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ARY NEWS

Reuters

  • Taliban seize Kunduz city center in milestone gain

    The insurgents raised the white Taliban banner over the central square and freed hundreds of fellow militants from the local jail, in a major setback for Afghan forces who abandoned a provincial headquarters for the first time since 2001.

    The stunning assault came a day before President Ashraf Ghani’s unity government marked its first anniversary, and will further complicate efforts to resume stalled peace negotiations.

    It was the second time this year that the hardline Islamist movement has besieged Kunduz city, defended by Afghan forces battling largely without NATO’s support after it withdrew most of its troops last year.

    The insurgents launched a surprise, three-pronged offensive before dawn, and by evening they had captured the governor’s compound and provincial police headquarters, said Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for the hardline Islamist movement.

    “Our fighters are now advancing towards the airport,” Mujahid said on his Twitter account.

    Ministry of Interior spokesman Sediq Sediqqi later confirmed that “most of Kunduz city has fallen to the Taliban”, and said Afghan forces were regrouping at the airport.

    “IT LOOKS GRIM”

    The Kunduz assault marks a troubling development in the insurgency, although Afghan forces have managed to drive the Taliban back from most of the territory they have gained this year during an escalation in violence.

    “It is certainly the first major breach of a provincial capital since 2001,” said Graeme Smith, senior analyst for International Crisis Group.

    “They are choking the Afghan forces from all sides. It looks pretty grim.”

    The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan evacuated its Kunduz compound on Monday morning, soon after the assault began.

    “They’ve been relocated within Afghanistan,” said U.N. spokesman Dominic Medley, declining to say where or how many staff were evacuated.

    Afghanistan’s deputy chief of army staff, Murad Ali Murad, defended the Afghan security forces’ performance, suggesting they withdrew to avoid harming civilians with all-out urban warfare.

    “There were enough troops inside Kunduz city, but the insurgents used some route deemed not that sensitive,” Murad told a news briefing late on Monday.

    “Our forces arrived there on time, but we had to take extra care not to cause civilian casualties.”

    Dozens of Afghan special forces were flown to Kunduz airport on a C-130 aircraft and were preparing to launch a counter-attack, according to a senior official in Kabul.

    Abdullah Danishy, deputy governor of Kunduz, vowed that Afghan forces would retake the occupied city.

    “We have reinforcements coming from other areas and will beat back the Taliban,” Danishy said by telephone from Kunduz airport after fleeing his office.

    But with most of downtown Kunduz now in Taliban hands and terrified civilians either trying to flee or hiding inside their homes, the insurgents may be tough to dislodge.

    “Once they get inside an urban area, your air assets and artillery become much less useful,” Smith said.

    FAMILIES SEPARATED

    The Taliban were ousted in 2001 after a U.S.-led campaign, and have been fighting to reimpose their rule in sporadic clashes ever since. They have stepped up their offensive this year as NATO forces drew down to just a few thousand troops.

    One Reuters witness saw buildings on fire in the south of the city and Taliban fighters entering a 200-bed government-run hospital.

    Dozens of panicked residents fled to the city’s main airport but were turned away by security forces.

    Electricity and phone services were cut across most of the city, and family members struggled to locate one another in the chaos.

    “My uncle’s wife has been killed by the Taliban today and still my wife and kids are in the area that the Taliban captured, so it is important to free my family,” said Matin Safraz, an official at the interior ministry who was visiting Kunduz for the Muslim holiday of Eid.

    Safraz had retreated to the airport, and said he was prepared to fight the Taliban with a borrowed AK-47 rifle.

    Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, a spokesman for Kunduz police, said

    20 Taliban fighters had been killed and three Afghan police wounded in the early morning clashes. Updated casualty figures were not immediately available.

    According to two security officials, Taliban gunmen, some armed with rocket-propelled grenades, overwhelmed security guards and broke into the main city prison, freeing hundreds of fighters.

    Taliban spokesman Mujahid urged Kunduz residents to stay inside.

