Model Town tragedy: Sanaullah, Shah granted 4 days to record statements

LAHORE: Former Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah and former Principal Secretary Tauqir Shah appeared before the tribunal formed to probe the Model Town tragedy on Thursday.

Sanullah and Shah requested to be provided four days to record their statements before the inquiry tribunal. The one-member inquiry tribunal headed by Justice Ali Baqir Najafi granted Sanaullah and Shah four days to record their statements.

Justice Najafi said Sanaullah and Shah should record their statements by Monday, adding that they could be summoned again if the need arose.

The inquiry tribunal resumed its probe into the tragedy on Thursday. Sanullah, Shah along with Chief Secretary Punjab and Inspector General Police Punjab appeared before the tribunal.

The former provincial law minister was surrounded by parliamentarians, lawyers and PML-N workers when he arrived to appear before the tribunal.

Swiss man breaks world record for 8,000m jump without oxygen

GENEVA: A Swiss man set a new world record on Sunday when he leapt from a hot-air balloon from an altitude of 8,000 metres (26,200 feet) without oxygen, the ATS news agency reported.

Remo Lang, 38, threw himself out of the balloon early in the morning and landed around 10 minutes later at Aarberg, in the Berne canton of Switzerland. Wearing a "wingsuit", his freefall lasted five minutes.

Lang´s team said he prepared himself for the jump by taking in oxygen from a tank intensively for half an hour before the stunt. (AFP)

'Captain America' sets April record with $96.2M

LOS ANGELES: Disney and Marvel could be one of the finest teams around.

Continuing the success of their superhero franchise, "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" has set a record as the biggest domestic April release ever. The Disney sequel debuted with $96.2 million, topping the previous record-holder, 2011's "Fast Five," which opened with $86.2 million.

"The Winter Soldier," which stars Chris Evans as the shield-wielding superhero and Scarlett Johansson (whose sci-fi film "Under the Skin" also debuted this weekend with $140,000) as Black Widow, commanded 32 international markets last weekend.

Expanding to Russia, Australia and China in its second week, the Marvel comic adaptation, boasting a budget of over $170 million, earned $107.1 million internationally this weekend, bringing its overall worldwide haul to more than $303 million.

Also a touchstone for Imax, "The Winter Soldier" received $9.6 million of its U.S. haul on 346 screens showing the film in the enhanced resolution format. Internationally, it showed on 278 Imax screens, bringing in $6.5 million, $4 million of which was delivered from China.

"Captain America: The First Avenger," which had a budget of around $140 million, debuted in July 2011 with $65 million. Overall, it earned $371 million worldwide.

Why the shift to an April release rather than remaining a summer launch?

"We looked at the possibility of creating separation from the other summer tentpoles," said Dave Hollis, head of worldwide theatrical distribution for Disney. "There was an opportunity. We have the second Marvel film coming at the end of the summer in 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' We wanted to start and end the summer and take advantage of this holiday. In the next month or so we'll have the benefit of spring break."

"The Avengers effect," as Hollis calls it, set the stage for the continuation of Marvel's massive box office presence, which includes the "Iron Man" and "Thor" franchises. With the release of the films' sequels, both have seen earning jumps of over 35 percent.

"There are very few movie brands that are this consistent," Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for box-office tracker Rentrak, said of the Disney-Marvel team. "For 'The Winter Soldier' to push on $100 million in April shows that you can release a big movie any time of the year. Every studio is going to be looking at this date to plant their flag in the future."

Meanwhile, Paramount's biblical saga "Noah," starring Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly and Emma Watson, took a drastic dip in its second weekend, earning $17 million after debuting with $44 million. Still, it sailed into second place, crossing the $70 million mark domestically, while pushing Lionsgate's young adult science-fiction thriller "Divergent," led by Shailene Woodley, to third with $13 million in its third week. Its stateside total is now $114 million.

Freestyle Releasing's surprise hit "God's Not Dead" took the No. 4 slot with $7.7 million in its third weekend.

Despite the decrease in the "Noah" box office performance, the outcome of film's debut, its overall haul, and the success of both "Son of God" and "God's Not Dead" bodes well for other biblical-themed films coming this year, including "Heaven is for Real," starring Greg Kinnear and "Exodus: Gods and Kings," starring Christian Bale.

