China quake toll hits 1,144, monks pray over dead

JIEGU, China — Tibetan monks prayed Friday over hundreds of bodies at a makeshift morgue next to their monastery after powerful earthquakes destroyed the remote mountain town of Jiegu in western China and left at least 1,144 people dead.

State media on Friday reported that another 417 people remain missing — as rescuers neared the end of the 72-hour period viewed as best for finding people alive. They continued to dig for survivors in the rubble, often by hand.

The official toll was likely to climb further. Gerlai Tenzing, a red-robed monk from the Jiegu Monastery, estimated that about 1,000 bodies had been brought to a hillside clearing in the shadow of the monastery. He said a precise count was difficult because bodies continued to trickle in and some had already been taken away by family members.

Hundreds of the bodies were being prepared for a mass cremation Saturday morning. Genqiu, a 22-year-old monk, said it was impossible to perform traditional sky burials for all. Tibetan sky burials involve chopping a body into pieces and leaving it on a platform to be devoured by vultures.

"The vultures can't eat them all," said Genqiu, who like many Tibetans goes by one name.

China Central Television reported that a 13-year-old Tibetan girl was pulled from the toppled two-story Minzu Hotel on Friday after a sniffer dog alerted rescuers to her location. The girl, identified as Changli Maomu, was freed after a crane lifted a large concrete block out of the rubble, it said. Her condition was good and she was taken to a medical station for treatment, it said.

Relief workers have estimated that 70 percent to 90 percent of the town's wood-and-mud houses collapsed when the earthquakes hit Yushu county, in the western province of Qinghai, Wednesday morning. The strongest of the quakes was measured at magnitude 6.9 by the U.S. Geological Survey and 7.1 by China's earthquake administration.

Xinhua reported that as of Friday evening the confirmed death toll had risen to 1,144, up from 791 in the afternoon. It said 11,477 people were injured, 1,174 severely.

Rescue spokesman Xia Xueping was cited as saying they now had more heavy equipment available — speeding up the process of recovering the dead.

Many survivors shivered through a third night outdoors as they waited for tents to arrive. Hundreds gathered on a plaza around a 50-foot (15-meter) tall statue of the mythical Tibetan King Gesar, wrapped in blankets taken from shattered homes.

Police had to intervene Friday to prevent young men from grabbing tents out of the back of a truck.

"I saw trucks almost attacked by local people because of the lack of food and shelter," said Pierre Deve, a program director at the Yushu-based community development organization Snowland Service Group. "It started yesterday, but you still see some things like this today. It's getting better. Chinese authorities are doing well."

Nonetheless, Deve said his group, which plans to distribute food, medicine, tents, clothes and bedding, was moving out of Jiegu in case things got worse.

"We want to have a place out of the city where we can communicate in a good way, protect the things we need to give to people who need them," he said.

China Central Television reported that about 40,000 tents would be in place by Saturday, enough to accommodate all survivors. Also on the way was more equipment to help probe for signs of life under the debris, it said. The tools include small cameras and microphones attached to poles that can be snaked into crevices as well as heat and motion sensors.

At one collapsed building where people were believed trapped, about 70 civilians, including three dozen Tibetan monks in crimson robes, joined rescue workers.

"One, two, three," the monks chanted as they used wooden beams to try to push away a section of collapsed wall. They later tied ropes to a slab of concrete and dragged it away.

The effort was hampered by the area's altitude, about 13,000 feet (4,000 meters), and Xinhua reported two dozen trained rescuers had to stop working because of altitude sickness. Sniffer dogs were also affected, it said.

Xinhua quoted a local education official as saying 66 children and 10 teachers had died, mostly in three schools, but more remained missing.

Thousands of students died during a massive Sichuan quake in 2008 when their poorly built schools collapsed. But unlike in Sichuan — where schools toppled as other buildings stood — nearly everything fell over in Yushu.

To underline official concern for a Tibetan area that saw anti-government protests two years ago, Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Yushu county Thursday evening to meet survivors. President Hu Jintao, in Brazil after visiting Washington, canceled scheduled stops in Venezuela and Peru to come home.

Wen, the sympathetic, grandfatherly face of the usually distant Chinese leadership, sought to provide comfort and build trust with the mostly Tibetan victims of the quake.

