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Deadly Dzeko gives Man City precious victory

LONDON: Bosnia striker Edin Dzeko’s first Premier League goal gave Manchester City a 1-0 win at struggling Blackburn Rovers on Monday to keeptheir hopes of a top-three finish alive.

Second-half substitute Dzeko, bought for 30 million pounds ($47.81 million) from VfL Wolfsburg in January, pounced on a loose ball eight metres out after 75 minutes to leave City on 59 points from 33 matches, five points behind third-placed Arsenal with a game in hand.
This season’s FA Cup finalists also pulled four points clear of fifth-placed Tottenham Hotspur who, like City, have played 33 games, and the relief on Dzeko’s face after notching his first Premier League goal was clear to see after the match.
“I’m not the first one who hasn’t made the best of himself,” he said, referring to Chelsea’s January signing Fernando Torres who scored his first goal for the London club on Saturday.
“I’m happy also for him. I know what the pressure is,” Dzeko told Sky Sports.
FRENZIED START
The visitors started at a frenzied pace and could have scored inside three minutes when David Silva cracked a left-footed volley on to the post.
After weathering Blackburn pressure in the second half, City struck when Silva’s shot was diverted into Dzeko’s path and he finished clinically although television replays suggested fellow striker Mario Balotelli was offside and impeding goalkeeper Paul Robinson.
Keeper Joe Hart produced a smart save from Blackburn’s Martin Olsson late on, leaving City manager Roberto Mancini with a big grin after the game.
“I am very happy for Edin. He deserves to score because he is a good player, a good man,” said Mancini.
Midfielder Nigel de Jong said Manchester City, who also play Stoke City in next month’s FA Cup final at Wembley, were looking to end the season in style.
“We have to aim at the highest possible place in the league.
We have to keep focused and maybe we can come third, you never know,” said De Jong.
Blackburn are in a relegation battle, one point ahead of 18th-placed Wigan Athletic and only three in front of bottom club West Ham United.

FBR chief orders recovery of Rs150bn arrears

ISLAMABAD: Facing an imminent shortfall in revenue collection, chairman, Federal Board of Revenue, on Monday asked top tax officials to work out a mechanism to expedite clearance of around Rs150 billion revenue stuck up in litigation for the past few years, an official source told.
The tax machinery will have to collect Rs568 billion at any cost in the last quarter (April-June) to reach the downward revised revenue target of Rs1588 billion by end June 2011.
Tax officials have collected Rs1020 billion during the past nine months of the current fiscal year.
But experts estimated that this target seems unlikely keeping in view the paltry growth in revenue collection despite the fact
that revenue target was revised thrice.
An official source privy to the board-in-council (BIC) meeting held here on Monday told Dawn that FBR Chairman Salman Siddique has asked tax members to clear arrears for bridging the shortfall to reach a conservative total by end June 2011.
“We need this revenue as revenue is not coming from other sources,” the chairman remarked.
An official in the finance ministry said that the revenue collection will hardly reach Rs1500 billion marks. Even the IMF has also informed the Pakistani officials that the Rs1588 billion revenue target is unlikely to be achieved.
A review team of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is also expected to visit Pakistan in the first week of May to discuss the next year 2011-12 revenue target along with revenue measures to be taken in the upcoming budget.
The tax target was revised from Rs1604 billion to Rs1588 billion despite mid-term revenue measures including withdrawal of exemptions on agriculture products through presidential ordinances.
As per FBR estimations, it was projected to raise an amount of Rs25 billion from 15 per cent one time surcharge on income tax payable during the tax year 2011, and another Rs25 billion would come to the government’s kitty from withdrawal of exemptions of sales tax from fertilizers, pesticides and input tax on agriculture tractors and raising of special excise duty to 2.5 percent.
According to the official, the revenue collection in the month of April will determine whether the tax officials will be in a position to reach the target or not.
Shortages in gas and electricity also lead to low revenue collection, the official said, adding the highest ever food inflation also diverted maximum budget of taxpayers to food items, which did not attract general sales tax.
As a result, the revenue from general sales tax also did not yield substantial growth.
The large scale manufacturing sector which contributes maximum portion in revenue collection also witnessed a negative growth during the past eight months of the current fiscal year. And low pace of growth in economy also leads to low revenue collection.
However, the most worrying factor for the government will be that customs duty has witnessed a negative growth since February following massive growth recorded in the previous months.
“This is the imminent fallout of the massive reshuffle of all most all collectors and other senior officers of the tax machinery in the mid-fiscal year”, a senior tax official commented.
In the current fiscal year, income tax collection largely remained short of the target followed by the federal excise duty. The only taxes that posted growth were the customs duty and general sales tax collection. The customs growth was because of rising import volume, while the sale tax collection partly because of higher collections at import stage and double digit growth in inflation that dragged collection at domestic sales.

