Qureshi visited MQM’s Headquarters 90 on Monday and held meeting with Rabita Committee members.
Subsequently, talking to media, he lauded host’s policies; saying that MQM encouraged politics at national level while the politics of race, language and personal gains tore country apart.
“MQM staged a historical and an organized public rally in Lahore, ” Qureshi praised, adding that Lahore’s public gathering is an evident of the depth in MQM’s ideology.
On the occasion, Farooq Sattar urged political parties to expel criminal elements form their ranks.
 |
| SOURCE: THE NEWS PK |
Judge of special anti terrorism court of Rawalpindi went to Adyala prison and held the trial of Benazir Bhutto’s murder case.
The counsel of FIA told the court that arrest of Pervez Musharraf could not be carried out on the warrant issued earlier. The British authorities have said that Musharraf had gone to Dubai, he added added.
The counsel requested the court that process for having Pervez Musharraf declared wanted be initiated and upon which the court ordered that the arrest warrant be withdrawn first.
Later, the court adjourned the hearing till May 7.
 |
| SOURCE: THE NEWS PK |
"The fighting in recent days has been very fierce, and the people have been running away from the violence to safety," said Charles Machieng, commissioner of Unity's Mayom county, the area of heaviest fighting.
"Although we have no reports of fighting today (Saturday), assessments show that there are 3,800 civilians who have fled, many who are here in Mayom town because their houses have been destroyed," he added.
Clashes in the soon-to-be-independent south broke out on Tuesday between the army and a rebel group led by former southern army general Peter Gadet, one of at least seven separate militia groups battling the southern government.
But just as the violence appeared to subside, separate clashes broke out on Saturday morning close to the town of Malakal, between the army and gunmen said to be allied to former militia leader Gabriel Tang, officials said.
Fighting in the Canal area of northern Jonglei state, around 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of Malakal, started at mid-morning, said state information ministry official Bartholomew Pakwan Abwol.
"Fighting broke out in the vicinity of Canal," said Abwol, speaking from Malakal. "The fighting is still occurring and we have few details at present."
Tang commanded a pro-Khartoum militia during the devastating 1983-2005 civil war between north and south Sudan, but agreed to join the southern army late last year.
His forces were reportedly waiting to to be integrated into the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) when the fighting broke out.
More than 800 people have been killed and 94,000 people forced from their homes in fighting since January, according to UN estimates, when southerners voted overwhelming to forge their own nation in a largely peaceful referendum.
 |
| source: bbc news |
The US has authorised the use of armed, unmanned Predator drones over Libya to give "precision capabilities".
Libyan rebels have been battling Col Gaddafi's troops since February but have recently made little headway.
Adm Mullen also said there was no sign of al-Qaeda in the Libyan opposition.
Speaking to US troops in Iraq, he said radical groups might try to take advantage of the Libyan uprising, but added: "We're watchful of it, mindful of it and I just haven't seen much of it at all. In fact, I've seen no al-Qaeda representation there at all."
Last month, a Nato commander said US intelligence had picked up "flickers" of al-Qaeda activity among the rebels.
Meanwhile Senator John McCain has visited the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, the most senior US official to do so since the conflict began in February.
He called on all countries to recognise the rebels' Transitional National Council as "the legitimate voice of the Libyan people", and to offer weapons and training.
Urban targets
A fourth evacuation ship chartered by the International Organisation for Migration is on its way to rescue stranded migrant workers and wounded civilians from the besieged city of Misrata./ continue reading....
 |
| SOURCE: THE NEWS PK Moin Akhtar passes away |
Moin Akhtar, 61, was taken to Combined Military Hospital (CMH) where he breathed his last during treatment, Geo News reported.
Moin Akhtar was a television, film and stage actor, as well as a comedian, impersonator, and a host. He was also a play writer, singer, film director and a producer.
A highly dynamic and versatile performer from Karachi, Moin Akhtar made his debut appearance on PTV on 6 September 1966, in a variety show telecast on the occasion of the first defense day of Pakistan. Since then, he had performed numerous roles in TV plays/shows and later teamed up with Anwar Maqsood and Bushra Ansari to get an overwhelming public applause.
Whether on the stage or on the screen, Moin Akhtar was one of the most sought after actors in Pakistani entertainment industry. His apparent attempts to avoid vulgar in his humor has rendered him a favorite amongst family audiences.