    “The mujahideen are trying to avoid any harm to Kunduz residents,” he said on his official Twitter account, referring to Taliban fighters.

    The once-quiet north of Afghanistan has seen escalating violence. Kunduz city was the center of fierce fighting earlier this year as the Taliban sought to gain territory after the end of NATO’s combat mission at the end of 2014.

    A scaled-down NATO presence now mostly trains and advises Afghan forces, although U.S. drones still target militant leaders and a U.S. counter-terrorist force also operates in the country.

  • Modi's Silicon Valley tour marred by protest

    Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was winding up a whirlwind two-day U.S. West Coast trip and Sunday’s event followed visits to some of the world’s biggest technology companies, hoping to convince them to bring more investment and jobs to India.

    Modi, 65, was the first Indian leader to visit the West Coast in more than 30 years. His trip followed a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who met several tech leaders in Seattle last week. Modi aimed to deepen ties with the U.S. technology sector and boost India’s digital infrastructure by promoting his “Digital India” campaign, which seeks to connect thousands more villages to the Internet.

    “(India) has moved on from scriptures to satellites,” Modi said. “The world has started to believe that the twenty-first century belongs to India.”

    Technology executives, eager to expand into India with its 1.3-billion population, embraced Modi’s initiative, with CEOs from Facebook Inc, Google Inc and Tesla Motors all hosting him at their headquarters. Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook met with Modi at his hotel.

    The second day of his visit began with a town hall at Facebook headquarters with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, where Modi spent 50 minutes on stage and discussed the importance of social media, Digital India and technological expansion in the country. Modi is an avid user of social media and the second-most followed world leader after U.S. President Barack Obama.

    He became emotional at one point when Zuckerberg asked him to speak about his mother. “I came from a very poor family. … We went to our neighbors’ houses nearby (to) clean dishes, fill water, do hard chores. So you can imagine what a mother had to do to raise her children.”

    Modi later visited Google headquarters and met with Indian-born Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, who announced that Google would bring wireless Internet to 500 Indian railway stations, news that Modi revealed at a dinner Saturday night with more than 350 business leaders.

    Though Modi remains wildly popular in India with an 87 percent approval rating, some of his stops were met with protests of his human rights record. Some claim that Modi did not do enough to stop 2002 religious riots in Gujarat that killed about 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, when he was chief minister of the state. He has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

    Mostly Sikh protesters calling on Modi to answer for his rights record temporarily blocked one of Facebook’s entrances. Several hundred people gathered outside San Jose’s SAP Center ahead of Modi’s speech that lasted several hours. Half were protesters shouting over metal barricades and holding signs that said “Modi believes in violence, not development,” and “#ModiFail” that resulted in several scuffles.

    Much of Modi’s U.S. visit, on which he received rock-star welcomes, also focused on connecting with the Indian diaspora in Silicon Valley, the IT professionals who migrated in their droves over the past two decades to seize job opportunities that weren’t available back home.

  • Scientists find evidence of recent water flows on Mars

    Although the source and the chemistry of the water is unknown, the discovery will change scientists’ thinking about whether the planet that is most like Earth in the solar system could support present day microbial life.

    “It suggests that it would be possible for life to be on Mars today,” John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administration for science, told reporters.

    “Mars is not the dry, arid planet that we thought of in the past. Under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars,” said Jim Green, the agency’s director of planetary science.

    The discovery was made when scientists developed a new technique to analyze chemical maps of the surface of Mars obtained by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft.

    They found telltale fingerprints of salts that form only in the presence of water in narrow channels cut into cliff walls throughout the planet’s equatorial region.

    The slopes, first reported in 2011, appear during the warm summer months on Mars, then vanish when the temperatures drop.

    Scientists suspected the streaks, known as recurring slope lineae, or RSL, were cut by flowing water, but previously had been unable to make the measurements.

    “I thought there was no hope,” Lujendra Ojha, a graduate student at Georgia Institute of Technology and lead author of a paper in this week’s issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, told Reuters.

    Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter makes its measurements during the hottest part of the Martian day, so scientists believed any traces of water, or fingerprints from hydrated minerals, would have evaporated.

    Also, the chemical-sensing instrument on the orbiting spacecraft cannot home in on details as small as the narrow streaks, which typically are less than 16 feet (5 meters) wide.

    But Ojha and colleagues created a computer program that could scrutinize individual pixels. That data was then correlated with high-resolution images of the streaks. Scientists concentrated on the widest streaks and came up with a 100 percent match between their locations and detections of hydrated salts.

    The discovery “confirms that water is playing a role in these features,” said planetary scientist Alfred McEwen, with the University of Arizona. “We don’t know that it’s coming from the subsurface. It could come from the atmosphere.”

    Whatever the water’s source, the prospect of liquid water, even seasonally, raises the intriguing prospect that Mars, which is presumed to be a cold and dead planet, could support life today.

    However, McEwen said much more information about the water’s chemistry would be needed before scientists could make that assessment.

    “It’s not necessarily habitable just because it’s water – at least to terrestrial organisms,” he said.

    The evidence that there was water on the planet recently was the key finding in the study released on Monday. NASA’s ongoing Mars rover Curiosity has already found evidence that Mars had all the ingredients and suitable habitats for microbial life to exist at some point in its past.

    Scientists have been trying to figure out how it transformed from a warm, wet and likely Earth-like planet early in its history into the cold, dry desert that exists today.

    Billions of years ago, Mars, which lacks a protective, global magnetic field, lost much of its atmosphere. Several initiatives are under way to determine how much of the planet’s water was stripped away and how much remains locked in ice in underground reservoirs.

  • Russia seizes initiative in Syria

    As leaders gathered in New York at the United Nations General Assembly, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry discussed Syria with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. He said that while it was vital to

    coordinate efforts against Islamic State militants this was not yet happening.

    “I think we have concerns about how we are going to go forward,” Kerry told reporters. U.S. officials said Kerry was working on a new political initiative in New York that would include Russia and key regional
    powers.

    A senior State Department official told reporters: “It was a very thorough exchange of views on both the military and the political implications of Russia’s increased engagement in Syria.”

    Kerry also discussed Syria with Iran’s foreign minister during a meeting at the United Nations on Saturday.

    It was announced in Baghdad that Russian military officials were working with counterparts from Iran, Syria and Iraq on intelligence and security cooperation to counter Islamic State, which has captured large
    areas of both Syria and Iraq.

    The move was seen in the region as potentially giving Moscow more sway in the Middle East.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin derided U.S. efforts to end the Syria war, which has driven a tide of refugees into neighboring states and Europe.

    He said Moscow, which this month sent tanks and warplanes to a Russian military base in Syria, was itself trying to create a “coordinated framework” to resolve the conflict.

    “We would welcome a common platform for collective action against the terrorists,” Putin said in an interview on Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

    PUTIN DERIDES U.S. EFFORTS

    Putin, who will meet U.S. President Barack Obama in New York on Monday, branded U.S. support for rebel forces in Syria as illegal and ineffective and said Damascus should be included in international
    efforts to fight Islamic State.

    He mocked U.S. plans to train up to 5,400 Syrian rebels to fight the group. “It turns out that only 60 of these fighters have been properly trained, and as few as four or five people actually carry weapons,” he
    said.

    Putin said Russia had no plans now to deploy combat troops. “Russia will not take part in any field operations on the territory of Syria or in other states; at least, we do not plan it for now,” he said.

    Referring to the risk of radicalized fighters returning home after fighting with Islamic State, he said: “There are more than 2,000 militants in Syria from the former Soviet Union. Instead of waiting for them to
    return back home we should help President al-Assad fight them there, in Syria.”

    Critics have urged Obama to be more decisive in the Middle East and Syria, where the United Nations has said 250,000 people have died after four years of conflict, and say lack of a clear American policy
    has given Islamic State opportunities to expand.

    Divisions over the role of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad remained critical.

