Islamabad, Sep 20 : Former cricketer and Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf chief Imran Khan has castigated the government for increasing prices of petroleum products, particularly diesel when its rates in the world market were showing a significant downward trend.

Talking to reporters, Imran said by increasing the diesel prices the rulers had compounded financial problems of the common man.

“The new rulers are even worse than Shaukat Aziz, having no sympathy with the poor,” he alleged while advocating reduction in POL prices.

Islamabad, Sep 20: A report presented to President Asif Ali Zardari has suggested that the recent air strikes in tribal areas by US forces had been carried out on the basis of wrong CIA intelligence, and that no ‘high-value’ targets had been hit in these attacks.

President Zardari is reported to have said that national sovereignty would get precedence over everything else and it would not be compromised.

According to sources, he made the statement while discussing important national and international issues with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani who had called on him at the President’s House here on Friday.

Peshawar, Sep 20: At least five people have been killed and 10 were injured in an explosion at a madrassa (religious school) run by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam in Quetta.

Television footage on Friday showed a gaping hole in the seminary’s external wall. The seminary is located on the outskirts of Quetta.

“The madrassa people say that someone threw explosives into the madrassa, but we are investigating,” said police official Wazir Khan Nasir.

London, Sep 20: US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said that American military chiefs are in close contact with the new Pakistani leadership and are on the ‘most productive path’ in dealing with al Qaeda, the Taliban and other insurgents in co-operation with the country.

Gates was in London for the NATO Defence Ministers’ meeting in which the United States is seeking 20 billion dollars from its allies to help stabilise Afghanistan by sending more troops to confront the growing insurgency.

Peshawar, Sep 20 : Increasing home-grown militancy, mounting American frustration at the continued Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and militant ‘safe havens’ in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas will dominate President Asif Ali Zardari’s maiden address to the joint session of parliament in Islamabad today.

Lahore, Sep 20: A long-delayed plan to send dozens of US military advisers to Pakistan to train the Pakistani Army in counter-insurgency could begin in a matter of weeks on a training base north of Peshawar under a new agreement.

The Los Angeles Times quoted Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen as saying that the US and Pakistan had cleared the remaining obstacles to the arrival of the advisers.

Washington has been urging the Pakistani military to accept the training team for months, the report said. However, Pakistan has resisted such advice, and asked for additional weaponry and equipment that the paper said “some US officials believe is best suited for its standoff with regional rival India”.