He is an inspiration for the generations to come and is one of the few that stands out so distinguishably. Akhtar was fluent in several languages, including English, Bengali, Sindhi, Punjabi, Memon, Pushto, Gujarati and others, while in the Urdu-speaking world, he is beloved for providing humor for people of all ages, and with an etiquette that remains unmatched.
He has a following not only in Pakistan but on the other side of the border, India, too due to the stage shows, Bakra Qiston Pe and Buddha Ghar Pe Hai with Umer Sharif. It would not be wrong to say that his ardent fans are spread all around the globe.
Moin Akhtar rose to the national spotlight and gathered critical acclaim for his performance in the drama Rosy /Rozy, in which he played the role of a female TV artist. Rozy was an Urdu adaptation of Hollywood movie Tootsie starring Dustin Hoffman.
Moreover, in a talk-show namely Loose Talk, which began in 2005 on a private television channel, he has appeared as a different disguised guest who is interviewed by Anwar Maqsood, the writer and the host of the program. Loose Talk ended after over 400 episodes, each seen with Moin disguised as a different personality.
 |
| SOURCE: THE NEWS PK |
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, made the comments before a trip to Islamabad as he visited U.S. bases in Afghanistan that are grappling with violence by insurgents.
Mullen acknowledged that "we've had a very turbulent time," but added that despite the tensions, all sides acknowledged the relationship was vital. "I think that all of us believe that we cannot afford to let this relationship come apart," Mullen said, referring to U.S. and Pakistani military and intelligence chiefs.
"It's just too dangerous. It's too dangerous, in each country, for each country. It's too dangerous for the region."
He acknowledged that the relationship was difficult, but added: "We walk away from it at our peril, quite frankly."
Asked about Pakistani demands to trim the number of U.S. military trainers, who Pakistan fears could be involved in covert action, Mullen said he still saw continued U.S. training support in the future. He did not offer specifics and said the matter still needed to be ironed out.
Mullen also visited the nearby U.S. forward operating base that was targeted by a suicide bomber in December 2009, killing seven CIA employees.
 |
| THE NEWS PK |
According to the sources, PML-Q has been offered a Senior Minister, four federal ministers, eight ministers of state and UN ambassadorship.
The PPP was also in talks with old allies Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) to join the government. A proposal of seat adjustment in elections with the new partners was also on the cards.
Analysts were of the view that the real issue behind this exercise was to get the next budget through the Parliament.
Too woo the PML-Q, the investigation officer of the NICL scam was removed. Additional Director General FIA Zafar Qureshi was made Managing Director National Police Foundation.
 |
| SOURCE: THE NEWS PK |
"If the Lord Almighty extricated the US out of NATO and dropped it on the planet of Mars so we were no longer participating, it is bizarre to suggest that NATO and the rest of the world lacks the capacity to deal with Libya -- it does not," Biden told the Financial Times.
"Occasionally other countries lack the will, but this is not about capacity," he told the daily amid deep unease among the US public and lawmakers over military action in Libya.
Washington coordinated operations in the first days of allied intervention in Libya after the United Nations Security Council approved international military action to thwart attacks by Kadhafi forces on rebel-held cities.
It transferred command to the NATO alliance earlier this month, leaving the Pentagon primarily providing refueling and surveillance aircraft, but it still flexes its military might.
Biden argued that Washington had to decide whether to spend resources "focusing on Iran, Egypt, North Korea, Afghanistan [and] Pakistan", or give Libya more attention, stressing: "We can't do it all." "The question is: Where should our resources be?" he asked.
"This is about our strategic interest and it is not based upon a situation of what can the traffic bear politically at home," he said. "The traffic can bear politically more in Libya: There's a bad guy there, everybody knows he's a bad guy, the people don't like him, and so that's not hard," he added, referring to Kadhafi.
Fulfilling the UN mandate to protect Libyan civilians "is totally, thoroughly, completely within the capacity of NATO," he said. "Where we brought unique benefits to bear and unique assets we have applied those assets and we will."
 |
| SOURCE: THE NEWS PK |
A senior member of Misrata's governing council, Nuri Abdullah Abdullati, said they were asking for the troops on the basis of "humanitarian" principles, in the first request by insurgents for boots on the ground.
Previously, he told reporters, "we did not accept any foreign soldiers in our country, but now, as we face these crimes of Kadhafi, we are asking on the basis of humanitarian and Islamic principles for someone to come and stop the killing."
"The helicopter trying to land at El-Fasher airport experienced a technical problem and crashed," Sawarmi Khaled Saad told media.