"The disaster you suffered is our disaster. Your suffering is our suffering. Your loss of loved ones is our loss. We mourn as you do. It breaks our hearts," Wen said in remarks repeatedly broadcast on state TV.

Wen also repeated nearly word for word the promise he made during the Sichuan earthquake: "As long as there's a glimmer of hope, we will spare no effort and never give up."

Tibetan monks help digging to search students believe to be trapped at a school collapsed after an earthquake in Yushu County, northwest China's Qinghai Province, Friday, April 16, 2010. Rescuers probed the rubble for sounds or movement Friday in a rush to find anyone buried alive more than 48 hours after an earthquake hit western China, killing hundreds of people. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Survivors face bleak situation as death toll in China quake rises to 620

Survivors face bleak situation as death toll in China quake rises to 620.
BEIJING: Soldiers and civilian rescuers dug into rubble to pull out more dead bodies while saving dozens of people including school children caught under fallen buildings. The death in the 7.1 magnitude earth quake that hit Tibetan dominated Yushu in southwest China's Qinghai province rose to 620 while the number of people injured was officially stated to be 9,000.

The death toll is expected to rise further because rescuers have not yet reached all the affected parts and a large number of people have suffered serious injuries. Attempts were being made to shift the seriously wounded people by road or air but enough transportation was not immediately available.

Officials said over 100,000 people will have to be relocated from the quake hit-zone both because vast areas have been left almost entirely without shelters of any kind and there is fears of after-shocks hitting the place. Survivors who spent the night in the open in freezing temperature had no alternative but to repeat the same experience tonight because the process of relocating them was yet to begin.

Rescue could be reached quickly because Qinghai has several military bases and also has a civilian airport at Yushu. But relief teams were facing serious problems with gusty winds and altitude sickness besides shortage of medical equipment, drugs and blood supplies. Heavy earth moving equipment and bulldozers were being rushed from the provincial capital of Xining, 800 kms away from the affected site, to assist rescuers in their work.

"We have people screaming with pain because of broken hands and legs. We are helpless as there is not enough medicine for all the wounded," a rescue worker said over phone. At least 900 of the injured are in serious condition, reports said.

Headwaters of three of Asia's largest rivers, the Yangtze, Mekong and Yellow, are located in Yushu. There are several hydro-electric projects along the mouth of these rivers making the area vulnerable to flooding in case of breaches in reservoirs.

"A dam has cracked, workers are trying to prevent the outflow of water," the official Xinhua news agency said without identifying the reservoir.

Chinese premier Wen Jiabao has reached the quake devastated area to supervise rescue operations while president Hu Jintao is cutting short his South American tour to return to China.

International aid agencies including the Red Cross have swung into operation to assist government authorities but the remoteness of the area was making the situation difficult. Initial reports said 10,000 bags of blood plasma have already been rushed by the Red Cross.

The local television showed relief workers saving a young girl who spent 12 hours trapped in debris. The quake toppled buildings, the local office of the Communist Party and damaged Buddhist stuppas and monasteries in the largely Tibetan region. 

Sania-Shoaib host glitzy Hyderabad reception

HYDERABAD: Tennis, they say, is all about coordination of one kind or another. To say the least, Indian star Sania Mirza and her Pakistani groom Shoaib Malik were wonderfully coordinated on the day — colour, cast, cut.

In the last of her wedding celebrations in India, Sania swept into the regal splendour of the reception hall on Thursday in a red-and-gold khara dupatta set against cream background. The elaborate costume is traditionally worn by Hyderabadi Muslim brides. The groom's cream sherwani worked as a fair set piece with Sania's glittering get-up.

The guest list at Taj Krishna grand ballroom and lawns, where the reception was held, had a fair mix of politicians like TDP supremo Chandrababu Naidu, corporate heavyweight Subrata Roy, the who's who of Hyderabad society and friends from the sporting community, including Davis Cuppers, Jaideep Mukherjea and Akhtar Ali and Pak cricketer Sohail Tanveer. Pakistan federal minister for population and welfare Firdious Ashiq Awan came bearing several gifts, one of which was a crown studded with jewels. The minister greeted Sania and put the crown on her head.

Congratulatory messages from netas including the Prime Minister, sportsmen and celebrities poured in from India and around the world.

