Blast in Karachi injures 8

KARACHI: A blast in the North Nazimabad Block B area of Karachi near Sachal Rangers Headquarters injured at least eight people, Express reported on Wednesday.

Rangers officials said that the bomb was planted in a motorcycle and two shops were destroyed in the explosion. No loss of life was reported.

SSP Central Muqaddas Haider confirmed that it was a planted bomb.

According to initial details, a Rangers convoy is believed to be the target of the blast.

Rescue teams reached the site of the explosion and the injured were taken to local hospitals for medical assistance. The bomb disposal squad was also summoned.

Muttahida Qaumi Movement MPA Dr Sagheer Ahmed, while speaking to the media in Karachi, confirmed that no loss of life had occurred. He added that the people with minor injuries were discharged after being provided with medical treatment.

Rangers personnel and police cordoned off the area and further investigations are underway.
This is not a first time there has been a blast in the same area.

In November 2012, a suicide bomber had rammed an explosives-laden pickup truck into the gate of Sachal Rangers Headquarters, causing a huge blast that killed three Rangers personnel, while at least 26 people were injured.

Internal, external challenges: Civil-military huddle reviews security situation

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has extended its full support to Afghan authorities for the second phase of presidential polls but urged them to take urgent steps against repeated cross-border firing incidents by their security forces.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif chairing a high level meeting to review the national and regional security situation at Prime Minister House on May 20, 2014. PHOTO: PID

The issue was one of the key agenda items during a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday. The meeting was attended by top civil and military leadership, including Chief of the Army Staff General Raheel Sharif and Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan.

According to an official statement issued by the Prime Minister House, the army chief briefed the PM on his recent visit to Kabul and his discussions on border coordination and security for the second phase of the Afghan presidential elections.

An official, privy to the development, said the meeting discussed Afghanistan in the post-election and post-US drawdown scenario. The army chief briefed the meeting about his visit wherein he had asked the Afghan authorities to take steps against cross-border firing incidents, he added.

He said Gen Raheel took up the issue during his talks with his Afghan counterpart Sher Muhammad Karimi and International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) Commander General Joseph Dunford in Kabul on Monday.

Officials said the army chief told the meeting that he shared his concerns with Afghan authorities regarding the alleged sanctuaries of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Afghanistan and said that Islamabad suspected that the TTP chief Mullah Fazlullah was being given refuge by Afghan security agencies.

The issue was discussed in the backdrop of ongoing peace talks with the TTP which had entered the second phase when the infighting within the Taliban ranks and government’s cautious approach towards their demand for release of non-combatants put the process on the backburner.

Though Tuesday’s meeting discussed the security situation in regional and national context, the official statement did not have a mention of talks with the Taliban.

On the other hand, officials did not say as to whether the issue of talks with the Taliban was taken up or not irrespective of the fact that the interior minister had recently announced that the government was going to resurrect the talk’s process.

The meeting, according to the statement, discussed national and regional security situation. Additionally, the law and order situation in Balochistan and Karachi was also reviewed.

The interior minister briefed the premier on the law and order situation in Karachi in particular and it was decided the targeted operations against miscreants would continue in the metropolis.

The meeting was also attended by Adviser to PM on Foreign Affairs and National Security Sartaj Aziz, Director General Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt Gen Zaheerul Islam, Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen Ashfaq Nadeem and DG Military Operations Maj Gen Amir Riaz.

(By Qamar Zaman) Published in GNN & Tribune, May 21st, 2014.

In-camera meeting: Opposition labels budget strategy as sketchy

ISLAMABAD: In a first glimpse of what looks like a response to the upcoming budget, members belonging to the opposition and allied parties have termed the government’s budget strategy ‘sketchy and wishful thinking’ while criticising the chief economic czar for bypassing parliament in budget-making.

The briefing came just days before the presentation of the budget in parliament on June 3, providing no chance for a meaningful discussion. CREATIVE COMMONS

In his first-ever briefing to a parliamentary panel on the budget strategy for financial year 2014-15, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Tuesday presented the strategy paper to a joint sitting of the National Assembly and Senate Standing Committees on Finance and Revenue in an in-camera meeting.

Dar had to face a barrage of questions after members of the committees took an exception to his move to ignore parliament in the budget-making process.

The whole exercise was complete eyewash, as the government did not share tax proposals with representatives of the people, said members after the meeting.