Coming in at No. 5, Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel" collected $6.3 million, bringing its domestic total to $33 million. Fox Searchlight expanded its stylish comedy to 1,263 locations, and the studio plans to add even more in the coming weeks. This is Anderson's second widest expansion following 2009's "Fantastic Mr. Fox."

"As this movie is expanding it is just building an audience," Dergarabedian said. A total of "$33 million compared to something like 'Captain America' doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a huge number for a film like 'Grand Budapest' that is so indie-minded and original."

The weekend's other releases included Codeblack Films' "Frankie and Alice," starring Halle Berry as a dancer with multiple personality disorder. Playing in 171 locations, it earned $350,000.

And Fox Searchlight's dark comedy "Dom Hemingway," starring Jude Law and "Game of Thrones" star Emilia Clarke, had a domestic gross of $32,000 after showing in only four theaters in New York and Los Angeles. Next week the film will expand to nearly 40 locations.

Disney's "Muppets Most Wanted," which landed at No. 6 with $6.3 million in its third weekend, and Fox's "Mr. Peabody and Sherman," coming in at No. 7 with $5.3 million in its fifth weekend, were the top kiddie films. But Fox's animated "Rio 2" stands to knock them down a few notches when it opens in the U.S. next weekend.

S&P 500 hits record on data, ECB; focus shifts to jobs report

NEW YORK: U.S. stocks mostly rose on Thursday, with the S&P 500 hitting a record after better-than-expected jobless claims data ahead of Friday's all important nonfarm payrolls report.
Boosting appetite for riskier assets, the European Central Bank decided not to take any action at its meeting on Thursday because economic and monetary conditions had not changed enough to warrant it. The euro hit its highest level against the U.S. dollar since late December.
Investors' focus shifted to Friday's employment data, due at 8:30 a.m. ET, which is likely to show job growth in the U.S. picked up enough in February to encourage the Federal Reserve to continue to scale back its monetary stimulus. But the gain was likely to be tepid given the unrelentingly harsh winter.
"There isn't much action today in terms of direction and volume on caution ahead of the jobs report tomorrow," said Ryan Detrick, analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio.
With less than a hour left in trading, about 4.9 billion shares traded on U.S. exchanges, according to data from BATS Global Markets, below the daily average of about 7 billion in the past month.
The biggest gainers were stocks in basic materials, financial and industrial sectors, often associated with strong economic fundamentals. The S&P basic materials index was up 0.4 percent, the S&P financial index was up 0.8 percent and the S&P industrials index was up 0.5 percent.
But the Nasdaq 100 fell 0.2 percent, led lower by Staples, which lost 15 percent to $11.39. The largest U.S. office supplies retailer forecast a decline in sales. Staples also said it would close up to 225 stores in the United States and Canada by 2015.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 71.49 points or 0.44 percent, to 16,431.67, the S&P 500 gained 4.1 points or 0.22 percent, to 1,877.91 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 5.914 points or 0.14 percent, to 4,352.06.
Crimea's parliament voted to join Russia and its Moscow-backed government set a referendum for 10 days' time on the decision in a dramatic escalation of the crisis in the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula.
U.S. President Barack Obama took steps to punish those involved in threatening Ukraine while European Union leaders agreed to suspend visa and investment talks with Russia.
An index of Moscow stocks lost more than 2 percent after the vote in Crimea, but pared the losses and closed down 1 percent. The rouble weakened 0.4 percent versus the U.S. dollar. A U.S.-traded Russian ETF fell 1.3 percent to $23.37.
With the S&P 500 at a record and lingering tensions between Ukraine and Russia, investors turned to the options market for hedges against a market decline. The S&P 500 climbed to an all-time intraday high of 1,881.94 earlier in the session.
Put buying in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF continued, with the weekly $185 and $187 strikes that expire Friday garnering the most interest as of Wednesday's close, according to Schaeffer's Investment Research. The ETF was up 0.3 percent at $188.22.
Costco Wholesale Corp was down 1.8 percent at $114 after the warehouse retailer reported a bigger-than-expected 15 percent fall in quarterly profit as unusually deep discounting in the holiday shopping season hurt margins.
Weekly applications for U.S. unemployment insurance fell to 323,000, the lowest in three months, a sign of strength in a labor market that has been hobbled by severe weather. New orders for U.S. factory goods, however, fell more than expected in January and shipments also slipped, adding to signs of a recent slowdown in manufacturing activity.