"The aircraft was completely destroyed and all five people on board were killed. Three of them were crew and two were passengers. They were all in the army," Sawarmi added.
BERLIN: The German government said Friday it was working on a bill aimed at battling a growing tide of complaints against noisy children in what is a rapidly ageing society.Regulations on noise fall under Germany's emissions laws, and a bill tweaking these is due to go before Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet in February, a spokesman for the environment ministry said.
"Noise made by childcare centres, playgrounds and places where ball games are played do not generally constitute a harmful environmental effect," the Passauer Neue Presse daily cited the bill as saying.
The government is also working on an amendment to building regulations that would make it easier for childcare centres to open in purely residential areas.
"Children making noise does not constitute something ... that citizens need to be protected from by law, but are an expression of liveliness," Peter Ramsauer, construction minister, said in Berlin.
Germany, where just 14 percent of the population is less than 14 years old, compared to 45 percent in Malawi, for example, has seen a spate of complaints against children being children in recent years.
Some of these have resulted in kindergartens being refused planning permission or childcare centres having to build noise-protection walls so as not to disturb locals.
The complaints, however, are not necessarily from senior citizens.
Many of them are from people in their 30s and 40s, including couples with children, worried about the value of their property falling if a noisy new kindergarten springs up nearby, experts say.
Only around 16 percent of households have children, with a recent government study showing that only half of Germans think that having children "enriches" life.
TERESOPOLIS: Brazil Saturday declared three days of national mourning for nearly 560 people killed near Rio de Janeiro this week in the country's worst flood disaster on record.
Emergency workers in the disaster zone, in the Serrana region just north of Rio, were overwhelmed by the body count. Refrigerator trucks had to be brought in to store corpses.
Workers transporting bodies said they feared the overall death toll could more than double as rescuers reached outlying hamlets.
President Dilma Rousseff declared the three days of mourning, government news agency Agencia Brasil reported. Rio de Janeiro state authorities said their state will observe a full week of mourning starting Monday.
As of late Saturday, the toll stood at 558, with the worst-hit towns being Teresopolis, Nova Friburgo and Petropolis. Outlying villages also reported deaths.
"I think in the end we'll see more than 1,000 bodies," said a funeral worker in Teresopolis, Mauricio Berlim. "In one village near here, Campo Grande, there were 2,500 homes and not one is left standing," Berlim said.
Authorities also made an urgent appeal for donations of blood, bottled water, food and medicine.
At least four refrigerated trucks were parked out the front of an overflowing makeshift morgue inside a church in Teresopolis.
Even as it was being built for the 1889 Universal Exhibition, a professor of mathematics sagely calculated that when the tower was two-thirds complete, its legs would buckle and the whole thing would come tumbling down, crushing workers and houses alike.
Today, the Eiffel Tower is not only standing but remains in rude health, testifying to the soundness of Gustave Eiffel's design and the strength of "puddle iron," the hand-made wrought iron of the late 19th century, say engineers.
Specialists at the Technical Centre for Mechanical Industries, or CETIM, have put together a high-powered computer model based on the 18,000 pieces that comprise the world's greatest iron edifice and the emblem of Paris.
On screen, the tower has been exposed to hurricane-force winds, lashing rain, extreme heat, cold and thick snow, and each time emerges unbowed, they say.
"We have applied the most demanding test standards currently set in Europe and have found that the tower is in excellent shape," said Stephane Roussin, a former French naval officer in charge of structural safety at Eiffel Tower Operating Co., or SETE.
"We have even doubled its weight to see what happens. The tower moves but is not destroyed."
SETE commissioned the model in 2008 to fine tune its maintenance programme -- to get a better idea of the 324-metre (1,063-feet) tower's weak and strong points as important projects are carried out.
In 2011, the tower will get its 19th coat of paint, and next year sees an overhaul of structures on its first floor. The tower itself weighs around 8,500 tonnes, to which some 3,000 tonnes (restaurants, lifts, TV antenna and so on) have been added.
Computer simulation has become standard practice for modern-built buildings, such as the Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and for bridges, such as the Millau viaduct in southwestern France.
But creating the model for the Eiffel Tower presented a technical challenge of a completely new kind.
One thing was that the realisation that its materials -- puddle iron (iron that is super-heated, beaten by hand and then folded over) and rivets -- perform quite differently from modern-day steel, concrete and bolts.
"We had to start from scratch," said Roussin.
Materials scientists carried out mechanical and chemical tests on samples of puddle iron to assess its resilience, and stress engineers revisited Eiffel's own drawings to calculate how the tower would perform under load from the natural elements.
