Millions of people bend and twist their bodies for Yoga Day

Millions of yoga enthusiasts across the world bent and twisted their bodies in complex postures Sunday to mark International Yoga Day.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spread his mat among rows of people, including his Cabinet members and foreign diplomats, at New Delhi’s main thoroughfare, which was transformed into a sprawling exercise ground.

Thousands of people dressed in white sat on yellow mats under the Eiffel Tower, and similar events were held in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Beijing, Manila and other places. Modi had lobbied the U.N. to declare June 21 as the first International Yoga Day.

“We are not only celebrating a day, but we are training the human mind to begin a new era of peace and harmony,” Modi told participants. “This is a program for the benefit of mankind, for a tension-free world and to spread the message of harmony.”

Schoolchildren, bureaucrats, homemakers, soldiers and ordinary folk took part in the exercise, held in all Indian state capitals. In Modi’s home state of Gujarat, yoga events were organized at nearly 30,000 places, state officials said.

In Taipei, more than 2,000 participants rolled out mats and performed 108 rounds of the “sun salutation” — the sequence of poses often practiced at the beginning of a routine as the sun rises.

“They give themselves a piece of time to observe their mind and their heart, which I think in the modern society we need a lot,” said practitioner Angela Hsi.

Fazel Shah, an Indian pilot working for a Middle Eastern airline, rushed from the airport on his stopover in Taiwan to join the event.

“Isn’t it awesome? I mean, just look at the number of people who are here, embracing it,” he said.

He said yoga was probably born in India but belongs anywhere. “If you go up from where I am and look from the sky down, you don’t see borders, you don’t see religions, you don’t see nationalities, you just see one group of people. So, I just go down and meet up with them, that’s all.”

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Thousands attend anti-austerity rallies across UK

Tens of thousands of people have taken part in anti-austerity demonstrations in UK cities.

The biggest march was in London, where thousands of people attended a rally outside the Bank of England before marching to the Houses of Parliament.

Union leaders and celebrities including Russell Brand and Charlotte Church have addressed crowds, while protests also took place in Liverpool and Glasgow.

The government says austerity measures are vital to cutting the deficit.

The London rally was also addressed by Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, former Coronation Street actress Julie Hesmondhalgh and Labour leadership hopeful Jeremy Corbyn.

The protest was organised by protest group the People's Assembly, which said 250,000 people attended. The Met Police have not estimated how many people were there.

Thousands of people also attended the rally in Glasgow, organised by Scotland United Against Austerity.

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Angelina Jolie, daughter bond with 12-year-old Refugee in Lebanon

Angelina Jolie, daughter bond with 12-year-old Refugee in Lebanon 

Mother-daughter duo Angelina Jolie Pitt and Shiloh spent some quality time with a 12-year-old Syrian girl named Hala in Lebanon.

Angelina, 40, met Hala a year ago during a trip for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, reported People magazine.

“Shiloh is very aware that I hold refugee families in high regard and has been asking to come on missions and meet them for many years,” Angelina said.

“She had heard about Hala since my last visit to Lebanon, and has been wanting to meet her and her brothers and sisters. “It was wonderful that they were able to meet, play together, and make friends. So many refugees are children. I’ve often heard them say that the most painful thing is not that they have lost their homes – it is that they have lost their friends,” she added.

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Three killed in Austrian car attack

Three killed in Austrian car attack

A four-year-old boy is one of three people who were killed when a 'mentally unbalanced' man ploughed his four-wheel drive into a crowd in the Austrian city of Graz, police say.

Witnesses said the green 4WD was travelling at over 100km an hour when it slammed into a crowd of people on one of the main shopping streets in the city.

The 26-year-old Austrian driver has been detained and described as a 'mentally unbalanced' man, according to governor Hermann Schuetzenhoefer.

A 24-year-old woman and a man, 28, were also killed while 34 others were injured, six remaining in a critical condition, officials said.

Regional police chief Josef Klamminger ruled out a terrorist motive.

'We can say clearly and without doubt that it is an isolated incident without political or extremist motivation,' he said.

During his rampage, the driver briefly got out of the vehicle wielding a knife and wounded two people before continuing on his course, the head of the investigation Kurt Kemeter said.

The suspect, a father of two, later gave himself up to police and showed no signs of being under the influence of alcohol or drugs, Kemeter added.

