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WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in Afghanistan. Aafia Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her over her alleged links to Al Qaeda. Her family’s lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp said she believed recent media reports about Mrs Siddiqui’s incarceration increased pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information. “I don’t believe that...

Orkney Islanders have Siberian relatives Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/05/2008 A new study on ancient human migrations suggests that Orcadians and Siberians are closely related, writes Roger Highfield. Orkney Islanders are more closely related to people in Siberia and in Pakistan than those in Africa and the near East, according to a novel method to chart human migrations. The surprising findings come from a new way to infer ancient human movements from the variation of DNA in people today, conducted by a team from the University of Oxford and University College Cork, which has pioneered a technique that analyses the...

The United States has been fighting the wrong war against the wrong enemy these past 13-years according to a damning new book - while behind closed doors Pakistan has been laughing in its ally's face. Pullitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Carlotta Gall claims that not only did Pakistan willfully hide 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden but also sponsored the Taliban insurgency after 2001 that has cost 2,625 American and British lives. The respected reporter, who spent more than a decade in the region for the newspaper, alleges that Pakistan's leadership have been tricking the United States into treating it...

What if the United States has been waging the wrong war against the wrong enemy for the last 13 years in Afghanistan? Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Carlotta Gall, who's spent more than a decade covering Afghanistan since 2001, concludes just that in her new book, The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014.

In Pakistan, according to a report released by Movement for Solidarity and Peace, 100 to 700 Christian girls are forced to convert to Islam each year. The girls are usually between the ages of 12 and 25; they are abducted, forced to convert and then married to the abductor or to a third party. What commonly happens is that the family of the abducted girl files a First Information Report (FIR) for kidnapping to the police, and then the abductor files a counter FIR that accuses the girl’s family for harassing their ‘willfully’ converting daughter. The girl is forced to...

Frontline units of the Pakistani navy have been equipped with C-602 anti-ship cruise missiles purchased from China, according to the Kanwa Defense Review published by Andrei Chang, also known as Pinkov, a Canadian a military analyst. Pakistan ordered about 120 C-602 anti-ship cruise missiles from China back in 2009. The first batch of the missiles, enough to equip a company, were delivered in 2011. After personnel completed training on using the missiles, the Pakistani government said that the C-602s have already been deployed to frontline naval units. The missiles were purchased to provide a countermeasure to India's BrahMos supersonic cruise...

PM facing embarrassment over links between adviser and Islamist group. Adviser Tariq Ramadan is grandson of Muslim Brotherhood's founder . ... Tariq Ramadan is one of 14 members of the Foreign Office’s Advisory Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief, chaired by Tory peer Baroness Warsi. He is Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, and was a member of a taskforce set up by Tony Blair after 7/7. But Prof Ramadan, 51, is grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder Hassan al-Banna and his father Said Ramadan was a leading light. ... He was kept out of France in...

The State of Indiana is reopening discussions with Midwest Fertilizer and Fatima Group about a multi-billion fertilizer plant in Posey County. Governor Mike Pence says the decision comes after the group and government of Pakistan took steps to make it more difficult for terrorists to obtain the company's products. Pence pulled state support for the project last year. Economic Development Coalition of Southwest Indiana Chief Executive Officer Greg Wathen says the company hopes to begin construction later this year.

India's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is widely expected to win India's parliamentary elections, the first round of which began on Monday. India is the largest democracy in the world, and so national elections are helpd in separate regions over a five-week period. Self-described Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) Narendra Modi is the head of BJP, and he's promising a substantially more aggressive foreign policy for India, including a promise to get tougher in territorial disputes with China. He's the "hope and change" candidate for this election, and he's expected to become the next prime minister. Modi is also promising to review India's...

I’ve already written about how his isolationist garbage leads inexorably to nonsense like this, so let me just add two points. First, and most obviously, there is no U.S. occupation of Yemen or Nigeria. The only way the airline plot is a reaction to U.S. “occupation” is if you accept the jihadist premise that there are no Arab/Muslim nation-states but rather only one Islamic caliphate waiting to be born. Only in that way does the U.S. occupation of Iraq warrant a reprisal from, say, a Pakistani or Yemeni. And yet, needless to say, if Britain was attacked tomorrow and Obama...

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 flew around Indonesian airspace apparently to avoid detection after vanishing from radar screens on March 8, a media report said today, suggesting the possibility of a more sinister reason behind the jet's disappearance..... After reviewing radar data provided by neighbouring countries, investigators have now found that the jetliner curved north of Indonesia before turning south toward the southern Indian Ocean, CNN quoted a Malaysian official as saying. The official also suggested the possibility of a more sinister reason behind MH370's disappearance a month ago. The plane's flight path clearly showed that someone on the plane was...

