A man with tattoos on his body and his eyes is pictured during the third International Tattoo Festival in Sao Paulo.
Category WORLD
S. Arabia will send imams to Pakistan
Saudi Arabia would send imams, one each from Masjidul Haram in Makkah and Masjid-i-Nabawi in Madina, to Pakistan every year.
Talking to visiting Pakistan’s Minister for Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony Sardar Mohammed Yousaf, President of the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques Sheikh Abdulrahman Al-Sudais made the announcement.
He said this was being done to promote ties between the two countries. He said that King Abdullah attached great importance to Pakistan and its people.
Relations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are based on deep love and reverence, Sheikh Al-Sudais told the Pakistani minister and the accompanying delegation. He also prayed for the Muslim Ummah and progress and prosperity of Pakistan.
The Pakistani minister told Sheikh Al-Sudais that Pakistan was making a concerted effort to promote interfaith dialogue in line with the initiative of King Abdullah. He also extended an invitation to Sheikh Al-Sudais to visit Pakistan.
Sheikh Al-Sudais visited Pakistan while the Lal Masjid episode was dominating headlines, apparently to convince Maulana Abdul Aziz and late Abdul Rasheed Ghazi to surrender before authorities.
However, clerics of Lal Masjid did not pay heed to his advice.
Wasim bowled
Legendary Pakistan paceman Wasim Akram said Monday he will marry his Australian girlfriend, who has converted to Islam and will settle in his home country.
Australian media reported that Wasim proposed on bended knee to Shaniera Thompson in her living room.
“Yes, I will marry next year and I’ve known Shaniera for the last one-and-a-half years and she has converted to Islam,” Wasim told AFP by telephone from England.
“I feel lucky that I have got a second chance in life.”
The 47-year-old’s first wife Huma died in 2009.
Wasim said Thompson, a former public relations consultant, will settle in Pakistan.
“She is close to my kids who are also excited and my in-laws (Huma’s parents) also endorsed the decision after meeting her,” said Wasim, who has two sons from his previous marriage.
“It will be a new life, a new beginning and I hope that we will settle down well with the best wishes of family and fans,” he said.
Wasim played 104 Tests and 356 one-day internationals for Pakistan in a career lasting from 1984 to 2003.
He was regarded as one of the best left-arm fast bowlers to have played the game and remains a major celebrity in Pakistan.
Wasim was player of the tournament in the country’s only triumph in the World Cup, in Australia in 1992. He captained Pakistan to a runners-up finish in the 1999 World Cup in England.
Ramadan to begin July 10
The Ramadan crescent will be seen in the evening of July 9. So the first day of Ramadan will be July 10, the Sharjah Planetarium has announced.
The planetarium under the Department of Culture and Information said the Ramadan crescent will form July 8 at 11.14 a.m. and set at 7.08 p.m., five minutes before sunset.
It said Aug 9 will be astronomically the first day of Eid-ul-Fitr.
Ibrahim Al Jarwan, astronomy researcher and supervisor of the Sharjah Planetarium, said the first half of the holy month of Ramadan will witness a rise in temperature to around 46 degrees Celsius, accompanied by dry dusty winds.
So, this means in pakistan, it would either be 9, 10 or 11
Pakistani writer short-listed for Man asian literary award
Five novels showcasing the diversity and depth of writing from Istanbul to Tokyo were announced today as the shortlist for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize was revealed, listing distinctive and celebrated writers for the first time in a region-wide context.
The shortlist, which includes writers from five different countries, champions a debut novelist alongside a Nobel laureate, translated work as well as original writing in English, and includes smaller regional publishers as well as larger international houses.
The five shortlisted novels, selected from a longlist of 15, are:
Between Clay and Dust – Musharraf Ali Farooqi (Pakistan)
The Briefcase – Hiromi Kawakami (Japan)
Silent House – Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
The Garden of Evening Mists – Tan Twan Eng (Malaysia)
Narcopolis – Jeet Thayil (India)
Award winning literary critic and journalist Dr. Maya Jaggi is chair of the 2012 judging panel. Joining Jaggi as Prize judges for 2012 are award winning Vietnamese-American novelist Monique Truong and novelist Vikram Chandra, most notably winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. The Prize judges’ comments on (between clay and dust) book can be found below.
