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Reuters

  • Djokovic, Federer advance to Cincinnati final

    Serb Djokovic, who beat Federer in the Wimbledon final for a second consecutive year last month, rallied to beat Ukrainian qualifier Alexandr Dolgopolov 4-6 7-6(5) 6-2 while the Swiss second seed beat third seed Andy Murray 6-4 7-6(6).

    Djokovic, who needs a win on Sunday to become the first player to claim all nine ATP Masters titles, lost the first set but escaped a nervy second-set tiebreak in Cincinnati that took the wind out of his 66th-ranked opponent’s sails.

    In the tiebreak, Djokovic was two points from defeat at 4-5 but dug deep and found a way to escape the jam, ultimately taking the set with a cross-court forehand winner.

    “(Djokovic) just plays more carefully on the big points. You have to beat him and go for the risk,” said Dolgopolov.

    “I really believed I could win and my game was enough to beat him. It was just the situation. You know, those few points decided everything.”

    Djokovic had squandered a chance to level the match in the ninth game of the second set when he was broken to love before the players each held serve over the next three games to force the tiebreak which the Serb won to ensure a third set.

    Djokovic then broke a disheartened Dolgopolov twice en route to ending the match in two hours, 20 minutes and improving his all-time record versus the Ukrainian to 5-0.

    Completing the set of ATP Masters titles will be no easy feat for Djokovic with six-times Cincinnati champion Federer standing in his way.

    The Swiss got off to a fast start against Murray, earning a break in the third game of the match en route to capturing the first set in 38 minutes with a forehand winner down the line.

    The players rode their serves to a tiebreak in the second set, where Federer went on to convert on his second match point.

    The victory sets up the latest instalment of the Federer-Djokovic rivalry, knotted at 20 wins apiece.

    The match will be their fifth meeting in 2015, with Federer winning on the hard courts of Dubai and Djokovic emerging victorious at Indian Wells, Rome and Wimbledon.

  • NATO contractors among 12 killed in Kabul bomb attack

    The suicide attack outside a hospital on a residential street at rush hour killed mainly Afghan civilians and injured scores more, heightening the anger felt in Kabul after a barrage of deadly blasts this month killed dozens.

    The attacker drove his car towards an armored pick-up truck belonging to contractor DynCorp International which was torn open and left twisted and blackened by the blast. Dozens of vehicles were destroyed, including a school van.

    One U.S. contractor died when the bomb exploded, and two died from their wounds, the NATO coalition known as Resolute Support said late on Saturday. It did not name them.

    The U.S. embassy in Kabul condemned the bombing.

    “The United States remains committed to assisting our Afghan partners in their efforts to ensure a peaceful future,” it said in a statement.

    Contractors such as DynCorp, which has a long involvement in the war and provided bodyguards for the last president, have frequently been targeted. Four U.S. DynCorp employees were killed in a similar Kabul suicide attack in 2013.

    Bombings have increased in Kabul since the government and the Taliban in July confirmed that Taliban leader Mullah Omar died two years ago, putting paid to hopes that the insurgents would quickly return to the negotiating table.

    The U.N. mission in Afghanistan called for an “immediate halt to all such disproportionate attacks” in civilian-populated areas.

    Fighting killed 5,000 civilians in the first half of this year, more than at any point since war started in 2001.

    The violence has strained Afghanistan’s ties with Pakistan, with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani accusing the neighboring country of not doing enough to stop militants planning attacks from training camps that he says lie across the border.

    Pakistan called the latest attack on civilians “cowardice” and promised to fight against “a common enemy”.

    But, referring to his belief that Islamabad only cracks down on fighters who launch attacks on its soil, Ghani issued a statement calling on Pakistan to “use the same definition of terrorism” at home and in Afghanistan.

    Afghanistan’s chief executive officer, Abdullah Abdullah, who shares power with Ghani and has been critical of Pakistan’s record on fighting the Taliban, called the attack a war crime.

    “We will do everything to protect our people and our country and go after terrorists and our enemies anywhere they are,” he said.

    The Taliban, fighting to re-establish hard-line Islamist rule 14 years after they were ousted, denied they was behind the attack. No group has claimed responsibility.

    Security sources said the contractors worked for DynCorp International. The U.S. company, which provides training, security and aviation maintenance to the NATO mission and the Afghan military, confirmed it was the target.- Reuters

  • Autistic traits linked to creative problem-solving

    Researchers surveyed 312 people online, asking if they had autism and assessing whether they might have some traits of the disorder even if they hadn’t been formally diagnosed with it.