    President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, like Russia a big military supporter of Assad, told reporters any discussion of political reform in Syria should come only after the threat of “terrorism” had been removed.

    The United States, Britain and some other allies in recent days have softened demands that Assad immediately leave power, raising the possibility that he could stay during a transition.

    U.S. Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said on Friday: “We do not think it is credible for Assad to remain for any length of time as the leader,” but added: “We appreciate there may be a political
    solution here where Assad is there for some period of time in some capacity while a transition takes place.”

    German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, however, told ARD television on Sunday that the formation of a transitional Syrian government should be kept separate from discussions on the future of
    Assad.

    KEEPING THE FORCES APART

    A senior State Department official said if the Russians were going to play a greater role in the fight against Islamic State, it was essential to have talks on “de-confliction” – measures to avert inadvertent clashes between the militaries.

    “We are just at the beginning of trying to understand what the Russians’ intentions are in Syria, in Iraq, and to try to see if there are mutually beneficial ways forward here. We have got a long way to go in that conversation,” the official said.

    France said it had launched its first air strikes in Syria, destroying an Islamic State training camp in the east of the country to stop the group from attacking French interests and to protect Syrian civilians.

    France had until now only struck Islamic State targets in neighboring Iraq.

    France had feared strikes in Syria could be counter-productive and could strengthen Assad, but it was shaken by a series of deadly attacks by Islamist militants this year.

    In addition, Paris has become alarmed by Islamic State gains in northern Syria and the possibility of France being sidelined in negotiations to reach a political solution in Syria.

    A French diplomatic source said Paris needed to be one of the “hitters” in Syria – those taking direct military action – to legitimately take part in any negotiations for a political solution to the conflict.

    Israel, which borders Syria and has previously attacked sites in Syria, carried out at least three air strikes against Syrian army targets on the Golan Heights on Sunday, rebel sources and a monitoring group said.

  • Facebook, eyeing TV dollars, rolls out new ad products

    The advertising options, most of which will also be available on Facebook-owned Instagram, are designed to take advantage of the social network’s strengths on mobile devices. It has the world’s most popular smartphone app and generates more than three-quarters of its $10 billion-plus in annual ad revenue on phones.

    Facebook is trying to convince advertisers, especially those who use video, that their dollars will be better spent on mobile platforms rather than on TV as users, especially millennials, spend more time on their phones than watching television. The rollout of the new products come ahead of New York City’s 12th Advertising Week, which runs from Monday to Friday and gathers the world’s largest advertisers and companies. Facebook also announced on Sunday that it has 2.5 million active advertisers in total, up from 2 million in February.

    Digital video advertising spending is growing rapidly, projected to increase 13 percent to nearly $15 billion by 2019, according to eMarketer. Television ad spending, by comparison, is expected to grow 2 percent in the same time period to $78 billion. “Facebook is listening to the ad community and giving them what they are looking for,” said Debra Aho Williamson, social media marketing analyst with eMarketer. “Does Facebook want video ad dollars? Yes.”

    On television, advertisers can buy ads based on how many people they will reach, an approach Facebook has adopted to ease the transition between television spending and digital spending.

    In addition, it can target highly specific audiences, such as women aged 18 to 35 years old who have shopped on a specific website, which TV cannot do.

    Among the new products are “brand awareness” ads, which aim to reach a large number of people to promote a company’s name and brand, such as Coca Cola. Advertisers will also be able to poll users on mobile phones about whether they saw an ad — a feature that used to be available only on desktop computers — and they can use a format that allows them to display multiple videos at once that users can scroll through.

    “We want to be the single-most important platform for all businesses,” said Carolyn Everson, Facebook vice president for global marketing solutions.

  • Apple reports record sales of iPhone 6s, 6s Plus in first weekend

    The company beat its previous record of 10 million in sales for the previous generation of iPhones in its first weekend in 2014. This year’s results benefited from the inclusion of the Chinese market, where regulatory problems delayed the gadget’s debut last year.

