Zulqarnain Haider - Pak Wicket Keeper Quits International Cricket

Pakistan wicketkeeper Zulqarnain Haider announced his retirement from international cricket on Tuesday, and said he plans to seek political asylum in Britain after fleeing the team amid alleged threats for defying a match-fixing conspiracy.

Haider arrived in London on Monday and in an interview broadcast by a private television channel on Tuesday, said he had discussed his status with immigration officials and “according to their rules, I will have to follow this procedure.”

“I understand there is rule in Britain that if you are on right and if you are not a criminal, then they always protect you,” Haider said.

Haider would not identify who threatened him or the nature of the threats that prompted him to flee the team hotel in Dubai and fly out to England without telling anyone.

“I was approached by one person who asked me to fix the fourth and fifth match and there would be problem for me if I did not do it,” Haider said.

“I do not want to say who is involved and who is not involved in the match fixing.”

The alleged threats came after he scored the winning run in the fourth one-day international against South Africa on Friday to clinch a one-wicket victory for Pakistan, thereby foiling an alleged plan to allow South Africa to win the game.

“The country is like a mother and any one who sells it cannot get anything in life,” Haider said.

“I did not want to sell my mother, I did not want to sell my country and I did what I thought was better.”

Following the game, Haider asked a Pakistan Cricket Board official for his passport, pretending that he needed it to buy a mobile phone connection, and then left the hotel to fly to London.

“I did not do what I was asked to do in the fourth one-dayer and I also did not let it happen what was being asked to do, so this is the reason that I left it and came here and I did what I felt better,” he said.

Haider would not detail the threats made to him, but Pakistan police had beefed up security at his house in Lahore, according to senior police official Sahahzada Salim, “to avoid any untoward incident.”

“I cannot say what kind of threats I have received as my family is still in Pakistan,” Haider said, adding his reluctance to provide details was in the interests of family safety.

Haider said he was new in Pakistan cricket and did not have enough money to hire a lawyer to represent him in the immigration case or any future legal disputes. He said he would approach some of his friends in London as he seeks a place to stay.

The alleged threats and match fixing were the latest setback for a Pakistan team that has been troubled by matters off the pitch.

In August, Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif were accused of involvement in an alleged betting scandal during a test in England.

The ICC described the allegations against the trio as the sport’s biggest fixing scandal in decades. It charged the trio with corruption in September and suspended them after a British tabloid sting alleged money was paid for bowling no-balls at prearranged times against England to fix spot-betting markets.

On Sunday, Pakistan’s team manager Intikhab Alam told The Associated that Haider and two other players had been fined for breaking curfew during the team’s series with South Africa.

Alam said opener Shahzaib Hasan, spinner Abdul Rehman and Haider were fined 500 dirhams ($136) for staying out late in Abu Dhabi, where the series began last month. Alam had said Sunday that all three would be available to play Monday.

Iron Woman Irom Chanu Sharmila Completes Her 10 Years of Hunger Strike

Irom Chanu Sharmila

Irom Chanu Sharmila, who is known as the "Iron Lady of Manipur", has completed her ten years of hunger strike on Tuesday. She has been fasting unto death from November 2, 2000 after witnessing the killing of innocent people by the army in Manipur.

The 38-year-old Sharmila was arrested for her protest and started her fasting in the prison hospital being fed with vitamins forcefully via a nasal drip. Her protest began after the army of 8 Assam Rifles allegedly killed 10 people at Malom near Imphal airport on November 2, 2000.

Sharmila is demanding for the withdrawal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from Manipur, under which the army is allowed to kill suspected rebels.

The iconic figure in the country is looking lean and thin, yet the positive thought has a notion to make her mission complete and successful. She has vowed to continue her strike until the demand gets approved.

According to Human rights campaigners, such activity by a daring woman has created a history not for the rebels but for the civilians, who is struggling for their rights in a free nation.

Wikileaks Founder Found His Life Is On Risk

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Israeli television on Sunday that he was taking security precautions following the release of nearly 400,000 secret U.S. military documents on the Iraq war.

