Pakistan

WASHINGTON / ISLAMABAD, Jan 22: Hillary Clinton, on her first day as the secretary of state, telephoned President Asif Ali Zardari and told him that the Obama administration was appointing a special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. "It was a touch-base meeting," said a senior diplomat aware of the conversation. "She felt it's necessary to […]

FORCED face first into the dust and pinned down by three men in black hoods, a young offender faced the merciless force of Taliban justice in Pakistan last week as he was beaten 30 times with a hard rod fashioned from old car tyres. The punishment , for smoking cannabis , was inflicted in front […]

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan , Pakistan fired its national security adviser amid tensions with India over the Mumbai attacks, a sign of strain on the weak civilian administration as it responds to growing pressure to track down and punish the alleged masterminds. Mahmood Ali Durrani, a former ambassador to the U.S. and seen by critics as too […]

WASHINGTON — The biggest foreign-policy challenge awaiting President-elect Barack Obama isn't Iraq or Afghanistan but Pakistan, President George W. Bush's national-security adviser said. In an interview previewing a valedictory speech he plans to give on Wednesday, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said Pakistan's increasingly turbulent border region poses threats not just to the U.S. mission […]

QUETTA, Pakistan: The gory practice of forcing alleged criminals to walk on burning coal to prove their innocence is frivolously disowned by many in Balochistan, yet it regularly draws hundreds of tribal spectators. The illegal phenomenon continues unchecked with increasing likelihood of the practice spreading to other parts of the country's least literate province. Charbeli, […]

LAHORE, Pakistan ‚ When Muhammad Saad Iqbal arrived home here in August after more than six years in American custody, including five at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he had difficulty walking, his left ear was severely infected, and he was dependent on a cocktail of antibiotics and antidepressants. In November, a Pakistani […]

NEW DELHI ‚ Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India accused unspecified official agencies in Pakistan on Tuesday of supporting the gunmen who struck in Mumbai in late November. He was speaking one day after India handed Pakistan what it said was the first comprehensive evidence linking Pakistan to an alleged "conspiracy" hatched on Pakistani soil. […]

ISLAMABAD: The top US diplomat for South Asia will visit Pakistan this week amid simmering tensions between Islamabad and India in the wake of the deadly Mumbai attacks, Pakistan's foreign minister said Sunday. Shah Mehmood Qureshi told a press conference broadcast live from Multan that he would meet US Assistant Secretary of State for South […]

KARACHI: The government of Sindh has banned a controversial novel about Hazrat Aisha, calling it offensive.  The novel 'the Jewel of Medina,’ written by Sherry Jones, is said to contain objectionable material which can "create a law and order situation in the country.' The department of interior in an order said all copies of the […]

KABUL: A strong earthquake shook northeastern Afghanistan and Pakistan early Monday, sending people running from their homes, but there were no immediate reports of damage, witnesses and officials said. The 6.0-magnitude quake struck at 3:43 am, around 275 kilometres northeast of the Afghan capital Kabul and near the border with Pakistan, the US Geological Survey […]

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) ‚ A suicide bomber attacked police officers in northwest Pakistan on Sunday as they treated civilians wounded by an earlier explosion, killing seven people and wounding at least 25 others, a police official said. The officers were struck as they investigated a blast in Dera Ismail Khan, near the Afghan […]

Imagine a country where people are forced to give up gas (petrol) and had to opt for Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) to save money, because the price of petrol had become too expensive for the public. It costs about 30, 000 on average to have the car equipped with the kind of equipment that makes […]