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COLOQUE AQUI A LEGENDA
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British PM David Cameron inspects damage in south of capita
The House of Reeves in Croydon, south London, was a local landmark furniture store run by the Reeves family for decades.
It was torched overnight during the wave of violence and looting that has raged across London since Saturday.
Cameron met police at the site who explained what had happened.
Cameron described the scenes of burning buildings and smashed windows in London and several other British cities as "sickening," but refrained from more extreme measures such as calling in the military to help beleaguered police restore order.
Instead the Prime Minister, who cut short his holiday to fly in to the capital, recalled Parliament from its summer recess Tuesday and nearly tripled the number of police on the streets.
Violence in London first broke out late on Saturday in the low-income, multiethnic northern district of Tottenham, where protesters demonstrated against the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four who was gunned down in disputed circumstances Thursday.
Duggan's death stirred old animosities and racial tensions similar to those that prompted massive UK race riots in the 1980s, despite efforts by London police to build better relations with the city's ethnic communities.
Some 525 arrests have been made in London alone and dozens were arrested in other cities. AGENCIES
Obama honors return of fallen troops from Afghanistan
Obama, after vowing he would be undeterred in his war strategy, led a delegation of U.S. officials paying tribute to those who lost their lives in the single deadliest incident for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
The visit appeared intended to show war-weary Americans that the president recognizes the human cost in Afghanistan. He unveiled a troop drawdown plan in June to start winding down
U.S. involvement in the unpopular, nearly decade-old conflict.
Obama's last visit to Dover Air Force Base, where the bodies of U.S. service members killed overseas come home, was in 2009 when he witnessed the poignant return of 15 soldiers and three federal agents killed in Afghanistan.
But this time, the Pentagon said the news media would not be allowed to cover the arrival ceremony. The troops' remains have yet to be identified -- due to the catastrophic nature of the weekend helicopter crash -- and therefore families would be unable to give their consent, officials said. AGENCIES
Zafar Baloch among 5 hurt in Lyari grenade attack
KARACHI: At least five people including PPP’s Zafar Baloch have been injured in an attack of hand grenade in Chakiwara area of Lyari locality of Karachi on late Tuesday, SAMAA reported.
Eyewitnesses said that the attackers were six in numbers who were riding three motorcycles. After hurling hand grenade, the miscreants also opened aerial fire before fleeing the crime scene, witnesses maintained.
Loud sound of blast sparked panic among the people who rushed out of their homes to determine the nature of the explosion and the destruction that latter had caused.
Meanwhile, heavy contingents of law enforcement agencies including police and rangers have arrived on the incident site and placed the stern cordon around the area.
Forces said they are collecting evidences relating attack, adding that the investigations are underway.
Injured persons have been shifted to hospital where two minor wounded men have been discharged after first aid.
Zafar Baloch, who is a worker of PPP, has received critical injuries, hospital sources said.
Reacting over the grenade attack, PPP’s Sindh Information Minister Sharjil Memon told SAMAA that his government will not allow the anti-state elements to disrupt Karachi’s peace.
He said he was hopeful of recovery of peace and order soon in Karachi, adding that elements involved in tarnishing peace in metropolis would be brought to justice at any cost.
Zulfiqar Mirza and Sharjil Memon of PPP have arrived at hospital to inquire after the wellbeing of hospitalized Zafar Baloch.
Reports of tension and firing in reaction of attack on Altaf Hussain Hali Road and near Old City KMC’s workshop are reaching this office. SAMAA
Strauss, Dhoni play down top ranking
India are currently the number one side but England will leapfrog them and second-placed South Africa if they win the four-match series by two clear tests, a feat they would achieve with victory at Edgbaston.
"We're not approaching this test match any differently," Strauss told reporters. "That number one ranking comes as a consequence of playing good cricket. So all we've got to concentrate on is playing good cricket.
"Rankings are not at the forefront of our mind at the mind, what is at the forefront of our mind is starting this test match well and hoping to get into a position to win it later in the week."
Dhoni, whose team lost heavily at Lord's and Trent Bridge and have been hampered by injuries to key players like Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag, was equally unconcerned by the rankings.
"We don't talk much about ratings," Dhoni said. "I've said in the last two years, ratings are not what are important for us.
"What we concentrate on is the kind of cricket we are playing so we try to break the sessions into smaller sessions not look five days ahead as to what may be the result.
"What's important for us is how you go about doing stuff in the first hour. We know the small things that matter and we will try to stick to that."
England look set to make one change to the team that won by 319 runs in Nottingham with Ravi Bopara replacing the injured Jonathan Trott. Bopara's last test was two years ago and he averages 33.46 in 10 matches.
Chris Tremlett has been released from the squad having failed to recover from a back injury, so Tim Bresnan should retain his place for the match starting on Wednesday.
"I think Ravi being the only change would be a reasonable assumption to make barring any last minute injuries," Strauss added. "We're all delighted that Ravi has got a chance again.
"He has been knocking on the door for quite a long time. He fills the role that has been vacated by Jonathan Trott very well with his batting and his ability to bowl a few overs. It's great to see him have the opportunity come into the Test side again."
India's selection is less clearcut. Sehwag has recovered from shoulder surgery and while he made only eight in the warm-up match at Northamptonshire, Dhoni said his place was almost assured. Gautam Gambhir will also return, from a bruised arm, and open with Sehwag.
