AMAZING PAKISTAN

Muted inflation supports more Fed easing

Consumer prices were flat in July for a second straight month and the year-over-year increase was the smallest in more than 1-1/2 years, giving the Federal Reserve room to ease policy further to tackle high unemployment.

Other reports on Wednesday showed home-builder sentiment in August hit its highest level in more than five years, while industrial production rose in July. However, a gauge of manufacturing in New York state contracted this month.

The tame inflation reading leaves the door open to more monetary stimulus from the U.S. central bank, even though data on job growth and retail sales have hinted at a bit of a pick-up in economic activity early in the third quarter.

Economists say growth is still too weak to do much to lower the nation's uncomfortably high 8.3 percent unemployment rate.

"The bigger worry is high unemployment," said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody's Analytics in West Chester Pennsylvania. "Additional monetary easing is likely, but they are probably going to wait until later this year, possibly after the election (in November)".

The flat Consumer Price Index reading confounded economists' expectations for a 0.2 percent gain.

In the 12 months to July, the CPI rose 1.4 percent, the smallest gain since November 2010 and down from June's 1.7 percent increase, the Labor Department said.

The core CPI, which strips out food and energy, gained 0.1 percent from June. That was the smallest rise since February and it broke four straight months of 0.2 percent increases.

In the year to July, the core index, which is closely watched by the Fed, rose 2.1 percent - the smallest rise in nearly a year.

INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION RISES

A second report showed industrial production increased 0.6 percent in July after a 0.1 percent gain in June, offering more hope the economy was improving after growth slowed in the second quarter.

The gain in industrial output, combined with surprisingly strong retail sales and a pick up in job growth in July, led some economists to argue the Fed's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee probably does not need to launch a third round of bond purchases this year.

"If the FOMC is waiting to see if recent weak data were anomalous, this month's round of numbers seems to make the case that it might be, which in turn is enough to keep the Fed on the fence," said Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York.

Officials at the Fed meet on September 12-13. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech at the central bank's high-profile gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in late August could offer clues on the near-term course of monetary policy.

Bernanke used that forum in 2010 to communicate the Fed's intention to pursue a second round of so-called quantitative easing.

In the absence of more bad news from Europe and perceptions of delayed Fed action, U.S. Treasury debt yields rose, extending a two-week trend. The dollar firmed broadly. Stocks on Wall Street ended slightly up, with the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index closing less than a point away from a four-month high.

The economy has been hit by fears of sharp cuts in government spending and tax increases in January. A debt crisis in Europe, which has left the euro area economy with one foot in a double-dip recession, has also eroded sentiment.

Staples Inc reported lower-than-expected quarterly results on weak demand in North America, Europe and Australia, prompting the largest U.S. office supply chain to cut its profit and sales forecasts for the year.

Current expectations for the year assume slower growth in the U.S. and continued weakness in Europe, the office supply chain said.

UTILITIES, MINES AND FACTORIES BOOST OUTPUT

Industrial output last month was boosted by big gains in utilities production and mining.

While manufacturing was up 0.5 percent after a similar rise in June, automaking accounted for the bulk of the increase. But with auto sales softening against the backdrop of weak income growth and high unemployment, manufacturers could be forced to scale back production.

Average weekly earnings were flat in July, when adjusted for inflation, and were up only 0.6 percent from a year ago.

A third report, from the New York Federal Reserve, showed factory activity in New York state contracted in August for the first time since October 2011.

"There are signs that manufacturing activity will continue to weaken ahead," said Daniel Silver, an economist at JPMorgan in New York.

"Auto production schedules point to a drop off in production in August and most of the manufacturing surveys have deteriorated in recent months. And exports look due to come off because of struggles with growth abroad."

Last month, inflation was held down by a 0.3 percent drop in energy prices, which offset a 0.1 percent gain in food prices.

A drought ravaging much of the country could lift food prices in the coming months, but the impact on inflation should be modest since food accounts for only 14.2 percent of the CPI.

