Washington, Oct 27: Following furious complaints from the Pakistan government for further ground raids into its tribal areas, the White House has reportedly begun relying on an intensifying campaign of air-strikes by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) against militants in the Pakistani mountains.

The decision followed after Pakistani officials made clear in public that they regard the Predator attacks as “a less objectionable violation of Pakistani sovereignty”.

Quoting American and Pakistani officials, the New York Times reported that attacks by remotely piloted Predator aircraft had increased sharply in frequency and scope during the past three months.

Lahore, Oct 27 : The unceremonious removal of erstwhile Pakistan cricket coach Geoff Lawson, of Australia, has drawn flak from within the country’s cricketing world, even as former cricketers have said that the decision had invited international ire towards Pakistan and that, henceforth, no foreign coach would show interest in accepting coaching assignment here.

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Tokyo - Tokyo stocks nosedived Monday, sending the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average to its lowest level in 26 years.

The Nikkei tumbled 486.18 points, or 6.36 per cent, to 7,162.9. The index has lost half its value this year.

The broader Topix index of all first-section issues also lost 59.65 points, or 7.4 per cent, to 746.46.

The Bank of Japan injected 600 billion yen (6.37 billion dollars) into the money markets Monday to ease a credit crunch as stocks prices plunged.

Lahore, Oct 27: PML-N chief and former Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif has said that the Kashmir issue would have been resolved in accordance with the aspirations of the Kashmiri people “if the PML-N government had not been toppled by the former army chief Pervez Musharraf on October 12, 1999”.

The former premier said his government was dislodged under a planned conspiracy at a time when the resolution of the Kashmir dispute was near, reported the Daily Times.

Cape Town, Oct 27 : The southern Cape town of South Africa has been singled out by an anthropologist as the most likely birthplace of modern humans - thanks, at least partly, to its abundance of fish.

According to a report in The Times, the anthropologist in question is Dr Curtis Marean, who presented his findings earlier this month at the Nobel Conference in Minnesota in the US.

Rich pickings of fleshy roots and bulbs, courtesy of the juicy Cape floral kingdom, are another crucial reason why mankind finally progressed past grunting to arithmetic and outboard motors, according to Dr Marean.

Fossil evidence of Homo sapiens has been found at several sites across Africa, including two 195000-year-old skulls in Ethiopia.