ABU DHABI,The first of the two Twenty20 Internationals between Pakistan and South Africa will be played here tomorrow.

Income from the first T20 International, to be played here at the Sheikh Zayad Stadium, will be given to the flood affected people in Pakistan.

The trophy launching ceremony for T20Is and One-day Internationals will be held today at a local hotel of Abu Dhabi during which Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi will also hold a press conference.

On the other hand, T20 captain Johan Botha and ODI captain Graeme Smith for South Africa will also address a press conference.

MUMBAI: Katrina Kaif might have been mum on Salman while they were dating, but now that the couple has gone separate ways she is coming out with all kinds of clarifications about their relationship. The stunner has refuted all reports that Salman chose to cast Sonakshi and not her in ‘Dabangg’.

In fact, if reports are to be believed, then Kat was the first choice for the super-hit but she turned it down as she felt she wouldn’t be able to do justice to the role.

Being her modest self, Katrina refused to confirm these reports, but told a news daily, "It is unfair to talk about a professional offer because someone else is finalised for it. Salman and I had a disaster in our last romantic film Yuvraaj. We had mutually decided then that when we do our next film, it has to be something different. Not a routine love story."

Talking about their relationship after the much hyped split, Katrina maintained that she is still very close to Salman and often takes career advices from him. "Salman and I talk or message each other at least once a day. He is my 4 am friend. When I was hospitalised, Salman was very much around. If I`m missing for something important that Salman has organised, there has to be a solid reason for it. Like at this blood donation drive he organised in Mumbai when I had been diagonised with a blood condition myself and advised against giving blood.

KARACHI: The number of people affected with the Dengue virus is on the rise in Sindh and Punjab, as there are at least 1,640 patients hospitalized in Sindh and 853 others in Punjab, Geo News reported Monday.

At least 1640 people were tested positive for Dengue out of 2974 from January to date in Sindh, with number of deaths at 15 in the province.

Sindh Health Minister Dr Sagheer Ahmed said the Dengue Surveillance Cell is being expanded and liaised with Sindh Blood Transfusion Authority.

According to Punjab Health Department, at least 63 new cases, enhanced the number of affected people to 690 in Lahore. Also, three Dengue patients were found in Faisalabad as well, which totaled 853 the number of Dengue victims in Punjab.

Secretary Health Punjab Fawwad Hasan Fawwad said the dengue situation is on the mend in Rawalpindi and Chakwal.

NEW YORK, they sit next to each other in a Toronto hotel, Robert De Niro and Edward Norton make an odd pair. A few hours before the premiere of their movie "Stone" at the recent Toronto International Film Festival, Norton sports a dress shirt and slacks, De Niro a blazer paired with cargo shorts and open-toed sandals, like a news anchor whose business attire ends at the waist. Norton is voluble, a self-styled intellectual ready to clarify his answers with citations from De Tocqueville, where De Niro's conversation is riddled with gray areas and no-go zones.

Although De Niro is notoriously reluctant to do interviews, and often tight-lipped when he does, he's relatively loose in Norton's company. At times, their exchanges are playfully barbed, as when Norton addresses the subject of his own reputation for sharing his opinion on set.

"I battle sometimes," Norton allows. "Sometimes, I'm probably a little bit compulsive."

De Niro smiles, his eyes softening. "They had a couple of two-hour conversations while I was waiting," De Niro says of his co-star and director John Curran.

Norton shoots back, quickly enough to suggest they've kidded on the subject many times before. "Sometimes we'd have a two-hour conversation because Bob would be on the phone, and we'd have nothing to do but talk about where to put the camera."

In "Stone," which opens Friday and reunites Norton with his "The Painted Veil" director, De Niro plays a prison counselor assigned to interview Norton's convict and determine whether he's ready to be paroled, meaning that he accepts responsibility and feels remorse for his crime. The natural thing, the expected thing, would be for Norton to claim he's learned the error of his ways, whether or not he truly has, but instead their sessions are verbal sparring matches, confrontations with the sustained intensity of a stage play.

Although he affects an air of moral rectitude, De Niro's character is at least as compromised as Norton's felon. In the film's opening sequence, where a young De Niro is played by "Dollhouse's" Enver Gjokaj, he responds to his wife's threat to leave him by holding their daughter out a second-story window. The tension is amplified by the furious buzzing of a bee along the sill, an introduction to a movie in which sound plays a key role.