QUETTA: The body of a U.S. commando captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan has been handed over to the Red Cross and is expected in this Pakistani border city, a Taliban official said here. Maulvi Hammad said the body of Major John Bolton, who Taliban sources Sunday claimed died of kidney failure at a hospital in Kandahar, would arrive here in a day or two, SADA reported Monday. He added that more than 20 US commandos, accused of spying, were being held by the Taliban. Bolton, who had apparently been arrested recently, had identified himself as Major Mohammad Ayub but ...

Lahore (Pakistan) (AFP) - While many children his age are still learning how to crawl, a nine-month-old boy in Pakistan has been accused of attempted murder in a case observers say highlights endemic flaws in the country's legal system. Baby Mohammad Musa along with his father and other family members was booked for throwing rocks at gas company officials in the working-class Ahata Thanedaran neighbourhood on February 1, the family's lawyer Chaudhry Irfan Sadiq told AFP Friday

A 9-month-old Pakistani boy bawled as he was fingerprinted and booked in Lahore on an attempted murder charge after his family members allegedly threw bricks at police trying to collect an unpaid bill. The ordeal started February 1 when several police officers and a bailiff went to a home hoping to get payment for a gas bill, said Atif Zulfikar Butt, a senior police official in Lahore. A scuffle ensued, during which the infant's father, one of his teenage sons and others in the residence severely injured some of the officials by tossing bricks their way, according to Butt.

In a sudden development, US Ambassador to India Nancy Powell on Monday resigned in the midst of general elections in India in which Narendra Modi is perceived to be a front runner for the post of Prime Minister. The announcement of her resignation to her colleagues in the US mission here today came a week after media reports here that she may be shipped out by the Obama Administration to “clean the state” with India. Powell has been in India for less than three years. “US Ambassador to India Nancy J Powell announced in a US Mission Town Hall meeting...

A Christian couple in Punjab Province incapable of writing proper Urdu was sentenced to death today for allegedly sending blasphemous text messages, bringing the number of Christians on death row in Pakistan to four.In a country reeling from increasing religious intolerance, the death knell for Shafqat Emmanuel and Shugufta Emmanuel sounded eight days after a court in Lahore sentenced another Christian, Sawan Masih, to death for allegedly insulting Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, during a drunken conversation with a Muslim friend. that made Masih the second Christian in Pakistan now on death row after a judge sentenced Christian mother Asia Bibi to...

LONDON — India and Israel have concluded an agreement to assemble a ballistic missile defense system. Indian sources said Jerusalem and New Dehli concluded more than two years of negotiations with an agreement in principle to build a BMD system for India. The sources said the system would be designed to protect against nuclear warheads fired from China or Pakistan. “This system would integrate Indian and Israeli assets into a layered defense network,” a source said. The sources said the Indian Defense Ministry agreed to the project. But the two sides were preparing for contract negotiations that could extend into...

SRIHARIKOTA: When Pakistani troops took positions in Kargil in 1999, one of the first things Indian military sought was GPS data for the region. The space-based navigation system maintained by the US government would have provided vital information, but the US denied it to India. A need for an indigenous satellite navigation system was felt earlier, but the Kargil experience made the nation realise its inevitability. On Friday, the Indian Space Research Organisation took the nation closer to the goal, which it would achieve in less than two years. The result, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) will be...

The Obama administration wants to spend $400,000 on a camel sculpture for a new embassy building in Pakistan, according to a report Monday. BuzzFeed broke the news that the State Department has plans to commission the camel sculpture from John Baldessari, an American artist. The art is called, “Camel Contemplating Needle.” According to a government document posted by BuzzFeed, the sculpture is a “large 500lb fiberglass aluminum, stainless steel, acrylic and painted contemporary art piece.” “Public art which will be presented in the new embassy should reflect the values of a predominately Islamist country,” the document states. While the United...

As the nation hurtles toward bankruptcy, our rulers aren’t wasting money just to waste it; they are wasting it to poke a finger in our eye. Otherwise, explain this: The State Department is planning to spend $400,000 in taxpayer funds to buy a sculpture for the new American embassy being built in Islamabad, Pakistan, according to contracting records. The work, by noted American artist John Baldessari, depicts a life-size white camel made of fiberglass staring in puzzlement at the eye of an oversize shiny needle — a not-so-subtle play on the New Testament phrase about the difficulty the wealthy have...