    They tested participants’ creativity by seeking interpretations of images designed to be seen more than one way – such as a picture that might be viewed as either a rabbit or a duck. Then they gave participants one minute to name as many uses as possible for ordinary objects like a brick or a paper clip.

    Compared to people without any indication of autism, the individuals who said they were diagnosed with autism and the participants without a diagnosis who exhibited many traits of the disorder generally offered fewer responses to these queries, but they also tended to have more unusual answers, the study found.

    “We think that perhaps the people with autistic traits use more effortful methods to produce answers to divergent thinking tasks (not based on obvious word associations or common uses for similar items) and therefore come up with fewer but better responses,” said lead author Dr. Catherine Best of the University of Stirling in the U.K., in email to Reuters Health.

    Around one percent of people may have autism spectrum disorder, a developmental disability that can cause significant social, communication and behavioral challenges, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some people with autism may be exceptionally gifted in certain ways, but people with the disorder can also be severely challenged in some aspects of life.

    To explore the link between autism and creativity, Best and colleagues examined survey responses for 75 participants who reported an autism diagnosis and 237 people with no autism diagnosis. Some of those undiagnosed people did, however, display autistic traits during the study.

    And autistic traits, with or without a formal diagnosis, were linked to an ability to see more than one image in ambiguous figures, based on results of survey questions on pictures designed to look like two things at once.

    The authors acknowledge in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders that because they lumped together people with diagnosed autism and people without a diagnosis who displayed many traits of the disorder, they can’t say for sure whether the people with a clinical diagnosis might have disproportionately influenced the results for this group.

    “There is no black and white dividing line between mild autistic traits and having a label of autism, and geeks and nerds in Silicon Valley,” Temple Grandin, an autism activist and livestock researcher at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, said by email.

    “Mild autism can provide some intellectual advantages and severe autism is a great handicap,” said Grandin, who wasn’t involved in the study. “If all the autism traits were removed, we would lose many creative minds in music, art, math and science.”

    It’s possible that some people with autism may focus intensely on their own thoughts, to the exclusion of listening to others speaking to them, and this might lead autistic people to generate less conventional thoughts and expressions, said Nira Mashal, head of the brain and language lab at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel.

    “The finding that people with high levels of autistic traits offer fewer responses to creative questions, but more original ideas does not surprise me,” Mashal, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

  • Murray sets up revenge chance against Federer

    Federer made quick work of Spaniard Feliciano Lopez in a 6-3 6-4 quarter-final romp that lasted just over an hour.

    Murray needed to grind out another win against Richard Gasquet, outlasting the Frenchman 4-6 6-1 6-4 after two hours.

    Third seed Murray saved a match point in the third set and fought fatigue to win his second straight three-set battle.

    “I fought and gave everything I had, but thankfully it’s just been enough in the last two days,” Murray, who lost to Federer in straight sets in the Wimbledon semi-finals, told reporters.

    Earlier, top seed Novak Djokovic avenged his French Open final loss to Stan Wawrinka by crushing the Swiss 6-4 6-1.

    Djokovic, now two wins away from becoming the first player to win all nine ATP Masters titles, needed a mere 63 minutes to dispatch fifth seed Wawrinka in the first meeting between the players since Roland Garros.

    Wawrinka denied Djokovic a chance to complete a career grand slam in Paris but was wayward in Cincinnati, finishing with 33 unforced errors and pushing a backhand wide on match point.

    Djokovic, a four-times runner-up in Cincinnati, broke Wawrinka’s serve four times and dropped just 12 points on serve in his final tune-up event ahead of the U.S. Open which starts Aug. 31.

    “(My performance) came at the right time against one of my biggest rivals and the guy I lost to last time we played in the finals of the French Open,” Djokovic said.

    “Obviously I approached this match very seriously in trying to prepare myself and get myself in a good position to win.”

    The world number one next faces Ukrainian qualifier Alexandr Dolgopolov, a 6-4 6-2 winner over Czech sixth seed Tomas Berdych.