Harbhajan is out with a stomach muscle problem and India are deciding whether to pick a replacement spinner, slow left-armer Pragyan Ojha or leg-spinner Amit Mishra, or a fourth pace bowler.
"He (Sehwag) is practising every day, which means he's available for selection and I can see no good reason why he shouldn't play," Dhoni said.
"He's a very dynamic player who backs his instinct to play shots, irrespective of which bowler he's facing. He believes more in looking at the ball and just giving it the treatment it deserves.
"We all know an aggressive opener can have a very big impact on the opposition bowling attack -- so he's a very good player to have in the side." AGENCIES
'Green hunger' as starvation stalks fertile Guatemala
They call it the "green hunger." Here in the mountains of central Guatemala, one of the world's top exporters of sugar and bananas, vegetation is everywhere and yet the people are starving.
Guatemala, which has a population of 14 million, has the highest rate of child malnutrition in Latin America. Half of all children under five are malnourished.
In rural areas such as Jalapa, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) or a three-hour drive from Guatemala City, where many families scrape by on less than a dollar a day, that figure can rise shockingly to as high as 90 percent.
Luis Alexander is nine months old and suffers from acute malnutrition. He appears weak and tiny in his mother's arms in front of their mudbrick house.
Ronald Estuardo Navas, a hunger monitor at the international non-profit Action Against Hunger, measures Luis's arm with a tape that evaluates the nutritional health of a child via the size of the upper arm.
"He has a perimeter of 9.9 centimeters -- there's a high risk he could die," he said.
His mother, Herlinda Rodriguez, who has two other children to care for, is also undernourished.
"He's underweight because I don't have enough breast milk to give him. That's why he's so thin," she said.
Looking around the green and mountainous land surrounding the Rodriguez family's humble home, it's hard to understand why they are slowly starving.
Guatemala is the world's fifth largest exporter of sugar, coffee and bananas, and when subsistence crops fail thousands of families simply cannot afford to buy enough food.
Many families have had to resort to buying their basic staples of corn and beans and rice from local markets because their modest subsistence crops have been seriously reduced by droughts and floods over the last few years -- the creeping effect of climate change across this region.
But the purchasing power of the little money these communities have has been battered by both international food price fluctuations and local prices, which have been pumped up by domestic scarcity. Three quarters of the food produced here is exported to the international market.
Willem van Milink Paz, World Food Program Representative Guatemala, says: "What we are seeing in Guatemala is that the price, the local price of food, is even higher proportionally than what we've seen at international levels."
That has hit families hard.
Benjamin Lopez Ramirez, a subsistence farmer in Jalapa, says: "The truth is that there is no work here, or the chance to have a salary, the fact that (maize) is so expensive makes it very difficult for us."
More than 6,500 people died from hunger related issues last year, 2,175 of whom were under five years, according to Luis Enrique Monterroso, who oversees the right to food at the Guatemala Human Rights Office.
Although there are schemes and money to help, he says, there's a lack of political will.
"The state doesn't exist for the most vulnerable families in this country."
Malnutrition doesn't stunt just physical, but also mental, development in children, which does not bode well for Guatemala's future economic development.
Guatemala's income from taxes is one of the lowest in the region at just 10 percent, and although the private sector could play a bigger role in reducing the levels of malnutrition and poverty in the country, the key factor is state involvement.
Van Milink Paz said: "To be clear and honest about this, there is not going to be a real solution to the problem if the government of Guatemala doesn't take a major part in the solution.
"The problem is too big for anybody -- you know private companies or even a UN agency like the World Food Program or other NGOs working in this area to solve. We are only really nibbling at this problem and not really solving it."
There have long been programs purportedly aimed at targeting child hunger.
The latest, overseen by outgoing President Alvaro Colom, is called "My Family Progresses," and is a conditional cash transfer scheme that gives poor mothers a stipend provided their children go to school and get regular health checkups.
But the program has been mired in criticism, and accused of a lack of transparency. Monterroso says this scheme and others like it are more directed at winning political popularity than producing real social change.
Billy Estrada, sub secretary of food security for the Guatemala government, said the problem is not a lack of schemes, but a lack of consistency.
"What I think is lacking, and will be lacking, in this government and those that will be, are continuous policies that can extend their mandate.
"It wouldn't matter if the political parties alternated if there was a continuation of activities started by one government and worth the effort continuing."
Unless the state can find the political will to implement schemes effectively to tackle the structural causes of malnutrition, children like Luis Alexander will continue to suffer.
Jackson's children give singer's art to hospital
Prince, 14; Paris, 13; and Prince Michael -- also known as "Blanket," age nine -- signed some of the artwork by their late father, who died on June 25, 2009 at age 50.
The artwork was donated by Brett-Livingstone Strong, an artist and friend of the Jackson family, who had them in his private collection.
"You look at this, it makes you happy," said Michael Jackson's sister La Toya at a ceremony at the hospital.
"They're whimsical, they're magical and there's just joy and peace," she continued.
"I know that when you see this and the kids see it, it will bring some type of joy to them, and at the same time, I know it will bring joy to my brother as well."
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Jackson's mother Katherine also attended the ceremony. AGENCIES
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