"No, I'm not running for my life, but we do have to take extra security precautions," Assange told Channel Two television in an interview that took place in London.

The Israeli channel reported that Assange was accompanied by bodyguards during the interview.

The mass of U.S. documents from 2004 to 2009 released by WikiLeaks on Friday offer a grim snapshot of the Iraq conflict, especially of the abuse of civilians by Iraqi security forces.

"Just yesterday, in fact, the former general counsel of the CIA said that it was his view was that the U.S. was trying to get me personally and possibly some other people into the U.S. jurisdiction, and that corresponds to former statements made by the Pentagon," Assange told Channel Two.

On Friday, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said before the material was made public: "We deplore WikiLeaks for inducing individuals to break the law, leak classified documents and then cavalierly share that secret information with the world, including our enemies."

Asked whether the WikiLeaks revelations could be of use to Osama bin Laden, Assange told the Israeli broadcaster that he was not privy to the thoughts of the al-Qaida chief.

"I do not have access to Osama bin Laden's thoughts. Many people want the truth out, insofar as al-Qaida wants the truth out, they are correct," he said.

Washington on Sunday came under increasing pressure to investigate allegations in the leaked documents.

The flood of material offers a grim snapshot of the conflict, especially of the abuse of Iraqi civilians by Iraqi security forces.

The heavily redacted logs appear to show that the U.S. military turned a blind eye to evidence of torture and abuse of civilians by the Iraqi authorities.

WikiLeaks claim the documents reveal around 15,000 more civilian deaths than were previously known about.

The files contain graphic accounts of torture, civilian killings and Iran's hand in the Iraq war, documenting years of bloodshed and suffering following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to oust dictator Saddam Hussein.

WikiLeaks held a news conference in London on Saturday, at which Assange defended the unauthorised release, saying it was intended to reveal the "truth" about the conflict.

"Most wars that are started by democracies involve lying," he said. "If there's enough truth early on enough then perhaps we won't see these kind of wars." 

Bengali's Biggest Festival Durga Puja Come to End

Vijayadashami is a festival celebrated in varying forms across India, Bangladesh and Nepal . It is also called Dasara, Dashahara, Navaratri and Durgotsav(Marathi: , Bengali: বিজয়াদশমী,Oriya :ବିଜୟାଦଶମୀ, Kannada:  Malayalam: വിജയദശമി, Nepali :,Tamil: , Telugu: ). It is also known as Dasara (also written Dussehra) Bengali: দশেরা, Kannada: , Malayalam: ദസറ, konkani: , Marathi: ,Oriya:ଦଶହରା Telugu: ) and Dashain in Nepali.

Vijayadashami is celebrated on the tenth day of the Hindu autumn lunar month of Ashvin, or Ashwayuja which falls in September or October of the Western calendar, from the Shukla Paksha Pratipada, or the day after the new moon which falls in Bhadrapada, to the Dashami, or the tenth day of Ashvin. It is the culmination of the 10-day annual Navaratri (Sanskrit: नवरात्रि, 'nine nights') festival. It is the largest festival in Nepal, and celebrated by Hindu and non-Hindu Nepalis.

In India, the harvest season begins at this time and so the Mother Goddess is invoked to start the new harvest season and reactivate the vigor and fertility of the soil. This is done through religious performances and rituals which are thought to invoke cosmic forces that rejuvenate the soil. In Bangladesh it is a five day long festival and is celebrated in mandaps (congregation).

The largest festival is held at Dhakeshwari temple and Ramkrishna missionary in Dhaka. On the day of Dasha-Hara, clay statues of the Goddess Durga are submerged in rivers. The pooja is performed with turmeric and other pooja items, which are added to the river in order to help the water yield better crops.

Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the founder of the Hindawi (Hindu) Swarajya - Maratha Empire worshipped Lord Shiva and the goddess Durga in her Bhawani form before engaging in military expeditions.