An initial investigation has revealed that the driver showed symptoms of 'psychosis' and was known for 'acts of violence', which led to him being barred from the family home at the end of last month.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer said he was 'deeply shocked' by the attack.

Shoppers described scenes of terror as the car ploughed into pedestrians, forcing people to scramble out of harm's way.

'People were screaming in panic and rushed into the stores to seek shelter,' said one woman at the scene.

The crashing of metal chairs on the terraces of cafes sounded like 'a shootout', she added.

Flowers and candles have been left in memory of the three who died near the scene, which has been closed off by police as the investigation continues.

Meanwhile the director of the Graz hospital, Gernot Brunner, praised the quality of care given to the injured even before the emergency services arrived.

'I thank the many people, including several doctors, who found themselves at the scene and quickly intervened,' he said.

- See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2015/06/21/three-dead-after-4wd-hits-crowd-in-austria.html#sthash.SOyG9gBD.dpuf

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Haqqani Network, LeT spared by army in military offensive: US report

 Haqqani Network, LeT spared by army in military offensive: US report

A US State Department report on global terrorism has acknowledged that the ongoing military offensive in North Waziristan and Khyber Agency has severely dented al Qaeda’s presence in South Asia.

“Al Qaeda’s presence in the [South Asia] region continued to face pressure from international, Afghan and Pakistani forces, and Pakistan’s ongoing offensive in the North Waziristan Agency  [has] further degraded the group’s freedom to operate,” stated the Country Reports on Terrorism 2014, published by the State Department on Friday.

“South Asia remained a frontline in the battle against terrorism [in 2014]… [But] pressure on al Qaeda’s traditional safe haven has constrained its leadership’s capability to communicate effectively with affiliate groups outside of South Asia,” it said.

The report noted that Pakistan’s military conducted ‘significant counter-terrorism operations’ in North Waziristan and Khyber Agency, while the country’s law enforcement and security agencies carried out raids in the country’s provinces.  “Security forces intercepted large stockpiles of weapons and explosives, and discovered bomb-making facilities and sophisticated telecommunication networks,” it said.

Even so, some groups continued to find space to orchestrate and launch attacks into Afghanistan and against minorities in Pakistan, the report pointed out. It said that while operations carried out by Pakistan’s military and security forces disrupted the actions of many militant outfits in the country, groups like the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Taiba were spared by the offensive.

And while it acknowledged Pakistan as a critical counter-terrorism partner of the US, the report noted that cooperation in this regard between Islamabad and Washington in 2014 had been ‘mixed’. “Pakistan continued to deny visas for trainers focused on law enforcement and civilian counter-terrorism assistance,” it said.

Read: National Action Plan plugged terror funding: Bajwa

The report also stressed the need for improvement in Pakistan’s national security and law enforcement infrastructure. It said that while the government rolled out many counter-terrorism plans, it failed to implement any of them completely.

“Pakistan promulgated a National Internal Security Plan (NISP) in February 2014, but failed to implement most of initiative. The National Counter Terrorism Authority (Nacta), which was formed under NISP, remained ineffective throughout the year due to the budgetary and bureaucratic reasons,” it said.

The report lauded the government’s efforts to reinforce legislation against terrorism and blamed the judiciary for slow processing of terrorism and other criminal cases.

On the other hand, it lauded the efforts of Federal Bureau of Revenue to counter bulk cash smuggling and acknowledged the initiatives of Pakistan Customs, which launched the End Use Verification (EUV) project to facilitate the entry of dual-use chemicals for legitimate purposes, while also investigating and preventing the entry of chemicals intended for use in IEDs.

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Pakistan’s Dollar Bonds Rise With Stocks After Moody’s Upgrade

Pakistan’s Dollar Bonds Rise With Stocks After Moody’s Upgrade

Pakistan’s dollar bonds climbed the most since April and stocks advanced after Moody’s Investors Service upgraded the nation’s sovereign credit ratings for the first time since 2008.

The yield on the notes maturing in April 2024 declined eight basis points to 6.95 percent as of 2:02 p.m. in Karachi, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The Karachi STOCK EXCHANGE 100 Index of shares rose 0.1 percent in a fifth day of gains. The Pakistani rupee climbed 0.2 percent to a one-month high of 101.725 a dollar.