  • Islamic State second-in-command killed in air strike – White House

    “Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali, also known as Hajji Mutazz … was killed in a U.S. military air strike on August 18 while traveling in a vehicle near Mosul, Iraq, along with an ISIL media operative known as Abu Abdullah,” White House spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

    “(His) death will adversely impact ISIL’s operations given that his influence spanned ISIL’s finance, media, operations, and logistics,” Price said, referring to the group by an acronym.

    The White House said the dead leader was a “primary coordinator” for moving weapons, explosives, vehicles, and people between Iraq and Syria. He was in charge of operations in Iraq and helped plan the group’s offensive in Mosul in June of last year.

    The United States and its allies stage daily air strikes on Islamic State targets in the group’s self-declared caliphate based in Iraq and Syria. A drone strike last month killed a senior Islamic State leader in its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.

    Mutazz was a lieutenant colonel in the army of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and, like many who later went on to form the core of Islamic State’s leadership, was detained by U.S. troops in Iraq at the Camp Bucca detention facility, said Harleen Gambhir, a counterterrorism analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. It was likely after leaving Camp Bucca that he joined Islamic State’s predecessor, Al Qaeda in Iraq, she said.

    Gambhir expressed some puzzlement at the White House announcement, noting that U.S. officials had in late 2014 said that they had killed Mutazz in an airstrike.

    One counter-terrorism specialist cautioned that the impact of the killing on Islamic State could be short-lived and noted how much territory it controls determines its power.

    “My experience in looking at the Islamic State suggests they have demonstrated … an ability to move people up into positions” when high-ranking operatives are killed, said Seth Jones, a former Pentagon official now at the RAND Corporation.

    A U.S. official acknowledged that, but said the death was damaging to the group’s reputation.

    “The death of Mutazz removes a key figure from ISIL and further pierces the group’s veneer of invincibility that it has sought to cast,” the official said.

  • Pakistani stand-up comedians make light of troubles

    “I don’t want an app to find me random girls to sleep with!” he cried. “I want my mother to find me random girls to sleep with!”

    Shaikh, 26, has just returned from New York and is trying to reinvigorate live comedy in Pakistan, an Islamic nation.

    It’s a difficult, sometimes dangerous quest. Aside from the usual financial struggles and small audiences, Pakistani comedians face harsh blasphemy laws and a barrage of death threats if their jokes offend the wrong person.

    One of Shaikh’s close friends, Sabeen Mahmud, a rights activist and the founder of The Second Floor venue he played this week, was gunned down in April. A man arrested for her murder has said she was targeted for championing liberal, secular values.

    “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid,” said Shaikh with a wry smile. “I’m not going to censor myself … the least I can do is joke about it. That’s the only power I have.”

    Shaikh and his improvisation troupe, the Bhands or the Entertainers, use comedy to make the audience laugh – and then think – about society in their nuclear-armed nation of 190 million, plagued by crime, militancy and corruption.

    “I’m not telling them what to think, but how,” he said after Sunday’s show. “My job is to pose questions … we don’t have a tradition of critical thinking.”

    BOMBING IN PAKISTAN

    Shah used to write weekly columns in Pakistan and was deluged with hate mail after mocking suicide bombers “who put the error in terrorism”. But it wasn’t just threats that drove him abroad. He needed bigger audiences.

    “In Pakistan, the audiences for comedy are very small. You can bomb once, but if you bomb twice, it’s tough,” he said. “Out here (in Australia) I’m doing four or five shows a week. There (Pakistan), I’d do a corporate event every month. You need to perform more regularly to be good.”

    Saad Haroon, a popular comedian now working in New York, says Pakistani artists are going online to get around the scarcity of venues and small audiences.

    “There’s lots of development on social media. It’s clandestine, guerrilla comedy,” he said.

    Yet even Internet distribution has problems.

    Comedian Ali Gul Pir posted his first song about the corrupt children of wealthy landlords on YouTube in 2012 after radio and television rejected the racy lyrics. It got a million views in three days.

    Three months later, the government banned YouTube, after a provocative film sparked deadly riots.

    Pir hit back with an expletive-laden song about the ban.

    “Open the ban, thief,” he sang as hapless policemen chased down a person in a YouTube costume. “These are our rights.”

    The video was wildly popular. The ban is still in place.

  • The Ashes: Australia on brink of victory as England collapse

    Steve Smith’s patient 143 guided Australia to a formidable total and the bowlers rammed home the advantage in the last session to boost their side’s bid for a consolation win after relinquishing the Ashes by losing the fourth test in Nottingham.

