Pakistan >>

Peter Van Buren for TomDispatch: If this is what post-Constitutional America looks like, we’re in trouble Peter Van Buren ...

distrust of increased business dealings is counter-productive, warns Pakistani PM's brother The powerful brother of Pakistan's prime minister has warned the military establishments of both India and Pakistan not to block efforts to sweep aside trade barriers between the two distrustful neighbours. On Indian affairs Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab, is widely seen as the de facto Pakistani...

s 50-minute video, released on 2 February on their media wing's website, opens with a scenic view of the mountainous valley, which is popular among domestic tourists and stages an annual polo festival. The narrator warns the Kalash, who are thought to number only 3,500, to convert to Islam or face death. "By the grace of Allah, an increasing number of people from the Kalash tribe are embracing Islam...

Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series ...

s prime minister has vowed that his government will pursue peace talks with Pakistani Taliban militants despite a recent spate of attacks and a pledge by the law minister of Punjab province to "smash" militant safe havens. Nawaz Sharif named a four-member committee to facilitate the negotiations, called on the militants to observe a ceasefire and condemned them for targeting security forces and civilians...

FOI documents reveal Immigration Department reservations, but leg-spinner was granted citizenship after ministerial intervention Paul Farrell ...

s book was due to be launched at an event on Monday at Peshawar University but organisers were forced to scrap it after the intervention of two senior members of the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (KP). The episode underlines the antipathy among many Pakistanis towards the 16-year-old who campaigned for education in the face of Taliban opposition. While she has been hailed in the west for...

s closest confidants, told the Guardian the time had finally come to "smash" militant safe havens. A spike in Taliban-led violence has prompted a dramatic rethink in policy from a government long determined to avoid a confrontation with the country's militant groups. Expectations are growing of a long-delayed military push against al-Qaida-linked groups operating from North Waziristan, a semi-autonomous...

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s hardline stance on immigration, according to lawyers and charity workers. Lawyers claim that asylum seekers are being forced to leave the UK without having a proper psychological or health assessment, both obligations under human rights legislation and UK immigration rules. A spokesman for Asylum Link Merseyside said the government had started selecting the most vulnerable cases for removal. He said:...

Mohammed Asghar, who has history of mental illness, convicted of blasphemy after claiming to be prophet Muhammad A Pakistani court has convicted a British man with a history of mental illness of blasphemy and sentenced him to death. The prosecutor Javed Gul said Mohammed Asghar had been arrested in Rawalpindi in 2010 for claiming to be the prophet Muhammad. He said a judge sentenced Asghar, who is...

s original revelations in September . The revelations forced Fifa's president, Sepp Blatter, to promise that football would not turn a blind eye to the issue following a stormy executive committee meeting. Qatar's ministry of labour hired law firm DLA Piper to conduct an urgent review and Hassan al-Thawadi, chief executive of the World Cup organising committee, said the findings would be treated with...

s most dangerous areas Gunmen shot dead six guards protecting a Spanish cyclist on Wednesday in a violent and remote area of western Pakistan where a bus bomb killed 24 Shi'iteShia pilgrims a day earlier, police said. The cyclist, who suffered minor wounds, had crossed into Pakistan's western province of Baluchistan from Iran, they said. Six guards were wounded. Police said they did not know why he...

s government insists on working towards a negotiated settlement The jets and helicopter gunships sent screaming into Pakistan's wild borderlands on Tuesday to attack Taliban hideouts marked a moment of dread for others besides the militants: it was something Pakistan's top politicians, too, had long hoped to avoid. For the past seven months, the country's leaders have strained to dodge an all-out fight...

Three employees of Express News TV in Karachi were killed in a shooting attack by a Taliban group, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), on Friday (17 January). The three - technician Waqas Aziz, security guard Ashraf Yusuf and driver Khalid Khan - died in a hail of bullets fired by four gunmen on two motor-cycles. TTP, in claiming responsibility for the attack, said there would be more attacks against...

AlertNet:  Chinese-funded solar panels on Parliament House in Islamabad will save $1m in annual energy bills ...

At least 10 killed in market, security personnel believed to be among them, a day after attack that killed 20 soldiers Jon Boone ...

s Assassination and the Politics of Pakistan , a short book which, though oversold by publishers' claims of a "gripping" narrative that goes "further than anyone else to unravel the mystery" of the two-time prime minister's death, nonetheless makes some interesting points. Central to the narrative is Bhutto herself. I spent much time with this impressive but deeply flawed woman in Pakistan in the late...

sitting in judgment' on US and block move by Noor Khan, whose father died in a 2011 attack A Pakistani man whose father died in a drone strike has failed in an attempt to hold British officials responsible for the killing. The court of appeal ruled on Monday that considering whether GCHQ staff had passed on "locational intelligence" to the CIA before the attack in 2011 would involve "sitting in judgment"...

s powerful army. Dozens more were wounded. Responsibility was claimed by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a coalition of Pakistani groups that pledges nominal allegiance to Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban. Rawalpindi is just a short drive from the capital and is home to the headquarters of Pakistan's half a million strong army, which is deeply frustrated by the government's refusal...