JERUSALEM :Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has ordered the army to seal off the West Bank for 48 hours until midnight on Saturday, an army spokesman said.

The action was taken “for security reasons” including a risk of attacks, the spokesman said Friday. The area was sealed off at midnight on Thursday.

Israeli police have also said they would bar Muslim men under the age of 50 from prayers on Friday at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, one of Islam’s holiest sites, fearing unrest.

The moves come after violent clashes at the site, which is also holy to Jews, during last week’s Muslim prayers, and fresh tensions over Israeli plans to build 1,600 homes for Jewish settlers in mostly Arab east Jerusalem.

The army said some medical and religious workers, teachers, journalists and others would be exempted from the West Bank closure.

Since the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, Israel has usually sealed off the West Bank ahead of major holidays, saying the move is necessary to prevent attacks, but only rarely on other occasions.

“The IDF (armed forces) will continue to operate in order to protect the citizens of Israel while maintaining the quality of life of the Palestinian population in the area,” the military said in a statement.

PML-N’s Pervez Malik won his seat of NA-123 Lahore with heavy margin on Wednesday while PML-N candidate Azam Chaila clinched his seat of PP-82 Jhang. PPP’s candidate Nasir Jamali won his seat of PP-25 Jaffarabad and Muslim League Zia’s candidate Shahid Anjum declared successful in PP-284 Bahawalnagar. Activists and members of winnings parties celebrated victories of their candidates and distributed sweets.
Poling for the by-elections on one National and two Provincial Assembly seats in Lahore, Jhang, Bahawalpur and Jaffarabad held today and counting of votes in this regard has been completed.
Unofficial vote count at all 268 polling stations set up in NA-123 shows PML-N’s Pervez Malik in a clear lead with 45,889 votes against his rival Hamid Miraj of Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf who stood second with 9,440 votes. According to unofficial results, PML-N candidate Azam Chaila declared successful in PP-82 Jhang with 42,145 votes in all the 127 polling stations. While PPP’s candidate Nasir Jamali clinched his seat in PP-25 Jaffarabad with 26169 votes and Muslim League Zia’s candidate Shahid Anjum remained successful with 52,605 votes, followed by Kashif Naveed of PPP with 26814 votes in all the 130 polling stations’ results. Thirteen candidates including Mai Juri and Ataullah Baledi have boycotted the by-polls in Jaffarabad.
Polling in constituencies including NA-123 Lahore, PP-82 Jhang, PP-284 Bahawalnagar and BP-25 Jaffarabad was started at 8am and remained continue till 5pm without any break. The tunrout in the by-polls remained below 30 percent. Old ID cards were also used for voting in Jaffarabad. Polling disrupted for some time at polling station 93 Fort Abbas due to clash between activists of Mulsim League Zia and PPP while 12 people were injured in the clashes at 9R polling station.
Clash was also erupted at Kandal Sherowana polling station of PP-82 Jhang due to which polling was stopped. FC raided the camp of independent candidate Ataullah Baledi and arrested 15 people holding batons. Jammat-e-Islami and Tehreek-e-Insaaf levelled rigging allegations on PML-N in NA-123.
According to the initial reports, PML-N’s candidates are leading in NA-123 Lahore and PP-82 Jhang while PPP’s candidate is ahead in Jaffarabad while thirteen candidates including Mai Juri and Ataullah Baledi have boycotted the by-polls in Jaffarabad. PML-N candidate Pervez Malik has majority against the opponents.

Turkey said on Tuesday it will not send its ambassador back to Washington until it gets a “clear sign” on the fate of a US resolution branding the 1915-era killings of Armenians by Turkish forces as “genocide”.
NATO member Turkey, a pivotal US ally, was infuriated and recalled its envoy after a US House panel last week approved the non-binding measure condemning the killings.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, speaking to reporters in Saudi Arabia off-camera, was quoted by state-news agency Anatolian as saying the ambassador will not be going back until there is a “clear sign” on the outcome of the situation regarding the Armenian bill. He did not elaborate.
Erdogan, on an official visit where he met Saudi leaders in Riyadh, has said the resolution will damage US-Turkish ties, although the Obama administration has vowed to stop it from going further in Congress.
Turkey, a secular Muslim democracy that has applied for membership of the European Union, is crucial to US interests in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and the Middle East.
The issue of the Armenian massacres is deeply sensitive in Turkey. Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks but vehemently denies that up to 1.5 million died and that it amounted to genocide — a term employed by many Western historians and some foreign parliaments.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates held talks in Kabul on Monday, warning of “hard fighting” ahead as his ground commander said NATO could take on the Taliban in their spiritual capital this summer.
There is no doubt there are positive developments going on, but I would say it’s very early yet, Gates told reporters on his plane before landing in the Afghan capital. He cautioned that there would be “some very hard fighting, very hard days ahead” as US, NATO and Afghan forces step up pressure on Taliban militants in the south under a last-ditch strategy designed to end the war. Gates acknowledged “bits and pieces of good news” when asked about the recent capture of senior Taliban leaders in neighbouring Pakistan, but said it was probably too soon to say momentum had shifted to coalition forces. I think more needs to be done, he said, adding that a surge of US reinforcements was still in its initial stages.

