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ISLAMABAD, Oct 19 (APP): Top seed Aqeel Khan, Ahmed Chaudhry, Heera Ashiq, Barkat ullah, Muzammil Murtaza, Shahzad Khan, Aman Atiq and Muhammad Abid moved into the quarterfinals by beating their respective opponents in the First Chairman POF Board National Ranking Tennis Championships 2016 here at Ordinance Club, Wah Cannt on Wednesday.
Barkat Ullah made the major upset when he eliminated 7th seed Usman Rafiq in straight sets at score 7-5,6-4. Barkat Ullah from Peshawar played excellent game of tennis with power full ground stokes from baseline.
He won the first set at 7-5 by breaking 12 game of Usman Rafiq and took the second set at 6-4 by breaking the 5th game. He will now face Heera Ashiq in the quarterfinal on Thursday.
M. Talha Khan beat Zainab Ali Raja 4-0,4-0; Ahmed Nael Qureshi beat Farhan Shah Khan 4-0,4-0; M Huzaifa Khan beat Fatima Ali Raja 4-0,4-0; Yahya Musa Luni w/o Anam Ali.
Brian David Mitchell, accused of kindapping Elizabeth Smart, is carted from the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City, Utah.
(CNN) -- The federal trial of Brian David Mitchell, charged in connection with the 2002 kidnapping of Utah teenager Elizabeth Smart, was halted Tuesday after Mitchell suffered a medical problem in court, according to CNN affiliate KSTU.
KSTU posted a picture on its website of Mitchell, wearing an oxygen mask, sitting on a stretcher as he was being loaded into an ambulance.
Mitchell, as usual, began singing when he was led into the courtroom Tuesday: "O Holy Night," KSTU reported. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball began the proceedings by raising an issue in a note sent from jurors. As Kimball asked for jurors to be brought in, Mitchell began to wail and dropped to the floor, KSTU said. Defense attorney Wendy Lewis told Kimball, "He's having a seizure, your honor."
An ambulance was called, and paramedics came into the courthouse to examine Mitchell, according to KSTU.
"The judge told the jury that an issue had come up and the trial would be suspended today," Melodie Rydalch, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney in Utah, said in an e-mail.
Kimball told jurors the trial would resume Wednesday, KSTU reported.
Rebecca Woodridge, Mitchell's stepdaughter, told KSTU he has suffered seizures before. "He's had a few of them in the past year. I don't think there's any reason for him to fake this," she said.
Defense attorney Robert Steele told reporters outside the courthouse that Smart herself had testified about Mitchell suffering a seizure during her time in captivity. "We watched a seizure," he said, according to KSTU. "It really happened."
Mitchell, 57, faces charges of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines in Smart's abduction. Then 14, she was kidnapped from her bedroom in her family's Salt Lake City, Utah, home. Nine months later, she was found in the company of Mitchell -- a drifter and self-described "prophet" who called himself Immanuel -- and his wife, Wanda Barzee.
Mitchell's trial resumed Monday after taking last week off. Barzee earlier testified as a defense witness.
Defense attorneys are mounting an insanity defense for Mitchell, hoping to prove that mental illness clouded his mind to such a degree that he did not understand that his actions were wrong when he abducted and held Smart.
CNN's Ashley Hayes contributed to this report.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012: Chief space weather forecasters Yihua Zheng and Antti Pulkkinen of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center are helping to implement a computer technique called ensemble forecasting that will improve NASA’s ability to predict the impact of severe solar storms.
Thursday, February 2, 2012: Two images displayed together show the fruits of NASA’s labors. In 2011, MESSENGER spacecraft went into orbit around Mercury (left), and Dawn spacecraft orbited main-belt asteroid Vesta (right), sending back the images seen here. Both spacecraft were the first to orbit their respective subjects. MESSENGER and Dawn are missions in NASA's lowest-cost Discovery program. Vesta has a much more irregular shape than Mercury, as a result of Mercury's far larger gravity, which squeezed the planet into a sphere. Mercury possesses a mass about 1300 times greater than that of Vesta.
