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/ 22 November 2006
Half centuries from Imran Farhat, Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf inspired a strong fightback by Pakistan to save the second Test after Brian Lara had hit his ninth double hundred to put West Indies in control on Wednesday. Farhat (70 not out) shared substantial partnerships with Younis (56) and Yousuf (56 not out) to steer Pakistan to a comfortable 213-2 at the close.
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/ 21 November 2006
A majestic unbeaten 196 from captain Brian Lara put the West Indies in complete control of the second Test against Pakistan on Tuesday. The 37-year-old left hander stood on the brink of his ninth double century in Tests as the visitors piled up 509-5 by the close of play on the third day.
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/ 20 November 2006
Chris Gayle and Daren Ganga forged an undefeated opening stand of 151 for the West Indies to cap a miserable day for Pakistan on day two of the second Test on Monday. Gayle (87) and Ganga (59) posted the first century opening stand for the West Indies in 20 Tests in Pakistan after the home side were bowled out for 357 with paceman Jerome Taylor taking 5-91.
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/ 17 November 2006
A British man who spent 18 years in a Pakistani jail for a murder he says he didn’t commit, was released on Friday, the Pakistani interior minister said. President Pervez Musharraf commuted Mirza Tahir Hussain’s death sentence on Wednesday after the British government and rights groups had pleaded for clemency for the 36-year-old from Leeds.
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/ 16 November 2006
Inzamam ul-Haq on Thursday urged the International Cricket Council to play six-day Tests during the winter in Pakistan to reduce the impact of bad light and poor weather. ”We lost 15 overs a day because of poor natural light,” said the Pakistani captain of the first Test against the West Indies in Lahore, which his side nevertheless won by nine wickets inside four days, finishing on Tuesday.
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/ 16 November 2006
Pakistan on Thursday test-fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile, the military said, a day after agreeing to fresh atomic safety measures at talks with rival India. The Hatf V missile with a range of 1Â 300km was fired from an undisclosed location and the test was successful, it said.
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/ 15 November 2006
Pakistan’s lower house of Parliament voted on Wednesday to put the crime of rape under the civil penal code, curtailing the scope of Islamic laws that rights groups have long criticised as unfair to women. The Women’s Protection Bill was seen as a barometer of President Pervez Musharraf’s commitment to his vision of ”enlightened moderation”.
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/ 14 November 2006
A century from captain Brian Lara could not prevent West Indies from tumbling to a nine-wicket defeat by Pakistan on the fourth day of the first Test on Tuesday. Lara scored a defiant 122 runs, his 33rd Test hundred, but it was not enough to stop West Indies from suffering their 16th defeat in their last 23 Tests since May 2004.
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/ 8 November 2006
A suicide bomber killed at least 42 soldiers at an army base in north-west Pakistan on Wednesday, in what appeared to be a revenge attack for a missile strike against an al-Qaeda training camp, officials said. Witnesses said the huge explosion left body parts and shredded clothing scattered across a parade ground.
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/ 1 November 2006
Pakistan fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar was banned for two years and teammate Mohammad Asif for one year after they tested positive for a banned steroid, an official said on Wednesday. A three-member doping tribunal appointed by the Pakistan Cricket Board ruled the pace pair out of all international and domestic cricket following hours of deliberations in the eastern city of Lahore.
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/ 31 October 2006
A religious school targeted in Pakistan air strikes was frequented by top al-Qaeda militants, including Ayman al-Zawahiri and the alleged mastermind of the foiled London airlines attack, a senior security official said on Tuesday. Neither al-Zawahiri — Osama bin Laden’s Egyptian deputy — nor Abu Obaida al-Misri were in the school, or madrasa, at the time of the raid on Monday, the official said.
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/ 31 October 2006
Thousands of tribesmen chanting ”Death to America” rallied against the Pakistani and United States governments on Tuesday ahead of nationwide protests over a raid on an Islamic school that killed 80 people. Pakistan launched its deadliest airstrike to date on Monday against a madrasa in the troubled Bajaur tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
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/ 30 October 2006
Pakistani helicopter gunships on Monday destroyed an Islamic school used as an al-Qaeda-linked training camp near the Afghan border, killing nearly 80 militants, officials and witnesses said. The strike targeting a madrassa near Khar, the main town in Bajaur tribal agency, was the biggest for months in the restive frontier region.
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/ 24 October 2006
England has conveyed to Pakistan it wants the International Cricket Council to intervene in a compensation dispute arising from the forfeited Oval Test after the two countries failed to reach an agreement. ”The England and Wales Cricket Board in their latest letter, have informed us they are going to the ICC,” said Pakistan Cricket Board director of operations Saleem Altaf.
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/ 18 October 2006
Former Pakistan Cricket Board chairperson Shaharyar Khan has blamed poor education among players for Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif failing drugs tests. Shoaib and Asif were recalled from the Champions Trophy in India on Monday after becoming the first cricketers to test positive for the banned steroid nandrolone.
