By Asif Haroon Raja Pak-US relations have followed a set pattern of ups and downs. Pakistan fell from the grace of USA in 1989 after the US found that it had achieved its objectives and Pakistan was no more needed. The reason put forth for cold shouldering Pakistan and putting it under sanctions was its nuclear program for which President Ronald Reagan had been certifying each year starting 1984 that Pakist ...

By Asif Haroon Raja Under the partition plan worked out by the British in June 1947, the 600 princely states had been given the choice of either joining up with India or Pakistan, giving credence to communal demographic milieus and geographic proximity. India in connivance with British Viceroy Lord Mount Batten annexed all the princely states including Junagadh, Hyderabad Deccan and Manavadar whose Muslim r ...

By Zaheerul Hassan Quetta Judicial Magistrate-III Muhammad Ibrahim Kakar has issued a non-bailable arrest warrant for Geo's anchorperson and columnist Hamid Mir as well as the chairman of the group and editor-in-chief of daily Jung newspaper. The court issued Mir's arrest warrant in a case filed by a senior lawyer of Balochistan, Khalid Khan. The petitioner has taken the plea that in his column of October 2 ...

By Zaheerul Hassan On February 28, 2012 an expert committee appointed by the Tamil Nadu government on submitted its report on the safety aspects of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNNP) to Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, marking a crucial stage in the debate over the project. At the same time, the State government invited the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) representatives for talks on ...

By Associated Press SRINAGAR, India — India has rejected every request over two decades to prosecute Indian soldiers in civilian court in Kashmir for alleged rights abuses including murder and rape, according to documents given Tuesday to the Associated Press. The revelation is likely to spark an outcry by Kashmiri activists who for years have accused Indian troops of abusing wide-ranging powers to search, ...

Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks on Monday began publishing more than five million confidential emails from US-based intelligence firm Stratfor, the anti-secrecy group said. The messages, which date from between July 2004 and December 2011, will reveal Stratfor's "web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods," claimed a WikiLeaks press release. "The material s ...

By Abdul Zahoor Khan Marwat The Mehrangate scandal has hit the headlines once again. As per details of the case, a PPP leader, retired Major General Naseerullah Khan Babar, had told the National Assembly in 1994 how the ISI had disbursed funds among politicians and various political parties to manipulate the 1990 elections by setting up the IJI. This was done to bring about the defeat of the PPP, whose gove ...

By S. M. Hali The curious case of the Mehran Bank scandal, which is now commonly known as the Asghar Khan case has taken an important position in Pakistan's judicial history. Air Marshal Asghar Khan, in 1996, had written a letter to then Chief Justice Nasim Hasan Shah against former army chief, General Mirza Aslam Baig, former ISI chief Lieutenant General Asad Durrani and Younis Habib of Habib and Mehran Ba ...