The briefing came just days before the presentation of the budget in parliament on June 3, providing no chance for a meaningful discussion.

“What was presented in an in-camera session is already known to us through newspapers, killing the purpose of the meeting,” said former finance minister Saleem Mandviwalla of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

Mandviwalla said the tax target of Rs2.810 trillion for next year was very ambitious and the budget strategy paper was a wish list. The briefing was nothing but just numbers, he remarked.

The government has already agreed on the budget deficit target of 4.8% of gross domestic product (Rs1.4 trillion) with the International Monetary Fund and rest of the exercise is just “number crunching”, said Syed Naveed Qamar, who also belongs to the PPP.

The numbers presented to the committees were notional, having no real value, he said, pointing out that the government did not give a briefing on the budget, as the entire presentation revolved around medium-term budget strategy.

According to Qamar, the members of the committees agitated against ignoring them in the budget-making process. “What the government presented to us was a very small step towards taking parliament into confidence.”

They were of the view that the government neither had a plan to curtail inflation nor it knew how to create jobs.

“As a result of the new budget, inflation will increase and there is also a question mark over the government’s strategy to reduce unemployment,” said Senator Talha Mahmood of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) – an ally of the ruling party.

Describing Rs2.810 trillion tax target as “doubtful”, Mahmood asked when the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) could not achieve this year’s Rs2.475 trillion target, what magic wand it had to reach the unrealistic target for next year.

He underlined the urgent need of introducing drastic reforms in the FBR as corruption prevailed at the lower level.

Raising $2 billion by floating Eurobonds and maintaining exchange rate stability should not be treated as benchmarks for economic revivals, suggested Rashid Godil of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). The briefing was nothing but a speech by a good orator, Ishaq Dar, he remarked.

Silver lining
Dar assured the parliamentarians that, depending on the Supreme Court’s favourable decision, the government would restore their budget for development schemes.

The finance minister gave personal assurance that not only for next year but parliamentarians’ funds for the outgoing fiscal year would also be allocated in the new budget, said Senator Talha Mahmood.

The government expected the court to give a favourable decision on June 2, he said.

Naveed Qamar pointed out that with the suspension of parliamentarians’ schemes, rural development had come to a halt.

(By Shahbaz Rana) Published in GNN & Tribune, May 21st, 2014.

U.S. utility's control system was hacked, says Homeland Security

(GNN) - A sophisticated hacking group recently attacked a U.S. public utility and compromised its control system network, but there was no evidence that the utility's operations were affected, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS did not identify the utility in a report that was issued this week by the agency's Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, or ICS-CERT.

The word 'password' on a computer screen is magnified with a magnifying glass in this picture illustration taken in Berlin May 21, 2013.

"While unauthorized access was identified, ICS-CERT was able to work with the affected entity to put in place mitigation strategies and ensure the security of their control systems before there was any impact to operations," a DHS official told Reuters on Tuesday.

Such cyber attacks are rarely disclosed by ICS-CERT, which typically keeps details about its investigations secret to encourage businesses to share information with the government. Companies are often reluctant to go public about attacks to avoid potentially negative publicity.

ICS-CERT said in the report posted on its website that investigators had determined the utility had likely been the victim of previous intrusions. It did not elaborate.

The agency said the hackers may have launched the latest attack through an Internet portal that enabled workers to access the utility's control systems. It said the system used a simple password mechanism that could be compromised using a technique known as "brute forcing," where hackers digitally force their way in by trying various password combinations.

Justin W. Clarke, an industrial control security consultant with security firm Cylance Inc, said it is rare for such breaches to be identified by utilities and even more rare for the government to disclose them.

"In most cases, systems that are so antiquated to be susceptible to such brute forcing technologies would not have the detailed logging required to aid in an investigation like this," Clarke said.

DHS also reported another hacking incident involving a control system server connected to "a mechanical device." The agency provided few details about that case, except to say the attacker had access over an extended period of time, though no attempts were made to manipulate the system.

"Internet facing devices have become a serious concern over the past few years," the agency said in the report.

Last year ICS-CERT responded to 256 cyber incident reports, more than half of them in the energy sector. While that is nearly double the agency's 2012 case load, there was not a single incident that caused a major disruption.

Those incidents include hacking into systems through Internet portals exposed over the Web, injecting malicious software through thumb drives, and exploitation of software vulnerabilities.(GNN) (Reuters)

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Tiffany Wu)