    Analysts had expected the company to sell 12 million to 13 million phones this past weekend.

    “Customers’ feedback is incredible, and they are loving 3D Touch and Live Photos,” Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in a statement. “We can’t wait to bring iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus to customers in even more countries on October 9.”

    Analysts had said Apple was virtually assured to set a new record for iPhone sales with the inclusion of China, which many expect will soon be the company’s largest market.

    But the figures announced on Monday suggest Apple’s iPhone sales were up overall, said FBR Capital Markets senior analyst Daniel Ives. He said the sales figures should ease investors’ concerns about how Apple will fare amid economic turmoil in China.

    “Demand out of China looks white-hot,” Ives said.

    Moor Insight & Strategy analyst Patrick Moorhead said the sales figures also suggested Apple seized some market share from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS), its chief rival in the smartphone market.

    Apple said the new iPhones would be available in more than 40 additional countries starting Oct. 9, reaching more than 130 countries by the end of the year.

    The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus arrived in stores on Friday, kicking off a sales cycle that will be scrutinized for signs of how much allure remains for the smartphone.

    The company relies heavily on the sale of its flagship iPhones, which generated nearly two-thirds of its revenue in the latest quarter.

    Shares of Apple were down 1.5 percent at $112.97 in early trading.

  • Afghan Taliban seize 200-bed hospital in Afghan city

    The Taliban launched a fierce offensive from three directions on Kunduz just after dawn, raising fresh fears parts of the provincial capital could fall into their hands.

    Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a post on Twitter that insurgent fighters had seized a hospital in a district in the south of the city.

    A police official, who declined to be identified, confirmed that a government-run hospital had fallen into insurgent hands but had no further details.

  • Judge freezes Neymar's assets in tax evasion probe

    Neymar is accused of not paying 63.3 million reais in taxes between 2011 and 2013 but his parents said the Barcelona player “cannot declare what is not his” and is not a partner in the firms a judge said were part-owned by the player.

    The judge froze three times that amount for security reasons and to cover potential interest and fines, according to a judicial order explaining the seizure. The action covers property and vehicles and is a preventive measure to stop the player selling assets before the case is settled. He will still have access to bank accounts and other liquid assets.

    Judge Carlos Muta accused the 23-year-old of “omitting sources of income from abroad”. Barcelona Football Club was cited as the source of unreported money.

    The frozen assets were in the name of the Brazil player and three companies in which he and his parents are the principal owners, the judge said. Neymar’s total assets were given as 244.2 million reais.

    However, Neymar’s parents said the decision was based on an “incorrect understanding” of their son’s income. “Neymar Jr did not avoid paying taxes, and neither did any of our companies,” Neymar da Silva Santos and Nadine Goncalves da Silva Santos said in a statement released to the press.

    “We have done our duty and we are confident that everything will be cleared up in due time.”

    Neymar joined the Spanish club in June 2013 after a successful career at Santos but his transfer has been a source of controversy. Then Barcelona president Sandro Rosell said Neymar cost 57.1 million euros ($63.92 million) but the deal was shrouded in secrecy.

    His successor Josep Maria Bartomeu eventually admitted the total cost came to 86.2 million euros once additional payments to the player and his family had been included.

    Rosell resigned in January 2014 after a judge decided to investigate and call him to testify in the case.

    A Brazilian investment firm which bought an interest in Neymar has taken legal action against the player, his father and Barcelona in a bid to secure a bigger slice of the transfer fee.

  • Eyes on space, India launches 'mini-Hubble'

    The observatory, named ASTROSAT, will help Indian scientists intensify space exploration efforts by studying distant celestial objects and conduct deeper analyses of star systems.

    “This launch … is important for astronomical sciences,” Harsh Vardhan, India’s minister for earth sciences, said in a statement. “We look forward to prospective research.”

    The simultaneous launch of six other satellites, four of which were for the United States, came hours before a scheduled meeting between Modi and US President Barack Obama.