The score by Jon Brion, who added the anxious drums to "Punch Drunk Love," is enhanced by ambient rumbles contributed by " Radiohead's" Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood (the latter also contributed the screeching glissandi to "There Will Be Blood") and ominous sound design by veteran Skip Lievsay, who worked on "No Country for Old Men's" unsettling soundscape. Late in the game, Norton's character claims to have experienced a religious conversion courtesy of an invented religion called Zokangor, in which the spirit enters the body through sound. It's easy enough to imagine, since by that point the movie's aggressive sonics have all but drilled holes in your skull.

"Stone" marks the first time Norton and De Niro have collaborated since 2001's "The Score," but they kept in touch between the two films, and in a more serious moment, it's clear that De Niro prizes his younger colleague's polymath talents.

"One thing with Ed that I've liked when we've worked together, he always has a lot of ideas," De Niro says. "He'll rewrite stuff and that's always great because he's very much committed to the project and involved. As far as I'm concerned, that makes it easier for me in some ways."

"For me, the second time around with anybody is better," Norton says. "Even if you already know somebody, everybody's got a different rhythm, the way they work. When you go through that once with someone, it's just easier to go, 'Yeah, I know how we roll.' You get an unconscious shorthand going. I felt that definitely, even in some ways more, with John. Bob's worked with many directors multiple times, and to be honest, I've always looked at that relationship from afar and thought how nice that would be, given how much work it is each time you start on a film with someone you've never worked with. I really liked doing it a second time with John, because I know everything about how this guy works. There's so much less debate."

That's not to say the production was free of disagreement. Although he was intrigued by his character, De Niro harbored unanswered questions about him that he is still unsure the film answers. (At the time, he had yet to see the final cut.) "It was like a puzzle," he says. "I wasn't sure about certain things because I didn't know whether it was clear enough, whether it was visceral enough. I didn't know whether an audience could feel why just because of that beginning scene. It was all for me very muted and subtle in a certain way, which is what it was. It's OK. It's just I thought because it's like a morality tale that it had to have a real biblical payoff. But it was a director's choice, and in a certain way Ed's choice."

Although Norton is credited only as an actor, he describes being involved from pre-production through scoring sessions, enough to take an evident sense of ownership in the final product. He doesn't interrupt as De Niro voices his reservations, but he coughs sharply during one of the elder actor's pointed critiques, the rest of the time staring out the window and brushing his fingers over his eyebrows. Once De Niro has finished, he jumps into the fray.

MIAMI, Working in a consistently noisy environment such as a factory more than doubles the risk of serious heart problems, research suggests.

In the under-50s, the risk increases to fourfold, the study warns, and young male smokers are also particularly affected by noise.

The U.S. team studied more than 6,000 employees over a five-year period, dividing them into those who endured persistent loud noise at work for at least three months and those who did not.

They found those in noisy environments tended to weigh and smoke more than those who worked in quiet offices, reports the British Medical Journal.

Among workers under 50 the link with noise was particularly strong. They were between three and four times as likely to have angina or coronary artery disease or to have had a heart attack.

The authors say: ‘Loud noise day after day may be as strong an external stressor as sudden strong emotion or physical exertion, the effect of which is to prompt various chemical messengers to constrict blood flow through the coronary arteries.

‘This study suggests that excess noise exposure in the workplace is an important occupational health issue.’

June Davison of the British Heart Foundation said: ‘Some people find sustained noise very taxing and stressful and that could explain this link between noisy workplaces and an increased risk of heart disease.

‘If you’re stressed you are more likely to snack on unhealthy foods, smoke and miss out on your 30 minutes of physical activity a day – a sure-fire recipe for an unhealthy heart.

ISLAMABAD, Unidentified gunmen killed at least three people and set 28 Nato oil tankers on fire carrying fuel for Nato and US forces in Afghanistan in Islamabad on Monday.

Many tankers caught fire during the attack. Rescue sources said at least three people died. The sources added that seven others were injured in the attack.

A vital land route for Nato supplies for Afghanistan that has been blocked for three days will reopen "relatively quickly," Pakistan's ambassador to Washington told a US news channel on Sunday.

Pakistan halted the Nato convoys on Thursday after Nato helicopters killed three Pakistani soldiers.

"I think the supply line will be open relatively quickly," he said, adding that he expected it would take "less than a week."

"It's not a blockade. It's just a temporary suspension of the convoys moving through," Haqqani added.