Outwardly simple, the geometry of the tower itself posed some mighty number-crunching problems.
The programme had to take into account a range of weather conditions on a latticework of 18,000 metal pieces and the tower's additions, calculating the load vertically, horizontally and in 3D: in all, the model has an astonishing million variables.
The tower has shrunk by some 13 centimetres (5.5 inches) over the past 120 years because it has settled under its own weight, says Roussin.
Looking to the future, the experiments show the tower's sensitivity to higher temperatures, so global warming is likely to become a bigger source of concern in decades to come.
Even so, the specialists say they are highly confident Paris' "Old Lady" will be around for the next two or three centuries.
RIO DE JANEIRO: Days of flooding and mudslides have left at least 109 people dead in southeast Brazil, with a mountainous region near Rio de Janeiro bearing the brunt Wednesday.Local officials and media said 96 people died in the Serrana mountain region north of Rio Tuesday and Wednesday after extremely heavy tropical rain sent hillsides sliding into towns and rivers broke their banks.
One town, Teresopolis, counted 71 deaths, according to a tally given to French news agency by the mayor's office.
FOLLOW MYFVRT ON TWITTER
Nearby Petropolis suffered at least 18 deaths, a municipal official said.
Another seven deaths occurred in Nova Friburgo, another town in the region, local media reported.
At least three firemen died when they were engulfed by a wall of mud as they were carrying out a rescue.
The town's power was cut off and the telephone system had collapsed.
The deaths added to 13 counted in Sao Paulo Monday and Tuesday, bringing the overall death toll for southeast Brazil to 109 so far this week.
Teresopolis's mayor, Jorge Mario, told the GloboNews television station: "It's a huge catastrophe, a major disaster."
Images from helicopters showed torrents of water cascading down mountains over his town of 180,000 people, and houses swamped in tons of mud.
Mario said around 500 people had been left homeless and dozens of bridges and roads had been destroyed.
He warned the death toll could rise even further as emergency crews made it through to remote stricken areas.
A local civil defense chief, Colonel Flavo Castro, called on locals "to take refuge in safe places: churches, schools."
He said a helicopter was being used to evacuate people cut off.
Heavy rains common during Brazil's summer wet season were intensified this week by a cold front which doubled the usual precipitation.
KARACHI: The accused in the police detention in connection with Karachi University blast have confessed that they were all set to launch attacks on other offices of KU as we as those of Rangers, Geo News reported Wednesday.The officials investigating the incident have disclosed that the accused have links with a ‘Punjabi Mujahideen’ group which was formed by dissidents of a student organization in 2007.
These accused have been identified as Hafeezullah alias Bilal, Muhammad Umer alias chhota and Faiz Ali. They blonged a group named ‘doctor brothers’, the officials added.
These men finalized the bombing plan on December 25 and planed explosives in an under-construction block on December 28 and later carried out the explosion with the help of a cell phone.
The investigating officers said that their remand will be sought on Thursday.
WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle led Americans to observe a moment of silence in memory of the victims of the weekend's shooting in Arizona that critically injured a US Congresswoman and killed six people, including a nine-year-old girl and a judge.
Obama and Michelle observed the moment of silence at 11am local time to honour the innocent victims of the senseless tragedy in Tucson, Arizona, including those still fighting for their lives.
As a bell rang three times, Obama and his wife bowed their heads and closed their eyes, their hands clasped in front of them, as members of the White House staff joined them on the side.
They then turned around and walked back inside the White House. Obama also signed a proclamation Sunday calling for flags to be flown at half-mast.
Meanwhile, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords continued to be in critical condition, doctors said.
She was shot in the back of her head Saturday at a public function held at a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona. Nine other patients remain hospitalized.
The alleged shooter, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, is scheduled to appear in a Phoenix courtroom later on Monday.
Loughner has been charged on five counts - two of murder and three of attempted murder -- according to the charge sheet filed by Arizona US Attorney, Dennis K Burke.
Federal investigative authorities say Loughner tried to kill Giffords.
However, after the news regarding the row between police stations aired on Geo News, the higher authorities broke the ice and administered to resolve the issue.
According to police sources, a Korangi-area-resident, Shahab Uddin (26) was shot dead in Bahaddurabad locality on Monday evening, after which the dead body had been shifted to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.
But a dispute of jurisdictions of police stations came to notice when the officials from three stations, New Town, Ferozabad and Bahaddurabad locked their horns, forcing the others to take responsibility of legal correspondence of the murder.
