INDIAN BOY IN UAE IS YOUNGEST PILOT TO FLY PLANE
DUBAI: A 14-year-old Indian-origin schoolboy in the UAE has become one of the youngest pilots to fly a single-engine aircraft, according to a media report. Mansour Anis, a class Ixth student at Delhi Private School in Sharjah, received a certificate for his first solo flight from an aviation academy in Canada last week, Gulf News reported. His solo flight was about 10-minute-long during which he taxied the aircraft from the parking bay to the runway, took off for a flight of about five minutes and landed back. Mansour, who flew a Cessna 152 aircraft during his solo flight, now has a student pilot permit. Apart from the flying test, he has also passed a radio communication test. LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Thursday directed the Punjab government to take a decision by September 11 on the plea of Jamaatud Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed who challenged the order to extend his detention for 60 more days.
The Punjab Home Department issued an order on July 28 under which the detention of Mumbai terror attack mastermind Saeed and his four aides — Abdullah Ubaid, Malik Zafar Iqbal, Abdul Rehman Abid and Qazi Kashif Hussain — was extended for another 60 days.
Saeed last week filed a fresh petition challenging the detention order. WASHINGTON: The United States on Thursday said Pakistan must “change its approach” towards terrorist groups operating from its soil and take decisive action against them.
“As the administration has said, Pakistan must change its approach,” a State Department spokesperson told the news agency PTI in response to a question on the BRICS statement that named Pakistanbased Lashkar-e-taiba and Jaish-e-mohammed among the terror groups that create problems in the region.
“We look to the Pakistan government to take decisive action against militant groups based in Pakistan that are a threat to the region,” the spokesperson said.
For the first time, the BRICS Summit in their joint declaration named Pakistan-based ter- rorist groups as a concern for regional security and called for action against them.
The Xiamen declaration was significant, given that China previously repeatedly stonewalled any reference to Pakistan or terrorist groups based there. Pakistan’s defence minister, Khurram Dastagir Khan, rejected the BRICS statement. These organisations, they have some of their rem- nants in Pakistan, which we’re cleaning,” Defence Minister Khurram Dastagir Khan told the Geo TV channel, without specifying which groups he was referring to.
“But Pakistan, we reject this thing categorically, no terrorist organisation has any complete safe havens,” he added. BRUSSELS: There is a “real risk” of increased funding for attacks in Europe as the Islamic State (IS) group loses ground in Iraq and Syria, the EU’S security chief warned on Thursday.
IS, which is also known as Daesh, has lost an estimated 90 per cent of its territory in Iraq. At one time, the group held around half of Syria but today controls just 15 per cent, according to estimates.
“As we have success against Daesh on the ground in Iraq and Syria, they are moving funds out of Iraq and Syria,” Julian King told the civil liberties committee in the European Parliament.
“There is a real risk of a new influx of funding for terrorism. We need to be conscious of that and we need to work together to see what we can do about it,” he added.
Last month, a UN report said that IS was continuing to send remittances abroad — often small sums, making them difficult to detect — as part of a bid to step up its international efforts “as demonstrated by the higher pace of attacks in Europe.”the report said funding sources were still based on oil profits and the imposition of taxes on local populations in the areas under its control.
However, it said the financial situation of the IS “core continues to deteriorate,” mainly due to military pressure on the group. In the last two or three years, EU member states have been hit by an increasing number of attacks claimed by IS which have taken place in Spain, Britain, France, Belgium, and Germany.