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ISLAMABAD: A commercial airbus of AirBlue has crashed into Margalla Hills, a mountainous range behind Shah Faisal Mosque, apparently due to rough weather, Geo news reported.

According to preliminary reports, as many as 150 passengers including crewmembers were on board plane while the smoke is seen rising through heavy clouds from the crash site, police and rescue service officials said.

Eyewitnesses said people noticed airbus flying at very low altitude near Daman-e-Koh this morning and it might have crashed due to rough weather.

The wreckage can be seen in video footages with fierce fire raging and smoke emitting from there despite heavy rains in Islamabad.

Airport sources said the flight took off at 7:50am from Karachi to Islamabad but crashed due to uneven weather a few minutes before landing after loosing connection with control tower.

Islamabad is witnessing heavy showers and thick fog at the moment. Meanwhile rescue teams have been dispatched to area.

Update:
ISLAMABAD: Five people have been rescued from the wreckage of a Airblue crashed at Margalla Hills early on Wednesday.

One hundred and forty-six people including 139 adults, five kids and five crewmembers were onboard whereas 12 are those lucky people who missed the flight.

According to sources, an airbus 320 bound for Islamabad departed from Karachi at 7:50 am. The local residents said plane made low flight before the crash.

Rescue operation is underway despite difficulties because of hilly location of the incident site.

Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik said five wounded being shifted to hospital whereas rescue operation and search for black box is underway. The airport control tower had signaled landing approach to the plane when it was just eight kilometers away from the airport, reports said.

ISLAMABAD: The Judicial Commission proposed in the Eighteenth Constitutional Amendment for the appointments of judges, has been challenged in the Supreme Court (SC), Geo News reported Saturday.

Advocate Akram Sheikh filed the petition of Advocate Nadeem Ahmed against the Judicial Commission, pleading to make the federal government as party to the case.

The petition said the new modus operandi poses fourth attack on judiciary after March 9; accordingly, the legislating power of the Parliament should be determined.

We are just told by highly reliable sources that one of Ufone’s data center, located in Islamabad caught fire today evening, around 5 PM. We are further told that fire has resulted into fatal destruction of infrastructure and the building.

A source heading a technical team at Ufone confirmed us that this particular data center was responsible for VAS services, including SMS and blackberry services.

Initial reports say that spark in backup battery was main cause of this fire. Latter on, for some reason fire control system didn’t go though to tackle the situation.

Customers in north region (Punjab/NWFP) may not send SMS during the recovery process, however, some VAS may damage country wide customer base.

Ufone is planning to recover the infrastructure immediately; however, it may take as long as 24 hours to initially deploy the machines from other data centers and the data recovery.

One of Ufone’s spokesperson confirmed us that Fire has damaged datacenter, however, no casualties were reported. He said that Ufone’s staff is fully equipped for recovering the things at earliest.

A French doctor is embarking on the 6,000-mile trip to promote a better image of Pakistan. ‘It’s not all about terrorism,’ he says.
Declan Walsh, The Guardian, Monday 9 November 2009

Low-key is good in Islamabad these days, where the threat of Taliban suicide bombings has filled Pakistan’s capital with checkposts, blast walls and a queasy air of anxiety. But one proudly conspicuous car rolled through the streets last week – a 25-year-old Volkswagen Beetle, painted in an explosion of trippy colours. At the wheel was a defiant doctor, Vincent Loos, headed for Paris.

“My dream was to return by road,” says the 39-year-old Frenchman, who has just finished three years’ work at a local hospital. Doctors without borders indeed – or perhaps doctors without sense. Only six months ago his ride was a dust-smeared wreck, collapsed at the bottom of an Islamabad street waiting for a final trip to the scrapyard. Loos, an intensive care specialist, restored the car to full health, then hired an artist to paint in the local style known as “truck art”.

Now the “Foxy Shahzadi”, or Beetle Princess, is the most distinctive car from Lahore to Lyons. The body is covered in a psychedelic array of flowers, waterfalls and the faces of famous Pakistanis. The idea behind the 6,000-mile trip is to promote the “soft side” of Pakistan. “We want to show the world it’s not just about terrorism,” says Loos.

Travelling by Foxy, as Beetles are affectionately known in Pakistan, Loos is paying homage to a local motoring cult. Dozens of well-maintained Beetles ply the streets. (Mine, in a cool grey, is Betsy, a proud 1967 model.)

The Beetle came to Pakistan in the 1950s with army officers and bureaucrats returning from postings abroad. The appeal has endured – Mubashir Hasan, a finance minister from the 1970s, still drives his around Lahore. Romano Karim of Islamabad’s VW club estimates about 500 “Foxies” travel Pakistan’s roads. “Cute, quirky, cheap spare parts – it’s the ideal car,” he says.

The French doctor’s Foxy should reach Paris in about two weeks. His team is equipped with an ample stock of spare parts and a line of Urdu poetry inscribed on the bonnet: “Every mother’s prayer is a breeze from paradise.”