US hypersonic aircraft crashes seconds into military test flight

An unmanned experimental aircraft designed to fly six times the speed of sound broke apart over the Pacific Ocean seconds into a military test flight due to a faulty control fin, the U.S. Air Force said on Wednesday.

The problem with the fin on the craft known as the Waverider or X-51A was identified in a test flight on Tuesday, 16 seconds after a rocket booster on the remotely monitored craft was ignited to propel it forward, the Air Force said in a statement.

Fifteen seconds later, when the X-51A separated from the rocket booster, it lost control due to a "faulty control fin," the statement said. The 31 seconds of flight fell far short of the military's goal for the X-51A to fly for five minutes.

The aircraft broke apart immediately and fell into the Pacific Ocean near Point Mugu northwest of Los Angeles, said Daryl Mayer, a spokesman for the 88th Air Base Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

Even if the test had been a success, the aircraft would have crashed at the end of the flight in any case and was not considered retrievable.

The Waverider was designed to reach speeds of Mach 6 or above, six times the speed of sound and fast enough to zoom from New York to London in less than an hour. The military has its eye on using the Waverider program to develop missiles with non-nuclear explosives that could strike anywhere in the world within an hour, analysts said.

The cost of the experimental aircraft, which military officials said was dropped from a B-52 bomber before its rocket booster was ignited, has not been disclosed because many details of the program are classified.

The aircraft is known as the Waverider because it stays airborne, in part, with lift generated by the shock waves of its own flight. The Boeing Co's Phantom Works division performed design and assembly on the craft, the military said.

The fins on the rocket booster kept the aircraft on-course during the initial phase of the flight, despite the problem with the control fin on the X-51A itself, Mayer said.

A Boeing spokeswoman declined to comment on the test flight, citing an Air Force request to have all public communication come from the military.

FUTURE X-51A FLIGHT

This was the third of four X-51A aircraft built for the military, one of which flew for over three minutes at nearly five times the speed of sound during a 2010 test flight, the Air Force said in a statement.

The Air Force, which is analyzing data from Tuesday's test flight, said one X-51A aircraft remains and that a decision has not been made "when or if that vehicle will fly at this time."

The Waverider is part of efforts by the U.S. military to develop a prompt global strike capability to hit targets anywhere in the world within an hour, said Guy Ben-Ari, senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Over the years, the global strike program will likely eat up billions of dollars in development costs, Ben-Ari said. If the program becomes operational, targets could include conventional military sites or militants, he added.

A missile would likely not be fired from a vehicle like the X-51A, but the craft itself would be the missile, he said.

"The differences between what's an aircraft and what's a missile and what you would call a drone or a remotely piloted vehicle are becoming very fuzzy," Ben-Ari said.

That the test flight crashed early due to a problem with a fin would likely be frustrating for the military because that part was relatively easy to build, unlike the largely untested Scramjet engine, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a website for military policy research.

"The only way that you can develop this stuff is to actually take it out and fire it, and so the problem is they've got computer models but not much data," Pike said.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne designed the X-51A's "Scramjet" engine, which uses the forward motion of the craft to compress air for fuel combustion, according to a description of the project from the military.

"It is unfortunate that a problem with this subsystem caused a termination before we could light the Scramjet engine," Charlie Brink, X-51A Program Manager for the Air Force Research Laboratory, said in a statement.

"All our data showed we had created the right conditions for engine ignition and we were very hopeful to meet our test objectives," Brink said.

Russia says West reneging on Syria deal

 Russia accused the West on Wednesday of reneging on an agreement to establish a transitional government in Syria and of prolonging the bloodshed by encouraging the rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said an agreement made by world powers and the then-peace envoy Kofi Annan in Geneva on June 30 was still valid and urged the West to do more to put it into practice.

"We remain convinced that what was achieved in Geneva should not be sabotaged. We will be demanding in the next few days a clear answer from our partners on whether they confirm what they signed in Geneva," Lavrov said.

"And if so, then why don't they take any measures to execute that plan?" he told a news conference in the Belarus capital Minsk.

The Geneva deal did not specify what role, if any, Assad should have in a transitional administration that would seek to end the violence in an uprising that began in March 2011.

