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  • PM showers praise on Rafique for ‘bringing railways back on track’

    Speaking on the occasion, the Prime Minister eulogized the leadership qualities of Railway Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique and said he has demonstrated how a visionary leader can make a difference with existing staff and resources.

    He said Mr. Rafique put declining Railways back on track of revival just in two years by activating its employees.

    The service will offer free Wi-Fi facility to its passengers throughout the journey all the way from Islamabad to Karachi.

    They will also be provided with breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea and snacks during their journey.

    The train includes imported air-conditioned business coaches along with locomotive engines and business coaches from China a few months ago

    Two separate trains will run on the route. The first train will depart from Islamabad at 3:15pm daily, and will reach Karachi by 2:30pm. The train will leave Lahore for Karachi at 09:00.

    The second train will depart from Cantt Station of Karachi at 9:30pm everyday and will arrive Margalla Station in Islamabad at 8:45pm the next day. It will each Lahore at 2:45pm and will leave for Islamabad at 3:15pm.

    It will have stopovers at Hyderabad, Rohri, Khanewal, Lahore and Rawalpindi before reaching Islamabad.

    One-way ticket from Islamabad to Karachi will cost Rs 5,500 (US$55) per person whereas the child fare (3-10 years) will be Rs 4,130. Children under the age of three will travel for free.

    On the other hand, One-way ticket from Lahore to Karachi will cost Rs 5,000 (US$50) per person while the child fare (3-10 years) will be Rs 3,750.

    Commandos and police will be deployed on the route to ensure that the trains function  safely.

  • Man throws acid on two Christian girls in Quetta

    According to details, an unknown attacker on a motorcycle threw acid on the two Christian girls named Hina and Rimsha in Sabzi Mandi area and managed to escape easily.

    They two girls were rushed to Bolan Medical Complex (BMC) where they are being treated.

    CCPO Quetta Razzaq Cheema has confirmed that the girls were Christians.

    The family of the victims has blamed a man named Vijay Masih as the attacker.

    Police has said that the suspects will be arrested soon.

    The acid attack cases in Balochistan are on the rise. Six women were badly burn in an acid attack in Pishin district of the province recently.

  • ECP restores Saad Rafique as MNA

    Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s Khawaja Saad Rafique was elected from Lahore’s National Assembly constituency NA-125. An election tribunal had annulled results of the NA-125 and PP-155 constituencies and ordered a re-election on the seats won by Saad Rafique, the Railways Minister and PML-N MPA Mian Naseer.

    The ECP, after the election tribunal’s decision, de-notified the PML-N stalwart as the member of the lower house of the parliament.

    The Supreme Court, in an order on a petition of Saad Rafique had suspended the tribunal’s decision earlier this week and ruled for restoration of his membership of the NA.

    After the order of the apex court the ECP has issued notification for restoration of the PML-N leader as member of the National Assembly.

    The ECP has also notified restoration of the membership of PML-N Punjab Assembly member Mian Naseer from PP-155 constituency.

  • PTI workers beat up journalists in Multan

    According to details, PTI activists thrashed the journalists who had arrived to cover the rally and told them to leave the venue.

    The party activists thrashed the journalists when they tried to explain the organizers that the spot designated for the rally’s media coverage was not suitable.

    The Tehreek-i-Insaf workers stated that they don’t need any coverage of the event.

    They assaulted the journalists and even threw seats at them after being incited by PTI leader Khalid Warraich.

    The media persons have decided to boycott the rally today.

    “Some journalists have arrived from Lahore especially to cover the event”, media persons said.

    Amir Dogar tried to negotiate with the journalists but they refused to cover the event till the assailants apologize over their behavior.

    It should be noted that PTI is set to stage a public meeting as part of the electioneering for the PP-196 Multan by-polls.

    It is pertinent to mention that media persons have also been thrashed in several PTI rallies and other events in the past.

  • Legendary musician B.B.King dies at 89

    Patty King said her father, a singular figure of US music history, was admitted to a Las Vegas hospital this month after suffering from dehydration. US media reports said King died late Thursday in Las Vegas.

    King played a guitar he famously called “Lucille” and had been inducted into both the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

    His signature song was “The Thrill is Gone.” From juke joints, country dance halls and ghetto nightclubs, B.B.King rose to international super stardom and reached the pinnacle of blues music. He played around 200-300 shows per year and in 1956, B.B.King played 342 one-night-stands. Since beginning in the early 1940s, his career further transcended into the 60s and 70s where the Rock n Roll culture embraced him wholeheartedly. B.B.King was also an inspiration to many famous musicians such as Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.

