DISABLED PEOPLE”S DAY
A disabled Pakistani man begs on a cart in Peshawar, Pakistan, yesterday. The International Day of People with Disability, which was promoted by the United Nations in 1992, is annually observed on December 3.
Swedish woman shot by gunmen in Pakistan
A Swedish woman was shot yesterday in the chest by unknown gunmen in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore, officials said. The 55-year-old social worker was targeted outside her house in Model Town area of the city, senior police officer Sohail Sukhera said by phone. A doctor at Jinnah Hospital, where she was taken after the attack, said she was “stable” after an operation to remove the bullet. No one took responsibility for the incident but Muslim extremists have targeted foreigners in the past. Police said they were hunting for the attackers who fled after shooting the woman, who has lived in Pakistan for at least 12 years.
Bomb kills five people in southern Afghanistan
At least five people, including two women, were killed when a bomb targeting an army vehicle exploded in southern Afghanistan yesterday, officials said. The remote-controlled bomb was placed on a motorcycle and hit an Afghan army patrol truck as it was passing in Trin Kot the capital of Uruzgan province. “Two Afghan army soldiers and three civilians were killed in the blast,” provincial police spokesman Farid Ayal said. The Uruzgan governor’s spokesman, Abdullah Hemat, said two women were among those killed. The blast also wounded eight others, including two soldiers, he said. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Pakistani govt road projects not popular
The government of Pakistan has launched two road projects in Chakwal district at a cost of Rs8bn but the poor of the area wonder for whose benefit? “How do we benefit from it? There will be more buses and trucks when the Mandra-Chakwal road becomes dual-carriage, but think about the fares they would be charging,” observed Mirza Fakhar, a 67-year-old resident of Bhaun. The question asked most by the people is: “Why they had to strip off the railway track that had served us well, and cheap, since 1912?” Built a century ago, the Bhaun-Mandra rail service used to be the economic lifeline of the people of Chakwal until the 1990s.
Medical admissions: Girls outnumber boys
Pakistan’s female students have again considerably outnumbered the male in the fresh admissions to the public sector medical colleges of Punjab province for the session 2012-13, it was learnt yesterday. According to the data, out of total 2,942 students who secured admissions on open merit seats for the session 2012-13 at the public sector medical institutions of the province, 63.3% were female while 36.7% male, showing a visible gender-wise difference. The data was compiled by the admission section of the University of Health Sciences under “MBBS Admission Statistics 2012-13”. The figures showed continuity of the trend.