Since Geneva, fighting has intensified and Annan has resigned, his peace plan in tatters.

Most Western and Arab nations have called on Assad to go, saying his government's violent response to initially peaceful protests give him no place in a future Syria.

Russia has opposed tougher U.N. sanctions against Damascus, a long-time strategic ally, but denies it is actively helping Assad remain in power.

"It is essential that all external players put pressure on all Syrian sides and stop encouraging the opposition to continue its military struggle," Lavrov said.

U.N. human rights investigators said on Wednesday that both sides in Syria had committed war crimes but that rebel violations "did not reach the gravity, frequency and scale" of those carried out by the army and security forces.

Syrian government forces, rebels committing war crimes: U.N.

Syrian government forces and allied militia have committed war crimes including murder and torture of civilians in what appears to be state-directed policy, U.N. investigators said on Wednesday.

Syrian rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad had also committed war crimes, including executions, but on a smaller scale than those by the army and security forces.

The report called for the U.N. Security Council to take "appropriate action" given the gravity of documented violations by all sides in a 17-month conflict that investigators said had become a civil war.

"We have identified both parties as guilty of war crimes and of course a greater number and of bigger variety from the government side," Karen AbuZayd, one of two commissioners aided by some 20 investigators, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Paulo Pinheiro, the commissioner who led the probe, said Syria's army of 300,000 had targeted rebel-held areas of cities with heavy artillery and helicopters. It had "much more means to inflict war crimes, for example bombing civilian populations".

"Besides evidence, we have names connected to the evidence," Pinheiro told Reuters, speaking from his native Brazil.

"But we are not a judicial or prosecutorial body. This is a problem for the Security Council, not for us."

The Security Council can refer a case to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the U.N. war crimes tribunal, but Russia and China - which have veto power - have been loath to condemn Syria.

The independent investigators conducted more than 1,000 interviews, mainly with Syrian refugees or defectors who have fled to neighboring countries, over the past year to produce their latest 102-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

They found "reasonable grounds" to affirm that government forces and their allied shabbiha militia had committed crimes against humanity, war crimes and other gross violations.

These included "unlawful killing, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, sexual violence, indiscriminate attack, pillaging and destruction of property".

Government forces and shabbiha militia had raped men, women and children in acts that could be prosecuted as crimes against humanity, the investigators said. Government troops had targeted staff of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, a war crime, they said.

A Syrian air strike killed 30 people in a rebel-held town on Wednesday, a local doctor said, and a mass kidnapping linked to Syria in neighboring Lebanon raised the prospect of sectarian violence spreading.

"PURSUANT TO STATE POLICY"

Evidence confirmed a previous finding that "violations had been committed pursuant to State policy", the U.N. report said.

Large-scale operations conducted in different provinces, their similar complexity and integrated military/security apparatus "indicate involvement at the highest levels of the armed and security forces and the government".

Rebels had killed captured government soldiers, shabbiha and suspected informers, sometimes after summary trials, the investigators said. "Executing a prisoner without affording fundamental judicial guarantees is a war crime," they added.

"We have many instances reported to us where the anti-government forces have executed prisoners. They say they don't have detention facilities and are not based in one territory and can't take care of them. This is a war crime," Pinheiro said.

Both government forces and armed insurgents had displayed "more brutal tactics and new military capabilities" as fighting escalated during recent months, the report said.

Each side had violated children's rights, it said. At least 125 youths under age 18, mainly boys, had been killed since February, while others were arbitrarily arrested without charge.

"Children described having been beaten, whipped with electrical cables, burned with cigarettes and subjected to electrical shocks to the genitals," the investigators said of those in the custody of state forces.

Armed insurgents continue to use children as couriers or to help with medical evacuations, they said.

Completing their probe into a massacre in the town of Houla in May - which the government blamed on Islamist "terrorists" - they said government forces and shabbiha fighters were responsible for the killings of more than 100 civilians.

Forty-one children were killed in Houla, including some by shelling, "but most appeared to have been shot at close range".

The investigators said they would update their confidential list of suspects or units responsible for crimes and give it to U.N. rights boss Navi Pillay when their mandate ends next month.

