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At least 1,400 children were subjected to "appalling" sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, a report has found. Children as young as 11 were raped by multiple perpetrators, abducted, trafficked to other cities in England, beaten and intimidated it said. The report, commissioned by Rotherham Borough Council in 2013, revealed there had been three previous inquiries.

Thousands of anti-government protesters armed with wire cutters and backed by cranes marched on Pakistan’s parliament Thursday, planning to remove barriers blocking them from soldiers guarding the seat of the country’s government. Pakistani television channels showed live footage of the troops taking positions in the so-called “Red Zone,” which also holds the president and prime minister’s ceremonial homes and many diplomatic posts. That set up a possible showdown between hundreds of soldiers and some 30,000 protesters backing opposition candidate Imran Khan and anti-government cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri. Both men have called on by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to step down over allegations...

"Our Dharamshala (community centre) has been gutted and the temple has been partially damaged. All the statues have been destroyed by the attackers," Kalpana Devi, chairperson of the local Hindu committee, told Reuters. Hundreds of students from local Islamic seminaries attacked the temple holding batons, one witness, Javed Shah, said. Police arrived quickly to protect Kumar from the angry crowd. "They acted smartly and took him out after making him put on a police uniform to save him from the wrath of the crowd," said Shah. "It took nearly 20 minutes to break down the doors (of the temple) before...

Just a few weeks ago, 11-month-old Shaista was pulling herself up, giggling as she took her first wobbly steps with the helping hand of her teenage mother. Then the polio virus struck and Shaista was no longer able to stand, her legs buckling beneath her weight. Today, her mother cries a lot and wonders what will become of her daughter in Pakistan’s male-dominated society, where a woman’s value is often measured by the quality of her husband. […] Fresh cases of polio—traced through genetic sequencing to the Pakistani strain of the disease—are showing up in countries that were previously polio-free,...

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf wants to leave the country to undergo medical treatment for a heart condition abroad, defense lawyers in his high treason trial said Friday. […] Two defense lawyers said the board recommended Musharraf urgently undergo an angiography—a medical imaging technique used to visualize the blood vessels of the heart to look for heart disease. One of the lawyers said Musharraf had doubts about the quality of medical care he could receive in Pakistan. […] Prosecutor Akram Sheikh said Musharraf simply wants to leave the country and railed against the retired general for not trusting the military...

The Lahore High Court has disposed of an application regarding a woman’s alleged rape and murder by family members, after legal proceedings were initiated against the victim’s brother. Sobia Aman had submitted an application to the LHC Complaints Cell stating that her friend Sadia had left her house in Nawankot village after being sexually assaulted by her father. The applicant said that Sadia’s relatives had persuaded her to return home at the end of May, assuring that they would not allow her to be sexually assaulted again. But a few days later, Sadia was poisoned and killed, the applicant said....

Pakistani education officials said Sunday that they have banned teenage activist Malala Yousafzai’s book from private schools across the country, claiming it doesn’t show enough respect for Islam and calling her a tool of the West. Malala attracted global attention last year when the Taliban shot her in the head in northwest Pakistan for criticizing the group’s interpretation of Islam, which limits girls’ access to education. Her profile has risen steadily since then, and she released a memoir in October, “I Am Malala,” that was co-written with British journalist Christina Lamb. While Malala has become a hero to many across...

Plumbing new depths in the battle for television ratings, abandoned babies are being given away on a controversial prime-time game show in Pakistan. TV host Aamir Liaquat Hussain presented baby girls to two unsuspecting couples during his show, which is broadcast live for seven hours a day during the month of Ramadan. … The baby girls given away on the show were found by an NGO, the Chhipa Welfare Association, which says it receives up to 15 abandoned babies a month. … “Pakistan wake up,” Shamim Mahmood wrote on the NGO’s Facebook page. “Babies are not trophies to be handed...

When Pakistani voters go to the polls later this week, the choice they face includes parties tainted by corruption allegations and those led by politicians appealing to anti-Western sentiment. The man favored to become Pakistan’s next prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, on Saturday called into question the U.S.-backed campaign by the Pakistani military against Taliban insurgents in the country. “I think guns and bullets are always not the answer to such problems,” Sharif, a former two-term prime minister who was overthrown in a 1999 military coup led by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, told the Reuters wire service. In a separate interview with...

In a country where almost no one pays income tax, including more than two thirds of MPs, it only took seven months for Ali Arshad Hakeem to become a hated man. As Pakistan’s newly minted chief taxman, he built a database designed to monitor the spending habits of millions of people, and work out how much tax they owed. … This quiet, technocratic revolution came to a juddering halt last month, when Mr. Hakeem was suspended by judges over allegations that his appointment breached government rules that demand each job be filled from a shortlist of three. In Pakistan’s murky...