    Kings’s voice was magical and stood out from the rest of the musicians from the pack. Filled with a longing for lost love, lust and soulful pain, King’s music connected with audiences across decades. A prolific musician no doubt, he was a millionaire by the time he was 80 years old.

  • Living a life under constant threat

    “Go,” he told Iqbal Hussain, who left his job and family behind after losing his brother Muhammad Hassan to join thousands of others on treacherous waters in search of hope.

    In the Shia-dominated Mari Abad quarter of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, each family has tales of death and exile.

    Sectarian violence — in particular by sectarian groups against Shias, who make up roughly 20 percent of Pakistan’s 200 million people — has claimed thousands of lives in the country over the past decade.

    In the latest bloodshed, 44 Ismailis were massacred in Karachi on May 13, in the first attack claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group in the country.

    The worst atrocities, however, have struck the province of Balochistan. The constant fear of violence is pushing young people towards illegal migration. The worst such attack so far, on January 10, 2013, saw a suicide bomber blow himself up in a small snooker hall in the capital Quetta.

    About ten minutes later, when rescue workers had rushed to the scene, a truck packed with explosives that had been parked near the hall was detonated.

    The overall toll was close to 100 dead. Among them was Hassan, who had gone to help.

    This file photograph shows Syed Qurban (R) sitting with his daughter Fauzia as he speaks during an interview at his residence in Quetta, next to a portrait of his son Ali Raza who was drowned after boarding a ship going illegally to Australia. — AFP

    His brother Hussain survived, but with 38 shrapnel wounds which pierced his body.

    “After six months, his mother was insisting, ‘I have lost my son, I don’t want to lose a second,’” said Ali, standing in the cemetery Hassan was buried in, where a corridor of photographs of martyrs fix their gazes on passersby.

    Ali, who had saved $20,000, sent Hussain and his mother south to Karachi, then legally onward to Indonesia.

    There, they placed their lives in the hands of people smugglers, and set off on a boat for Australia — the promised land — just before the conservative government there changed the law, and began sending back all new illegal migrants.

    “The boat was very dangerous, there were 200 people, among them around 20 people from Quetta. It was very tough, the water was rough, we called for help” and were finally picked up by a fishing boat, Hussain said.

    After the journey to a transit camp, the pair made it to Melbourne and today Hussain is learning English.

    “There simply isn’t any hope in Pakistan for young Shiites,” he said. “Here in Australia we have a new life.”

    – ‘Even today, I am sorry’ –

    Like Hussain, another young man Ali Raza also wanted a new life.

    In 2011, Raza, who belongs to the ethnic Hazara community — whose distinct Central Asian features make them easy targets for sectarian militant groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) — lost his best friend Yusuf to an attack in Quetta.

    After the attack, he had only one goal: to leave.

    His father Syed Qurban, a tyre vendor, helped him move to Malaysia, where he hoped he would set up a business. That plan, however, never materialised.

    “He called me to tell me he would be leaving for Australia. I told him, ‘Don’t go, my son’,” cried the old man.

    Their old boat, which carried 250 illegal migrants, sank in the sea.

    Some decomposed corpses were found, while others, including Raza’s were taken by the sea — something the family is still coming to terms with.

    “Even today, I am sorry. How did I let this happen,” his father said.

    Mushtaq, who declined to be identified by his real name, was on the same boat as Raza, but managed to survive three days adrift at sea, without drinking water, being burned mercilessly by the sun.

    “When we were found at sea, my lips were cracked and my skin was raw,” he recalled.

    Sent back to Indonesia, he tried to make the illegal crossing again.

    During one part of the journey, “I lost conciousness, I was having flashbacks for the first time,” he said.

    “I couldn’t sleep, I was afraid of death at every moment,” said Mushtaq, who finally reached Australia, his Eden, to work on a chicken farm.

    “If I stayed in Pakistan, I was afraid of being killed. If I took to the sea, I was afraid of dying. Death awaited in both cases — but at least abroad I have hope.”

    – Hero smugglers? –

    In Quetta, those Shia Hazaras who remain stick to their own neighbourhoods, without much hope for a future in their homelands of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.

    And people smugglers — a dirty profession in most of the world — are highly regarded.