Organisation of Islamic Cooperation suspends Syria

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation suspended Syria's membership early on Thursday at a summit of Muslim leaders in Mecca, citing President Bashar al-Assad's violent suppression of the Syrian revolt.

"The conference decides to suspend the Syrian Arab Republic membership in the OIC and all its subsidiary organs, specialized and affiliated institutions," the closing statement said.

The move had been approved on Monday at a preliminary meeting of OIC foreign ministers and was agreed on the summit's second night of meeting despite opposition from Iran.

Saudi Arabia, the summit's host, has led Arab efforts to isolate Syriadiplomatically and has backed calls for the Syrian rebel opposition to be armed.

The summit, which has taken place late on consecutive nights because of the Ramadan fast, had been billed as a diplomatic showdown between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Iran, which have backed different sides in sectarian conflicts in the Middle East.

However, Saudi King Abdullah tried to conciliate Iran at the summit opening by placing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at his side to welcome Muslim leaders in a gesture Saudi political analysts said was aimed at putting old grievances aside in the quest for a resolution to the Syrian crisis.

He also suggested founding a centre for dialogue between Islam's sects in another move aimed at defusing some of the region's sectarian tensions. That proposal was adopted by the summit.

In his first published comments since the summit opened, Ahmadinejad appeared to rebuff the Saudi move.

In comments published on Iran's Mehr news agency on Wednesday, he said countries which wanted the Syrian crisis solved must come up with a plan of action to do so.

"But unfortunately some of our brothers and friends have not acted well in this area and instead of inviting the conflicting parties for talks and understanding, they are busy sending weapons into the country and encouraging slaughter," he added.

Syria and Iran have accused Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey of arming the rebels.

Lebanon kidnap fans fear of Syria spillover

Saudi Arabia has told citizens to leave Lebanon after a mass kidnapping in retaliation for events in Syria raised fears that violence may be spilling across a region riven by sectarian rancor and great power rivalries.

On a day when Lebanese captives held by Syrian rebels were among the wounded in a deadly air strike by government forces, citizens of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, key backers of the mainly Sunni Muslim insurgency, were seized along with about 20 Syrians by Beirut Shi'ites in an area run by Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

Their threat to take more Saudi, Turkish and Qatari hostages to secure the release of a kinsman held by Syrian rebels in Damascus bore ominous echoes of still deeply polarized Lebanon's own, long civil war - and Gulf Arab governments lost no time in urging visitors to leave Beirut's popular summer tourist haunts.

"The snowball will grow," warned Hatem al-Meqdad, a senior member of the powerful Lebanese Shi'ite Meqdad family who said his brother was detained by the Free Syrian Army two days ago.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose Alawite minority is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, has long relied on support from Shi'ite Iran and its Hezbollah allies. He accuses the Sunni powers of the Gulf and Turkey of promoting the revolt against him, which grew out of Arab Spring demonstrations 18 months ago.

While his opponents, and the Western powers which sympathize with them, insist they want to avoid the kind of sectarian blood-letting seen in Iraq, rebels who mostly come from Syria's disadvantaged Sunni majority have seized Iranians and Lebanese there in recent weeks, saying they may be working for Assad.

On Wednesday, the Meqdad clan said it was holding more than 20 people, including a Saudi, a Turkish businessman and several Syrians they described as anti-Assad fighters. Its action was a blow to a Lebanese economy for which Gulf tourists have played a part in recovery after 15 years of civil war ended in 1990.

"We still haven't even done one percent; we still haven't really moved," said a man who told reporters late on Wednesday in Beirut's Hezbollah-controlled Dahiya district that he and his fellow masked gunmen from the Meqdad clan's "military wing" were ready to take more action against Syrian rebels in Lebanon.

Fighting in Syria has triggered violence across the border before - some of it linked to Syrian rebels bringing arms and supplies across Lebanon. But the round of hostage-taking, on both sides, adds a new factor for regional states engaged in advancing their strategic interests while the world powers are deadlocked by a split over Syria between Russia and the West.

Against that backdrop, the bloodshed in Syria continues.

