Category: WORLD NEWS

Pakistan’s two major opposition parties have questioned the “haste” shown by Prime Minister Imran Khan in making efforts to mend ties with India and held him responsible for the “diplomatic debacle”, saying he should have done his “homework” before approaching for a meeting. Khan had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking to re-start bilateral talks on key issues “challenging the relationship” including on terrorism and Kashmir. India initially agreed to a meeting between Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi on the sidelines…

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A key US Senate committee postponed its high-stakes hearing on sexual assault allegation against President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after his accuser Christine Blasey Ford declined the committee’s request to testify before it on Friday. Senator Chuck Grassley, who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Friday that both Kavanaugh and accuser Ford had been invited for the hearing scheduled to take place on Monday. He said while Kavanaugh had agreed to testify, Ford, a clinical psychology professor at Palo Alto University, declined.Grassley asked Ford, 51, to respond…

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There was no “deal” between the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for the release of jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his family members after a top court suspended their sentences in a corruption case, a senior Pakistani minister has asserted.The Islamabad High Court Wednesday suspended the jail sentences of Sharif, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Capt (retd) Muhammad Safdar in the Avenfield corruption case and they were released from the Adiala Prison in Rawalpindi.”No country asked for his release. Nawaz Sharif is not so important for Saudi…

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Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Imran Khan has written a letter to his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, the Foreign Office said here Thursday, seeking to re-start the bilateral talks on key issues “challenging the relationship” including on terrorism and Kashmir.In the letter dated September 14, the cricketer-turned-politician, who became the prime minister last month, proposed a meeting between Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York this month.”Building on the mutual desire for peace between our two…

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President Donald Trump is flexing his executive power to declassify secret documents in the Russia investigation, an extraordinary move he says will ensure that “really bad things” at the FBI are exposed. But the decision, made against the backdrop of Trump’s spiraling outrage at the special counsel’s Russia investigation, may expose sensitive sources and methods and brush up against privacy law protections, experts say.The order is likely to further divide the president from the intelligence agencies he oversees and raises new concerns that Trump is disclosing government secrets for his own…

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Pakistan government and the Opposition on Tuesday unanimously agreed to form a parliamentary committee to investigate allegations of rigging in the July 25 general elections in which the Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf emerged as the single largest party.Major political parties like the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) have alleged that the votes cast at various polling stations were changed behind closed doors after their polling agents were thrown out. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has rejected the claims. The…

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The cash-strapped Pakistan government on Monday sold 34 cars as part of an auction of 102 luxury vehicles, including some bullet-proof ones, as part of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s austerity drive.Apart from luxury cars, the government, facing huge debts and liabilities, plans to auction eight buffaloes kept by deposed and jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif at the PM House for his “gastronomic requirements”, a senior aide to Khan said last week.It will also sell the four surplus helicopters lying unused with the Cabinet Division, Naeem-ul-Haq, the Prime Minister’s Special…

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British Prime Minister Theresa May said Sunday she was “irritated” by speculation about a leadership contest as she slammed former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, seen as her most likely challenger.The centre-right Conservative Party’s leader said she was focused on securing a Brexit deal rather than her own future, in a BBC television interview marking the six-month countdown to Britain’s departure from the European Union.May blasted Johnson for using “completely inappropriate” language when he described her Brexit blueprint as putting Britain in a “suicide vest”.Asked about her plans to stay in…

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo unloaded Friday on his Obama-era predecessor John Kerry for “actively undermining” US policy on Iran by meeting several times recently with the Iranian foreign minister, who was his main interlocutor in the Iran nuclear deal negotiations. In unusually blunt and caustic language, Pompeo said Kerry’s meetings with Mohammad Javad Zarif were “unseemly and unprecedented” and “beyond inappropriate.” President Donald Trump had late Thursday accused Kerry of holding “illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to…

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The Afghan conflict could overtake Syria as the deadliest conflict in the world this year, analysts say, as violence surges 17 years after the US-led invasion. The grim assessment contrasts sharply with the consistently upbeat public view of the conflict from NATO’s Resolute Support mission in Kabul, and underscores the growing sense of hopelessness in the war-torn country. It suggests that US President Donald Trump’s much-vaunted strategy for Afghanistan is, like those of his predecessors, failing to move the needle on the battlefield, observers said, as a generation of Americans…

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