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Updated at: 1904 PST, Saturday, February 28, 2009 ISLAMABAD: The prices of petroleum and oil lubricants (POL) will remain unchanged for the month of March, Geo news reported on Saturday. According to sources, Finance Ministry had forwarded summary to Prime Minister recommending to keep petroleum products’ prices unchanged by 1st March which, premier has approved today. This approval will mount Rs.17 billion profit to government excluding taxes, sources added. Government gained Rs.15 billion profit owing to petroleum development delivery in the month of February but Rs.2 billion additional profit will be added in March, sources maintained.

THE trilateral talks in Washington on the war on terror have again seen that unedifying ritual in which Afghan delegates pour venom on Pakistan and, presumably, embarrass their hosts. In the US capital to attend talks with Pakistani and American delegates on developing greater cooperation to thwart terrorism, the Afghan foreign minister had unpalatable things to say about Pakistan. The “main threat centre” for instability, he said, was neither Iraq nor his own country but Pakistan. This is a rewording of the Indian charge that Pakistan is the “epicentre” of terrorism. Speaking at the Centre for American Progress on Thursday, Rangeen Dadfar Spanta feared that Pakistan could become a failed state and that would not be in the interest of America and the region. This piece of wisdom has come from a man whose own country has been devastated by war and civil conflict, and that has been a victim of terrorism for three decades. In fact, there is no sign yet that the corrupt government he re

Diplomatic sources claim that US was apprehensive about the decision and wanted it to be delayed on the grounds that political instability in the country would divert focus from the war on terror. - File photo. ISLAMABAD: Islamabad had indicated to Washington about the possibility of a Supreme Court decision to disqualify former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif from holding any elected office. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who is currently in Washington, leading a team of senior officials for participating in the review of US policy for the region, hinted at this during his bilateral talks with some of his interlocutors there, well placed diplomatic sources said. Although the report was confirmed from multiple sources, but one of them was so categor

WASHINGTON DC : Companies that defrauded the United States and jeopardized American lives received new government work despite rulings designed to stop them from receiving federal contracts, government investigators report. Payments went to a German company whose president tried to sell nuclear bomb parts to North Korea , a company that jeopardized lives on the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy, and a seller of body armor that the Air Force said was defective. The companies were on a government database of 70,000 individuals and businesses suspended or barred by various U.S. agencies from receiving government contract work. The Government Accountability Office blamed some of the mistakes on faulty computer searches by officials who left out commas or periods. But it also said the search engine for the database often failed to identify any of the entries on the exclusion list. A hypothetical suspended company named XYZ Corp., Inc. — with a comma — would escape detection if one sear

Updated at: 0716 PST, Saturday, February 28, 2009 WASHINGTON: The United States has no desire for a "long-term" military presence in Afghanistan despite plans to send more troops to the war-torn country, President Barack Obama said Friday. "One of the things that I think we have to communicate in Afghanistan is that we have no interest or aspiration to be there over the long term," Obama said in an interview with PBS public television. "There's a long history, as you know, in Afghanistan of rebuffing what is seen as an occupying force and we have to be mindful of that history as we think about our strategy," he said. Obama, who earlier Friday announced an end to US combat operations in Iraq within 18 months, has vowed a new focus on fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The new president has ordered another 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan and is conducting a review of policy in the region. Obama, who opposed his predec

OSLO: President Barack Obama and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy are believed to be among a record 205 nominations for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. The secretive five-member awards committee, which released its final nominations count on Friday, keeps the names of candidates secret for 50 years. But some of the thousands of people with nominating rights do announce their nominees. ‘It is very easy to be nominated for the peace prize, but that is in no way an endorsement by the committee,’ said Geir Lundestad, the Norwegian awards committee’s nonvoting secretary. The committee said 172 individuals and 33 organisations were on the list by this week’s deadline. The previous record was 199, in 2005. ‘There was a very good geographical spread,’ Lundestad said. The nominations included those postmarked by a Feb 1 deadline, and those added by the committee itself at its first meeting of the year, which was Thursday, he said. This year, the name of the US president has been put forward b

