Pak Navy successfully test-fires 3 missiles
Pakistan Navy has successfully test-fired three surface-to-air missiles at Sonmiani coast, ISPR said in a statement released on Monday.
The surface-to-air missiles successfully hit the targets.
The missile tests have boosted defence capability of Pakistan Navy, a spokesman said.
Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Noman Bashir also witnessed the missile tests. The new missiles will further boost the navy’s ability to defend the coastal belt and creeks, Admiral Bashir said.
1st Muharram on 8th December, Ashura on 17th
Muharram-ul-Hara’am moon has not been sighted; hence 1st Muharram would be on 8th December while Ashura would be on 17th December, 2010, trendpk.Com reported on Monday.
Mufti Muneeb-ul-Rehman presided over the meeting of the central Royat-e Hila Committee in Karachi. Scholars from different schools of thought, representatives of meteorology department, Pakistan Navy personnel and officers of religious ministry participated in the meeting. It was told during the meeting that no evidences for sighting the Muharram moon were received from any part of the country. After the meeting Mufti Muneeb-ul-Rehman officially announced that the moon was not sighted in any part or city of the country.
Pakistan celebrates 133rd birthday of Allama Iqbal
November 9, 2010 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
Staff Report
LAHORE: Pakistan is celebrating the 133rd birthday of Allama Iqbal today (Monday). The Poet of the East was born in Sialkot on Novemebr 9, 1877. The nation will pay special tribute to the fore-dreamer of a separate country for Muslims of the sub-continent.
The day started with a guard changing ceremony at the mausoleum of Allama Iqbal in Lahore. A vigilant Pakistan Navy squad took over guard duty from a troop of rangers.
Rear Admiral Bashir Ahmad was the chief guest on the occasion. He laid a wreath of flowers on the grave of the great leader of the pre-Pakistan independence movement of Muslims.
All day long, people belonging to different walks of life will continue to visit the mausoleum of Allama Iqbal to pay tribute and offer Fateha to the great scholar of the sub-continent.
The Government of Pakistan has announced a public
Malik sees third element in Karachi incidents
ISLAMABAD: Federal Interior Minister Rehman A Malik said the government writ is intact in Karachi, adding a third force is involved in the incidents of killings in the city, Geo News reported Tuesday.
Talking to Geo News, he said only those people are involved in the carnage who want to destabilize the country.
He continued, ‘Even if someone is killed as a result of a general row, the same is declared as target-killing.’
Responding a query, he said Malik said the vision of President Asif Ali Zardari has helped his reputation soar higher, which has caused great anguish to his enemies.
Pak Navy to commence drills from next month
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Navy, in a bid to ensure the security situation in the region, announced to conduct War Game Exercise Shamsheer-i-Behr IV in the next month keeping in view India’s new concept of war, Geo News reported Tuesday.
According to Pak Navy, Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani would inaugurate these war games on July 12.
It should be mentioned here that these drills have been worked out keeping in sight the Indian concept of war. The exercises would include mastering various war strategies like the possibilities regarding circumstances of confrontation and jumping to retaliatory action.
The War Game is designed to revalidate Navy’s operational concepts and evaluate new ones in the backdrop of emerging trends in regional and geo-strategic environment.
Last Shamsheer-i-Behr exercises were organized in 2007.
According to Navy spokesman, the 5th Corps of military and Southern Command of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) have also been incorporated in the war games.
French judge confirms Agosta deal kickback
PARIS: The French judge, investigating corruption charges, confirmed that illegal commissions were paid for the sale of submarines to Pakistan in 1995.
Fourteen people, including 11 French nationals, were killed and 18 others, including 10 foreigners, were injured when a suicide bomber rammed his car into a Pakistan Navy bus near the Sheraton Hotel, setting off an incendiary device.
Charges emerged in France last year that the attack was carried out after differences over payment of commissions involving top figures in both Pakistan and France. The list included President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was a minister then.
Each article of Constitution be implemented, urges CJ
ISLAMABAD: The Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Iftikhar Muhammed Chaudhry said the Constitution is a living document; hence, its every article should be put into practice, Geo News reported Wednesday.
A larger SC bench comprising 17 judges is currently hearing various identical petitions against certain clauses of the 18th Amendment, including the limits of parliament’s right to amend the Constitution.
Giving remarks, Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday said there is a Public Service Commission for the appointments above 17 grade; but contrarily, the Parliament has been authorized to appoint judges.
He added, ‘The Parliament is respected; however, the issue relating the judges’ appointment will have to be looked into.’