North Korea said Tuesday that it would boost its nuclear weapons capability because US President Barack Obama was determined to ignore its calls for peace and bring it down by military force.
North Korea said this week that it had put its army on full combat alert as US and South Korean forces began joint military drills involving nearly 40,000 troops, an annual event that draws anger from the North but typically results in no major incidents. ‘The US is leaving no means untried to bring down the DPRK (North Korea) including military threat, economic sanctions and ideological and cultural poisoning’, the North’s KCNA news agency quoted an unnamed foreign ministry spokesman as saying.
‘(The North) will continue bolstering up its nuclear deterrent as long as the US military threats and provocations go on’, the spokesman said. The North has come under pressure to return to six-party disarmament-for-aid nuclear talks because of UN sanctions imposed after a May 2009 nuclear test and prodding by its major ally and the host of the talks, China. Sanctions have dealt a blow to its wobbly economy, and a botched currency move late last year has sparked inflation and rare civil unrest. The two Koreas are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended with an armistice and not a peace treaty. The North said at the weekend that any talks on denuclearising the Korean peninsula would ‘naturally come to a standstill’ because of the drills. North Korea conducted live fire exercises near sea borders with the South earlier this year.

22-year-old Giselle, a social escort, joins in the RazorTV studio. Find out how she utilises online tools to market herself, and what she thinks of the rising trend of online prostitution.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed grave concerns about the ethnic and religious violence in Nigeria where hundreds of people were murdered over the weekend.
‘I am deeply concerned that there has been more inter-religious violence with an appalling loss of life,” Ban told reporters. “I appeal to all concerned to exercise maximum restraint’. In recent years, fierce competition for control of fertile farmland and other resources between indigenous Christian groups and Muslim settlers from the north have repeatedly triggered conflicts and clashes. Since 2001, more than 2,000 people have been killed in communal violence in Plateau State.
‘Nigeria’s political and religious leaders should work together to address the underlining causes and achieve a common solution to the crisis’, said Ban.

Muammar Gaddafi has appealed for jihad against Switzerland, long regarded as one of the most peaceful nations in the world.
The Libyan leader’s call for a holy war was, he said, a response to a Swiss referendum in November to ban the construction of minarets on mosques. It is the low point in a relationship that has been deteriorating since 2008 when Col Gaddafi’s son Hannibal was briefly detained in Geneva after allegedly beating his servants. “Any Muslim in any part of the world who works with Switzerland is an apostate, is against (the Prophet) Muhammad, God and the Quran,” Colonel Gaddafi said at a rally broadcast on television.

French media, politicians and nationalists strongly criticized the restaurants offering halal burgers. The termed the halal burgers as an Islamic tax on France and called to stop it forthwith. The reaction came in wake of a move by a French fast-food chain to offer halal menus at a handful of restaurants. The Quick chain has taken pork off its menu in eateries in Roubaix, northern France, as well as in Marseille and in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil to try to tap into the growing market of Muslim customers.
But politicians from the left and right have complained that the switch to no-bacon hamburgers, launched three months ago in November, is depriving non-Muslims of their right to the standard menu.

Indian Seductive Stories Latest News Updates, in Indian Seductive Stories, indian sax, zarine khan wallpapers, iss, gutter uncensensored malaysia, isteri kedua sultan kelantan, Kozhikode , A specter is haunting India’s state of Kerala, a supposedly new and secret Islamic weapon, “love jihad.” Namely,

the idea that young Muslim men court impressionable Hindu and Christian women to capture their souls as well as their bodies. In the Malabar region, where the majority of Kerala’s most venerable Muslim community lives, it is whispered that as many as four thousand women have already succumbed. Can it be? Will seduction threaten the communal peace in this tolerant multicultural state? By chance, we arrived in Kozikode on the day riot police dispersed hundreds of demonstrators belonging to Hindu Aika Vedi (HAV) as they marched within a hundred meters of an Islamic social center. It was actually a “conversion center,” the protestors insisted as a large crowd led by the Sunni Students Federation (SKSSF) gathered to protect the threatened social center. City authorities invoked a law banning provocative assemblies, a riot was averted, and the crowd dispersed. A newspaper account was careful to state that during the agitation, Hindu leaders of HAV escorted a pregnant Muslim woman in a jeep to the local women’s hospital.

It also happened that we were meeting two highly respected Muslim leaders: A Congress Party veteran, T. Sadarikkoya, who as a youngster took part in Gandhi’s “Quit India” campaign in 1943; and Prof. M.N. Karassery of Calicut University, a leading authority on Kerala’s Malayalam language and a widely read columnist.

Both agreed that yes, there were communal problems. Fundamentalists have been proselytizing, and its effects are evident in the prevalence of hijabs worn by a growing minority of Muslim women. But Malabar had its distinct civil culture. Whereas Muslims in India’s Northern provinces arrived as conquerors, their brothers arrived in Malabar some 450 years ago as traders.

With rare exceptions, they have lived in peace alongside Hindus and Christians. Another unifying factor, Professor Karassery, stressed is that while a common language, Urdu, unites northernIndian Muslims and Pakistanis, the Malabar Muslims share the same language, Malayalam, with Hindus and Christians. Thus during the bloody exchange of populations that occurred when India and Pakistan gained independence in 1947 there were no riots in Kerala, and few Muslims migrated northward.