AIR STRIKE, WAR CRIMES

In Azaz, near the heavily contested northern economic hub of Aleppo, bombing by Assad's air force killed 30 people according to a local doctor and wounded scores more as buildings were flattened. Among those hurt, a rebel commander said, were seven Lebanese being held captive, while a further four were missing.

Assad's forces have increasingly been using their air power against the lightly armed insurgents - a tactic which featured in fresh accusations of war crimes leveled by United Nations human rights investigators on Wednesday.

They said rebels had also committed war crimes, but the violations "did not reach the gravity, frequency and scale" of those by state forces and the pro-Assad shabbiha militia.

Last month, Assad's troops successfully counter-attacked after rebels seized parts of Damascus. They are still trying to dislodge insurgents from Aleppo, Syria's biggest city.

A Syrian air strike has wrecked a hospital in a rebel-held area of Aleppo, a doctor there said on Wednesday, an attack that New York-based Human Rights Watch said violated international law. At least two holes gaped in the walls of Al Shifaa Hospital and four floors were heavily damaged by Tuesday's raid.

Most Western and Arab governments have called on Assad to go, saying his government's violent response to initially peaceful protests give him no place in a future Syria.

Russia has opposed tougher U.N. sanctions against Damascus, a long-time strategic ally, but denies it is actively helping Assad remain in power. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Western governments of reneging on a deal among world powers made on June 30 to push for a transitional government in Syria.

Washington shot back that it was Russia and China which had blocked efforts to pass a U.N. Security Council resolution.

LEBANESE NIGHTMARE

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the kidnappings, but his government seemed largely powerless to act.

"This," he said, "brings us back to the days of the painful war, a page that Lebanese citizens have been trying to turn."

Saudi Arabia "called on Saudi citizens currently in Lebanon to leave immediately given the latest developments in Lebanon and the appearance of some explicit threats to abduct Saudi citizens and others", the Saudi state news agency said.

A diplomat said the Turkish businessman had been kidnapped shortly after arriving in Lebanon on Wednesday: "He was here for business, arrived today, and was kidnapped near the airport."

Air France diverted one of its planes away from Beirut on Wednesday evening for "security reasons" after the kidnappings. The road from the airport has regularly been blocked by protesting families of Lebanese being held in Syria.

The Turkish hostage told a Lebanese television channel he was being treated well. Another station broadcast footage it said showed two Syrian hostages in the custody of masked gunmen from the Meqdad clan wearing fatigues and armed with rifles.

A clan member said the detained Syrians included an army lieutenant who had deserted to join the rebels. He added that Syrians who were not rebel fighters had been freed.

One of the detainees, shown looking tense in a room full of gunmen, identified himself as a captain and said his role was to help supply the FSA. The other man said he was his assistant.

The rebels in Damascus had accused their captive, Hassan al-Meqdad, of being sent to Syria by Hezbollah to aid Assad.

Syria air raid kills 30; Lebanon kidnap worries region

A Syrian air strike killed 30 people in a rebel-held town on Wednesday, a local doctor said, and a mass kidnapping linked to Syria in neighboring Lebanon raised the prospect of sectarian violence spreading.

That citizens of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, key supporters of the Sunni Muslim insurgency, were among those seized by Lebanese Shi'ites prompted Gulf states to urge citizens to leave Lebanon. It also underscored how the Syrian conflict is dividing the region along sectarian lines as world powers remain deadlocked.

Doctor Mohammad Lakhini said at a hospital in Azaz, in the north near the Turkish border, that scores of people there were wounded in the raid by President Bashar al-Assad's air force. It reduced several houses to rubble and dozens of men clawed through the concrete and metal debris looking for survivors.

In video posted by activists earlier on Wednesday, residents in Azaz - close to the major urban battleground of Aleppo - screamed and shouted "God is greatest" as they carried bloodied bodies from collapsed concrete buildings.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens had been killed. One activist in the town said at least 30 bodies had been found and rescuers were searching for more.