Moody’s raised Pakistan’s foreign currency issuer and senior unsecured bond ratings to B3 from Caa1 with a stable outlook, citing improving foreign-exchange reserves and the government’s economic overhaul under an International Monetary Fund program. The upgrade augurs well for the South Asian nation that is planning to sell $1 billion of global bonds and privatize state assets to revive its economy.

“Moody’s move shows the confidence of international investors in Pakistan,” said Adeel Ahmad Khan, Karachi-based chief executive officer of BMA Asset Management Co., which manages about $80 million in stocks and bonds. “Pakistan can now offer international bonds at cheaper rates than it did previously.”

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is aiming to meet goals under a $6.6 billion IMF loan deal, plans to increase capital-gains tax to boost revenue and lift economic growth to the highest in nine years. Standard & Poor’s raised its credit outlook on Pakistan’s debt to positive from stable this year. It rates Pakistan as B-.

Investor Optimism

Sharif’s push to build power plants, roads and rail links to spur the $232 billion economy are helping improve investor sentiment. The nation’s first global sukuk since 2005 was five times oversubscribed last year. New York-based MSCI Inc. this week said Pakistan will be included in its 2016 review of equity indexes for potential reclassification as an emerging market.

The yields on the 2024 dollar bonds has slumped 89 basis points in 2015. The rate on similar-maturity Indonesian dollar debt rose 35 basis points this year to 4.48 percent. The KSE100, Pakistan’s benchmark equity gauge, has climbed 7.8 percent in 2015, compared with a 4.1 percent retreat in the MSCI Frontier Markets Index.

Pakistan is making “significant progress” in meeting the IMF’s economic targets under the loan program, mission chief to the country Harald Finger said in May.

“With the program now at its mid-point, we consider that the government has achieved significant traction in reforms,” Moody’s analyst Anushka Shah wrote in a statement on Thursda

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PM unveils Pakistan’s largest oil refinery

 Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Friday said that his government was committed to sustained availability of fuel and energy supplies in Pakistan to ensure accelerated growth in all areas.

He was addressing the inauguration of country's largest oil refinery complex with a crude oil refining capacity of 120,000 barrels per day, fulfilling around 39 per cent of country's energy needs and cutting down reliance on fuel imports. The refinery built by the Byco Group has brought in an investment of US 750 million and produce about 1.6 million tons of Fuel oil, 2.4 million tons of diesel, 1.1 millions tons of LPG annually.

The prime minister said that the refinery was an appreciable addition to the oil and gas sector, and would go a long way in achieving sustainable productivity and increased profitability. He said that oil and gas were precious natural resources and added that oil-producing countries boast a strong economy.

He said currently, Pakistan required 22 million tons oil, but the country was still short of capacity to refine crude oil. He said that it would take time to achieve complete self-sufficiency. He noted the role of Byco Group in oil refining and said the setting up of the second refinery would help generate employment opportunities and help the country achieve self sufficiency in crude oil refining.

The prime minister also appreciated the Abraaj Group for their investment in refinery and invited its head Arif Masood Naqvi to visit him in Islamabad and put forward suggestions and areas where they could make more investment. He said that it was his government's vision to make Gwadar a free Port and assured that necessary legislation would be done soon to accord it the status.

He said the Port would be connected through road, rail links to Peshawar and then onwards to Central Asian Republics. He said a beautiful road was being constructed from Gwadar to Chaman, near Quetta, while another option was to link it with Wakhan corridor in Afghanistan, from where it can be connected to the Central Asian Republics.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said that it would bring about a sea change in national economy, but also boost the economy of Balochistan, generate numerous employment opportunities and provide inter connectivity with all regions of the country. He reiterated that the operation in Karachi would continue till the elimination of the last terrorist and said peace was vital in the port city for a booming economy.

He said that those involved in the Safora attack in Karachi had been nabbed and said no leniency would be shown towards them who killed innocent people. He said that the terrorists now understood that they had no more room now to manoeuvre and were being cornered.

He said that the Zarb-e-Azb operation was going on with success and the hideouts and networks of the terrorists were no more operational. Nawaz asked Finance Minister Ishaq Dar to consider giving more concessions to new industries in taxation to encourage more foreign investment.

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