PESHAWAR, The Nato supply through Pak-Afghan border of Torkham lay suspended for five days now, Geo News reported Monday.

According to the sources of Torkham border, the containers packed with Nato supplies are not being allowed to cross the border; their clearance is hitherto suspended, as around 200 Nato containers are standing in the area to cross the border into Afghanistan.

It should be mentioned here that Pakistan suspended the supply line after the martyrdom of Pak security forces in the incident of shelling from helicopters of the allied forces, which violated the country’s airspace.

A high-level team of Pak Army was sent to Afghanistan for probe into the violations of Pakistani airspace by Nato forces. The Pak team is probing the incident in sync with Nato officials.

Meantime, the incidents of attacks on Nato containers are on the rise in Pakistan.

Some days back, the Nato oil containers were attacked in Shikarpur, where several oil tankers were destroyed. Nato supply oil tankers were attacked in Islamabad during Monday night.

Pakistan held these attacks as the public reaction.

PORT BLAIR, Indian Navy's only floating dock, a place on the waves where Navy's ships come for regular maintenance and repair, is based in Port Blair. Most docks for repairing ships are land based but in the earthquake prone Andaman and Nicobar Islands the floating option was considered safe.

Commander AK Sharma, Officer-in-charge of the floating dock says, "Here we carry out docking of war ships, which are positioned here and carry out their maintenance, related to underwater portion. That's how, keeps them float worthy."

The dock is situated just off Port Blair in the beautiful Andaman and Nicobar islands. It length is more than 188 metres and its width is over 40 metres.

This floating dock is second only to an aircraft carrier in size - in fact the only things it cannot dock are aircraft carriers and oil tankers.

When a ship comes for repair or maintenance, the dock's portion is sunk beneath the water. The ship to be repaired floats onto it and then the dock is raised again - leaving the hull of the ship in the open air, making it much, much easier to repair.

Commander Sharma adds, "We ballast the water into those tanks and this dock goes down into the water and thereafter ships are positioned onboard wherein precision is of the order of about 3mm."

BRUSSELS, European and Asian leaders begin three days of talks Monday centred on trade, IMF reform and climate change but under the cloud of a territorial spat between Japan and China.

Leaders will meet at the royal palace in Brussels for the 48-member Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) for two days, followed by separate European Union summits with South Korea and China on Wednesday.

The Japan-China row could steal the show, however, as observers watch whether Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan meet face-to-face to ease tensions over a maritime incident near disputed islands.

The diplomatic standoff was sparked by Japan's arrest on September 8 of a Chinese trawler captain near the islands in the East China Sea.

Japan has released the captain, but tensions remain with Beijing freezing high-level talks.

Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara sought Sunday to put a lid on anti-Beijing sentiment in Japan, insisting the two countries were "good neighbours."

For the EU, the summits are a chance for the 27-nation bloc to tighten its links with Asia and reassert itself as a major world player, analysts say.

"The EU must use the meeting to give a signal that it is not becoming 'irrelevant' on the global stage as some in Asia claim," said Shada Islam, senior programme executive at the European Policy Centre think tank.

The 27-nation EU will sign a major free trade deal with South Korea, hoping it will be the first in a series of similar pacts with Asian countries.

But the meeting with China could prove more contentious following European and US charges that Beijing deliberately keeps its yuan currency undervalued to gain a trade advantage.

The EU is also expected to raise concerns about human rights in China.

In Athens before heading to Brussels, Wen told Greek lawmakers he was committed to improving EU-China relations.

"I am convinced that a strong Europe is irreplaceable," he said. "China wants to promote and strengthen strategic links with the European Union."

Wen, whose country holds the world's biggest foreign exchange reserves, pledged to support the euro and facilitate investments in China, but he also urged Europeans to "limit protectionism."

Economic issues will likely dominate the meeting of ASEM nations, which represent 60 percent of the world population and global trade.

ASEM, which meets every two years, groups the EU, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, Japan, South Korea, India, Pakistan and Mongolia, and new members Australia, New Zealand and Russia.

Reform of the IMF will likely feature high on the agenda after the EU signalled Friday its willingness to cede some power at the international lender to emerging powers, which say Europe is over-represented.

On climate change, ASEM leaders will share the goal "of reaching urgently a fair, effective and comprehensive legally binding outcome," according to a draft statement obtained by a French news agency.

"Deep cuts in global emissions are required" to ensure the increase in global temperature remains below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degree Fahrenheit), it says.

