Hamas says it's back in control of the Gaza Strip

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Bearded Hamas activists on Friday delivered an envelope with five crisp $100 bills to a veiled woman whose house was damaged during Israel's invasion of Gaza, the first of promised relief payments by the militant group.

In another part of the territory, a bulldozer cleared rubble and filled in a bomb crater where a week before a top Hamas leader had been killed in an Israeli air strike.

Since a truce took hold this week, ending Israel's three-week onslaught, Gaza's Hamas rulers have declared victory and gone out of their way to show they are in control.

They have pledged $52 million of the group's funds to help repair lives, the money divvied up by category. The veiled woman received emergency relief money for her two-story home in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.

Hamas, which is believed to be funded by donations from the Muslim world and Iran, said the emergency relief would include $1,300 for a death in the family, $650 for an injury, $5,200 for a destroyed house and $2,600 for a damaged house.

More than 4,000 houses were destroyed and about 20,000 damaged, according to independent estimates.

"We are in control and we are the winner," Hamas legislator Mushir al-Masri declared this week, after attending the funeral of four Hamas gunmen.

Nothing was accomplished by Israel. They pulled out so that our HNIC would not be mad. They should have killed every single arab in Gaza.

Pakistani newlyweds live in fear of honour killing

KARACHI (Reuters) - Pervez Chachar and his young wife live in the police headquarters in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Their crime? They fell in love and married without their families' permission.

The newlyweds dare not venture out of the police station as they fear their families will hunt them down and kill them.

"I know they will kill her and I have to protect her," Chachar said of his wife's family who are enraged that the young woman chose to marry a man from a rival tribe.

In traditional rural society in Pakistan, getting married without permission is deemed such a serious slight to the "honour" of a family or a tribe that death is seen as fitting retribution.
Rights groups estimate 500 people, most of them women, are killed in the name of "honour" in Pakistan every year, with the majority of victims from poor, rural families often killed by their own relatives.

Shortly after Chachar married Humera Kambo a year ago, the couple fled to Karachi from their home in Sindh province. Humera, too afraid to talk to a reporter, has been abducted by her family and Chachar has been beaten by them.

Still defiant, they fear death if they stray too far from the cramped room next to the police canteen which they share with another young couple in the same position. They have been there for four months and they don't know when they can safely leave.

Under Pakistani customs still followed in much of the countryside, a man or woman can be declared an outcast for having sexual relations outside marriage, or choosing their own spouse.

Ahh, the muslim tribal system. Isn't it so loving. Two people find that they are in love and the muslim code of tribes says nope. You must marry who we say, or you die. Lovely people these muslims are.

Read it all:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKTRE50M07020090123?rpc=401&feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&rpc=401