Plane crash in Pakistan kills 152 people
ISLAMABAD — A government official says all 152 people on board a plane that crashed in the hills surrounding Pakistan’s capital were killed.

The cause of Wednesday’s Airblue crash was not immediately clear. It attempted to land in rainy and cloudy conditions. (more…)

Clinton aims to refine goals of Afghan war
ISLAMABAD — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton started a South Asia tour on Sunday aimed at refining the goals of the nearly 9-year-old war in Afghanistan and pushing neighboring nations to work together in the fight against al-Qaida and Taliban extremists.

Clinton landed in Islamabad where she will underscore the need for Afghan-Pakistani cooperation in winning the war but also announce plans to beef up U.S. development assistance to Pakistan, which is rife with anti-American sentiment.
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The Lahore High Court has declared Mudassir Qayyum Nahira, a PML-N member of the national assembly, disqualified because he holds a fake degree. Elected form NA-100 Gujranwalla. The idea that those holding fake degrees should be disqualified – not just for the ‘fakeness’ of their education but also for the sheer act of lying and making a fool of the very people they are supposed to be representing (more…)

McDonalds Recall – 12 Million Shrek Glasses Recalled After Cadmium Fears
McDonalds Remember, federal regulators found that 12 million “Shrek” $ 2 cup from McDonald sold as a development bank, movie tie-in “Shrek Forever After”, contains toxic cadmium, a risk factor for health of children. This is the official Consumer (Product Safety Commission) quickly and the advertised product was recalled. The lenses are available in four, 16 oz glass designs were in McDonald’s restaurants from May 1921 and produced about 12 million euros. The four designs include Puss’ n Boots, Shrek, Princess Fiona and Donkey. “A very small amount of cadmium, the surface can come from the cup, and the greatest possible protection of children, the CPSC and McDonald’s have worked together in this recall,” said CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson. He declined to specify the amounts of cadmium leached from the paint on the evidence, but said the amounts were “developed slightly above the level currently protected by the agency.” Wolfson said that the glasses have “much less than cadmium in children who previously recalled metal jewelry of the CPSC.”

The 16-ounce glasses, being sold for about $2 each as part of a promotional campaign for the movie “Shrek Forever After,” were available in four designs depicting the characters Shrek, Princess Fiona, Puss in Boots and Donkey. (more…)

Tropical Cyclone Phet threatens the Indian and Pakistani coastlines
Tropical cyclone 03A has intensified quickly in the last 24 hours, and as a result, the storm has been renamed Tropical Storm Phet. Phet is located in the Arabian Sea, Northern Indian Ocean, and is threatening the Indian and Pakistani coastlines, NASA satellite imagery has claimed.

NASA’s Aqua satellite flew over Tropical Storm Phet on June 1 at 9:11 UTC (5:11 EDT) and captured an infrared image of the cloud top temperatures. The image indicated large areas of high, cold cloud tops, as cold as -63 degrees Fahrenheit, indicating strong convection.

At 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT) on June 1, Tropical Storm Phet had maximum sustained winds near 55 knots (62 mph) with higher gusts. Phet was located about 550 miles south-southwest of Karachi, Pakistan, near 16.8 North and 62.2 East. Phet is moving to the northwest near 6 knots (7 mph).

Current landmasses threatened by Phet include: India (Gujarat), Pakistan (Sindh and Balochistan).

Phet is forecast to continue strengthening and turn northeast later this week. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecasts landfall by the end of the week in the border area between India and Pakistan. (more…)

LAHORE: Gunmen attacked worshippers from a religious minority in two worship places in Lahore on Friday, taking hostages and killing at least 30 people, officials said.

The gunmen opened fire shortly after Friday prayers and threw grenades at two Ahmadi worship places in Lahore’s Model Town and Garhi Shahu neighbourhoods.

Rizwan Naseer, director general of an ambulance service, told Reuters 30 bodies had been taken to hospitals in the city.

City officials had earlier put the death toll at 14.

“There are some hostages and we are planning an attack,” said Haider Ashraf, a senior police office in the neighbourhood of Garhi Shahu. “Their lives are under threat.”

Shooting continued at Garhi Shahu.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion quickly fell on the Pakistani Taliban.
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Pakistanis create rival Muslim Facebook
ISLAMABAD — Pakistanis outraged with Facebook over “blasphemous” caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed have created a spin-off networking site that they dream can connect the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims.

A group of six young IT professionals from Lahore, the cultural and entertainment capital of Pakistan, launched www.millatfacebook.com on Tuesday for Muslims to interact online and protest against blasphemy.

The private venture came after a Pakistani court ordered a block on Facebook until May 31, following deep offence over an “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day” page considered “blasphemous” and “sacrilegious”. (more…)

Pakistan mosque gunmen kill 20, take hostages
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen attacked two mosques belonging to a minority sect during Friday Prayers in Lahore, seizing worshipers and repelling police officers as they tried to rescue the hostages, witnesses said.

Sixteen people were killed, according to Sajjad Bhutta, the district administrator of Lahore. Hospital officials spoke of dozens more who were injured, and some news reports said that more than 20 people died.

More than an hour after the attacks started, two gunmen on the roof of a mosque near the rail station were still firing at security forces on the ground below them, said Qamar Suleman, a worshiper who was able to flee.
They are both mosques of the Ahmadis, also known as Qadiani, and have tens of thousands of members. Rights groups say the sect has long been persecuted in Pakistan and has remained an occasional target of sectarian attacks. (more…)

The reason why there is no picture of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him)
why is it that there isn’t a picture available of the prophet Muhammed[pbuh] anywhere in the world?

Islam came to prevent all means that may lead to shirk or the association of others in worship with Allaah. Among these means is the making of images, so sharee’ah forbids making images, and curses the one who does that, and a strong warning is issued to the one who does that. It was narrated from ‘Aa’ishah the Mother of the Believers that Umm Habeebah and Umm Salamah mentioned a church that they had seen in Abyssinia, in which there were images. They mentioned it to the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and he said: “Those people, if there was a righteous man among them and he died, they would build a place of worship over his grave and put those images in it. They will be among the most evil of creation before Allaah on the Day of Resurrection.” (narrated by al-Bukhaari, al-Salaah, 409).
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Pakistan blocks YouTube and Wikipedia after Facebook

The Pakistani government blocked access to YouTube on Thursday because of “sacrilegious” content on the video-sharing website, signaling a growing Internet crackdown against sites deemed offensive to the country’s majority Muslim population.

The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority did not point to specific material on YouTube that prompted it to block the site, only citing “growing sacrilegious contents.” The government took action against both Facebook and YouTube after it failed to persuade the websites to remove the “derogatory material,” the regulatory body said in a statement.
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