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A cabinet committee on Friday approved the designs of Rs20 and Rs5,000 denomination currency notes. The cabinet committee on design of currency notes met here with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in the chair. According to an official handout, the designs were presented to the committee by the chairman of the Printing Corporation of Pakistan. The [...]

United Kingdom-based Pakistani singer Raja Kashif, trained by acclaimed composer Ravi Shankar, has announced the completion of a duet album with film singer Alga Yagnik. The duet, produced by Indian company Saray Gama HMV, is Yagnik’s first non-film work…

The federal government has formally contacted the Balochistan government for acquiring 10,000 acres of land to set up a tax-free industrial zone in the port city of Gwadar. The transfer of land was likely in the next few weeks, said sources. Sources said the federal government had decided to set up a tax-free industrial zone [...]

As the ban on trade of used mobile phones is being lifted from January 1, 2005 (tomorrow), the police and Karachi Electronic Dealers Association (KEDA) have devised a joint strategy to counter the menace of mobile phone snatching in the metropolis. Police and the KEDA would formally introduce a web-based computerised mobile phone tracking system [...]

The Network Microfinance Bank (NMB) was launched at a simple ceremony on Tuesday. The NMB is sponsored by the Network Leasing Corporation and Jahangir Siddiqui & Co and would be the first Microfinance institution to be listed at a stock exchange (the Karachi Stock Exchange). The bank would provide a full range of banking services [...]

World’s leading goal scorer and ace drag-flicker Sohail Abbas, and Waseem Ahmed of Pakistan, have confirmed their participation in the Premier Hockey League, adding glamour to the much-awaited competition. The presence of these two players is likely to give a further boost to the PHL, which is set to begin in Hyderabad on January 13. [...]

The Provincial Science Olympiad opened on Wednesday in Lahore. One hundred research-based projects in the fields of biology, chemistry, computer sciences, mathematics and physics are being displayed at the Olympiad. Intel Pakistan Corporation and the Punjab Education Department’s second science education project are jointly organising the Olympiad in which students will be selected for the [...]

TeleSpectrum Worldwide, once a top U.S. teleservices provider, has become the subsidiary of a Pakistani firm in a case of an offshore company buying a domestic call center outsourcer. The Resource Group, a teleservices conglomerate based in Lahore and Karachi, Pakistan, bought TeleSpectrum in October. Financial details were not disclosed. However, The Resource Group said [...]

Members of a delegation of Indian Sindhi writers visited their ancestral towns of Daro and Chuhar Jamali on Monday. In Daro, they attended the launching ceremony of Adab ja Sarchashma (Resources of literature) by critic Yousuf Sindhi, Aalami Ajaibat (Wonders of the world) by travel writer Abdul Hayee Palijo and a periodical Jati. The ceremony [...]

The Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi, will introduce three master’s level programmes from the new session, commencing in 2005. An IBA official said that the new MS programme is being introduced in Computer Science/Information Technology, Accounting, Marketing and Economics. Each programme of two-year duration is planned for which 50 admissions will be offered on [...]