The video footage, which could not be immediately verified, showed crowds of residents wrestling with steel bars and pulling away a giant slab of concrete to reveal the dust-covered arm of a child. "This is a real catastrophe," said an activist who gave his name only as Anwar. "An entire street was destroyed."

Seven Lebanese hostages being held in Azaz were also wounded, with four others still missing, a rebel commander said.

"The building they were in was hit," rebel commander Ahmed Ghazali told the Lebanese news channel Al Jadeed.

"We were able to remove seven from the wreckage. They are wounded, and some of the injuries are serious."

Assad's forces have increasingly used helicopter gunships and warplanes against the lightly-armed insurgents - elements in fresh accusations of war crimes leveled by United Nations human rights investigators on Wednesday.

LEBANON KIDNAPPING

The Syrian civil war has taken on overtly sectarian overtones, with most rebels belonging to the Sunni Muslim majority, fighting against government forces rooted in Assad's Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Regional powers are being drawn into the fight, with Sunni-led Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey supporting the rebels and Shi'ite Iran backing Assad's government. Fighting between Sunnis and Shi'ites lay behind long civil wars in Syria's neighbors Iraq and Lebanon, and the West fears the violence could spread.

In Lebanon, gunmen belonging to a powerful Shi'ite clan abducted more than 20 men, including at least one Turk, one Saudi and several Syrian anti-Assad fighters, in retaliation for the capture of one of their kinsmen by rebels in Damascus.

The incident, in an area of Lebanon controlled by Hezbollah Shi'ite militants long allied to Assad and supported by Iran, raised the prospect of Syria's sectarian violence spilling over to its neighbor. Mass kidnapping was a perennial tactic in Lebanon's own sectarian civil war from 1975-1990.

Members of the Meqdad clan said they had carried out the kidnappings in retaliation for the capture of kinsman Hassan al-Meqdad by anti-Assad rebels in Damascus two days earlier.

They threatened to carry out more abductions of Qataris, Turks and Saudis. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates told their citizens to leave Lebanon - potentially dealing a blow to Beirut's reviving tourist business.

Syria's civil war has polarized Lebanon, with Shi'ites rallying behind Assad and Sunnis backing his enemies.

In Damascus, a bomb exploded in the car park of a hotel used by U.N. monitors, but several military buildings are also in the vicinity and it was not clear what the target was. No U.N. staff were hurt in the blast which set a fuel tanker ablaze.

State media said three people were wounded in the bombing and several rebels were killed or captured in a separate gunbattle with security forces in the western district of Mezze.

U.N. emergency relief coordinator Valerie Amos, on a mission to seek more access for aid deliveries, was meeting European Union officials in Damascus when the bomb went off.

She herself was unable to reach the town of Douma, a trouble spot just north of the capital, due to bombardment.

"Waiting at checkpoint to get into Duma. Sounds of shelling. Could not enter," Amos tweeted. The authorities told her she had been turned back for her own safety, her spokesman said later.

As the violence intensified, U.N. human rights investigators accused forces loyal to Assad of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

They said rebels had also committed war crimes, but the violations "did not reach the gravity, frequency and scale" of those by state forces and the pro-Assad shabbiha militia.

"The commission found reasonable grounds to believe that government forces and the shabbiha had committed the crimes against humanity of murder and of torture, war crimes and gross violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including unlawful killing, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, sexual violence, indiscriminate attack, pillaging and destruction of property," said the 102-page report by the independent investigators led by Paulo Pinheiro.

COUNTER-ATTACK

Last month, Assad's troops successfully counter-attacked after rebels seized parts of Damascus. They are still trying to dislodge insurgents from Aleppo, Syria's biggest city.

A Syrian air strike has wrecked a hospital in a rebel-held area of Aleppo, a doctor there said on Wednesday, an attack that New York-based Human Rights Watch said violated international law. At least two holes gaped in the walls of Al Shifaa Hospital and four floors were heavily damaged by Tuesday's raid.

"If we had lingered just another five minutes, we would have died," said the surgeon, who gave his name only as Younes.

Dust covered hospital beds, incubators were broken and the floor was strewn with rubble. Water from a broken tank had leaked out, mixing with patches of blood.