    “Human smugglers for other people, they might be bad for them. But for us, we give them lot of importance in our society,” said Abdul Khalique Hazara, chief of the nationalist Hazara Democratic Party.

    “You give me peace, then I would say they must be (stopped),” he added.

    Wandering between the graves of his two brothers, both of whom were killed for their faith, and his son Hassan, the old man Ali’s heart remains tied to the country that robbed him of his loved ones.

    “If I leave,” he said, “who will weep for them?”–AFP

  • Oil prices lower in Asian trade

    US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for June delivery fell seven cents to $59.81 while Brent crude for July fell two cents to $66.64 in afternoon trade.

    Nicholas Teo, market analyst at CMC Markets in Singapore, said prices “faltered” after the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced slowing US shale oil output was being offset by higher production elsewhere.

    Teo said higher output by the OPEC cartel indicated it is “winning the price war by taking market share back from the Americans”.

    He added: “Although oil could trade in a wide range for some time, the market share war doesn’t appear to be ending.”

    Oil prices plummeted more than 60 percent between June and January as the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries refused to cut production despite a global glut.

    The move by the cartel, which pumps about 30 percent of global crude, was widely taken as trying to push US shale producers, which have higher costs, out of the market.

    Oil supplies from leading OPEC producers Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are near their highest levels in three decades, the IEA said in a monthly report Wednesday.

    OPEC is scheduled to meet in Vienna on June 5 to discuss its collective output level, currently at 30 million barrels per day.

    Analysts said dealers are also keeping an eye on civil strife in Libya and Yemen, with concerns that the fighting may supplies in the crude-rich Middle East.  (AFP)

  • Two ‘Islamic State’ activists arrested in Peshawar

    CTD has said that Ghulam Mohammad and Lal Mohammad were convincing the citizens to join Islamic State by distributing pamphlets.

    The raid was carried out on an intelligence tip, CTD said.

    The counter terrorism department also stated that the pamphlets were written in Persian and Pashto language.

    Cases have been filed under the Anti Terrorism Act 1997.

    The Islamic State group on Wednesday had claimed responsibility for an attack by gunmen on a bus that killed at least 43 Ismaili community members in Pakistan’s biggest city Karachi.

    The pamphlet which was found from the bus attack in Karachi which left 43 people dead
  • Senior police official shot dead in Karachi

    According to sources, SSP Ejaz was in Gulistan-e-Jauhar’s area of Pehlwan Goth in order to take care of private business. His vehicle was intercepted by a motorcyclist, who subsequently opened fire on the unsuspecting officer. Ejaz Haider succumbed to his injuries on the spot.

    Police officials recovered 9mm bullet shells from the crime scene. The car of the SSP which was shot at by armed assailants, contained three women as well. One of the women being identified as Aqsa, also got injured in the attack. As per sources, one of the bullets hit Aqsa in the back, causing her to be injured. Two bullets hit the SSP in the head, which proved to be fatal and resulted in his death.  Ejaz Haider was stationed as SP Jail in Hyderabad and was only three days ago transferred to Karachi.

    Ejaz Haider’s dead body has been shifted to Dar-ul-Sehat hospital in Gulistan-e-Jauhar, where a large number of senior police officials have gathered.

     

  • LEAs arrest 145 suspects in Karachi crackdown

    The Rangers conducted targeted raids on suspected hideouts of outlawed groups in various parts of the city arresting dozens of suspects.

    A meeting of the Apex Committee on Thursday attended by the Army Chief General Raheel Sharif and other top civilian and military officers decided to step up the operation in Karachi after Wednesday’s terrorist attack on a bus of Karachi’s Ismaili community in which 47 innocent citizens were killed.

    Police and Rangers conducted a joint raid in Khameeso Goth in New Karachi and arrested 40 persons including a target killer Alam Baig alias Ganja and several drug dealers. The arrested killer was wanted to police in murder of 19 people.

    The rangers in a raid in Pirabad locality arrested four Afghan nationals.

    Moreover, police detained 57 suspects from Essa Nagri and Zaman Town during a search operation.

    Policemen arrested an injured armed man in Shanti Nagar police precinct after exchange of fire.

    A statement of Rangers said that  the arrested personnel included suspected killers, members of outlawed groups and gangsters linked with the Lyari gang war.

    According to the statement, a number of weapons including SMGs, were also recovered from the arrested suspects.