Hameed, in a video released by British tabloid the News of the World, is shown accusing his teammates of fixing almost “every match” Pakistan has played. But the batsman denied giving any such interview to the tabloid and said the undercover reporter who spoke to him posing as a sponsorship agent sent him intimidating text messages to stick to the comments shown in the video.

Hameed was summoned to the Pakistan high commission in England for a meeting with high commissioner Wajid Shamsul Hasan in London on Sunday. After the meeting, the Pakistan Cricket Board’s legal advisor Tafazzul Rizvi released a statement on behalf of Hameed. In the statement, Hameed said that he was offered money and even blackmailed to stand by the remarks attributed to him in the video which he claims was shot without his knowledge.

“I would like to respond to comments attributed to me by the News of the World today. I wish to stress I have never been approached by the NOTW and neither did I approach anyone connected with the News of the World to disclose any allegations concerning the Pakistan cricket team or any other players,” Hameed said in his statement.

Hameed claimed that he was having dinner with a friend at the Holiday Inn, Nottingham on the evening of Monday August 30 and was approached by a man who introduced himself as Abid Khan and offered to arrange a sponsorship deal for him (Yasir) with an airways.

“I have now seen a photograph of the so-called Abid Khan and have discovered that he is Mazhar Mahmood (NOTW’s undercover reporter). Naturally I was interested in what he had to say and we began a conversation. He offered me at least 50,000 pounds for the deal, which was for a 6′ x 3′ sticker at the back of the cricket bat plus TV and billboard advertisements in the UAE,” he said. “He also asked me for names of four more players who may be interested in a similar deal. I thought of Umar Gul, Shahid Afridi, Umar Akmal and Fawad Alam,” Hameed added.

“I also called Umar Gul during this conversation to tell him about this potential contract deal and he agreed that I should continue with the negotiations,” Hameed said. “Then Abid Khan started asking about the match-fixing allegations and as I saw him as a friend and a potential agent, I naively started to answer. He asked me about the match-fixing allegations against the current three Pakistani players and if I had any further knowledge. As far as I can recall I only told him whatever I had already read.”

Afridi says Hameed is ‘retarded’

LONDON: Pakistan ODI and Twenty20 skipper Shahid Afridi has said that Yasir Hameed has the mindset of a teenager despite being 30-31 years of age. The claim came after the opener allegedly told an undercover journalist that his teammates were corrupt and had constantly fixed games.

“Yasir Hameed is about 30 or 31, but mentally he is 15 or 16. People know the type of character he is. We have known him for a long time and we know what to expect from him,” the Sun quoted Afridi as saying. “He has done this sort of thing many times. Is he unreliable? Well, he is sitting with someone he does not know and gives these messages out, so, I have to say yes,” he said.

ICC to consider Aamer’s young age while handing out punishment

LONDON: Pakistan pace sensation Mohammad Aamer’s tender age of 18 may help him escape stringent punishment such as a life ban in case he is found guilty of spot-fixing allegations, ICC’s CEO Haroon Lorgat has hinted.

“In my own honest personal view, yes, I think age would come into account in these matters. But that is something the independent tribunal will have to decide upon,” Lorgat was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail. Lorgat also said Hameed’s disclosure was disappointing. “I feel extreme disappointment because we’ve got a code in place that obliges players to disclose any sort of information like this,” he said.

Read more: I was tricked, blackmailed: Yasir Hameed – Top Stories – Cricket – Sports – The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/cricket/top-stories/I-was-tricked-blackmailed-Yasir-Hameed/articleshow/6509163.cms#ixzz0yq5VmFbO

“UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie arrived in Pakistan today to meet people affected by the floods and to highlight the continued urgent need for help,” the agency said in a statement.

Jolie, the 34-year-old actress and roving envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, would be travelling to affected communities in the northwest and would meet those involved in the relief efforts, it said.

This is the fourth visit by Jolie to Pakistan since she became a UNHCR goodwill ambassador in 2001.

Last week Jolie released a video message appealing for greater public support for Pakistan’s relief efforts, and she has herself donated 100,000 dollars to the flood appeal.

The UNHCR is providing relief aid including shelter materials to those displaced by the disaster, which has killed 1,760 people by the official toll.

