The petition had been moved by Dunya News senior anchor person Mubashar Luqman.

The counsel for the petitioner, Ali Zafer Advocate, adopted the stance that the Punjab government had committed corruption while distributing laptops among students, adding that failed students were awarded with laptops.

The petitioner also advocated that the laptops were distributed by such people who were neither high official nor were entitled to do so.

The petitioner also claimed that this move just aimed at securing political benefits, with the prayer that legal action should be taken against the people committed negligence and corruption.

After hearing preliminary arguments, the court has accepted the petition for hearing.
 

Pakistan People’s Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has urged President Barack Obama to show “some courage” and apologize to Pakistan for the NATO airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at Salala and bring US-Pakistan relations back on track.

“Pakistan deserves an apology,” he said, noting that his current week-long visit to the United states was taking place at a crucial point in the relations between the two countries. The PPP chairman also called for an end to the drone attacks inside the Pakistani territory, saying they were illegal and violate international law and even the US’s war powers act.
 

Sindh Home Minister Manzoor Wasan went abroad on one month leave and the sources have said that he has applied 15 days extension in his leave.

Meanwhile, SSP Thatha, Muhammad Ali Wasan, a close relative of Manzoor Wasan has been transferred. The sources said that all the names sent by Home Minister for appointment in police department have been removed from the list.
 

The National Economic Council (NEC) which met here under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has approved Rs 873 billion for Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP 2012-13), with focus on water and power, social sector, health education, job creation and food security, for the socio-economic prosperity of the country.

Talking to media after the NEC meeting here on Thursday, Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh said that government has planned a balanced development approach to equally develop Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit Baltistan and Federally Administered Tribal Areas with other parts of the country.

The Minister said that the NEC also reviewed the progress of Federal Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) of Rs 300 billion during the outgoing financial year 2011-12 and it was observed that 170 big development projects have been completed with 100 percent releases for the projects.

During the last four years, National Development Expenditure has been Rs. 2.2 trillion, including Rs 1 trillion by the Federal Government. Our Government increased the size of development expenditure from Rs 416 billion in 2008-09 to Rs 710 billion during the current fiscal year. This shows an average annual increase of 19.5% during this period.

The government was able to achieve growth rate in the range of 3.4% during the last two years. We know that this growth rate is not sufficient to achieve the overarching targets of poverty reduction and enhancing employment opportunities. For that we need at least a consistent GDP annual growth of over 7% over a long period of time.

He said that the government is proposing a GDP growth rate of 4.3% for the next fiscal year, which is quite achievable due to the base provided by the Government.

Another positive development is the falling inflation rate. The CPI which witnessed increase of 20.8 percent during 2008-9, is now reduced to around 11 procent. Similarly the food inflation has been brought down from 23.7 percent in 2008-09 to around 11 percent during the current fiscal year and estimated to be in single digit by the end of next fiscal year.
 

The United States on Thursday voiced concern over extrajudicial killings and religious intolerance in Pakistan, including in its troubled southwestern province of Baluchistan.

In an annual report on human rights, the State Department said that the "most serious human rights problems" in Pakistan included extrajudicial killings, torture and disappearances by both security forces and militants.

"Lack of government accountability remained a pervasive problem. Abuses often went unpunished, fostering a culture of impunity," it said.
In presenting the report, senior US official Mike Posner also highlighted an uptick in violations of religious freedom, including through controversial anti-blasphemy laws, as well as violence in Baluchistan.

"We re very concerned about the violence in Baluchistan. We re concerned about the effects of those who ve challenged some of the laws, like the blasphemy law," said Posner, the assistant secretary of state for human rights.

Posner raised the case of Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death in November 2010 for alleged blasphemy. Assassins last year killed Salman Taseer, the governor of the central province of Punjab, and Shahbaz Bhatti, the minister for minority affairs, who both defended Bibi and sought reforms.

In her own remarks on the report, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not name Pakistan but voiced concern over the treatment of religious minorities including the Ahmadi community.

The State Department report also accounted allegations of rights violations in Baluchistan — a highly sensitive issue for Pakistan.

The report, based largely on accounts by rights groups and officials, said that disappearances in Baluchistan "remained a problem" with the mutilated bodies of 355 missing people found between June 2010 and December 2011.

Baluch rebels rose up in 2004, demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from oil, gas and mineral resources in the region. The unrest comes as the United States an Pakistan focus on Islamic extremism in lawless areas on the Afghan border.

The State Department report also said that prison conditions were "extremely poor" in Pakistan, with accounts of torture, sexual abuse, overbevolking, inadequate food and medical care, and discrimination against minority inmates.
 