Between Clay and Dust
By Musharraf Ali Farooqi (Pakistan)
Published by Aleph Book Company
Dr. Maya Jaggi said, “Set in a decaying inner city after the partition of India, Between Clay and Dust is an elegiac but unromanticised evocation of a dying culture. The tragedy of a champion wrestler, challenged by his younger brother and befriended by an ageing courtesan, has a mythic resonance, as the characters’ ethical codes collide with the values of a new world. Farooqi’s tale is more moving for the spareness and restraint with which it is told.”
Musharraf Ali Farooqi was born in 1968 in Hyderabad, Pakistan. His previous novel, The Story of a Widow (2009), was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. He is also the highly acclaimed translator of Urdu classics Hoshruba (2009) and The Adventures of Amir Hamza (2007), contemporary Urdu poet Afzal Ahmed Syed’s selected poetry Rococo and Other Worlds (2010) and Urdu writer Syed Muhammad Ashraf’s novel The Beast (2010).
The date to announce the winner is on 14th march, so lets pray that a pakistani wins this award
World’s 10 least habitable cities
1. Mumbai
India’s commercial and entertainment capital tops the list when it comes to the worst cities to live in.
2. Istanbul
3. Seoul
4. Shanghai
5. Mexico City
6. Johannesburg
7. Buenos Aires
8. Beijing
9. Sao Paulo
10. Moscow
Ajmal kasab hanged
The accused behind the Mumbai 2008 attacks, Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab, was hanged at an Indian jail early on Wednesday, after his appeal for mercy was rejected by Indian President Pranab Mukherjee.
The death warrant for Kasab was signed on Nov 8 after his appeal for mercy was rejected on Tuesday by Indian President Pranab Mukherjee and that the government was maintaining secrecy over the issue.
The reports added that the allegedly sole surviving Pakistan-born attacker was hanged in Pune’s Yerwada prison at 7:300 am local time.
Kasab was sentenced to death in May 2010 after he was found guilty of a string of charges, including waging war against India, murder and terrorist acts.
What a black spot he was….
Paris hilton in Makkah
Socialite and hotel heiress Paris Hilton has sparked outrage in the Middle East by opening a new store in Saudi Arabia’s Holy city of Mecca.
Saudis took to Twitter to say Hilton, who once starred in a sex video, was ‘insulting Mecca’ by bringing her business venture to the city.
Hundreds lashed out at the celebrity entrepreneur with their tweets, with some saying it was an ‘affront’ to the ‘principal sanctuary’ of Islam.
According to the New York Daily News, one person replied to her message, in which she announced the official opening on her Twitter feed last Thursday, by saying: “R u kidding?”.
Another added: “Saudi claim there are other ways to allow for pilgrims, and if religiosity is of such importance, why is @ParisHilton being allowed a store in Mecca?”
A third person tweeted: “How can someone who made such a video open a store in the holy city next to the Grand Mosque?’ And a further added: “It is not acceptable to have such a woman open her store here.”
But the 31-year-old remained undeterred by the comments and tweeted a picture of the store accompanied by the message: “Loving my beautiful new store that just opened at Mecca Mall in Saudi Arabia!”
She later added: “This is the 5th store in Saudi Arabia, and store number 42 in total! So proud to keep growing my brand!”
Amir and afridi in Makkah for Hajj
Afia siddiqui Vs Anres breivik
A NORWEGIAN court has jailed mass killer Anders Breivik, who massacred 77 people for 21 years.
Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bomb attack and massacre that shook the nation to the core, said he wanted to “apologise to all militant nationalists in Norway and in Europe for not having killed more people”.
He smiled with apparent satisfaction when Judge Wenche Elisabeth Arntzen read the ruling, declaring him sane enough to be held criminally responsible and sentencing him to “preventive detention,” which means it is unlikely he will ever be released, even though a formal minimum term of 10 years applies.
He was cut off mid-sentence as his microphone was silenced by the court.
Breivik’s sentence, the maximum allowed in Norway, can be reviewed and extended indefinitely if the far-right extremist responsible for Europe’s deadliest peacetime gun rampage is deemed a continued threat to society.
Now, a guys get 21 years for killing 77 people mainly, muslim. Thats like 3.6 months per person. Compare that to AFIA SADDIQUI, she gets 86 years for killing 2 americans, thats 43 years for one person!
Shame on all muslim leaders…..
PAKISTANIS ONLINE . COM 