Opposition sources say 18,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Assad erupted in March last year. The bloodshed has divided regional and world powers, making peace efforts fruitless and paralyzing the U.N. Security Council.

Most Western and Arab governments have called on Assad to go, saying his government's violent response to initially peaceful protests give him no place in a future Syria.

Russia has opposed tougher U.N. sanctions against Damascus, a long-time strategic ally, but denies it is actively helping Assad remain in power. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Western governments of reneging on a deal among world powers made on June 30 to push for a transitional government in Syria.

Washington shot back that it was Russia and China which had blocked efforts to pass a U.N. Security Council resolution on a transition. Moscow has said the Western powers should not make the removal of Assad a pre-condition for such a handover.

Muslim heads of state were expected to suspend Syria from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation at a summit in Mecca on Wednesday, over the objections of Iran, Assad's closest ally.

The 57-member body's rebuke is mostly symbolic, but it shows Syria's isolation - as well as Iran's - across much of the Sunni-majority Islamic world

Mars rover sends incredible photos

NASA's newly landed Mars science rover Curiosity snapped the first colour image of its surroundings while an orbiting sister probe photographed litter left behind during the rover's daring do-or-die descent to the surface, scientists said Tuesday.Curiosity's colour image, taken with a dust cover still on the camera lens, shows the north wall and rim of Gale Crater, a vast basin where the nuclear-powered, six-wheeled rover touched down Sunday night after flying through space for more than eight months.The picture proved that one of the rover's key instruments, a camera known as the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, was in good working order affixed to the end of Curiosity robot arm.Designed to take magnified, close-up images of rocks and other objects, or wide shots of landscapes, the camera currently remains stowed on the rover's deck. But once in full operation, scientists can use it to capture fine details with a resolution as high as 13.9 microns per pixel -- several times finer than the width of a human hair.

Top 10 Fastest MotorBike

Bike is one of the most entertaining and fast rides in the World, The thing which fascinate me most about motorbikes is their sound, The heavier the engine the better the sound is produced, Well every bike lover wants a faster motorbike to ride, After year 2000 the competition in bikes market had dramatically increased, They introduced turbine powered bikes like y2k which were much more faster in acceleration and top speed were above 200 mph, but later in year 2001 manufacturer had decided to electronically limit the motorbike speeds to 186 mph to make it safe for riders but many manufacturers declined and they are still producing bikes which are more then 200 mph in top speed but mostly street bikes are electronically limited to 186 mph, Let’s have a look at the world’s fastest Motorbikes

Dodge Tomahawk

500 bhp with Viper Engine V 10 – This concept Bike can touch 300 mph

MTT Streefighter

This Bike is using turbine engine technology, MTT Streetfighter can touch 250 mph and it has got 420 bhp

MTT Turbine Superbike (Y2K Superbike)

This super machine has been powered by Rolce Royce turbine engine which gives him 320 bhp to touch the speed of 230 mph

Suzuki Hayabusa

The hot selling Hyabusa have got 197 horses in its engine ( 197 bhp – 1349 cc ) which can take him to the top speed of 200 mph but current model has electronically limited speed of 186 mph

Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14

Ninja ZX 14 is using DOHC engine technology with 1352 cc engine which produces 190 bhp to give it top speed of almost 190 mph

BMW S1000RR

BMW s1000 RR is oen of the super bikes using DOHC technology , It was introduced in 2009 Superbike World Championship, This bike has  got 192 bhp ( 999 cc ) with the electronically limited speed of 186 mph

MV Agusta F4 CC

It has got 1078 cc engine which produces 200 bhp and the top speed which this bke can attain is 190 mph

Honda CBR1100XX Blackbird

This bikes is from 1996 using DOHC technology and it came with 1137 cc engine which produces 150 bhp, Honda CBR 1100XX can go upto 180 mph

Yamaha YZF R1

R1 is one of the most popular street bikes, It is also using DOHC engines with 179 bhp ( 998 cc ) which can take it to 170 mph

Aprilia RSV 1000 R

Aprilla has got V2 141 bhp engine which can take him upto 168 mph