Commenting on the incident where senior journalist of The News (a local newspaper) Umar Cheema was tortured, he said it was an issue more serious than the ban on TV channels and the media should raise a joint voice against it.

When asked to comment on the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Prosecutor-General Irfan Qadir’s reported refusal to abide by the Supreme Court’s judgment regarding his (Qadir’s) removal from office, Nawaz said they had supported the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government on the 18th Amendment to strengthen national institutions, including the judiciary.

To a question about the premier’s intentions to convene an All Parties Conference (APC) for devising a joint policy on coping with the calamity of floods, he said it was too late to convene the APC, implying that the PML-N would not support the idea if the prime minister decided to organise the conference.

About the Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s Altaf Hussain’s statement on a “martial law-type action against feudal lords and corrupt politicians,” he said it could be the wishful thinking of the enemies of Pakistan and not of well-wishers of the country. He said martial law had been tried in the past only to learn that it was itself a problem instead of being a solution to other problems.

On the ongoing wave of terrorism in the country, Nawaz said those who were killing innocent people could not be termed humans. He affirmed his pledge to continue the struggle against terrorism and to defeat the terror groups instead of accepting defeat at their hands.

The Presidency, however, distanced itself from Qadir’s stance and Farhatullah Babar has refuted Qadir’s claim of involvement of the Presidency. Irfan Qadir also called a meeting of law officers at his office and issued them high-level directives to keep up their work.

A three-member Supreme Court bench, last week, declared the appointment of the acting chairman, NAB, Javed Qazi, and Prosecutor General Irfan Qadir as “illegal and unlawful”.

The court gave the verdict on a petition, filed by Punjab Advocate General Harris Ahmad Khawaja, who, during the course of proceedings of the Bank of Punjab scam case, challenged the appointments of Qadir and Javed Zia Qazi.

With the order of the court, legal experts believe that all the cases dropped by NAB under the signature of Irfan Qadir and Zia Qazi would be reopened, including three important references against President Asif Ali Zardari.

Khawaja Harris, Advocate General Punjab, while talking to our sources said that any person who acknowledges Irfan Qadir as NAB prosecutor general and acts on his directives was also liable to contempt of court proceedings.

He mentioned that Irfan Qadir can be tried under contempt of court proceedings, but the court remains in the bounds of decency. “Such attitude is unbecoming of a person who has remained a judge of a high court and has been assoc-iated with this profession for years,” Khawaja Harris said adding:

“When the court has said that Irfan Qadir’s appointment is illegal then all the orders passed by Qadir are void and the cases closed with his signatures will also be reopened.”

It is worth mentioning here that three major cases against President Asif Ali Zardari, Cotecna reference, polo ground reference and ARY Gold reference have been withdrawn by NAB under Irfan Qadir.

Khawaja Harris mentioned that when a person like Irfan Qadir publicly issues a statement against the Supreme Court then the court can ask the executive to throw Qadir out of his office under Article 190 of the Constitution.Sources close to Law Secretary, Masood Chushti, told this correspondent that the Law Ministry has not asked Irfan Qadir to carry on with his office and that Qadir was doing all this on his own.

“We are targeting Pakistani security forces because the government has allowed America to launch drone attacks on us,” Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Azam Tariq told AFP by telephone.

“Rather it is on the Pakistan government’s behest that drone attacks target us,” he said.

“We will continue suicide attacks on security forces. Civilians should avoid proximity with them.”

Tariq claimed responsibility for Monday’s suicide attack on a police station in northwestern Pakistan in which 19 people were killed.

Nine policemen and four schoolchildren were among those killed by the attack in Lakki Marwat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, not far from tribal areas that are a stronghold of the Taliban.

“We carried out the Lakki Marwat suicide attack,” Tariq said, adding that the Taliban “regretted” the killing of schoolchildren in the attack.

“Our children are also killed in drone attacks,” he said.

The TTP frequently claims responsibility for attacks on Pakistani security forces but generally denies those that target civilians.

US forces have been waging a drone war against Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked commanders in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt, where militants have carved out havens in mountains outside direct government control.

The US military does not as a rule confirm drone attacks, but its armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy pilotless drones in the region.