Iraq oil exports hit record 2.8mn bpd in February

BASRA: Oil exports from Iraq rose to a record 2.8 million barrels per day (bpd) on average in February, Deputy Prime Minister for energy Hussain al-Shahristani told reporters on Saturday.
The figure was up from 2.228 million bpd in January thanks to the completion of work expanding the capacity of the southern Basra port, from which the bulk of Iraq's crude is shipped.
"These projects which we carried out relating to development and production have enabled Iraq to produce 3.5 million barrels per day and to export 2.8 million barrels per day, which is a historic figure," Shahristani told reporters at the Basra refinery as he attended a ceremony for the opening of new units.
Production reached 3.5 million bpd in February and Shahristani said if the autonomous Kurdistan region had pumped its share, the figure would have hit 4 million.
Current Kurdish production capacity stands below 400,000 bpd, and around one third of that is refined locally. The Kurds are at loggerheads with the Iraqi central government over oil rights, and stopped exporting crude via the national network more than one year ago.
Since then, they have been exporting smaller quantities on their own terms by truck, whilst building a separate pipeline to Turkey, enraging Baghdad, which claims sole authority to manage all Iraqi oil.
Of the 2.8 million bpd exported in February, 2.5 million came from Basra, Shahristani said. The rest was exported from the northern Kirkuk oilfields via a pipeline to Turkey that has repeatedly been sabotaged.
Iraq also used to export between 10,000-12,000 bpd of crude by truck across the border to Jordan, but conflict in the western province of Anbar put a halt to that this year.

Another record broken: Biggest art class held in Lahore

LAHORE: Over 5,000 school children set a new world record on Friday by sitting through the largest art lesson of the world at Punjab Stadium.
The record was previously held by Chinese Taipei with 4,810 children.
As many as 6,000 students from Beaconhouse School System exhibited great discipline in the 30-minutes class as they painted the Mughal-era style buildings.
The Guinness Book team then counted the papers prepared by the children and affirmed 5,351 valid, declaring Pakistan the new record holder. The stadium echoed with slogans of Pakistan zindabad as the announcement came.
Addressing the participants, Sports Board Punjab Director General Usman Anwar praised the students and said that Pakistani children had the potential to regularly set and break records.
Sports Secretary Muhammad Khan Khichi was also present.
Young scientists
An exhibition was organised at the Lahore Expo Centre as part of the festival under the aegis of the Ministry of Science and Technology. Several government, private and educational institutions, including the National University of Science and Technology, the Pakistan Engineering Council, the National University of Oceanography, the Pakistan National Accreditation Council, the Center for Applied and Molecular Biology, the Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority, the Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority and the National Institute of Electronics Islamabad.
Thousands of students from 47 universities arranged 75 stalls at the exhibition. Students displayed models of dams, bridges, important buildings, roads and electronics and won praise from the audience.
An electronic bicycle model by Muhammad Tauseef of Government College of Technology, Sialkot, earned great appreciation from the large gathering. A jury would announce the winners on Saturday (today) after examining the models and listening to students’ presentations.
Separately, a large book fair has also been organised at the venue, where publishers have displayed a large number of academic, religious, historic and scientific books. A digital Quran has also been displayed.
Farming
An exhibition of Best Agricultural Produce is also underway at the Lahore Expo Centre. Department of Agricultural Information Punjab, Ayub Agricultural Faisalabad, Agricultural Department, Institute of Rice Research Kala Shah Kaku and many other research institutes are participating in the exhibition.
Information is being given to farmers on how to protect their crops from disease. Farmers are also being educated on methods of preserving fruit and vegetables. Several agricultural experts talked on the occasion. They said farmers could not get more production and profit since they were unaware of the use of modern technology.