Pashtun Times Latest News

PAKISTAN: A senior Afghan Taliban commander has been gunned down in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, insurgent leaders were quoted as saying on Friday. The shooting happened in Kachlak area, some 25 kilometres from the provincial capital Quetta, on Thursday evening, The Express Tribune reported. A source in the insurgent movement believed the killing of Maulvi Muhammad Alam, a close confidant ...

DEUTSCHLAND: Cologne’s police chief was dismissed on Friday amid mounting criticism of his force’s handling of a string of New Year’s Eve sexual assaults and robberies. Wolfgang Abers had faced mounting criticism for the police’s handling of the alleged New Year’s Eve attacks on women by groups of men who were part of a larger crowd of some 1,000 described ...

Some Afghan Taliban factions are considering joining the peace process that officials from Afghanistan and Pakistan aim to revive next week, several senior officials said. This appears to be a softening of the militants’ recent stance against talks, they said. Next week’s meeting in Islamabad, between officials from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China, is intended as the first ...

INDIA: A court in India has issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni for appearing in an 2013 advertisement which depicted the 34-year-old as a Hindu deity , Indian media reported. Dhoni, who was presented as the Hindu God ‘Vishnu’ on the cover of a magazine under the title ‘God of big deals’, is been ordered ...

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan reaffirmed on Thursday its support to Saudi Arabia, which is embroiled in a tense standoff with Iran, and the counter-terrorism coalition that it (Riyadh) was setting up. The reiteration of support for the Saudi government was made during a shortened visit by Saudi Foreign Minister Dr Adel Al-Jubeir to Islamabad for discussions on his country’s diplomatic row with ...

It took several days for the news of hundreds of sexual assaults in Cologne to make headlines. As progressives dither over what to say, the far right has already seized the opportunity. It reminded us all of the beginning of the end of the Arab Spring. In 2011, the celebratory crowds in Egypt’s Tahrir Square began giving way to organized ...

The same people lived together peacefully for centuries in the pre-partition Indian subcontinent; however, the post-partition relations of the two countries have never been good neighbourly or even just neighbourly. Presently, these relations are at their lowest ebb, since BJP took over the reigns of India and Pakistan went under Martial law rule with the blessing of elected Parliament. In ...

NEW YORK: Leonardo DiCaprio feels optimistic that the debate over climate change has begun to wane and world leaders are finally starting to take it more seriously. “The scientific community has been screaming out loud. Ninety-nine per cent of the scientific community is in agreement that man is contributing to (climate change),” DiCaprio told The Associated Press on the red ...

UNITED NATIONS: Yemen has declared the leading UN rights official in the country “persona non grata”, the UN spokesman said Thursday, describing the decision as “an extremely regrettable development.” George Abu al-Zulof, the head of the UN human rights office in Yemen, “has been doing an excellent job,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. The decision came just days after the ...

KABUL: In his daily news conference, the White House’s Press Secretary, Josh Earnest told newsmen that President Barack Obama had been informed regarding causalities of US troops caused in Afghanistan fighting. “This does underscore that Afghanistan is a dangerous place,” he said. A US troop was killed and two more were wounded in hours-long fighting in southern Helmand province on ...