    England’s collapse was not quite as abject as when Australia were bowled out for 60 on the first morning at Trent Bridge but it was quite remarkable on a sun-kissed afternoon in south London.

    Spinner Nathan Lyon bowled England captain Alastair Cook for 22 just before tea to start the rot.

    Adam Lyth’s wretched run continued when, on 19, he spooned an attempted pull off Peter Siddle to Mitchell Starc at mid-on.

    Siddle, recalled in place of the injured Josh Hazlewood, produced a superb delivery to bowl Ian Bell for 10 and Joe Root nicked Mitchell Marsh to keeper Peter Nevill after labouring for 39 balls to make six.

    Jonny Bairstow, on 13, tamely pulled Mitchell Johnson to Lyon at square leg, Jos Buttler was bowled by Lyon for one and Ben Stokes skied Marsh to Nevill for 15.

    Stuart Broad edged Marsh to Adam Voges at slip for a duck before Moeen Ali and Mark Wood each made eight not out to take the hosts to the close without further loss, still 374 runs behind their opponents.

    Australia had resumed in the morning on 287 for three and Smith waited until his 24th delivery to add to his overnight 78 while Voges played more freely.

    The experienced right-hander cut Broad for four to reach his second fifty in a row and had scored 76 when he misjudged a fierce inswinger from Stokes that kept low and was trapped lbw.

    Smith flashed hard at the very next delivery from Steven Finn and keeper Buttler took the catch, but the bowler immediately returned to the crease to check his footmark and replays confirmed that he had overstepped by several inches.

    Finn looked distraught as Smith was recalled but he did claim a wicket when Marsh, on three, edged a lifting delivery to Bell at second slip.

    Smith clipped Moeen for a single to bring up his 11th test century, a patient effort spanning more than five hours at the crease.

    Nevill fell for 18, feathering a catch to Buttler down the leg-side off Moeen and the spinner bowled Johnson for a second-ball duck just before lunch.

    Smith’s long vigil ended when he dragged a ball from Finn on to his stumps and he departed to a standing ovation having hit two sixes and 17 fours.

    Starc struck a six and nine fours in a breezy 58 off 52 balls before he was lbw to Stokes and Siddle was caught by a diving Lyth at gully off Finn to end the innings.

  • Sangakkara fails to convert start, Sri Lanka 140-3

    Playing his 134th and final test, Sangakkara made 32 as he and Kaushal Silva (51) added 74 runs to help Sri Lanka overcome the early loss of opener Dimuth Karunaratne.

    Lahiru Thirimanne was batting on 28 at the close with skipper Angelo Mathews on 19 at the other end with the hosts, who lead the three-match series 1-0, still trailing by 253 runs in the evenly poised test.

    Sangakkara walked out to a guard-of-honour by the Indian team after Umesh Yadav had dismissed Karunaratne with his first delivery at the P Sara Oval.

    The first ball Sangakkara faced was a vicious inswinging yorker from Yadav which the left-hander barely managed to dig out.

    He also got a reprieve on 24 when Ajinkya Rahane failed to take a catch at slip after Sangakkara had attempted a cut shot off Ravichandran Ashwin.

    The Indians soon combined again to dismiss Sangakkara, who got a standing ovation on his way back to the pavilion while his opponents clapped.

    Silva was caught behind off Stuart Binny when on 14 but it turned out to be a no-ball and the opener went to notch up his ninth test fifty before sweeping leg-spinner Amit Mishra to Ashwin at short fine leg.

    Earlier, Wriddhiman Saha (56) capitalised on a charmed life to hit his second successive test fifty as India inched close to the 400-mark before being all out soon after lunch.

    Resuming on 319 for six, the visitors lost Ashwin early but Saha added 46 runs with Mishra (24) to frustrate the hosts.

    Sri Lanka bowled without luck, illustrated best in the second over of the day when Dhammika Prasad’s delivery brushed Saha’s off-stump but could not dislodge the bails.

    Left-arm spinner Rangana Herath claimed the last two Indian wickets to finish with figures of 4-81.

  • Lahore High Court bans Bollywood movie Phantom

    Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba which the United Nations has listed as a terrorist organisation, petitioned the court to ban the Kabir Khan-directed feature film “Phantom” on the basis that it maligns Pakistan and vilifies Saeed and his current organisation, Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

    The Lahore High Court issued a ban on Thursday, Saeed’s lawyer said.