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/ 16 October 2006
Pakistan paceman Shoaib Akhtar’s career has been a mixture of brilliance, frustration and injury, but his latest misdemeanour could well be his last. On Monday, Shoaib and new ball partner Mohammad Asif left Pakistani cricket in a state of shock after they were withdrawn from the Champions Trophy squad in disgrace after testing positive for the steroid nandrolone.
Former Pakistan fast bowler Sarfraz Nawaz said on Tuesday he was able to detect ball-tampering from 1 000 metres away and offered cricket chiefs his services to stop the practice. Nawaz, hailed as the pioneer of reverse swinging the ball during his heyday in the early 1970s and 1980s, said tampering was out of control in the modern game and called on world cricket chiefs to act.
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/ 4 September 2006
Pakistan captain Inzamam ul-Haq’s disciplinary hearing is likely to be held on September 27 or 28, a Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) source said on Monday. ”The ICC [International Cricket Council] has indicated to us about the proposed dates for the hearing. They will make a formal announcement themselves,” the source said.
Pakistan have asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) to hold an inquiry into umpire Darrell Hair’s conduct in the Oval Test before captain Inzamam-ul-Haq’s disciplinary hearing. After the cancellation of the ICC board meeting in Dubai on September 2, the Pakistan Cricket Board has written a letter demanding an urgent investigation into Australian Hair’s conduct during the fiasco.
Reaction in Pakistan to the ball-tampering row at the fourth Test against England has spiralled from initial dismay to a darkening mood of racial, religious and political undertones. The cartoon in a Pakistani Islamist newspaper on Wednesday has Australian umpire Darrell Hair dressed in a Nato uniform growling: ”I am also waging a war against terrorism.”
Flash floods triggered by torrential rains have killed at least 120 people in Pakistan’s North West Frontier province, and forced hundreds of thousands out of their homes in neighbouring India, officials said on Monday. In the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, 100 people have died in four days of torrential monsoon rains.
The death toll from a bridge collapse in Pakistan’s northern town of Mardan rose to at least 39 on Sunday as rescuers continued searching for dozens of people feared drowned in floods, reports and officials said. ”According to local people, more than 100 people were on the bridge when it caved in,” a senior district administrator said.
Landslides and flash floods caused by torrential rains have killed at least 14 people, including four children, living in tents in earthquake devastated areas of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, police said on Thursday. Ten people were killed during early morning prayers when a mudslide hit their tents at the foot of a mountain in Dadar Kadim.
Pakistan edged closer on Wednesday to reforming Islamic laws that discriminate against women, one of which makes rape victims liable to prosecution for adultery unless they produce four male witnesses. A Cabinet meeting approved in principle a draft of amendments to the Hudood Ordinances, as the laws are called, that will be presented to the National Assembly.
Pakistani officials on Tuesday ruled out the possibility of a terror attack in an airliner crash that killed 45 people, as they sent the plane’s ”black box” for analysis. The ageing Pakistani International Airlines Fokker F27 plummeted to the ground and burst into flames shortly after take-off from the central city of Multan on Monday.
A Pakistan International Airlines’ Fokker passenger plane crashed on Monday killing all 45 people on board, the police chief in the central city of Multan said. ”Everyone is dead. I am standing at the site,” said police chief Iftikhar Babar. Flight PK 688, en route for Lahore before flying on to Islamabad, crashed 10 minutes after take-off from Multan airport.
Pakistan said on Monday that Osama bin Laden was likely to be in Afghanistan, rejecting a reported claim by Kabul’s foreign minister that the al-Qaeda chief is hiding in Pakistani territory. In the latest verbal salvo between the neighbours, Islamabad dismissed criticism by new Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta of its attempts to catch Bin Laden.
Afghanistan’s Taliban militia has released a DVD purporting to show suicide bombers shortly before they carry out attacks and calling for more strikes on United States and British coalition troops. The film is called Convoy of Martyrdom Seekers and is sold at markets in restive north-west Pakistan and on the other side of the border in eastern Afghanistan.
At least 31 people have died as a searing heatwave brought temperatures of nearly 47ºC to central Pakistan, officials said on Monday. The hot spell comes amid a warning from the country’s top meteorologist that Pakistan faces a possible drought with no significant rain expected in the next two months.
Pakistan have hired former South African cricketer Jonty Rhodes to boost their squad’s fielding skills ahead of an important tour of England, officials said on Friday. ”We have finalised the hiring of Rhodes as fielding coach for two weeks and he will be arriving in early June,” Pakistan Cricket Board director Abbas Zaidi told Agence France-Presse.
Pakistani police have registered a blasphemy case against Danish cartoonists and some European newspapers over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked worldwide protests this year, they said on Wednesday. Internet search engines Google.com and Yahoo.com were also named in the complaint filed by Iqbal Haider, an activist of a small political party, police said.
Pakistan and India agreed to work towards finalising a draft agreement reducing the risk of an accidental nuclear conflict between them at the end of two days of talks on Wednesday. "The two sides held detailed discussions on the draft text of an agreement," said a joint statement.