Dasha-Hara is the festival of Victory of Good over Evil. Buses, trucks and machines in factories are decorated. Dasha-Hara is also Vishwakarma Divas - the National Labor Day of India. Veda Vyasa is considered the foremost guru and Vijayadashami is also celebrated as Vyasa puja. Shastra pooja, or the worship of the weapon Shastra/Astra used by Goddess Durga, are worshipped on this day.

Jr doctors Strike in Kolkata’s Govt Hospital Continuies, Who Care for Patients

In West Bengal, the seize of work by junior doctors at SSKM Hospital in Kolkata has entered the fourth day on Monday. Patients are dying without any treatment, pregnant and babies are also suffering for this.

Junior doctors started indefinite seize of work since Saturday in protest against assault on one of their colleagues following death of a patient.

Junior doctors of Chittarjanjan National Medical College and Hospital has joined them from last night.

Junior doctors of Calcutta Medical College and Hospital also started the seize of work since this morning to show their solidarity with the agitating doctors in the two government hospitals in the city.

AIR Kolkata Correspondent reports that normal services in the government-run hospitals have been severely affected due to agitation of junior doctors. New admission and emergecy operations have virtually come to a halt. Patients and their relatives are facing tremendous hardship. Police arrested five junior doctors for assaulting patient parties at SSKM Hospital last night.

Meanwhile, the West Bengal Chief Minister Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee appealed to the junior doctors to withdraw their seize of work. Mr. Bhattacharjee firmly said that the government will not tolerate unruly behaviour of junior doctors. But they are stand still in their position and also started relay fast on demand for release their co-worker who were arrested last night, for attacking the media.

Obama Blasts Iran Leader Over 'Outrageous, Offensive' 9/11 Comments

US President Barack Obama has slammed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's September 11 conspiracy theory comments at the United Nations as ''offensive'' and ''hateful''.
In his first comments on the Iranian leader's statement that the 2001 terrorist attacks on America may have been orchestrated to bolster the US economy and ''save the Zionist regime'', Mr Obama told BBC Persian that ''for him to make a statement like that was inexcusable''.
US and European diplomats walked out of the UN General Assembly hall on Friday when Mr Ahmadinejad delivered his remarks about the September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
Envoys representing Australia, Canada, Costa Rica and New Zealand also left during the speech.
The interview with BBC Persian is part of Mr Obama's attempt to communicate directly with the Iranian people as the US and other nations increase pressure on Mr Ahmadinejad's government to comply with UN demands that it halt uranium enrichment.
''To have a President who makes outrageous, offensive statements like this does not serve the interests of the Iranian people, does not strengthen Iran's stature in the world community,'' Mr Obama said.
The US, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia were united last week in telling Mr Ahmadinejad to comply with UN Security Council demands or remain under trade and financial sanctions. The council wants Iran to cease uranium enrichment and answer the International Atomic Energy Agency's questions about whether the effort is designed to achieve a weapons capability.
In his speech to the General Assembly on Friday, Mr Obama said while he was willing to negotiate, ''the Iranian government must demonstrate a clear and credible commitment, and confirm to the world the peaceful intent of its nuclear program''.
Mr Obama told BBC Persian that Mr Ahmadinejad's address ''defies not just common sense but basic sense - basic senses of decency that aren't unique to any particular country - they're common to the entire world''.
He drew a distinction between the Iranian people and their government, saying that when the September 11 attacks took place there was ''a natural sense of shared humanity and sympathy expressed within Iran''.
''It just shows once again sort of the difference between how the Iranian leadership and this regime operates and how I think the vast majority of the Iranian people who are respectful and thoughtful think about these issues,'' he said.

USA Report Mention India 3rd Most Powerful Nation

India is listed as the third most powerful country in the world after the US and China and the fourth most powerful bloc after the US, China and the European Union in a new official US report.




The new global power lineup for 2010 also predicted that New Delhi's clout in the world will further rise by 2025, according to 'Global Governance 2025' jointly issued by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) of the US and the European Union's Institute for Security Studies (EUISS).