    “The government has been told that the film should not be presented for showing in Pakistan and to take necessary steps in this regard,” lawyer AK Dogar told Reuters.

    In its reply to the petition in court, the Pakistani government “vehemently denied” that there were ever any plans to screen the Indian film.

    Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is banned in Pakistan but tolerated unofficially. Saeed has long abandoned its leadership and is now the head of its charity wing, Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

    India says it has handed over evidence against him to Pakistan which should have detained him. The issue has stood in the way of rebuilding relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

    The United States has also offered $10 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Saeed, who denies any involvement in the Mumbai attacks.

    Saeed lives freely in the city of Lahore in a villa with police stationed outside.

    “Phantom” is described as a political thriller set in aftermath of the Mumbai attacks and features Bollywood stars Saif Ali Khan and Katrina Kaif opposing a villain named “Harif Saeed”.

    Yahya Mujahid, spokesperson for Hafiz Saeed and Jamaat-ud-Daw, applauded Thursday’s court ruling.

    “This film was calling for an attack on Hafiz Saeed, and this was clearly terrorism on the part of India, to release such propaganda. So we think the High Court has given a very good decision on this.”

     

    Saif Ali Khan’s remarks on Phantom’s possible screening in Pakistan

    Earlier, Saif Ali Khan had been quoted as saying that he would like the movie to be released in Pakistan. He was quoted in the Indian media as saying that he was friends with the chief of the Board of Censors in Pakistan but that there must be “pressures” on the board chief as far as this particular film was concerned.

    saif-ali-khan-26-09-2013

  • Israel hits Syria with missiles in rocket attack retaliation

    Israel says the rare salvo had been launched there by an Iranian-backed Palestinian militant group.

    The group, Islamic Jihad, denied the Israeli allegation. It had previously threatened reprisals should one of its activists in Israeli detention, Mohammed Allan, die of a hunger strike. Allan ended the fast on Wednesday after an Israeli court intervened.

    Israeli officials said two rockets struck close to a northern village in the upper Galilee, near the Lebanese border, setting off brush fires but causing no casualties. Air-raid sirens had sent residents to shelters.

    The attack was unusual as that frontier had been largely quiet since the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah. By contrast, the Israeli-occupied Golan, about 16 km (10 miles) to the east, has occasionally come under fire from within Syria during the four-year-old civil war there.

    The Israeli military said in a statement the rockets that hit the upper Galilee “were launched from the Syrian Golan Heights … by Islamic Jihad, sponsored by Iran”.

    Israel “holds the Syrian government responsible for attacks emanating from Syria”, the army said, adding it had retaliated against targets in Syria.

    An Israeli military source said the air force and artillery had struck “five or six times” in the Syrian Golan.

    Syrian state TV confirmed Israeli strikes had hit, but said only material damage was done after “several missiles” targeted a transportation center and a public building in the Quneitra area near the Israeli frontier.

    Rebel sources in Syria, however, said the strikes hit some of Damascus’s military facilities on the Golan. A monitor initially reported casualties but did not elaborate.

    Islamic Jihad’s leaders are based in the Syrian capital and most of its followers are in the Gaza Strip, whose dominant faction Hamas has mostly been observing a truce with Israel that ended the war in the Palestinian enclave a year ago.

    Dawoud Shehab, an Islamic Jihad spokesman in Gaza, denied the group had fired on Israel from the Syrian Golan.

    “Israel is trying to divert attention from the defeat that it suffered in the face of the determination of the hero prisoner, Mohammed Allan,” Shehab told Reuters.

    Allan had refused food in protest at being detained without trial by Israel. On Wednesday, he called off the 65-day hunger strike after Israel’s top court suspended his arrest warrant.

    The possibility that Allan might die of his fast had drawn Islamic Jihad threats to attack Israel, which in turn deployed Iron Dome rocket interceptors outside Gaza as a precaution.

    Islamic Jihad acknowledges receiving support from Iran, Israel’s arch-foe. Israel has sought to highlight such Iranian backing for regional armed groups as it campaigns against U.S. congressional approval of the July 14 deal curbing Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for international sanctions relief.

    Israel captured the western Golan in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it, a move not recognized abroad. While saying it is keeping out of the Syrian civil war and that some of the shooting against its side of the Golan has been stray fire, Israel has usually retaliated against Damascus’s assets over the armistice line.