Friday, February 3, 2012: Galaxy NGC 2217 swirls in the constellation of Canis Major (The Great Dog). A distinctive bar of stars within an oval ring anchors the galaxy centrally. Further from the center, tightly wound spiral arms almost form a circular ring around the galaxy. Astronomers classify NGC 2217 as a barred spiral galaxy, and it lies nearly face-on to us. The bluish outer spiral arms indicate the presence of hot, luminous, young stars, born from interstellar gas clouds. The central bulge and bar appear yellower, due to the presence of older stars. Dark lanes of cosmic dust block out some of the starlight in the galaxy's arms and central bulge. The majority of spiral galaxies in the local universe, including our own Milky Way, are thought to possess a bar of some kind.
Monday, February 6, 2012: NuSTAR, The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, will image the sky for the first time in the high energy X-ray (6-79 keV) region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our view of the universe in this spectral window has been limited previously. NuSTAR is scheduled to launch March 14, 2012, from an aircraft operating out of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Here, NuSTAR is seen undergoing a solar array illumination test. Image released via Twitter Feb. 3, 2012.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012: Astrophotographer Adam Block captured this image of nebula LBN 1022 in the constellation of Monoceros at the Mt. Lemmon Sky Center/University of Arizona in Nov. 2011.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012: The East Coast of the United States glows at night, as seen from the International Space Station. This looks generally northeastwards with the Philadelphia-New York City-Boston corridor at bottom center. The western shoreline of Lake Ontario with Toronto lies on the left edge. Montreal, Quebec, Canada, gleams as the bright spot near the center. Atmospheric limb and light activity from the Aurora Borealis appear intertwined due to an optical illusion. Photo taken Jan. 29, 2012.
Thursday, February 9, 2012: On Jan. 27, 2012, a large X-class flare erupted from an active region on the sun, near the solar west limb. X-class flares represent the most powerful of all solar events. The X-ray telescope on Hinode spacecraft captured this image of the flare, showing an emission from plasma heated to greater than eight million degrees during the energy-release process of the flare.
Monday, February 13, 2012: The Hubble Space Telescope shows three galaxies in this image. Two, including the tilted galaxy at the bottom and the small galaxy at top center, show spiral arms around a bright nucleus, like our own Milky Way galaxy. However, Markarian 779, the galaxy at the top of this image, possesses a distorted appearance, likely the product of a recent galactic merger between two spirals. This collision destroyed the spiral arms of the galaxies and scattered much of their gas and dust. Image released February 6, 2012.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012: NGC 6752 globular cluster has blazed for over 10 billion years as one of the most ancient collections of stars known. It has existed over twice as long as our solar system. NGC 6752 contains a high number of "blue straggler" stars, the origin of which remains a mystery. These stars display characteristics of stars younger than their neighbors. Collisions between stars in this turbulent area could produce the blue stragglers that are so prevalent. NGC 6752 lies 13,000 light-years from Earth.
A jury that will begin deliberating next week whether two New York City men conspired with Mohegan Sun dealers to cheat the casino at mini-baccarat will no longer be considering the actual charge of cheating against Leonard Hu and Hung Lit Leung.
New London Superior Court Judge Arthur C. Hadden granted a motion by defense attorneys Jeremiah Donovan and Conrad Seifert to dismiss the cheating charges Friday, saying the state law on cheating does not clearly prohibit someone from participating in a game with marked cards.
The law "prohibits anyone involved in a lawful gambling game to knowingly mark cards."
"There is no evidence or inference that these defendants marked the cards," Hadden said. "There is no evidence that they even touched the cards."
Hu and Leung remain charged with conspiracy and larceny. Both sides rested their cases Friday, and attorneys are scheduled to deliver closing arguments Monday. The six-member jury will begin deliberating after the judge instructs them on the charges.