According to hospital sources, the Medico Legal Officer (MLO) Dr Saleem lodged complaint with the Police Control, requesting the concerned DIG to intervene into the matter.
But unless, Pakistan’s best television news channel, Geo News, intervened and broadcast the news, the dispute was not to seemingly resolve as the DIG later discovered that it was Bahaddurabad police station, within the limits of which, the murder had taken place.
Subsequently, the medico legal certificate was handed over to Bahaddurabad police station after postmortem of the body.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives at a news conference where he unveiled a new messaging system in San Francisco
Since last weekend, there were rumors circulating on the Internet that Facebook is shutting down March 15 because CEO Mark ZuckerbergMark Zuckerberg said in a press conference that "he wants his old life back and need to get rid of all the madness".
According to the Facebook administration, the rumors are false and rubbish.
CNN website also published a news to end all rumors. Facebook Director of Corporate Communication Lary Yu told CNN that there is no truth and we are not shutting down the social networking website, and all such rumors are false.
Last month, Facebook received investments of $500 million from Goldman Sachs and Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies.
WASHINGTON: The United States has ordered an additional 1,400 Marines to southern Afghanistan to preempt a Taliban spring offensive, despite a planned troop drawdown starting in July, the Pentagon said Thursday.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday "approved additional Marine forces to southern Afghanistan to exploit and consolidate gains already achieved and apply pressure on the enemy during the winter campaign," spokesman Colonel David Lapan told media.
The Marine contingent could start arriving within weeks and would only be on the ground for a short mission of less than 90 days, defense officials said.
The move was designed to cement tentative gains against the mostly Pashtun insurgency, with the hope of bolstering recently cleared areas between Kandahar city and Helmand province, officials said.
The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, currently based on a ship in the Indian Ocean, would be heading to Afghanistan for the "winter campaign," the head of US Central Command, General James Mattis, said later in a statement.
There are currently about 97,000 American troops in Afghanistan, along with 45,000 forces from other countries, and officials said the new Marines would not put the total number of US forces above the limit of 100,000 authorized by President Barack Obama.
"These forces are within the current authority," Lapan said.
Obama last month said the US war strategy in Afghanistan was "on track," but warned that gains won by his surge strategy at a heavy cost in casualties remained fragile and reversible.
That assessment came one year after Obama announced both a surge of 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan and gradual troop drawdown beginning in July 2011.
The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the Marine reinforcements, said that commanders were considering an even larger boost of up to additional 3,000 troops. Pentagon officials could not confirm that detail.
The new Marine deployment comes as a surprise given the preparations for withdrawals by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan, where a war against Taliban insurgents has dragged on for more than nine years, with nearly 2,300 coalition deaths, about two-thirds of them Americans.
US commanders are under pressure to show clear progress in Afghanistan in 2011 and successfully counter any upswing in Taliban attacks in the spring, or else face fresh public doubts about the course of the war.
Defense officials insisted the Marine deployment did not reflect difficulties in the war but was aimed at hammering home progress at a time when the insurgents usually pull back to prepare for fighting after the winter.
US officials see the American-led campaign in the south as make-or-break for the war effort, pinning their hopes on undermining the Taliban in its heartland.
The White House strategy review issued last month said progress in Afghanistan was evident in gains by Afghan and coalition forces against Taliban bastions around Kandahar city and in the Helmand province.
But the study was short on details, and did not include pointed criticisms of the Pakistani and Afghan governments that have featured in US government documents leaked in recent months.
Though pledging to work with Afghanistan to improve governance and reduce corruption, the review said little about countrywide graft, including in President Hamid Karzai's government, which many analysts see as endemic to Afghanistan and a serious threat to the US-led war effort.
KARACHI: Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Mian Mohammed Nawaz Sharif Friday threatened government that his party would not express hesitation in parting ways with PPP in Punjab if the ultimatum issued to latter is not positively heeded and responded as well, Geo News reported.
He said N-league would then look for other ways in order to accomplish targets that are there on his party’s agenda.
Nawaz was talking to Kamran Khan in Geo News program ‘Aaj Kamran Khan Kay Saath’.
He said, “There are many pro-public points on our agenda which need to be accomplished at any cost if our party wants to continue enjoying respect in the eyes of people”, persisting that with or without government in Punjab, we have to strive hard for welfare of people.
We have shown sincerity in a great deal but it would be irony of fate if the government does otherwise, he feared.