A mob broke into a Pakistani police station and burned a man accused of desecrating the Koran alive, police said Saturday, in the latest violence focusing attention on the country’s blasphemy laws. … At least 53 people have been killed in Pakistan since 1990 after being accused of blasphemy, according to the Center for Research and Security Studies, and accusations are becoming more frequent. Blasphemy in Pakistan is punishable by death, but it is not specifically defined by law. …

Pakistani politicians, media, and civil society are pushing for a robust offensive to finish off the Taliban in the aftermath of the militants' shooting of a girl peace campaigner. The October 9 shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai in northwestern Swat Valley has led to a groundswell of calls for Islamabad to abandon its long reluctance to take on extremist sanctuaries in the North Waziristan tribal region, on Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan. The region is home to Pakistani and Afghan Taliban factions and allied international jihadists. For years, Islamabad resisted considerable pressure from Western capitals to launch an offensive in...

Pakistani officials say a mentally-challenged Christian girl accused of blaspheming Islam has been released from jail. Rimsha Masih's release Saturday comes a day after a judge granted her bail, in a case that has drawn international outrage. Rimsha, believed to be 14 years old, spent the last three weeks in jail near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, after neighbors accused her of burning pages from the Quran. … On Friday, Amnesty International said Rimsha is still in serious danger even after a judge ordered her freed. …

An 11-year-old Christian girl has been arrested after being accused of desecrating pages of a book containing Islamic text. She was detained for blasphemy after an angry mob demanded her arrest and threatened to burn down Christian homes outside of the capital, Islamabad, Pakistani media say. The girl is known to have learning difficulties, officials say. Police have taken her parents into protective custody following threats. According to Dawn newspaper, police said the girl had been unable to answer questions properly during the interrogation. Dr Paul Bhatti, Pakistan's minister for National Harmony, told the BBC that the girl was known...

In the end it was a meeting in a nondescript conference room in Chicago that finally set in motion the long-awaited US apology to Pakistan last week ending a seven-month impasse over NATO supply routes for the Afghan war. The meeting in late May followed months of clamoring by Islamabad, images of flag-draped coffins on TV, and widespread outcry from Pakistanis incensed by the US air attack that killed 24 of their soldiers on the Afghan border last November. The breakthrough, in which Islamabad reopened supply routes into Afghanistan and Washington yielded to months of Pakistani demands to apologize for...

A visiting U.N. human rights expert has drawn fresh attention to the abuses arising from Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, reporting that fear of reprisals result in intimidated judges bringing convictions without evidence while lawyers avoid taking up cases. The criticism by Gabriela Knaul, a “special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers,” came at the end of an 11-day visit to Pakistan to study the country’s judicial system, the first by a U.N. human rights expert since 1999. Pakistan generally manages to sidestep censure at the U.N. Human Rights Council, a body in which it wields substantial influence through its...

Pakistani authorities have sentenced a doctor accused of helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden to 33 years in jail on charges of treason, officials said, a move almost certain to further strain ties between Washington and Islamabad. Shakil Afridi was accused of running a fake vaccination campaign, in which he collected DNA samples, that is believed to have helped the American intelligence agency track down bin Laden in a Pakistani town. The al Qaeda chieftain was killed in a unilateral U.S. special forces raid in the town of Abbottabad in May last year. "Dr Shakil has been sentenced to...

A growing diplomatic dispute over Pakistan's refusal to reopen supply routes for U.S. and other troops in Afghanistan threatened to overshadow President Obama’s efforts on the final day of the NATO summit to finalize plans for ending the unpopular war. In remarks to more than 50 world leaders, Obama on Monday made clear his frustration at what aides view as Pakistani intransigence by publicly thanking Russia and other Central Asian countries for providing "critical transit” of war supplies into Afghanistan in the six months since Pakistan closed its ground routes following U.S. airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Pakistani President...

Pakistan blocked the social networking website Twitter for much of Sunday because it refused to remove tweets considered offensive to Islam, said one of the country's top telecommunications officials. The tweets were promoting a competition on Facebook to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, said Mohammad Yaseen, chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication's Authority. Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous. The government restored access to Twitter before midnight Sunday, about eight hours after it initially blocked access. Twitter spokesman Gabriel Stricker said the company had not taken down any tweets or made any other changes...

A court acquitted a Christian couple of “blasphemy” charges yesterday, overturning their life sentences, their lawyer said. Chaudhry Naeem Shakir told Compass that Justice Mazhar Ali Akbar Naqvi of the Lahore High Court accepted the couple’s appeal because prosecutors failed to prove allegations that 32-year-old Munir Masih and his wife Ruqayya defiled the Quran or insulted Muhammad on Dec. 8, 2008. The allegations by Muhammad Nawaz in Mustafabad, Kasur district, came under sections 295-B and 295-C respectively of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which are routinely employed to exact revenge on Christians over personal disputes; in this case, the Christian couple’s children...