DUBAI, March 1: Former military ruler Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf said on Friday he would return home within weeks to contest elections after more than four years in self-imposed exile, but did not set a specific date.

“Under the advice of all my party men, we have decided that as soon as the interim government is in place, which we hope will be on March 16, within a week of that I will go back to Pakistan,” he announced in Dubai...

By Khaleeq Kiani

ISLAMABAD, March 1: The Ministry of Finance has prepared broad contours of the federal budget 2013-14, envisaging an overall outlay of about Rs3.43 trillion and a deficit of about 4.3 per cent of GDP.

The budget strategy paper (BSP) is expected to be presented to the federal cabinet on March 6 for clearance after which the Ministry of Finance will firm up budgetary estimates for next year...

By Saleem Shahid

QUETTA, March 1: Terrorists shot dead Mehmood Afridi, a senior journalist and President of the Kalat Press Club, on Friday evening.

Mr Afridi was sitting in a private Public Call Office in Kalat Bazaar when gunmen on a motorcycle came there and opened fire...

By Our Staff Reporter

LAHORE, March 1: The chief of Pakistan Muslim League-Functional has warned of bloodshed and riots during the coming elections.

Pir Sibghatullah Rashidi (Pir Pagara) told reporters at a ceremony here on Friday that the government should take extraordinary measures to ensure fair, transparent and free elections, and peaceful transition of power...

By Our Staff Reporter

LAHORE, March 1: SNGPL teams on Thursday night raided two furnaces, one owned by a senior PPP leader and the other by the family of a PML-N MNA, and found plants were using the natural gas in an illegal manner, officials alleged.

The raiding teams confiscated five industrial meters on the two premises and sent them to the Central Meter Testing Shop of Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited, where these would be tested on Monday in the presence of the two leaders or their representatives...

By Raja Asghar

ISLAMABAD, March 1: The country’s energy regulators came under fire in the National Assembly on Friday with two opposition walkouts over the latest increases in petroleum prices and the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) was partly blamed by members from both sides of the house for power shortages.

It was the Muttahida Qaumi Movement which left the PPP-led coalition government last month that staged the first walkout against an increase of about four per cent in the princes of petroleum products announced overnight, with one party member, Asif Hasnain, asking why the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) had not consulted a parliamentary committee formed for the purpose...

NEW DELHI, March 1: Hundreds of protesters clashed with police on Friday outside a New Delhi hospital where a seven-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted at school was admitted earlier in the day, police said.

Angry youths hurled stones at buses and police, who then used batons to break up the demonstration outside the hospital which is located in a low-income neighbourhood, India’s NDTV channel reported...

CANBERRA, March 1: Top World Health Organisation officials and Muslim leaders will meet in Egypt next week in an effort to stop attacks on polio workers, which are hampering the eradication of the virus in some countries with large Muslim populations.

“Shooting health workers who are protecting kids from this crippling disease is against the (teachings of holy) Quran and everything Islam stands for,” WHO’s Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward said here on Friday...