Using the insights of a host of experts from Brazil, Russia, India and China, among others, and fictionalised scenarios, the report illustrates what could happen over the next 25 years in terms of global governance.


In 2010, the US tops the list of powerful countries/regions, accounting for nearly 22 percent of the global power.


The US is followed by China with European Union at 16 percent and India at eight percent. India is followed by Japan, Russia and Brazil with less than five percent each.


According to this international futures model, by 2025 the power of the US, EU, Japan and Russia will decline while that of China, India and Brazil will increase, even though there will be no change in this listing.


By 2025, the US will still be the most powerful country of the world, but it will have a little over 18 percent of the global power.


The US will be closely followed by China with 16 percent, European Union with 14 percent and India with 10 per cent.


'The growing number of issues on the international agenda, and their complexity, is outpacing the ability of international organisations and national governments to cope,' the report warns.


This critical turning point includes issues of climate change, ethnic and regional conflicts, new technology, and the managing of natural resources.


The report also highlights the challenges proponents of effective global governance face.


On one hand, rapid globalistion, economic and otherwise, has led to an intertwining of domestic politics and international issues and fueled the need for more cooperation and more effective leadership.


But on the other hand, an increasingly multipolar world, often dominated by non-state actors, have put a snag in progress toward effectual global governance, it said.

Google's Awesome Tribute to Agatha Christie On Her 120th B'day

The search engine's multicoloured logo has been replaced with an elaborate scene adapted from one of the crime author's many detective novels.

Each of the logo's letters has been replaced with a character taken from her novels. For example the letter "G" has been designed in the form of her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

Google's Tribute to Agatha Christie

It has been created more than 30 years after her death, in January 1976, in Wallingford, Oxon.

The author, who also wrote under the pen name Mary Westmacott, was born in Torquay, Devon on September 15, 1890.

She wrote more than 90 books, mostly detective novels, which have sold an estimated four billion copies worldwide.

Christie is considered the best selling writer of books of all time and is only outsold by the Bible and William Shakespeare.

She also wrote several successful West End performances, including The Mousetrap, the world’s longest running play.

The design is the latest in long line of doodles that celebrate key events or anniversaries.

Last week Google fuelled online speculation by releasing a mysterious new interactive doodle for a second consecutive day. In that doodle users could "type" in the colours of the search engine's logo.

It followed a design the previous day that sparked similar mystery on the web. That design featured dozens of coloured balls amid suggestions the interactive logo was part of its 12th birthday celebrations.

Earlier this month, Google marked the 25th anniversary of the discovery of the "buckyball", a spherical dome of exotic molecules of carbon, with a special moving design. Users could move around an orange sphere using their mouse.

Another interactive Doodle was produced in May, celebrating the 30th birthday of Pac-Man.

That design, which went public on Friday, May 21, 2010, was the first doodle to be fully interactive. The Pac-Man character could be moved by using the arrow keys on the user's keyboard.

Google Doodles have become newsworthy in their own right after the firm started using the customised versions of its logo to mark what it considered significant occasions.

The first of them was used in August 1998 when Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the firm's founders, designed one for the Burning Man Festival.

In October 1999, it produced a Halloween doodle: the first after the firm switched to a new logo.

The first "Christmas card" doodle was presented in 1999, on Christmas Day, featuring a snowman and flakes drifting onto the name.

Mother's and Father's Day doodles appeared in May and June 2000 respectively before the firm started noting more esoteric and, let's face it, interesting occasions.

On October 7, 2009, it did "Google" as a bar code to recognise the anniversary of its invention in 1948 by Bernard Silver, which some saw as a significant shift away from human language and towards machine language.

On Saturday, June 5, 2010, a hologram replaced the logo to honour Dennis Gabor, the inventor of holograms.

Most recently the firm marked the 71st anniversary of the Judy Garland film The Wizard of Oz with a doodle of Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow walking down the Yellow Brick Road towards a landscape with "Google" on it. Perhaps it's a metaphor.