Washington has branded the rugged tribal area on the Afghan border — part of which has now been hit by Pakistan’s catastrophic flooding — a global headquarters of Al-Qaeda and the most dangerous place on Earth.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Taliban+says+will+continue+Pakistan+suicide+attacks/3489020/story.html#ixzz0yq0D5ijB

Earlier on Friday, an accountability court had sent Sohail Zia Butt to jail to undergo three years imprisonment awarded to him by an accountability court in absentia in 2001 under Section 31-A of the NAB Ordinance in a reference of Rs 2 million embezzlement.

On Thursday, the court had granted two-day physical remand of Sohail Zia Butt to National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Punjab, and had directed the bureau to produce the record of the reference number 31/2001.

On Saturday, The NAB authorities produced Zia before the court and sought extension to physical remand for further interrogation. However, NABís plea was rejected by the court as they did not produce the record of the case.

NAB authorities submitted that as the said reference was pending in the Lahore High Court, it was not possible for them to produce its record, adding that the courtís record was in the LHC along with prosecutionís record.

At this, the court rejected NABíS plea for extension to physical remand and sent Zia to jail for 11 days on judicial remand. The court had said that if NAB would be able to find the record of the reference during 11 days, they could consult with the court for extension to physical remand of Zia.According to case details, Zia was nabbed over the charges of defaulting on a Rs 70.2 million loan.

End.

During his speech in the National Assembly, Prime Minister Gilani said the loss incurred by Pakistan due to the floods was between five to six billion US dollars and that 30 per cent of the country’s agricultural land had been devastated.

Gilani informed NA that around four billion rupees had been accumulated by September 3 in the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund. He said the floods had claimed more than 1,600 lives.

He further said that some 479 health centres were operational and providing relief to the survivors.

At least 206 people were wounded in the Friday attack that the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for. Officials on Friday reported that 59 people were killed in the attack.

Qari Hussain, a senior member of the group — also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP — said the attack avenged the deaths of Sunni religious leaders by Shiites. The TTP also claimed responsibility this week for a trio of suicide attacks Wednesday during Shiite processions in Lahore, which killed 31 people.

The blast in the city of Quetta occurred during an Al Quds day rally, an annual event in the Arab and Muslim world that criticizes Israeli policies toward Palestinians.

Dramatic television images showed what appeared to be the blast, followed by heavy gunfire and people dispersing. Images also showed many casualties being treated.

The U.S. Justice Department announced this week that a key TTP leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, has been charged for his alleged involvement in the killings of seven U.S. citizens at an American military base in Afghanistan in 2009 and the attempted Times Square bombing this year. A $5 million reward is being offered for information leading to the capture of Mehsud and another top Pakistani Taliban leader, Wali Ur Rehman, U.S. officials said.

Hussain said his group felt proud that the United States felt “threatened” by the Taliban.

“We will continue to attempt the kind of attacks we tried in New York Times Square, but next time, we will succeed,” he said. “Soon the world will realize that we are very effective.”

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said U.S. officials “strongly condemn the recent barbaric attacks on religious processions in Lahore and Quetta and on a place of worship in Mardan, near Peshawar. Our sympathies are with the victims and their families and all those affected by these cruel acts of hatred. We stand with all of the people of Pakistan who should have the freedom to peacefully observe their religion, especially during Ramadan, and focus on rebuilding their lives after the floods, not mourn friends and family killed in terrorist attacks.”

In an apparently unrelated incident Friday in northwestern Pakistan, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside an Ahmadi worship place in Mardan, killing himself and a pedestrian, police said.

The incident occurred in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Waqif Khan, Mardan’s police chief, said guards fired on the suicide bomber when he tried to breach the site’s security barrier. After he was injured, the attacker detonated his explosives.

Four other people were injured in the attack.

Ahmadis, who call themselves Muslims, are considered heretical and have been persecuted in the Muslim world. Recently, there was fighting between Ahmadis and non-Ahmadi Muslims in Indonesia.

Sunnis and Shiites do not consider the Ahmadis part of Islam because they do not regard Mohammed as the last prophet sent by God. As such, they have been targeted by Islamic extremists.

Pakistan’s population is largely Sunni Muslim.