US senators scandalized by Pakistan s jailing of a doctor for helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden voted on Thursday to cut aid to Islamabad by $33 million — one million for each year in the doctor s sentence.

"It s arbitrary, but the hope is that Pakistan will realize we are serious," said Senator Richard Durbin after the unanimous 30-0 vote by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

"It s outrageous that they (the Pakistanis) would say a man who helped us find Osama bin Laden is a traitor," said Durbin, the Senate s number two Democrat.

The amendment was offered by Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat. Earlier in the week an appropriations subcommittee slashed aid to Islamabad and warned it would withhold more if Pakistan does not reopen supply routes for NATO soldiers in neighboring Afghanistan.

The Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, was sentenced to 33 years in jail Wednesday on charges of treason. He was accused of running a fake vaccination campaign, in which he collected DNA samples, that is believed to have helped the American intelligence agency track down bin Laden in a Pakistani town.

The al Qaeda leader was killed in the town of Abbottabad a year ago in a unilateral U.S. special forces raid that heavily damaged ties between Islamabad and Washington. Since then, there have been growing calls in the U.S. Congress to cut off some or all of U.S. aid.

Pakistan has been one of the leading recipients of U.S. foreign aid in recent years. Even after the cuts voted this week it still would receive about $1 billion in fiscal 2013, if the full Senate and House of Representatives approve.
 

An earthquake measuring 4.8 on Richter Scale jolted Quetta, Mastung, Sibbi and surrounding areas in the early hours of Friday. The epicenter of the quake was 90km north of Khuzdar.

Panic spread in the area after the quake and people came out of their houses. People were informed about the earthquake through aerial firing.

Meanwhile, seven people including four children were injured during a stampede after the earthquake. The injured were shifted to Civil Hospital for treatment.

Vroeger, a moderate earthquake hit Kalat and its suburbs at 10:00pm on Thursday.
 

The White House declared Thursday that Pakistan had "no basis" for the harsh prison sentence decreed against Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi for his pivotal role in helping to track Osama bin Laden.

"We continue to see no basis for Dr. Afridi to be held," spokesman Jay Carney told reporters. "I think it s an important point that any assistance rendered by anyone in the effort to bring Osama bin Laden to justice was assistance not against Pakistan, but against al-Qaida and against Osama bin Laden."

"We ve raised the issue with the Pakistani government, and we continue to have conversations with them about it," Carney said amid congressional outrage at Afridi s treatment.

The White House also said that the United States continues to work with Islamabad towards restoration of the Pakistani land routes that transport Nato supplies into landlocked Afghanistan but were shut six months ago in the wake of cross-border strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.
 

President Asif Ali Zardari reached returned home on Thursday night after participating Chicago conference. President reached Karachi via London.

Tight security arrangements were made at the Karachi Airport on the occasion of President’s return. The sources informed that President Zardari will leave for Nawabshah after a night stay in Karachi.
 

De euro raakte zijn laagste punt tegenover de dollar sinds juli 2010 on Wednesday ahead of a European Union summit aimed at dealing with the threat that Greece could exit the eurozone.

Een dag na oud-Griekse minister-president Lucas Papademos waarschuwde dat de mogelijkheid dat Athene zou kunnen doen van de euro is "echte", de euro is gedaald tot $1.2582 opzichte van de dollar op 2100 GMT, uit $1.2684 late Tuesday.

"The ongoing decline in euro/dollar is mirroring the decline in the willingness of investors to carry any unnecessary risk," ETX Capital trader Markus Huber told AFP.

"Investors are continuing to become even more risk averse than they have already been before, factoring in the notion that the EU summit won t be yielding much in a way of bringing calm into the financial markets at least in the short term," he said.

French President Francois Hollande stressed the importance of immediate action to quell worries in the markets, but there was still a clear division in the euro area over tactics, with Germany standing steadfast against issuing region-based eurobonds to raise funds against contagion.

"I say that we have to act straightaway for growth … otherwise there will still be doubt on the markets," said Hollande.
The markets were unsettled by Papademos  comments to Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday.

"The risk of Greece leaving the euro is real and it depends effectively on whether the Greek people will support the continued implementation of the economic program," he said.

"It cannot be excluded that preparations are being made to contain the potential consequences of a Greek euro exit."
Safety-seeking investors pushed into the yen, driving it higher.

The euro bought 99.96 yen, compared to 101.45 yen Tuesday, and the dollar was at 79.45 yen from 79.98.

The dollar rose to 0.9543 Swiss francs from 0.9468; the British pound slipped to $1.5689 from $1.5766.
 

De Balochistan Docenten’ Association has set up a hunger strike camp outside Quetta Press Club while teachers from all districts of Balochistan are participating in the strike.