The thrust of the cuisine was Hyderabadi, with some tasteful additions like a variety of salad trays and several vegetarian options. Sania and Shoaib or Shoania as the couple have come to be called, are expected to leave for Pakistan late next week. The reception will be held in Lahore. Asked what would Sania's welcome be like in Pakistan, she said: "You wait and see how we welcome our bahu."

Shoaib said: "The last few days have been peaceful, more so after the storm after my arrival in India. I'm happier now than I have ever been in my life. I'm looking forward to introducing Sania to my people at our reception in Pakistan.

Sania, who competed in Pakistan as a junior, said: "I'm looking forward to visit Pakistan. Shoaib has told me a lot about Pakistan as I tell him a lot about India."

Sania will return to India by the end of the month as she has prior commitments to keep. Shoaib and Sania have planned their honeymoon to the Maldives, but are still looking for time to fit it into their schedule.

Sania Mirza Wedding Pictures and Video

Indian tennis star Sania Mirza married to Pakistani cricket player Shoaib Malik on Monday, after a romantic affair that saw the groom forced to get a messy divorce from his first wife days before the wedding.


Sania and Shoaib pose for a picture with their relatives during the wedding ceremony at a five-star hotel Taj Krishna around 1:00 p.m. as per Muslim religious traditions.




The nikah(marriage) was done in the presence of a very selected gathering comprising only the family members of the Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik




There was a very high drama at Sania mirza's residence as the celebrity left her posh residence at Jubilee Hills accompanied by her parents, Imran Mirza and Naseema Mirza, and sister Anam Mirza.




A close relative of the Mirzas described the ceremony, which lasted for ten minutes as a very simple affair. Family members of Sania mirza and close relatives of shoaib Malik, including his sisters and brothers-in-law attended the wedding function.




Families settled to go ahead with the nikah ahead of the earlier declared wedding date of April 15. Sources said the families steered clear of all possible legal hurdles before going ahead with the ceremony by seeking necessary counsel.

Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik: the romance that gripped two nations

Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik discuss his previous alleged marriage with the press on Monday Photograph: Mahesh Kumar A/AP

Bring on the puns about love games, fine legs and bowling a maiden over. Pakistan's former cricket captain, Shoaib Malik, is to marry India's top-ranked female tennis player, Sania Mirza. In India, the rightwing Hindu nationalist political party, the BJP, has asked Mirza to "reconsider" her decision to marry a Pakistani, while more centrist parties have remained silent. In Pakistan, the Islamic rightwing political parties – who would usually have a lot to say about women who wear tennis skirts – have remained silent, while more centrist parties have voiced their congratulations. The contrasting attitudes each side of the border actually reveal the same assumption: a wife belongs to her husband's "household", so an Indian woman marrying a Pakistani man is unpatriotic, whereas a Pakistani man marrying an Indian woman is carrying home the spoils of victory. Or, as the painfully sexist/ jingoistic joke doing the rounds in Pakistan goes: "Finally, we get to see Pakistan screwing India."

But wait, there's more. Ayesha Siddiqui from Hyderabad, India – Sania's home town – has appeared, declaring she is already married to Shoaib. Many Pakistanis remember Ayesha from a news story in 2005 that hailed "cross-border love" as Pakistan's cricket team travelled to India and provided a first opportunity for Shoaib to meet the in-laws. According to the stories at the time, Shoaib and Ayesha had met once in Jeddah (by her account, which he neither corroborated nor denied), continued a romance via the internet and were married over the phone in 2002. As stories went it was a compelling one – love across the border but within the same religion (ie confronting prejudice without breaking taboo) and a pleasing mix of modernity and tradition (internet romances both break and maintain the strictures of arranged marriages by allowing couples to communicate while still maintaining a modest physical separation).

