن کر کسان کو گالیاں دیتا۔ کسان بیچارہ ڈنڈا لے کر اس کے پیچھے دورڈتا۔ لیکن گیڈر اس کے ہاتھ نہ 
 آتا۔
کسان گیڈر کے ہاتھوں بہت پریشان تھا۔ ایک دن کسان اپنے دوست سے ملنے گیا۔ جو لکڑی کا کام کرتا تھا۔ اس نے پوچھا یار تم بہت پریشان
لگ رہے ہو۔ کیا بات ہے؟
  کسان نے ساری کہانی اپنے دوست کو بتائی۔  تو اس کا دوست بولا۔ یار یہ تو کوئی بڑا مسلئہ نہیں ہے۔ تم ایسا کرو۔ کہ یہ گوند لے جاو اور 
وہ جس پتھر پر بیٹھتا ہے۔ اس پر لگا دو۔
 کسان بہت خوش خوش گھر کو گیا
 اگلی صبح کسان نے وہ گوند اس پتھر پر لگا دی جس پر گیڈر روز بیٹھتا تھا۔ 
گیڈر آیا اور روز کی طرح بولا۔۔ چاجا کیسے ہو؟ کسان بولا اللہ کا احسان ہے۔ 
گیڈر پھر بولا۔ کیا بیج رہے ہو؟ 
کسان بولا۔ خربوزے اور تربوز۔  
گیڈر نے کہا۔  رات کو اس کی حفاظت کون کرے گا؟ 
کسان بولا ۔ موٹا تازہ کالا کتا۔ 
گیڈر نے یہ سن کر کسان کو گالیاں دینے لگا۔ کسان ڈنڈا لے کر اس کے پیچھے بھاگا۔ گیڈر جب اٹھنے لگا تو وہ پتھر سے چپک گیا۔
کسان نے اسے بہت مارا اور پھر ایک درخت سے الٹا لٹکا دیا۔ 
جو بھی اس راستے سے گزرتا گیڈر کو ایک دو ڈنڈے ماتا۔ شام تک گیڈر مار کھاتا رہا۔ وہ زور زور سے چلایا لوگو۔ میں اگر مر گیا تو قیامت 
آجائے گی۔ 
ایک آدمی نے ڈر کر اسے کھول دیا۔
گیڈر بولا۔ قیامت آئے یا نہ آئے پر مجھ پر سے قیامت گزر گی۔ یہ کہتا ہوا وہ بھاگا اور پھر کبھی لوٹ کر نہیں آیا۔۔






Jackal and the farmer

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Long age. There was a farmer in a village. He was every day from morning until late evening worked in his farm.
A jackal comes every day and sat on a stone and asks the farmer.
How are you today,  Uncle?  The Farmer says. I'm fine.  Jackal asks again. What are you seeds in farm?
Farmers says, melon and watermelon..
Jackal speaks, who is the protection by night?
The farmers tell him. Thick fresh black dog. The jackal hear  whenever that he many abuses to him and  run way very fast.
The poor farmer takes a stick and behind the runs. But he never  get him.
The farmer was very upset by him.
One day the farmer went to meet his friend. who was do weed works.  He asked to farmer. you are looking so upset, why?
The farmer told him all story. The woodworker. says. It's no big problem. I'm taking to you that gum and where he sits on a stone. You put this on before his comes.
The farmer gone back to home very happy.. The next morning the farmer put gum on this rock. Where the jackal has sitting daily.
Jackal came and said as usual. How are you today? Uncle.  I'm good. the farmer said.  Jackal asked again some question. What are you seeds in the from. He told again . Melon and watermelon.Jackal speaks, who is the protection by night?
The farmers tell him. Thick fresh black dog   . Jackal  was said many abuses to him and  try to run way.
But what is the hell.he said. He was stuck in stone. Farmer has too much beaten him And then hung reversed from a tree.
Everyone kicked him who goes this route. Until everning Jackal was beaten to everyone..
He screamed loudly. O people, if i died, then resurrection day will come now. A man scared opened him. Perhaps he has the right.
Jackal said to him, thanks a lot O kind brother.  Resurrection day come or not come. But i have passed aresurrection day on myself.. He ran fast and did not return again..

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