The ASEM summit coincides with a final preparatory meeting in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin for UN climate talks opening in November in Cancun, Mexico.

LONDON, The chairman of a football club caught up in the Pakistan match-fixing scandal, David Le Cluse, is thought to have taken his own life.

Mr Le Cluse, 44, was found dead on Saturday with gunshot wounds in a garage near his home in Surrey.

He was chairman of Croydon Athletic, whose owner Mazhar Majeed was arrested in August following allegations that members of the Pakistan cricket team were involved in match fixing during their recent tour of England.

Mr Le Cluse, who was married with two children, was said to be devastated when the Ryman League club became embroiled in the scandal.

A statement posted on the club's website said: "Croydon Athletic are deeply shocked and saddened by the sudden tragic death of their chairman, David Le Cluse, on Saturday October 2.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with David's wife and children, and we would ask everyone to respect their privacy at this devastating time for them."

Croydon Athletic's former manager Tim O'Shea told The Times: "He was very upset at the allegations and the club getting involved.

"It probably hit him harder than most because of his personal friendship with Majeed.

"He wanted nothing more than for the club to succeed and he was probably upset and affected by it more than anybody else."

Majeed was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud bookmakers and released on bail.

The match-fixing allegations centred on the timing of no-balls delivered during the Test match.

Undercover reporters from the News of the World allegedly paid a middleman £150,000 and in return were told exact details relating to play during the following day.

In video footage released by the paper, Majeed was apparently seen with a pile of money in front of him.

Mr Le Cluse's body was found at 10.40am on Saturday in a garage in Park Gate Road, Sutton, following reports of a man with gunshot wounds.

The Metropolitan Police said: "A 44-year-old man suffered what is believed to have been a gunshot wound to the head. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

"The circumstances of his death are being treated as unexplained. Inquiries are ongoing."

A post-mortem examination is due to take place.

He was brought to the club in November 2009 by owner Mazhar Majeed, as a replacement for previous chairman Dean Fisher who was under investigation for defrauding his employers at the time. In July, Fisher was convicted of the crime and jailed for three years.

LAHORE, A new film of Lollywood Bhai Log is in the last stages of its completion, Geo News reported Monday.

A song was filmed in Lahore for the movie being made under the directions of Faisal Bukhari.

This is a heavy-budget movie that would showcase some new faces as well along with the senior actors in the lineup.

A romantic number was recorded in a Lahore college with actress Sila Hussain and actor Babrak Shah.

WASHINGTON,Some dinosaurs may have been at least 10 percent taller than previously thought, US paleontologists said in a study that found the creatures had large amounts of cartilage.

The dinosaurs had thick layers of cartilage in their joints that may have added more than a foot (30 centimeters) to their height, according to researchers at the University of Missouri (MU) and Ohio University, who said this may have changed their speed and posture.

"Our study of the limbs of modern-day relatives of dinosaurs shows that dinosaurs were significantly taller than original estimates," said study lead author Casey Holliday, an anatomy professor at the MU School of Medicine.

She explained that many dinosaurs' long bones, such as the femur or tibia, lack major articulations and have rounded ends with rough surfaces.

"This indicated that very thick cartilages formed these structures, and therefore the joints themselves, and would have added significant height to certain dinosaurs," Holliday added.

In contrast, mammal bones have small protrusions at their ends that help them connect with other bones at a joint. The bones are then linked with a very thin layer of cartilage.

The study, which was published in the Public Library of Science's journal PLoS-ONE, shed further light on how reptiles and mammals such as humans build their joints with different amounts of cartilage and bone.

The researchers compared articulations of ostriches and alligators -- the closest living relatives to dinosaurs -- to fossilized limbs of dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops.

They found that alligators' and ostriches' limbs included six to 10 percent cartilage.

By applying a "cartilage correction factor," Holliday found that many theropod dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus, were only modestly taller, while ornthischian and sauropod dinosaurs like Triceratops and Brachiosaurus, may have been 10 percent taller or more.

Brachiosaurus, which was previously thought to be 42 feet (13 meters) tall, may actually have been more than a foot taller with the additional joint cartilages, according to the researchers.

"This study is significant because it shows that bones can't always speak for themselves," said Lawrence Witmer, a professor of anatomy at the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

"To understand how dinosaurs moved, we need to analyze the bones as they were inside their bodies, including their cartilage."