Prosecutor Stephen M. Carney alleges the two men conspired with two former Mohegan Sun dealers to gain an advantage over the casino using marked cards. The dealers, Jeian Ng and Bong Gate Louie, admitted marking cards after a man identified only as "Lee" approached Ng in the poker room at Foxwoods Resort Casino in 2010.
Hu and Leung were arrested in February 2011 after a surveillance investigator noticed the table at which they were playing lost an unusually high amount of money and reviewed video tape in which he said they increased their bets when a marked card was coming out.
While the defense attorneys claimed the state failed to prove any link between the dealers and the two defendants, the state claimed they could be linked through circumstantial evidence, including the amounts of money the two men won as a result of the marked cards.
Mohegan Sun's director of operational accounting, David Thomlinson testified Friday that based on the casino's "theoretical hold" calculation, Hu was expected to lose $150,000 at mini-baccarat between October 2010 and February 2011 but instead won $468,500. Leung was expected to lose $51,297 during the same period but won $165,370.
The casino calculates its theoretical hold, or expected winnings, by multiplying the house advantage, the length of time played, the average bet and the decisions (bets) per hour. The casino was able to track the gambling activity of Hu and Leung because both men are "rated" players who presented their player's card when gambling.
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, in her first press conference since taking the helm of the U.S. central bank, sent stock markets plunging Wednesday when she said the Fed might start raising interest rates six months after ending its bond purchasing program.
The Dow Jones Industrial average hit an intraday low -- down about 210 points -- shortly after Yellen made her comment around 3 p.m.
The Dow regained much of those losses, but markets seemed surprised at Yellen’s specificity.
Earlier, the policy setting Federal Open Market Committee voted to reduce the Fed’s asset purchases to $55 billion per month, cutting $10 billion from its bond-buying program for the third time in as many meetings.
The move was widely expected.
The Fed also changed its guidance for when it may start to increase its short-term federal funds interest rate, which is a benchmark for many consumer and business loans.
With the unemployment rate nearing 6.5%, the FOMC removed that threshold for when it may begin to raise the target rate.
“In determining how long to maintain the current 0 to ¼ percent target range for the federal funds rate, the Committee will assess progress – both realized and expected – toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2% inflation,” the FOMC said in its statement. “This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial developments.
The shift away from the unemployment rate as a primary indicator to a broader array of indicators was also widely predicted.
In her press conference, Yellen said she has never considered the headline unemployment rate alone as a “sufficient” gauge for the health of the overall labor markets. Instead, she said she looks at other labor indicators as well, including the broader U6 rate, which includes people not currently looking for work, and the labor participation rate.
“It’s appropriate to look at many more things,” she said.
As for its asset purchases, beginning in April, the Fed will buy $25 billion of agency mortgage-backed securities and $30 billion of longer-term Treasury securities.
After concluding its two-day meeting, the Fed also tweaked its economic forecasts. It now expects the unemployment rate this year to settle between 6.1% and 6.3%, gross domestic product to increase between 2.8% and 3%, and longer-run inflation to rise at 2%.
In December, the Fed forecast the unemployment rate for this year would fall between 6.3% and 6.6%, with an increase in GDP between 2.8% and 3.2%. Its longer-run inflation forecast is unchanged.
The FOMC also acknowledged the role severe weather had on the economy, noting “growth in economic activity slowed during the winter months, in part reflecting adverse weather conditions."
Narayana Kocherlakota, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, voted against the policy over concerns the Fed is not committed to its 2% inflation target.
Yellen said in her press conference that the Fed is “closely monitoring” the situation in the Ukraine, but that U.S. financial interests haven’t been significantly impacted yet by the situation brought about by Russia’s aggressive push to annex the Crimea.
Click button for audio. Scroll to read story below.
A small town in Texas. A giant explosion. An unsolved mystery. And the forces that pulled it all back together.
WEST, Tex. — If her son hadn’t stowed that damn ’66 Chevrolet Impala in her garage, Jeanette Holecek would have died the day her town exploded. But its sloping steel bulk was in just the right place, at just the right time, and it shielded her from the concussion that shattered her home.