US evacuates some staff, ups pressure on Syria

WASHINGTON: The United States has ordered embassy families and some staff out of Syria as it has hardened its tone on Damascus’s crackdown on protests without calling for President Bashar al-Assad to go.
The State Department late Monday ordered embassy family members and some non-emergency personnel to leave Syria, after an earlier travel warning telling US citizens to leave the country because of escalating attacks on protesters.
At the same time, Washington has defended the presence of a US ambassador in Damascus, who only arrived after a six-year absence in January, as Assad’s forces deployed tanks and snipers, killing at least 25 people in a key town.
“The brutal violence used by the government of Syria against its people is completely deplorable and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said Monday.
The United States is pursuing a range of possible policy options, including targeted sanctions, to respond to the crackdown and make clear that this behavior is unacceptable.
The Syrian people’s call for freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and the ability to freely choose their leaders must be heard.”Washington has issued repeated statements by senior officials including President Barack Obama calling for an end to violence and political reform in Syria, but has faced criticism for not taking more concrete steps.
But Monday’s crackdown appeared to mark a point at which the administration – which has sought to engage Syria as a key regional power player – had little choice but to be seen to act more robustly.
As well as the crackdown in the town of Daraa, a focal point of protests, Syrian troops also on Monday launched assaults on the Damascus suburbs of Douma and Al-Maadamiyeh, witnesses said.
Some 390 people have been killed in security crackdowns since protests erupted in Syria in mid-March, according to rights activists and witnesses.
New US sanctions would have a strong symbolic element but the Wall Street Journal reported that they would not have much impact on Assad’s inner circle as few regime kingpins have substantial holdings in the United States.
But should similar measures be adopted by Europe, they could have more bite, given more substantial holdings in the continent by the Assad family, it said.
Syria is already subject to American sanctions, aid restrictions and export bans, due to its presence on Washington’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.
So far, Washington has not threatened to recall its ambassador, a post filled in January after a six-year absence, as Obama sought to court Damascus as part of a broader Middle East diplomatic push.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the presence of the ambassador had allowed Washington “to make our views known directly and not be a long distance (away).”
Carney was also pressed on why Obama had not personally called for Assad to heed calls of protesters and leave – raising an apparent contradiction with US policy in Libya, which has seen the president call for Moamer Kadhafi’s ouster.
“Libya was, again, a unique situation,” Carney said, citing the international consensus to intervene.

“We had large portions of the country that were out of the control of Moamer Kadhafi, we had a Kadhafi regime that was moving against its own people in a coordinated military fashion and was about to assault a very large city.”Late Monday, the State Department urged US citizens to depart while commercial transportation is readily available and limit travel within the country, citing “the uncertainty and volatility of the current situation.”The crackdown in Syria poses a dilemma for the Obama administration, which has found its regional policy repeatedly challenged by unrest.

Washington could stand to profit from a fall of Assad’s minority Alawite regime, which is allied to Shiite Iran, a longtime US foe, and which wields power detrimental to US goals in Lebanon.
On Friday, Obama accused Syria of blaming outsiders for its troubles, and specifically said it was seeking Iranian help to suppress its citizens.
But though it may welcome a weakening of Syrian ties to Iran, Washington also fears a more radical government could replace the Assad regime.