Mary Shelley, the British author of Frankenstein, had the 213th anniversary of her birth celebrated by a spooky Google Doodle late last month.
source: telegraph.co.uk

18 Killed & More Than 75 Injured in J&K Violence

Curfew was on Tuesday extended to all major towns of the Kashmir Valley as a precautionary measure after violent clashes left 14 people dead and over 50 injured, official sources said here. 
Air services to and from Srinagar have been suspended for three more days. Air services in Srinagar were earlier under suspension since September 3 due to renovation work on the runway, but were otherwise operating from the military airport at Awantipora in Pulwama. The services have now been been stopped due to bad security situation in the Valley. 
A mob defied curfew in north Kashmir's Khanpora in Baramulla district on Tuesday morning and indulged in heavy stone pelting on the security forces. The police used tear smoke shells to disperse the mob. One protester is reported to have got injured. Heavy pelting was going on the security forces till last reports came in. 
Srinagar city, Anantnag, Bijbehara, Awantipora, Lethpora, Pampore and Pulwama towns in south Kashmir and Sopore town in north Kashmir were already under curfew since Sunday. 
The new areas that have been brought under the ambit of prohibitory orders include Budgam town, Choon, Mirgund, Ompora, Narkara, Shekhpora, Humhama, I.G. Road, Gulwanpora, Nadir Gund, Chadoora and Wathoora in central Kashmir's Budgam district. 

Curfew was also imposed in Ganderbal and Kangan towns, Kulgam, Qoimoh, Shopian town, Baramulla town, Tangmarg, Kupwara town, Tregham, Kralpora, Handwara, Chotipora, Kulangam and Bandipora town. 
A police spokesman said a mob took out the belongings and bedding of police personnel from a police post at Khanabal-Pahalgam Road in Anantnag town on Monday night and set them on fire. 
A troops carrier of the state police was torched at Charier Sharief in Budgam district, he said. 
Fresh violence erupted in Kashmir on Monday, leaving 17 dead, including a policeman and over 70 injured with mobs torching several government properties and a private school after a television report alleged desecration of a holy book in the US. 
The state cabinet yesterday condemned the alleged act of desecration and made a fervent appeal to the people not to take law in their own hands. 
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had on Monday voiced concern over the ongoing unrest in Jammu and Kashmir. He also sought to reach out to the people in the state, saying their grievances have to be addressed and promised talks within the Indian Constitution with those who abjure violence. 

9/11 & Story of Muslims

Nearly every Sept. 11 since Sept. 11, Hadidjatou Karamoko Traoré has made sure that her three children were dressed in their best clothes, and taken them from their tidy brick home in the Bronx to the pit where the World Trade Center stood, and where her husband, their father, worked and died.

After the attacks, all that was found of Abdoul-Karim Traoré, a cook at the Windows on the World restaurant, were his leather wallet, his identification cards and a few coins.


“I like to go down there and pray and see the place and remember,” said Mrs. Traoré, a native of Ivory Coast who came to the United States in 1997. “When I go there, I feel closer to him. And him to me. I pray for him, too.”


When she prays, she calls God Allah. Mrs. Traoré, 40, says praying in the pit feels entirely natural, even if some of those standing with her — widows and widowers, parents and children — blame her religion for the destruction of that day.


“That’s not fair,” she said. “It’s not because of Allah that these buildings fell.”

Mrs. Traoré is the widow of one of roughly 60 Muslim victims — cooks, businessmen, emergency responders and airline passengers — believed to have died on 9/11. It is a group that has been little examined, and no precisely reliable count of their ranks exists. But their stories, when told, have frequently been offered as counterweights in the latest public argument over terrorism and Islam.


Mrs. Traoré works the overnight shift as a nurse’s assistant at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. She loves to cook: peanut sauce and doughy fritters are her specialties. She has a wide smile and a raspy laugh. Her life, a juggling act of homework, bills and prayer, is one Sept. 11 story — the kind of personal account Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and others have sought to highlight amid the debate over a planned Islamic community center near the pit where Ms. Traoré prays every September.