If Misty Kaska hadn’t found a coupon for dinner at the Panda Express in Waco that Wednesday evening, she and her husband would have been in their house when it crumpled and ignited.
If the blast happened a little later, the old folks at the rest home would have been tucked into bed, vulnerable as the ceilings came down. If it had happened earlier, schoolchildren would have been sliced by flying glass and trapped in ruined classrooms. If it had been a Tuesday or Thursday, much of the town would have been at the sports fields for home games, right in the blast radius. But because it was a Wednesday, many were a safe distance away: at St. Mary’s for weekday Mass, or Bible study at the Baptist church, or the track meet near Texas A&M.
Blessings abounded in the Texas town of West, population 2,800, on that April day in 2013 when the fertilizer plant caught fire and its ammonium nitrate detonated — killing 15, injuring 252 and damaging or destroying 500 buildings.
At a house 1,000 feet from the plant, everything collapsed except for a cabinet with glass figurines of angels, intact and unmoved. At Holecek’s home, a bedroom wall was wiped clean of its decor except for a single wooden cross. In another room, two paintings still hung side by side: a generic store-bought landscape and a cousin’s hand-rendered lighthouse.
The first one was shredded. The second was not even askew.
Investigators have spent 4½ years and millions of dollars trying to determine what happened that day in West. The town, though, has already figured it out.
Two American cities were wracked by explosions during the third week of April 2013. West, Tex., is the one you didn’t pay as much attention to.
On April 15, a small but vicious pair of pressure-cooker bombs ripped through the finish-line crowd at the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring 264. There were obvious villains and emerging heroes, and the subsequent manhunt transfixed the nation. “Boston Strong” became a national mantra.
West was a far larger event, though the circumstances were murkier. The April 17 explosion was roughly five times the size of the blast of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which was also generated by ammonium nitrate. It injured almost 10 percent of West’s population, registered as a magnitude-2.1 tremor and flung debris as far as 2½ miles away. It was as if a twister had come through town carrying an atomic bomb.
West registered only briefly on the national radar. Donations poured in and cable news crews camped for a while outside the cattle-auction building, but it soon became clear that there was no link to terrorism. For many, the narrative ended with President Barack Obama’s speech at an April 25 memorial in Waco.
We tend to treat small-town America as both a cliche and a touchstone, of what we used to be and what we still aspire to. What, then, to make of West’s calamity?
The blast was a culmination of a century of history, of immigration and agriculture and government and growth. It was also the prologue to an epic investigation, a lingering mystery, a baffling twist and a series of epiphanies — some practical, some incredible — on what it means to prosper, to doubt, to be safe, to recover, to believe, to be a community.
The town gravedigger was locking up the cemetery when he saw smoke on the horizon. Jake Sulak pulled the white iron gates shut and climbed into his pickup. Looked like his fellow volunteer firefighters would need help.
Bryan Anderson, who owned the local pizza joint, was at the Exxon, on the way home with son Kaden from religious-ed class. “Look at all that smoke, Dad,” the 9-year-old said. Bryan called his wife at their bluffside home overlooking the town, and he asked her to step outside and see what was happening.
Next door, Stevie Vanek was having a beer with the justice of the peace when his pager started buzzing. The judge kept gabbing, but then the dispatcher called through his radio: “Structure fire at the West Fertilizer plant.” At that, Stevie broke away. He’d have to grab a truck at the fire station.
A fourth-generation Westite, Stevie was manager of a glass company and part of the town’s volunteer fire department, established in 1894 by the community of Czechs and Germans who’d settled on this blackland prairie to raise cotton, corn and cattle. When the hand-cranked alarm sounded, farmers, grocers and doctors would race toward danger to protect the world they were building together.
The mayor, Tommy Muska, parking his son’s Ford pickup on the grassy shoulder by the high school, about a quarter-mile from the fire.
Judy Knapek, an elections administrator for the county, arriving in her own truck and wondering about her cousins already fighting the blaze up close.
