Pak attack
Pak army claim victory over Lahore attackers
Pakistan paramilitary troops at the police training school on the outskirts of Lahore(AP Photo)
Atleast 27 policemen in an eight-hour siege that ended with four terrorists being shot dead and six captured alive by security forces. ( Watch )
"We hope to finish the operation within 40 minutes to an hour," paramilitary Major Farhat Ali told Reuters at the site, after commandos took back control of the complex.
Television news channels showed jubilant police shouting praise to God and firing in the air, soon after an intense burst of firing inside the academy.
Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik earlier said 52 police were wounded in the attack but gave no word on the number killed.
Salman Taseer, governor of Punjab province, said authorities had reports of four people confirmed killed, although television news channels put the number of dead at 20, including cadets.
"It was like doomsday; it was every man to himself. Every boy was trying to race to safety," one young cadet with bandaged hands told reporters at a hospital.
The latest brazen attack will heighten fears about mounting insecurity in nuclear-armed Pakistan. The assault came less than a month after gunmen attacked Sri Lanka's cricket team in Lahore, killing six police guards and a bus driver. Those gunmen escaped.
One wounded policeman described how the attackers struck while police recruits were going through their regular morning drill on the parade ground in the eastern city.
"A grenade hit the platoon next to ours ... then there was continuous firing for about 20 minutes," the policeman told reporters gathered round his hospital bed.
"A man in light-coloured clothes -- I think they were white -- stood in front of us, firing at us. They wanted to do as much damage as possible."
Army and paramilitary troops laid siege to the training centre for hours, firing from rooftops of nearby buildings, while gunmen returned fire and threw grenades to keep police back.
Punjab police chief Khawaja Khalid Farooq said one of the suspected attackers had been caught. Footage showed police kicking a bearded man on the ground before leading him through a throng of journalists.
Reports said the suspect was caught with a grenade in his possession and had an Afghan passport, though a cadet who fled the carnage said he heard the attackers speaking a dialect common to southern Punjab. Lahore is the capital of Punjab province.
Governor Taseer said up to 10 gunmen carried out the assault, although one wounded policeman told Geo News channel there were up to 20 gunmen in the building.
The academy is on the road to the nearby border with India. Islamist militants have launched a campaign of violence to destabilise the Muslim nation of 170 million people, and the one-year-old civilian government's ability to meet the challenge.
U.S. President Barack Obama made support for President Asif Ali Zardari's government a centrepiece of a review of policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan that was announced on Friday, and which made annihilation of al Qaeda the United States' principle objective.
Despite the attack in Lahore, Pakistani stocks and the rupee firmed as investors registered relief that a recent political crisis had subsided.
Television channels said several hundred trainees were at the centre when the attackers struck. Taseer said some wore masks.
One witness told Reuters the gunmen attacked in groups of three or four from all sides, and lobbed grenades before opening sweeping fire on cadets assembled on the parade ground.
Another wounded policeman recounted how he escaped when the gunmen burst into a room and began firing indiscriminately.
"I jumped from the second floor," he said. "There were dead bodies all over the place."
One television station showed pictures of about a dozen police lying on the parade ground. Some appeared to be lifeless while others were crawling to cover.
An army helicopter circled overhead, and police and soldiers were seen carrying wounded to ambulances.
A police armoured personnel carrier (APC) earlier tried to enter the compound and an exchange of fire, including what appeared to be a grenade explosion, broke out, a Reuters photographer at the scene said. The APC then withdrew.
Militant violence has surged in Pakistan since mid-2007, with attacks on security forces and government and Western targets.
While there have been attacks in all Pakistan's big cities, most violence has been in the northwest, near the Afghan border.
Source From: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lahore-siege-ends-31-dead-Pakistani-forces/articleshow/4335033.cms
Varun Gandhi gets bail, but remains in jail
Pilibhit (UP): A court here granted bail to embattled BJP leader Varun Gandhi in two separate cases relating his alleged hate speeches but he will remain in jail because of his detention under the National Security Act.
Chief Judicial Magistrate Vipin Kumar granted the bail to the 29-year-old leader asking him to furnish two personal bonds of Rs 20,000 each after 45 minutes of arguments by the prosecution and the defence lawyers.
The magistrate gave the bail to Varun in two separate cases--one relating to allegedly causing breach of peace through inflammatory speeches at Barkhera and the other on the charge of violating prohibitory order.
Arguing for Varun's bail, his lawyer Siddharth Luthra alleged there was no evidence against his client and the video tapes purportedly showing his client making the speeches were fabricated.