Over the past nine years, Mrs. Traoré has lived a kind of dual life. She is a 9/11 widow struggling to raise her children, cope with her loss and tame her anger. The trials of her days would ring familiar to single mothers and fathers from Staten Island to Washington. But she is also a Muslim woman, both devoted to her faith and conscious of the discomfort it can evoke in her adopted homeland.


She wears Western clothes when she shops at Costco. But she wears a robe and head scarf when she visits her mosque in the Bronx. When she is in her religious attire, she can sense a shift as people on the street appear to regard her with suspicion.


“When people run away from me, I feel sad,” she said. “But I understand why they’re doing that. What happened was terrible.”


Her two sons, Souleymane, 11, and Siaka, 9, attend a Roman Catholic school near their home. During prayer, they sit in the back of the classroom with the few other non-Catholic students. They feel comfortable there, but they, too, have hidden their religion from schoolyard bullies. Mrs. Traoré received government money from the Sept. 11 compensation fund, and she said she was both unsurprised by and grateful for the American generosity.










Mrs. Traoré is also frustrated and troubled, she said, that so many Americans find it impossible to separate the pious of her faith from its fanatics. But it has not buckled her beliefs.


“I’m proud to be Muslim,” she said. “I’m going to be Muslim until God takes my spirit.”


Africa and New York


Mrs. Traoré met her husband in 1990 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He was a handsome mechanic, she worked at a health clinic, and they quickly fell in love. They married in 1992, and she was pregnant the next year. Before their daughter was born, however, Mr. Traoré moved to New York in search of a better life. Mrs. Traoré followed four years later.


They lived, at first, in the Parkchester section of the Bronx. She braided women’s hair and spent most of her time with other West Africans. She felt comfortable in the city and never felt the need to hide her religion.


Mr. Traoré first worked delivering groceries; later he got a job as a cook at the restaurant inside the American Museum of Natural History, and then came the opportunity at Windows on the World. He worked the 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. shift, which allowed him to make extra money delivering USA Today in the early morning.


Mr. Traoré never met his daughter, Djenebou, a quiet 17-year-old who now looks after her brothers as something of a surrogate parent. Unable to move to the United States with her mother, she grew up with relatives in Ivory Coast, and came to New York in 2002 after receiving “humanitarian parole.”


Their home, a jumble of New York and Africa, is filled with the laugh track of Disney Channel sitcoms and the smell of peanut stew. A pile of shoes lies by the door — leopard-print Timberland boots, shiny high-top sneakers, slippers, sandals and high heels.


Mrs. Traoré keeps hand-drawn Mother’s Day cards taped to her bedroom door and posters of Mecca taped to the living room walls. Those walls could use a fresh coat of paint, and the ragged carpet has seen better days. But the family is busy, and the house is well loved, a refuge from the rough streets of Hunts Point outside.


Mrs. Traoré is strict — she keeps her children indoors or in their small backyard — and she tries to limit television to an hour a day. Djenebou spends much of her time checking Facebook and juggling instant messages, but her sessions are routinely interrupted by the call to prayer, which Mrs. Traoré has set to issue from the family laptop’s speakers.


Mrs. Traoré wants her children to pray, but that can take some nudging. They pray together in her bedroom, and they have long, quiet conversations about their religion. And on Fridays, they visit a ground-floor mosque nearby on Southern Boulevard that sits opposite a graffiti-covered junkyard, down the street from El Mundo Department Store.


“I tell them we have to believe in God, you have to pray,” she said.


While she finishes her overnight shift at the hospital, the children get themselves up and prepare their bowls of cereal. She calls when she is five minutes away so they can jump in the car and race to school. “We’re always late,” she said. “Always, always.”


She sleeps until 3 p.m., and then picks them up from after-school programs, prepares dinner, reviews homework and checks backpacks before leaving for another night shift.


“I’m the father and mother now,” she said.


‘He Went to Work’


Mrs. Traoré can barely discuss Sept. 11, 2001, without tears pooling in her eyes. “He went to work,” she said. “That’s it.”


