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Pope Urges Pakistan To Repeal Anti-Blasphemy Law Pope Benedict XVI has called on Pakistan to scrap its anti-blasphemy law after the assassination of Salmaan Taseer 10 January 2011 Pakistan must repeal its anti-blasphemy law because it acts as a "pretext for acts of injustice and violence against religious minorities", the pope said today as he urged world leaders to ensure Christians are protected from attack and discrimination. In an address devoted to religious freedom, Benedict XVI said the "tragic murder" of Salmaan Taseer, the Punjab governor who was killed for opposing legislation that imposes a death sentence for people who...

Amid bitter, recriminatory exchanges between the United States and Pakistan over the Osama bin Laden extermination, planned bilateral visits of President Asif Ali Zardari to Washington DC and a return trip of President Barack Obama to Islamabad are both in jeopardy. Ties between the two sides are expected to slide further following Pakistan's "outing" of the CIA station chief in Islamabad on Saturday. In a sign of how bad ties are between the two countries, Pakistani media on Saturday once again publicly named the CIA station chief in Islamabad, a breach of both protocol and trust, that is bound to...

In the wake of the U.S.-led operation that killed Osama bin Laden, billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Pakistan are in jeopardy as relations between the two countries turn sour. Pakistan is coming under fire for not being able to spot bin Laden, who, instead of hiding in the remote caves of the northwest tribal areas as originally thought, was in fact living in an affluent neighborhood in Abbottabad, right near the Pakistani military academy. U.S. administration officials say they didn't inform their Pakistani counterparts of the operation to hunt down and kill bin Laden until it was all but...