He said the CDs have been sent to the forensic test and the report was awaited and there was no point in keeping Varun in detention.
Luthra said the prosecution based their case on local intelligence reports and statements of shopkeepers-witnesses none of whom was named in the case diary.
Luthra also contended that there was a delay in filing the case diary on March 26 although the incident had taken place on March 18.
The prosecution, on the other hand, referred to the CDs and the witnesses seeking to buttress the argument that Varun's speeches had vitiated the atmosphere.
Source From:http://www.indianexpress.com/news/varun-gandhi-gets-bail-but-remains-in-jail/440863/
Giant Internet worm set to change tactics on April 1
Monday, March 30, 2009 (New York): The fast-moving Conficker computer worm, a scourge of the Internet that has infected at least 3 million PCs, is set to spring to life in a new way on Wednesday — April Fools' Day.
That's when many of the poisoned machines will get more aggressive about "phoning home" to the worm's creators over the Internet. When that happens, the bad guys behind the worm will be able to trigger the program to send spam, spread more infections, clog networks with traffic, or try and bring down Web sites.
Technically, this could cause havoc, from massive network outages to the creation of a cyberweapon of mass destruction that attacks government computers. But researchers who have been tracking Conficker say the date will probably come and go quietly.
More likely, these researchers say, the programming change that goes into effect April 1 is partly symbolic — an April Fools' Day tweaking of Conficker's pursuers, who for now have been able to prevent the worm from doing significant damage.
"I don't think there will be a cataclysmic network event," said Richard Wang, manager of the U.S. research division of security firm Sophos PLC. "It doesn't make sense for the guys behind Conficker to cause a major network problem, because if they're breaking parts of the Internet they can't make any money."
Previous Internet threats were designed to cause haphazard destruction. In 2003 a worm known as Slammer saturated the Internet's data pipelines with so much traffic it crippled corporate and government systems, including ATM networks and 911 centers.
Far more often now, Internet threats are designed to ring up profits. Control of infected PCs is valuable on the black market, since the machines can be rented out, from one group of bad guys to another, and act as a kind of illicit supercomputer, sending spam, scanning Web sites for security holes, or participating in network attacks.
The army of Conficker-infected machines, known as a "botnet," could be one of the greatest cybercrime tools ever assembled. Conficker's authors just need to figure out a way to reliably communicate with it.
Infected PCs need commands to come alive. They get those commands by connecting to Web sites controlled by the bad guys. Even legitimate sites can be co-opted for this purpose, if hackers break in and use the sites' servers to send out malicious commands.
So far, Conficker-infected machines have been trying to connect each day to 250 Internet domains — the spots on the Internet where Web sites are parked. The bad guys need to get just one of those sites under their control to send their commands to the botnet. (The name Conficker comes from rearranging letters in the name of one of the original sites the worm was connecting to.)
Conficker has been a victim of its success, however, because its rapid spread across the Internet drew the notice of computer security companies. They have been able to work with domain name registrars, which administer Web site addresses, to block the botnet from dialing in.
Now those efforts will get much harder. On April 1, many Conficker-infected machines will generate a list of 50,000 new domains a day that they could try. Of that group, the botnet will randomly select 500 for the machines to actually query.
The bad guys still need to get only one of those up and running to connect to their botnet. And the bigger list of possibilities increases the odds they'll slip something by the security community.
Researchers already know which domains the infected machines will check, but pre-emptively registering them all, or persuading the registrars to neutralize all of them, is a bigger hurdle.
"We expect something will happen, but we don't quite know what it will look like," said Jose Nazario, manager of security research for Arbor Networks, a member of the "Conficker Cabal," an alliance trying to hunt down the worm's authors.
"With every move that they make, there's the potential to identify who they are, where they're located and what we can do about them," he added. "The real challenge right now is doing all that work around the world. That's not a technical challenge, but it is a logistical challenge."
Conficker's authors also have updated the worm so infected machines have new ways to talk to each other. They can share malicious commands rather than having to contact a hacked Web site for instructions.
That variation is important because it shows that even as security researchers have neutralized much of what the botnet might do, the worm's authors "didn't lose control of their botnet," said Michael La Pilla, manager of the malicious code operations team at VeriSign Inc.'s iDefense division.
The Conficker outbreak illustrates the importance of keeping current with Internet security updates. Conficker moves from PC to PC by exploiting a vulnerability in Windows that Microsoft Corp. fixed in October. But many people haven't applied the patch or are running pirated copies of Windows that don't get the updates.