Four killed, 56 injured in twin Karachi blasts

KARACHI: Bomb attacks hit two buses carrying Pakistani navy officials in Karachi Tuesday, killing four people in the latest sign of rampant insecurity in a nation key to US hopes of beating the Taliban.
Nearly 60 people were wounded when remote-controlled bombs exploded beside the buses at rush hour in different parts of Pakistan’s politically tense economic capital.
Officials said four people were killed in the attacks and the navy, which is based largely in Karachi, identified them all as its employees.
“The four dead were navy officials including a lady doctor, a sub lieutenant, a sailor and a civilian employee,” navy spokesman Commander Salman Ali told AFP.
“Fifty-seven people were injured in the two attacks and of them, 50 were navy officials,” he added.
Provincial government official Sharfuddin Memon told AFP that the first bomb was planted on a motorbike parked in the upmarket Defence Housing Scheme and the second hidden in rubbish in the impoverished Baldia town neighbourhood.
Intelligence officials said that the bombs were triggered by remote control near buses carrying naval personnel.
“We suspect the signature of terrorist organisations like Jundallah or Lashkar-e-Jhangvi,” Memon told AFP.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani condemned the attack, saying it “cannot deter the resolve of the nation and our armed forces to curb the menace of militancy and extremism”.
Television footage of the scene showed navy passenger buses with smashed-out windows and the remains of a destroyed motorcycle, as security officials collected the debris and marshalled the rescue effort.
“It appears to be part of the same militant campaign but I don’t see any logic in targeting the navy because unlike army and air force they are not    involved in any operations against the militants,” said Tasneem Noorani, a security analyst and former interior secretary.
“They may have targeted navy out of desperation because the other forces (air force and army) may have become very careful and are difficult to attack.”

Almodovar, Malick films among 19 selected for Cannes competition

PARIS: Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s “The Skin That I Inhabit” and British director Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” are among 19 films competing at the 64th Cannes Film Festival, organisers said Thursday.

Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier’s “Melancholia” was also selected from a total 1,715 films watched, festival head of selection Thierry Fremaux told journalists alongside festival president Gilles Jacob “We have a special thought for Japan this year, but also for Tunisia and Egypt,” Jacob said, adding that Egypt would be the festival’s special guest at its 64 edition which begins in the Mediterranean resort on May 12.

Steering the Palme d’Or jury this year will be US actor and director Robert de Niro, while South Korean director Boon Joon-Ho will chair the panel that picks the winner of the Camera d’Or prize for best first film.

Italian cinema legend Bernardo Bertolucci, whose silver screen classics include “Last Tango in Paris” and “The Last Emperor,” will meanwhile be given an honourary Palme d’Or for his life work.

Woody Allen’s latest comedy “Midnight in Paris” – in which French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has a bit part – will open the festival, and Gus Van Sant’s teen drama “Restless” will kick off the Un Certain Regard screenings.

Last year Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul took the Palme d’Or with a surreal and hypnotic reincarnation tale set in the jungle, titled “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”.

Pakistan team leaves for West Indies tour

LAHORE: The Pakistan cricket team on Thursday departed for their tour to the West Indies, according .

Team Manager Intikhab Alam said he was hopeful that the young players included in the squad would prove their merit during this tour.

Shahid Afridi will captain Pakistan in the limited over format while Misbah-Ul-Haq will lead the test squad. Pakistan will play a warm-up match on April 18, while the tour formally starts from the April 21.

Meanwhile, West Indian selectors also on Thursday unveiled a thirteen-member squad for the first two ODIs against Pakistan.

The men from the Caribbean will play a five-match ODI series, in addition to one Twenty20, and two test matches against Pakistan scheduled to start from 21st April, 2011 in St.Lucia.

The Chairman of the West Indian selection panel, Clyde Butts stated that the core of the team is capable of serving for years to come.

According to him, the fresh blood inducted in the squad has the potential and the desire to succeed, and hence received the nod.

Butts added that the time was rife for making wholesome changes as the West Indians vowed to regain their lost glory at the highest level of the game.