Three years later, Ayesha's father declared that the marriage was over, but Shoaib was refusing to grant Ayesha a divorce. Shoaib insisted that though there was an internet romance, the marriage never took place. Now he says that yes, she pressurised him into taking part in a nikah – marriage ceremony – over the phone, but the chief qazi (sharia judge) of Hyderabad says a phone nikah isn't valid in Islamic law and in any case, Shoaib says, the nikah is doubly invalid because he was deceived about who he was marrying.
"But did you go to a hotel room with her?" an Indian journalist asked at the recent Sania-Shoaib press conference, voicing the question on everyone's mind. Shoaib looked pained. "First, tell me, who is Ayesha, and who is Maha? Tell her to come in front of me so I can be clear on this." This is the crux of the issue. Shoaib says he believed the woman he had agreed to marry, and whose photographs he had seen, was called Ayesha. But he later found out the woman in the photographs and the woman who he had been speaking to (and agreed to marry) were two entirely different women. He is refusing to release the photographs because the woman in them, he has discovered, is already married and he doesn't want to drag her into the scandal.
The "other woman" – who he agreed to marry – turned out to be someone called Maha. In a further twist, he says he had met Maha but believed she was an older relative of his fiancee Ayesha. Intriguingly, in 2005, prior to the Pakistan cricket team's arrival in India, the BBC named Shoaib's betrothed as "Ayesha (AKA Maha Siddiqui)".
This tiny detail is of little relevance to Shoaib's supporters, who point to photographs of Ayesha as proof that he clearly didn't know who he was marrying. "How could a hot young cricketer choose to marry someone who looks like that?" they ask. (In Pakistan, as all around the world, deception about personality traits are to be expected in courtship, but deception about physiognomy is entirely unacceptable.)
Meanwhile, Pakistan waits to greet Sania with open arms, and well-chosen wedding gifts. Pakistan's federal minister for population welfare has vowed to give the couple a "family planning kit". Pakistani comedian Sami Shah remarked, "She is going to give them a condom as a wedding present. I guess they can cross that off their wedding registry. Now, who's getting the blender?"

Shoaib, Sania Nikkah today: report

The Nikkah ceremony of Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik and Indian tennis star Sania Mirza will be held today, Indian newspaper reported on Friday.

The report publish in The Daily Siasat said Pakistani Cricketer Shoiab Malik and Tennis ace Sania Mirza tie the knot today, and their Nikah ceremony will be performed after Magrib at the residence of Sania Mirza.

As per Islamic Law Nikah will be performed by Qazi Azmathullah Jafferi in the presence of both family members, relatives and some intimate friends, report said.

As earlier Sania and Shoaib told Media that marriage will be held on 15th April 2010, but after the discussion between both the families and authentication given by Qazath, it is scheduled on 9th April 2010 at the residence of Sania Mirza, report added.

The reception party is scheduled on 15th April 2010 at Hotel Taj Krishna, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad. Many prominent celebrities are expected to attend the reception.

At Nikah ceremony, not only both family members but also the relatives and friends of Shoaib Malik who had come from Pakistan, will attend including Sania's personal friends.

At the source of Qazath, this marriage is called second marriage (Aqad-e-Sani) for Shoaib Malik.

From across the border, books and bats

This week, while one Pakistani was being questioned by the Indian police and hysterical reporters on an alleged marriage to an Indian, another Pakistani, composed and smiling, fielded questions from an admiring audience on dynasty and politics in the country that every Indian has an opinion on.
The contrast between Shoaib Malik, who is all set to marry Indian tennis star Sania Mirza, and Fatima Bhutto, writer and niece of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, could not be more glaring. And that is reason to celebrate.
Because for a few days, we could forget all the usual tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals and simply revel in a public spectacle that had equal measures of romance, melodrama and suspense.
As well as a chance to see up, close and personal, a member of a family that is as closely connected with Pakistan’s character as perhaps the Gandhi family in India.
Bhutto, in Mumbai to launch her memoir, “Songs of Blood and Sword”, said there was much in common between the two countries, but we only get to hear the views of politicians and other “glitzy and glamorous” people.
But there were other voices, she said and more to talk about, like art and literature and healthcare.
Dressed in a saree and wearing a bindi on her forehead, perhaps to show she is different from her veiled aunt whom she closely resembles, Bhutto, 27, answered questions easily, joking and smiling, even as she described the day of her father’s assassination in 1996.
Hailed by the Indian media as much for her good looks as her writing ability, Bhutto said she wrote the story, difficult as it was, in order to pierce through the silence and secrecy that shrouds much of Pakistan’s bloody history.
A host of talented Pakistani writers including Mohsin Hamid, Mohammed Hanif, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Ali Sethi, Nadeem Aslam, Kamila Shamsie and Uzma Aslam, are all doing just that.
But it also helps to throw some cricket into the mix.