The local funeral director, Robby Payne, who balked at the size of the blaze and started conferring with other firefighters about whether to back the heck up and figure out a Plan B.
The smoke was now whipping on the wind toward nearby homes.
In her small brick house 1,000 feet away, Cindy Nemecek Hobbs was sitting on her couch reading, unaware of the fire and wondering about the sweet fragrance wafting through her screen door.
What was it, she wondered. Not the honeysuckle. Not the roses.
Where are you? her daughter-in-law asked. There’s a fire at the fertilizer plant. There’s a chance it could explode.
The plant was a mom-and-pop operation, a distribution center where farmers picked up custom mixes of fertilizer to boost crop yields. It was built in 1962 a half-mile outside West. As the harvests grew, so did the town. In 1967, the rest home opened 629 feet from the plant. In the early ’70s, a two-story apartment complex was built even closer. Then a playground and basketball court, a mere 249 feet away.
But now the gravedigger was peering over his steering wheel at flames the color of blood, lashing the gray sky above the engulfed plant, so high he couldn’t see the end of it. Biggest, meanest fire he’d ever seen.
The fire department’s hoses were too short to reach the nearest hydrant, at the high school. So an engine pumped water from a tender truck as four firefighters tried to direct the hose into the open northeast portal of the storehouse, and the inferno inside. The heat vaporized the water before it could reach the flames.
“Pat, that place scares me,” Stevie Vanek said to a fellow firefighter in his truck as they approached and inhaled a chemical odor, something harsh and horrifying.
Adair had been at church when his cellphone rang. The 83-year-old plant owner came speeding up to the perimeter that first responders had established at the site. He could see that the building was a total loss.
“Get the people off the street and off the yard,” he told a firefighter.
There were about 300,000 pounds of fertilizer-grade ammonium nitrate on the premises. It was planting season, after all.
Only 22 minutes had passed since a West police officer first caught a whiff of smoke.
That’s when radio traffic suddenly went dead.
The mayor’s baseball cap flew off.
The noise could be heard dozens of miles away.
Close by, everything seemed to happen in silence.
A scythe of light swept over the ground. The earth collapsed upward around the plant. Fiery hunks of metal and concrete streaked away like meteorites returning to space. A rippling dome of air bloomed from the explosion, crushing the firetrucks, racing out in a wall of pressure, flattening grass.
It threw Robby Payne, the funeral director, into a metal tank. It heaved Tommy Muska, the mayor, backward six feet. It pushed the rails of the train track together into one ribbon of steel, and it tipped over a rail car containing 200,000 pounds of fertilizer. It blew out the back walls of the apartment complex, and then the front walls, carrying some residents into the parking lot. Then it hit Bryan and Kaden in their truck, collapsing the cab and blowing the windshield into their faces.
Up on the bluff, Bryan’s wife was knocked off her feet. Behind her, the front windows of the house exploded, and glass shards riddled the couch she had just been sitting on.
Across from the apartments, the rest home folded like a house of cards. At the schools, door frames split, ceiling tiles dropped and glass flew into corkboard.
All around West, air bags deployed. Car trunks opened. Tires went flat. Garage doors crumpled out while windows blew in. Insulation dropped from ceilings. Water mains cracked underground.
A mile away at St. Mary’s, the stained glass splintered.
Six miles away, in the town of Abbott, front doors popped open.
Ten miles away, a fisherman on Aquilla Lake ducked, thinking his boat was being struck by lightning.
And back in West, things started falling from the sky. An 800-pound slab of the plant’s foundation crashed through the rest home’s roof, cartwheeling through a wall and out onto the street. The front end of a forklift landed in Jeanette Holecek’s yard as she lay by the Chevy. A fireball flew past between Cindy Nemecek Hobbs and one of her neighbors. The fire chief, George Nors Sr., was dazed, bleeding from the ears. Judy Knapek looked up and saw a mushroom cloud. A giant U-shaped pipe landed at her feet and disintegrated.

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