KABUL: Afghanistan hosted leaders from Turkmenistan, Pakistan and India on Friday for the ground-breaking ceremony of the Afghan section of a much-delayed multi-billion dollar pipeline project to transit natural gas from energy rich Turkmenistan to South Asia through Afghanistan. The work on the Afghan section was started after the construction of the Turkmenistan section was completed which was started in ...

A global money-laundering watchdog has decided to place Pakistan back on its terrorist financing watchlist, a government official and a diplomat said on Friday, in a likely blow to Pakistan’s economy and its strained relations with the United States. The move is part of a broader U.S. strategy to pressure Pakistan to cut alleged links to Islamist militants unleashing chaos ...

WASHINGTON: Pakistan will collapse like the erstwhile Soviet Union if it does not quit a “losing arms race”, and, must also seriously consider casting aside its dependence on the armed forces, especially the army, to be regarded as a great nation, said a former envoy. Interacting with students and academia at the Florida State University (FSU) recently, Pakistan’s former Ambassador ...

SWAT-PASHTUNKHWA: Hundreds of Pashtun masses in Swat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa staged a big demonstration in Khwazakhela against the security forces of Pakistan, calling on Islamabad to quit its military installations and to put an end to the ongoing brutalities, inhuman treatment with residents on military check-posts and also to the human rights violations by the security forces in the ...

KABUL: A top Pakistani politician said that fetching the Taliban militant group to the table of talks is impossible, rejecting the Taliban’s offer for direct talks with the United States as unjustifiable. In an interview published on Sunday, Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) Chairman, Aftab Sherpao believed bringing the Taliban insurgents to peace talks was impossible. In an interview with The ...

ISLAMABAD: The United States has put forward a motion to place Pakistan on a global terrorist-financing watchlist with an anti-money-laundering monitoring group, according to a senior Pakistani official. Pakistan has been scrambling in recent months to avert being added to a list of countries deemed non-compliant with terrorist financing regulations by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a measure that ...

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Tuesday, during the Naqeebullah Mehsud extra-judicial killing case hearing, granted protective bail to Rao Anwar and directed the former Malir senior superintendent police (SSP) to appear in court on Friday. The case was being heard by a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar at the Islamabad registry. Earlier, the SC had given ...

The taboo subject of missing persons is back in the national conversations. Muzzling information and punishing those who reported on it has not worked. This past fortnight Pakistan witnessed unprecedented mobilisation by the youth of tribal areas. Thousands protested seeking justice for Naqeebullah Mehsud brutally killed in a fake encounter by Karachi police — all in the name of counter ...

Leading human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir passes away in Lahore ISLAMABAD: Renowned lawyer and human rights activist Asma Jahangir passed away in Lahore on Sunday due to a cardiac arrest. Jahangir, 66, was a human rights lawyer based in Pakistan and was Pakistan’s first woman to serve as the President of Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan. Family sources have confirmed that ...

PESHAWAR: A Haripur Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) announced its verdict in the Mashal Khan lynching case on Wednesday, handing one person two death sentences, five persons multiple terms of life imprisonment, and 25 others jail sentences, but acquitting 26 others for want of sufficient evidence. Mashal Khan, 23, a student of Mass Communications at Mardan’s Abdul Wali Khan University, was beaten and ...