Updated at: 1204 PST, Saturday, February 28, 2009 TEHRAN: Bahrain and Iran said they will maintain good relations, indicating that the diplomatic row that erupted between them last week was over. Delivering a message of "friendship and brotherhood" from King Hamad to Ahmadinejad the visiting Bahraini official stressed the "importance of expansion of relations with Iran for Bahrain's government and nation." Sheikh Khaled also met with his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, stressing that the kingdom will continue "good neighbourly" relations with Iran. In a short statement broadcast by Iran's Arabic-language television, the two men indicated that the diplomatic row was over. "It is a goodwill letter which shows mutual respect between the two countries. This letter responds to all ill-wishers who wanted to hurt the deep relations between the two countries," Sheikh Khaled told reporters of the Bahrain's king message. Last week, B

Updated at: 1132 PST, Saturday, February 28, 2009 NEW DELHI: Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said more practical measures needed to curb terrorism. Mukherjee said he believes President Asif Ali Zardari is sincere about ending the menace but underlined that his desire should be backed by actions by Islamabad. "I would like to say that I believe in his sincerity because he himself is a victim of the terror attack. His wife, one of the tall leaders of the subcontinent fell victim to the senseless brutal terror attack," Mukherjee said. "I believe Zardari has desire to fight against terrorism," he said while talking to media here. Mukherjee described Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi also as gentlemen.

Updated at: 0547 PST, Saturday, February 28, 2009 LONDON: The UK revealed yesterday it was planning to inject up to £25.5bn ($36.5bn) in additional capital into Royal Bank of Scotland as part of a plan to stabilise the beleaguered lender and prevent it from being fully nationalised. The injection, under a government scheme to ringfence £325bn of RBS's assets against large future losses, is the first of what is expected to be a series of banking bail-outs designed to kick-start lending to the ailing British economy. Lloyds Banking Group, which includes HBOS, is today expected to reveal details of a similar scheme to ringfence up to £250bn of potentially bad assets. The long-awaited move came as RBS reported a £24.1bn loss for 2008, the largest in British corporate history, and revealed that businesses with assets of about £240bn - almost a quarter of the bank's balance sheet - would be sold or wound down over the next three to five years. The losses and insurance scheme are fur

Updated at: 1101 PST, Saturday, February 28, 2009 KARACHI: Pakistan's Central Bank sold 10 billion rupees ($125 million) of Treasury bills on Saturday under five-day repo contracts at 9.00 percent to mop up funds from the money market.

Updated at: 1400 PST, Saturday, February 28, 2009 KARACHI: The government has set a target for bringing down the interest rate to 12 percent by June 2009. Addressing a seminar on ‘public-private partnership’ under the aegis of Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Federal State Minister for investment, Salim H. Mandviwala said that the government was making out an industrial package for boosting industries, which would provide support to the industries. He further said that the government was seriously working on ending power outage by increasing power production, while talks were underway with the Chinese investors for power production from garbage and other refuse, which would soon be given a final shape.

NEW YORK: Global stocks this week was seen mixed, following the failing expectations of positive impacts of the US government deal relating to Citi Group. Dow Jones and Nesdak indexes this week eroded by 304 and 75 points respectively. On the other hand in Asian markets, Japan’s Nikkei-225 index went up by 254 points. Similarly Hong Kong’s Heng Sang index wrapped up in positive zone, but Shanghai index lost 66 points and it closed at 2082 points. Besides in European markets, France’s index dropped by 103 points and Germany’s index by 214 points, while Britain FTSE-100 index melted down by 59 points during this week.

KARACHI: Finance Advisor Shaukat Tarin has said that the stock exchange crisis has died down and it was now on its way to recovery. Addressing a gathering here, Finance Advisor, Shaukat Tarin said that the government was gearing up the process of privatization for boosting foreign investment. He said that further $4.5 billion would be required for the improvement of balance of payments. Shaukat Tarin said that Pakistan economy being adversely affected in the war against terror.