She remembers her husband praying and getting dressed for his first job of the day, delivering newspapers, but it was too early for them to speak. She woke up at 8 a.m. for what was to be her second day of formal English classes. Though she had spent four years in New York, she knew only rudimentary phrases.


As she was hurrying to leave, her brother-in-law called to ask if Abdoul had gone to the World Trade Center. Yes, of course. Like always. He told her to turn on the television.


She saw the towers burning, but she could not understand what the newscasters were saying. She began crying, dialing her husband’s cellphone “again, again, again.” Relatives rushed to the apartment to translate the TV for her.


For two weeks, Mrs. Traoré barely slept. She called her husband’s phone repeatedly and visited a string of hospitals in search of him. She did not tell her children what she most feared.


“I just said he went away,” she remembered. “I said he’s coming, he’s coming.”


Souleymane, then 3, struggled. He insisted, for whatever reason, on sleeping on sheets that were perfectly white. A social worker advised her to tell the children what happened, and nine years later they still have not made peace with their father’s death.


“I want to ask why they did that,” Souleymane said on a recent afternoon. “If they were mad at somebody, they could have sorted it out instead of starting a war.”


Mr. Traoré’s remains were never found, but his wallet was recovered intact, as if he had only forgotten it on the nightside table. For years, Souleymane kept it as a totem.


Soon after the attacks, the family moved from Parkchester to a three-story home in Hunts Point that Mr. Traoré had found before he died. His brother, a taxi driver, lives on the top floor. A family friend from Ivory Coast lives on the second floor. Mrs. Traoré has support. She is not one to live in the past, even if her busy life allowed for more reflection.


“Life has never been normal, but it’s better,” she said. “I still miss him. But it’s not horrible like before.”


‘Everything Has Changed’


If the attacks forever upended her family, they also altered her understanding of America, and her place in this country.


“After 9/11, everything has changed,” she said. “At the beginning after 9/11, they were saying terrorists are all Islamic people. But terrorists and the religious people are different. God doesn’t say kill people.”


At home, the river of mail and bills never stops, a deluge her husband managed so smoothly. She still struggles with English. Perhaps the one part of her world that has remained fixed is her faith.


“My children are Muslim and my parents are Muslim,” she said. “I read the Koran and I am proud.”


Islam, indeed, acts as the ballast of her life. “It puts me in the right direction, and it protects me from doing bad things,” she said.


She does not blame God for her husband’s death. “That was my husband’s destiny,” she said.


If they had stayed in Ivory Coast, she reasons, perhaps he would have fallen fatally ill. “I’m praying to God to make me strong to protect them and raise them,” she said of her children. “I believe God is helping me because my children here are growing and they’re healthy and I’m doing my work.”


“I move closer to prayer, closer to God, and I thank him,” she said. “I keep praying to God to make me strong.”


On Friday, she will have a birthday party for Siaka. He has asked for ice cream cake. On Saturday, Sept. 11, the family will return to ground zero. And she will pray to Allah.


source:nytimes.com

Three Accused Pakistani Cricketers Return Home Today

Three Pakistan cricket players questioned by British police over claims they were involved in a fixing scandal will return home on Friday, the London legal firm representing them said. 
"The Metropolitan Police has been notified that Mohammad Aamer, Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt will return to Pakistan later this morning," said a statement from Addleshaw Goddard. 
Police had questioned Test team captain Butt and bowlers Aamer and Asif over claims in the News of The World newspaper that they took money to deliberately bowl no-balls in a Test match against England at Lord's last month. 
The players, who have denied wrongdoing, were released without charge after being quizzed at a London police station on September 3. 
Despite their return to Pakistan, the lawyers' statement said the cricketers "remain available to co-operate fully with the police investigation and have each given undertakings to return to the UK if required to do so." 
"The players are looking forward to being reunited with their families," it said. 
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police in London confirmed it was aware that the trio were leaving Britain and said the players had promised "through their solicitor to return to assist the Metropolitan Police Service inquiry in due course."