Unlike other Internet threats that trick people into downloading a malicious program, Conficker is so good at spreading because it finds vulnerable PCs on its own and doesn't need human involvement to infect a machine.
Once inside, it does nasty things. The worm tries to crack administrators' passwords, disables security software, blocks access to antivirus vendors' Web sites to prevent updating, and opens the machines to further infections by Conficker's authors.Someone whose machine is infected might have to reinstall the operating system.
Source From: http://profit.ndtv.com/2009/03/30170609/Giant-Internet-worm-set-to-cha.html
RIL shuts down oil production at KG basin
Monday, March 30, 2009 (New Delhi):Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has once again shut down crude oil production at its predominantly gas-rich KG-D6 block to hook up more wells that will raise the output to a peak of 40,000 barrels per day.
Reliance shut down production at the MA field on the midnight of March 22 for 45 days to connect more oils that will raise the output, a source said.
The MA field was producing about 18,000 barrels per day of oil from three wells when it was shut down. Two-three more wells would be hooked up in the planned shutdown period.
"Output is expected to rise to 40,000 bpd before the end of the April-June quarter," the source said.The Reliance spokesperson did not return calls for comments.
The MA field in KG-D6 off the Andhra coast, which began pumping out oil in September 2008, had produced 7,90,000 barrels of oil till December 9 last year, when output ceased due to equipment failure. It had resumed production earlier this month after the three-month shutdown.
RIL, the source said, sold a second cargo from the MA field to Chennai Petroleum Corp Ltd (CPCL). A 4,50,000-barrel cargo was delivered to CPCL's refinery near Chennai last week.
The billionaire Mukesh Ambani-run firm had sold the first cargo of over 4,30,000 barrels of oil to Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd's Vizag refinery in November.
Source From: http://profit.ndtv.com/2009/03/30133759/RIL-shuts-down-oil-production.html
Gambhir, VVS guide India to draw in 2nd Test
Monday, March 30, 2009 (New Delhi): With some timely performances by Gautam Gambhir (137), Rahul Dravid (62), Sachin Tendulkar (64) and VVS Laxman (124*), India scored 476/4 in the 2nd innings to draw 2nd Test against the Kiwis. Both the captains agreed to call off the day, as they saw no possible result coming out. India's savior came in the form of Gambhir who batted for almost 11 hours to save the Test match for his side.
Jesse Ryder was declared Man of the Match for his outstanding double century in New Zealand's first innings. New Zealand scored 619/9 and declared their first innings whereas, India managed to pile up only 305 and the batting line-up crumbled. They were forced to follow on and batted till last day to manage 476/4, which proved to be sufficient to draw the Napier Test.
With an overnight total of 252/2, Gambhir and Tendulkar resumed batting in the morning as they looked determined to play solid knocks to take India out of danger. The tourists then trailed by 62 runs.
Kiwi pacer Chris Martin initiated the proceedings for his side. An early breakthrough for the hosts came in the form of Tendulkar (64) in as early as the fifth over of the day, when he was caught by McCullum off Martin. VVS Laxman came in next to partner focused Gambhir.
As expected, Laxman played a fine innings and supported Gambhir well. Like always, he had the composure and calmness of an experienced Test batsman and it reflected in his batting. Both the batsmen took India's score to 306/3 at lunch and were only 8 runs behind Kiwi total.
The classy batsman stitched 53 runs off 136 balls while on the other end, Gambhir enjoyed a second life when he had earlier survived a dismissal when O'Brien dropped a dolly from him.
The Gambhir party ended when he was caught plumb by Jeeten Patel on 137 runs. He played 436 balls and stayed at the crease for 642 minutes to deprive New Zealand the Test win. India then stood at 356/4 and had taken a lead by 20 runs.
Yuvraj Singh walked in then to form a pair with Laxman almost at the stroke of tea and visitors' scoreboard then showed 397/4, leading by 83 runs.
And then it was Hyderabad player, who by his charismatic performance raised 14th Test century of his career in the need of the hour.
Yuvraj kept the momentum and answered his critics by 6th Test fifty of his career that came in soon after Laxman's refined hundred. The stylish left-hander came back in form with a half-century on just 51 deliveries, looking as good as an ODI knock. The Laxman-Yuvraj partnership of 100 runs came in just 86 balls.
And as the play seemed to get stagnant and no possible result could be seen, both the skippers - Sehwag and Vettori, decided to call off the day when India was on 476/4.
Source From: http://cricket.ndtv.com/cricket/ndtvcricket/storypage/ndtv/id/SPOEN20090089132/story.html
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