Drie protesterende leraren in kritieke toestand overgebracht naar het ziekenhuis burgerlijke op woensdag. 

De leraren zijn in staking voor de acceptatie van hun 26 behoeften, waaronder de verhoging van de salarissen. The teachers said that their hunger strike would continue till the government raises their salaries and fulfill other demands.

Calling all government teachers association an unregistered organization, the provincial government said that they are not bound to issue notification to them.

European researchers are planning to use new techniques to analyze DNA that could help crack the mystery of whether Bigfoot exists.

In a project announced this week, Oxford University and Lausanne Museum of Zoology scientists appealed to museums, scientists and Yeti aficionados to share hair samples thought to be from the mythical ape-like creature.

New genetic tests will be done on just a few strands of hair and should be completed within weeks. Even if the sample is judged to come from an unknown species, scientists should be able to tell how closely it is related to other species, including apes or humans.

Bryan Sykes of Oxford University said the group had already received many offers of samples to test, including blood, hair, and items supposedly chewed by Bigfoot. Sykes and colleagues plan to sift through the samples for the next few months before deciding which specimens to test. They will then publish their results in a peer-reviewed journal.

Other experts agreed recent advances made in DNA testing could theoretically solve the Bigfoot question.

"If the Yeti is real and somebody has found bits of their hair, you should be able to tell from the DNA in the hair if this is actually a Yeti," said Mark Thomas, a professor of evolutionary genetics at University College London. He is not connected to the Bigfoot project.

But Thomas was unsure how likely it was anyone might have actual Yeti hairs. Some scientists theorize Yetis are either a distinct hominid species, or a mix between homo sapiens and Neanderthals or other species. There is already evidence of interbreeding between homo sapiens and Neanderthals.

"If Yetis have survived for the last 30,000 jaar, they have probably had a pretty miserable existence and are a small population vulnerable to extinction," Thomas said. "It s not as insane an idea as many might think, but the chances are pretty small."

Sykes said he has always been intrigued by stories of Yeti sightings, but would rely on science rather than such tales to prove if the stories are credible. "It s not really possible to fabricate DNA evidence," he said.

He acknowledged that the chances of proving the existence of a new Yeti species are low, but said that the study was still worthwhile. "If we don t look, we ll never find out," he said.

Bigfoot is a legendary giant, hairy, ape-like beast that is variously known as Sasquatch, the Abominable Snowman, Yeti and other names. It supposedly lives in heavily forested or snowy mountains. Although most scientists don t believe in the beast s existence, decades of eyewitness reports, suggestive photos and stories have kept the legend alive.

David Frayer, a professor of biological anthropology at Kansas University, told The Associated Press in an email that "No serious scientist (would) treat Yeti as a worthy research project."

He said previous tests on supposed Yeti hairs have already been done "and they turned out to be from a bison."
 

A pioneering commercial spaceship closed in on the International Space Station on Wednesday, a key test in a controversial program to reduce the US government s role in human space flight.

Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, launched its Dragon cargo capsule into orbit on Tuesday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida for a test run to the $100 billion orbital outpost.
 

Thousands of university students marched through central Mexico City on Wednesday to protest media coverage that they say favors the candidate of the former ruling party in upcoming presidential elections.

The students say newspapers and television stations are tilting their coverage toward Enrique Pena Nieto, who is leading polls by double digits ahead of the July 1 vote.

Many of the students were from the elite Iberoamerican University, where a May 11 appearance by Pena Nieto set off a rare wave of protests by young people against a return to the presidency of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico for 70 years before it was voted out in 2000.

The students say Mexico s largest television channel, Televisa, was particularly biased in its coverage of the rally and the campaign in general. Many finished the march at Televisa s studios, where Pena Nieto was appearing on a live interview show.

Local media reported smaller, simultaneous marches in at least a half-dozen other cities around Mexico.

A Televisa spokesman declined immediate comment, as did Pena Nieto s campaign.

"We want to be told the truth in this country," said Esteban Pacheco, an industrial design student at Iberoamerican. "I look at this as a wake-up call."

Pena Nieto s backers have labeled the students as supporters of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, but many at the rally said they supported none of three main presidential candidates.

A march through central Mexico City on Saturday drew tens of thousands of protesters against Pena Nieto, a much larger crowd than the one on Tuesday night.
 

Volgens gegevens, four-month-old Gulroze was soled for Rs 20 thousand by his father Nauroze Khan to a man named Sajjad.

It was also decided in the deal that Sajjad will have to pay further 50 thousand rupees in case of death of the child. Nauroze had earlier sold two of his daughters due to poverty and wanted to sell his other children too.

Police have arrested the accused while a case has also been registered against five persons, including two women.