Relief efforts continue at Makran, Sindh coasts
KARACHI: Balochistan Chief Minister, Nawab Aslam Raeesani, along with Commander Coast Vice Admiral Tayyab Ali Dogar and Chairman National Disaster Management Authority visited cyclone affected areas of Gwadar, Pasni and Turbat.
An ISPR (Navy) press release issued here said that the Chief Minister, on board PN helicopter, took an aerial view of the cyclone affected areas and reviewed relief operations being undertaken by Pakistan Navy in collaboration with civil administration.
Earlier, three Pakistan Navy aircraft carried 1,800 kilograms of medicines, 10 large size de-flooding pumps and 600 chicks (doorway curtains) to Gwadar for the cyclone-affectees.
Relief goods are being delivered by PN aircraft and helicopters to the areas which are humanly inaccessible due to rain water.
PN Ship Zulfiquar has already reached Gwadar with 55 tonnes of dry ration and relief goods.
A PN truck also left here today carrying 4,000 kg relief goods for cyclone-hit creek areas of Sindh.
PNS Shahjahan is also on its way carrying relief goods for cyclone affectees.
A PN aircraft has also reached Karachi from Gwadar on Tuesday, carrying 18 serious patients for medical treatment at PNS Shifa.
The patients include six serious delivery cases. PN Special Services Group team is also undertaking salvage operation of sunken fishing boats at Gwadar and Pasni.
Sarkozy involved in arms deal scandal with Pakistan
PARIS: French President Sarkozy was caught up in a long-simmering kickbacks scandal yesterday when police in Luxembourg named him as the creator of a company that handled tens of millions of pounds in illegal funds.
An inquiry appears to implicate Sarkozy in a case involving the sale of French submarines to Pakistan in 1994. It will strengthen suspicions of French investigators that money from the contract was funnelled to finance a 1995 presidential campaign managed by Sarkozy, who was then Budget Minister.
Two French judges believe that a dispute between France and Pakistan over unpaid commissions led Pakistani agents to bomb a bus carrying French-employed shipyard workers in Karachi in 2002. Fourteen people died in the attack, 11 of them French. The attack was originally blamed on al-Qaeda.
Last year Mr Sarkozy dismissed as fantasy allegations that money intended for secret commissions to middlemen during the sale of the submarines had been used to finance the 1995 campaign of Edouard Balladur. Mr Balladur, then the Prime Minister, was backed by Sarkozy in an unsuccessful race against Jacques Chirac.
After Chirac won, he halted further payment of the submarine commissions, it has emerged from the French inquiry.
A parliamentary investigation has determined that £80 million in commissions was paid by DCN, France’s naval shipyards, to middlemen in the submarine deal. At the time, such commissions were not illegal in France but kickbacks, known as “retro-commissions”, were.
Luxembourg police, working for the French judges, said that, in 1994, Sarkozy “directly supervised” the creation of a Luxembourg offshore company called Heine. Its purpose was to channel the secret payments.
Pakistan”s nuke arsenal bigger than India: report
STOCKHOLM: A series of recent estimates by international nuclear watchdogs and reputed think tanks hold that Pakistan has a total of 70 to 90 warheads compared to India”s 60 to 80. China, in comparison, has around 240 warheads.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said Pakistan”s weapons-grade plutonium production would jump seven-fold with the two new reactors at Khushab nearing completion.
“Our conservative estimates are that Pakistan has 60 warheads and could produce 100 nuclear weapons at short notice,” said SIPRI, adding that Islamabad had earmarked its US-supplied F-16 fighters, Ghaznavi and Shaheen missiles as its nuke delivery systems.
India”s nuclear weapons programme, in turn, has largely been plutonium-based, basically centred around the Pu-239 produced in research reactors like Cirus and Dhruva at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.
Nuclear arsenals of India, Pakistan, and even China, pale in comparison to the gigantic ones of the two former Cold War foes, US and Russia. SIPRI estimates there are whopping 22,600 active, inactive and stored nuclear warheads around the globe, enough to destroy it several times over.
While Russia has 12,000 warheads, 4,630 of them “deployed” ones, US has 9,600, which includes 2,468 of them operational. The two have, however, recently decided to slash their inventories by nearly one-third.
France comes third with 300, followed by UK with 225. Israel, which like India and Pakistan is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, completes the list of the eight countries with nuclear weapons, with an arsenal of 80 warheads. Then, there is also North Korea, which has produced “enough plutonium for a small number of warheads”, SIPRI said.
