NEW YORK, JUL 31 (IANS):A church in Florida, US, is reportedly planning to host an “International Burn a Quran Day” on the anniversary of the Sep 11, 2001, terror attack, a move that has been condemned by many Christians and Muslims. The Dove World Outreach Centre in Gainesville, Florida, would host the event to remember 9/11 victims and take a stand against Islam, which it calls a “deceptive religion” and “of the devil”.
The church is promoting the event on its website and Facebook page and has invited Christians to burn the Muslim holy book at its premises from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. “We believe that Islam is of the devil, that it’s causing billions of people to go to hell, it is a deceptive religion, it is a violent religion and that is proven many, many times,” church pastor Terry Jones was quoted as saying by the CNN.

LONDON, JUL 30 (IANS):Taliban in Afghanistan has threatened to behead informers who have been revealed following the explosive disclosure by WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has put out over 90,000 uncensored intelligence documents, causing a security scare. Countries which have their forces fighting in Afghanistan are pouring over the documents to see the extent of the damage.
The Taliban on Thursday night responded for the first time since the WikiLeaks expose of the names and locations of anti-Taliban informers, Daily Mail reported on Friday.

ISLAMABAD, July 28 (AP): A passenger jet crashed into the hills overlooking Pakistan’s capital amid poor weather Wednesday, killing all 152 people on board and blazing a path of devastation strewn with body parts and twisted metal wreckage. It was the worst plane crash ever in Pakistan, and rescue workers battled fires and muddy conditions as they searched in vain to find survivors on the densely wooded hillside where the flight went down.
“The situation at the site of the crash is heartbreaking,” said Imtiaz Elahi, chairman of the Capital Development Authority, which deals with emergencies and reports to the Interior Ministry. “It is a great tragedy, and I confirm it with pain that there are no survivors.” The dead included two U.S. citizens, said the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad without providing further details. The crash left twisted metal wreckage hanging from trees and scattered across the ground on a bed of broken branches. Clouds of dense gray smoke rose up from the burning wreckage as a helicopter hovered above.

Madrid, JUL 12 (AP/Agencies):Spain’s World Cup-winning team has arrived home from South Africa for a huge celebration, including meetings with the Spanish king and prime minister and an open air bus ride through the city’s historic center.
Players landed at Madrid’s Barajas airport shortly before 3 p.m. (1300 GMT). After resting at a hotel, they will be received by King Juan Carlos in the Royal Palace. Then they head to meet Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

KATHMANDU, JUL 11 (IANS):Less than a fortnight after a minister was detained in Nepal for carrying banned Indian currency notes, Nepal has reiterated its call to India’s banking transaction regulator to lift the prohibition.
Yubaraj Khatiwada, governor of Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB), the republic’s apex bank, has asked Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor D. Subbarao to lift the RBI ban on Rs.1,000 and Rs.500 Indian rupee notes in Nepal. The ban came into effect more than a decade ago after a growing racket in fake Indian currency as well as suspected routing of money to fund terrorist activities through Nepal.

JOHANNESBURG, JULY 10 (AP): Spain’s artists meet the artisans of the Netherlands on Sunday in a World Cup final that will end with one team taking the title for the first time. European champion Spain has steadily improved with each game in South Africa until the point where it controlled this week’s semifinal against Germany with a measured performance that denied a previously impressive team any space or opportunity to counterattack.

NEW DELHI, JUL 8:Celebrity octopus Paul, who has so far correctly predicted the outcome of all of Germany’s games in the 2010 World Cup, will now also forecast the result of the final between Spain and the Netherlands.
According to reports, Paul will also predict the outcome of the third-place playoff game between Germany and Uruguay even though most German fans are angry and some have called for its killing or being thrown into the shark tank at the German aquarium in Oberhausen.

SEOUL, July 5 (AP): Like most North Koreans, Son Jong Nam knew next to nothing about Christianity when he fled to neighboring China in 1998. Eleven years later, he died back in North Korea in prison, reportedly tortured to death for trying to spread the Gospel in his native land, armed with 20 bibles and 10 cassette tapes of hymns. He was 50.
His story, pieced together by his younger brother, a defector who lives in South Korea, sheds light on a little-discussed practice: the sending back of North Korean converts to evangelize in their home country — a risky move, but one of the few ways to penetrate a country that bars most citizens from outside TV or radio and the Internet. Little is known about the practice, believed to have started in the late 1990s. Missionaries won’t say how many defectors they have sent back, citing their safety and that of the defectors. “It’s their country, where people speak the same language.

London, June 23 (ANI): India is among thirteen countries that have been declared to have a high level of corruption and abysmal government performance. According to the report prepared by the Washington based Results for Development Institute (R4D), Guatemala, Paraguay, Ghana, Kenya, Peru, Argentina, Russia, Romania, Albania, Moldova, Poland, and Indonesia are the other countries that were listed for review and assessment on these two counts.

VOA News, 15 June: Police in Pakistan have detained an armed 52-year-old American man for allegedly trying to cross the border into Afghanistan to hunt and kill fugitive al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden. Pakistani authorities have identified the suspect as Gary Faulkner, a resident of California. They say police arrested the man early this week in the northwestern mountainous district of Chitral, which borders Afghanistan's eastern Nuristan Province. The suspect is said to have told his Pakistani investigators he was on a mission to kill Osama bin Laden because he considers the leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network a big threat to the United States. Acting District Police Chief Mumtaz Ahmed Khan said the American was roaming in a village bordering Afghanistan when police captured him.