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Islamabad, Sep 25: The United States and the European Union are concerned over the recent arrests and detention of leaders of the opposition parties ahead of the presidential election on October 6.

A US embassy statement stated that reports of the detention of the leadership of several major Pakistani political parties are "extremely disturbing and confusing" for the "friends of Pakistan".

Islamabad, Sep 25: The Pakistan Foreign Office has said that the ongoing joint military exercise between India and the UK in Ladakh is illegitimate.

Pakistan has lodged a formal protest with the Government of both the countries, as Ladakh is a part of the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir, Foreign Office (FO) spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told reporters.

“This is not a legitimate activity because Jammu and Kashmir is an internationally recognised disputed territory and more than anybody else the British should be aware of it,” Aslam said.

New York: Credit Suisse has maintained neutral rating for Tektronix Inc (TEK). As per the view of Technical Analyst W Stein, the target price for Tektronix Inc. is now $33. He further added that the less business from Japan in the company's summer orders list will impact the sales in coming quarters and will have negative effect on profits.

The company has reported higher than expected revenues for F1Q08. The EPS for the current results is also marginally above market estimates. However, the guidance for F2Q08 is lower than market expectations.

The social networking space may see more action in coming days as Software Giant Microsoft Corp is planning to invest in Social networking website Facebook. The company plans to buy up to 5% stake in fast growing online social network with an investment of nearly US $400 million.

Google has also shown interest in buying stake in Facebook, but there has been no official statement regarding the issue. Google also operates a social networking website orkut. Microsoft will get better access to a very huge user base of Facebook after this investment.

ICICI Bank has planned to offer better private banking services in smaller cities and towns to get control over the mid-size and small-size entrepreneurs. Personal Banking business of ICICI has shown a growth of nearly 70 per cent in the last fiscal and the bank authorities want to continue at the same pace in this sector. ICICI Bank will be adding more relationship managers in the current year.