Biggest-ever European lottery jackpot won

BAGNONE, Italy: Someone has won the biggest lottery jackpot ever in Europe -approximately $210 million in Italy's state lottery, Italian media reported Saturday.
The identity of the SuperEnalotto game winner hadn't been revealed but the winning ticket was purchased in the Biffi bar in Bagnone, a town of fewer than 2,000 people in Massa Carrara province, RAI News reported.
The BBC and Sky News said the winning numbers were: 10, 11, 27, 45, 79 and 88.
The Italian news agency ANSA said the jackpot had been building up since January without a winner.
The lure of winning such a huge pot of cash had turned into a tourist draw for Italy, the news agency said.
The Italian treasury rakes in just under half of the nearly $3 billion in lottery ticket sales since the jackpot was last won, making it a big winner, too.

Claims of violence, fraud at Afghan polls

WASHINGTON: Reports of fraud and intimidation in Afghanistan's presidential election continued to mount Saturday, with anecdotal, but widespread accounts of ballot-box stuffing, a lack of impartiality among election workers and voters casting ballots for others.
Director Jandad Spinger, Foundation for free and transparent elections in Afghanistan said that over 7000 observers of his group told that the ballot boxes were already stuffed, while bogus voting and other irregularities continued.
US newspaper said that European groups have also pointed out many discrepancies, while in several provinces the polling stations remained shut fearing violence.
Karzai government has denied any sort of fraud committed in the elections.

Swine Flu Campaign Waits on Vaccine

Government health officials are mobilizing to launch a massive swine flu vaccination campaign this fall that is unprecedented in its scope and in the potential for complications.
The campaign aims to vaccinate at least half the country's population within months. Although more people have been inoculated against diseases such as smallpox and polio over a period of years, the United States has never tried to immunize so many so quickly.
But even as scientists rush to test the vaccine to ensure it is safe and effective, the campaign is lagging. Officials say only about a third as much vaccine as they had been expecting by mid-October is likely to arrive by then, when a new wave of infections could be peaking.
Among the unknowns: how many shots people will need, what the correct dosage should be, and how to avoid confusing the public with an overlapping effort to combat the regular seasonal flu.
To prepare, more than 2,800 local health departments have begun recruiting pediatricians, obstetricians, nurses, pharmacists, paramedics and even dentists, along with a small army of volunteers from churches and other groups. They are devising strategies to reach children, teenagers, pregnant women and young and middle-aged adults in inner cities, suburban enclaves and the countryside.....more

$2.5bn deal to fuel Zain growth

Saudi Arabia: Zain (KSA) announced last week the closing of a $2.5 billion Murabaha financing facility.
“The funds will be used to repay its existing Murabaha, facilitating the mobile telecom operation’s ongoing network expansion and future growth,” Zain said in a statement issued from its Manama headquarters.
The term of the facility is two years with options of extending for a further twelve months. Al-Rajhi Capital, Banque Saudi Fransi and Calyon acted as financial advisers, with a total of eight regional and international financial institutions participating in what is one of the largest Islamic financings this year.
“This is an enormous vote of confidence by the International financial community in Zain KSA’s performance to date and its future expansion plans in the region’s largest economy,” said Saad Al-Barrak, CEO of Zain Saudi Arabia and Zain Group. “The growth and success of this mobile operation is critical to Zain Group’s 2011 ambition of being a top ten global mobile telecommunications company. The Murabaha facility, which comes at a vital stage of Zain KSA’s business growth cycle, will play an important role in achieving this goal.”
In less than 12 months, and despite the very competitive nature of the mobile telecom market in the Kingdom, Zain Saudi Arabia has acquired 4 million customers. For the first half of 2009, Zain KSA reported gross revenues of $342 million with average revenue per user per month (ARPU) of $19. Zain KSA’s marketing and customer acquisition strategy paid off in the first half of 2009, capturing over 50 percent of total net additions in the mobile telecom market.

DPRK seeks better ties with S Korea

SEOUL: North Korean envoys called on Saturday for an improvement in inter-Korean ties as the South confirmed the group would meet its leader in the highest-level talks between the neighbours in years.
The delegation sent from Pyongyang to mourn former South Korean leader Kim Dae-Jung will visit President Lee Myung-Bak in Seoul on Sunday, a unification ministry spokeswoman told AFP. The group said they were carrying a message from North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il that they wanted to convey to Lee, Yonhap news agency reported.
“The North Korean delegation will pay a visit to President Lee on Sunday morning,” spokeswoman Lee Jong-Joo said late on Saturday.
Relations between the two Koreas, who never signed a peace deal following the 1950-53 Korean War, worsened sharply after Lee came to power last year and pledged to take a firmer line with Kim and his isolated communist regime.
“While meeting many South Koreans here, I came to believe that inter-Korean ties must be improved at the earliest possible date,” said Kim Yang-Gon, the North’s official in charge of inter-Korean ties, according to pooled reports.
“We’ve had little opportunity to talk... I hope that these first high-level official talks under the Lee Myung-Bak administration will provide a chance to have frank talks,” he told South Korea’s Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek.
The six-member delegation was originally in Seoul only to mourn the death of former president Kim Dae-Jung, who won the Nobel Peace Prize after he held the first inter-Korean summit in 2000.
However, amid recently improving ties with Seoul and its ally the United States, South Korean officials and the delegation held 90 minutes of talks on Saturday.
Hyun was holding a private dinner meeting with the North Koreans on Saturday evening at their Grand Hilton hotel. His ministry said they would discuss “practical issues”. The rare encounters on Saturday and planned meeting with Lee have raised hopes for better ties after more than a year of tension, worsened by the North’s nuclear and missile tests in early summer. The visitors called for the resumption of regular talks and economic exchanges, said Chung Dong-Young, a former South Korean unification minister. “Times have changed.
Legacies from the Cold War must be buried... I’ll meet with everyone for frank talks,” Chung quoted the North’s chief envoy, Kim Ki-Nam, as saying.