    Modi is bullish about India’s space research programme and has repeatedly lauded the efforts of his scientists, who last year scored big on the global stage when their low-cost Mars mission entered the red planet’s orbit on its very first attempt.

    Despite the recent successes, the growth of India’s space programme has been stymied by lack of heavier launchers and slow execution of missions – during 2007-2012, only about half of the planned 60 missions were accomplished.

    In December, India successfully tested a new, more powerful rocket – the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark III – that can put heavier payloads into space, but it is not yet operational.

    ASTROSAT is seen as a smaller version of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope that was launched in 1990. It will be able to detect objects in multiple wavelengths such as X-rays, but with far lower precision than Hubble, said Mayank Vahia of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

    “This will bring little commercial advantage but will show India’s new capability in space research,” said Vahia, whose institute made three of the five scientific instruments aboard ASTROSAT.

    The ASTROSAT instruments will transmit data to a control centre in the southern city of Bangalore that will manage the satellite during its five-year mission life.

  • European roundup: Manchester United top, Messi injured, Bayern perfect

    ENGLAND

    Manchester United replaced neighbours Manchester City at the top of the Premier League by comfortably beating Sunderland 3-0 after City slumped to a 4-1 defeat at Tottenham Hotspur.

    England captain Wayne Rooney scored his first league goal of the season, in between those by Memphis Depay and Juan Mata.

    West Ham United are third after drawing 2-2 with visiting Norwich City, level on 13 points with Arsenal for whom Alexis Sanchez scored a hat-trick in a 5-2 win at unbeaten Leicester.

    But champions Chelsea are in the bottom six after scraping a 2-2 draw at struggling Newcastle United thanks to late goals by Brazilian pair Ramires and Willian.

    SPAIN

    Villarreal are surprise La Liga leaders after Leo Baptistao gave them a 1-0 victory over Atletico Madrid and a toothless Real Madrid were held 0-0 at home to Malaga.

    Luis Suarez hit a double for Barcelona who beat Las Palmas 2-1 but the win came at a cost with Lionel Messi going off early with a knee injury. He is expected to be out for two months.

    Villarreal are unbeaten after six matches and top the table with 16 points, Barca are a point behind and Real are two back.

    Celta Vigo who thumped the Catalans 4-1 last Wednesday, were held 1-1 at Eibar and are fourth behind Real on goal difference.

    GERMANY

    Champions Bayern Munich made it seven wins in seven Bundesliga games with Robert Lewandowski scoring twice in a 3-0 win at Mainz 05 to extend their lead at the top to four points.

    Lewandowski, who netted five times in their midweek win over Vfl Wolfsburg, became the first foreign player to require just 168 matches to score 100 goals in the Bundesliga as Bayern increased their advantage over second-placed Borussia Dortmund.

    Dortmund’s forward, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang struck twice to become the first player to score in the first seven matches of a Bundesliga season but a 90th minute equaliser from captain Aytac Sulu gave Darmstadt 98 an unexpected 2-2 draw.

    ITALY

    Fiorentina cruised to a 4-1 victory at 10-man Inter Milan helped by a Nicola Kalinic hat-trick as they leapfrogged their opponents to top Serie A.

    Third-placed Torino won an ill-tempered clash 2-1 against visiting Palermo as they finished with nine men.

    AC Milan had a man sent off as they lost 1-0 at Genoa for their third loss of the season.

    Fiore and Inter have 15 points from six games while Torino are on 13, with struggling champions Juventus losing further ground down in 15th place after losing again.

    FRANCE

    Paris St Germain recovered from a terrible first half to win 4-1 at Nantes and stretch their Ligue 1 lead to four points.

    Goals by Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Angel Di Maria, Edinson Cavani and Serge Aurier put the champions on 20 points from eight games.

    St Etienne remain second despite a 4-1 home defeat to Nice, who were led by an impressive Hatem Ben Arfa.

    Olympique de Marseille slumped to a 2-1 loss against visitors Angers and Olympique Lyonnais lost 3-1 at Girondins de Bordeaux on a bad weekend for the big guns.