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Al Qaeda militant behind Marriott bombing, Sri Lankan team attack killed in Afghanistan: Pentagon WASHINGTON: A US drone strike in eastern Afghanistan on March 19 killed the senior Al-Qaeda military commander Qari Yasin, who has been linked to numerous attacks in his native Pakistan, the US military confirmed on Saturday. "The death of Qari Yasin is evidence that terrorists who defame Islam and deliberately target innocent people will not escape justice," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in a statement. A native of the Pakistani region of Balochistan who has ties to the Tehrik-e-Taliban group, Yasin was accused of plotting the September 20, 2008 bombing on a Marriott Hotel in Islamabad that killed dozens of people, including two US service members. He was also said to have been behind a 2009 attack on a bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore that killed six Pakistani police officers and two civilians, and wounded six members of the team. Yasin w

GHALANAI: The bullet-riddled bodies of six unidentified men were found in Michni, a hilly area of Ekkaghound in the Mohmand tribal region, on Saturday, said an official of the political administration. Security sources said that the men were killed during a clash with security forces in Michni. They claimed that the clash occurred after militants attacked security forces in the area. Officials of the local administration shifted the bodies to the agency’s headquarters hospital in Ghalanai for post-mortem and identification of the deceased. A source in the hospital said that the men appeared to be aged between 22 and 35 years. It may be mentioned here that two suicide bombers attacked the FC training school in Michni on Friday in which one soldier of Frontier Constabulary was killed and three others were injured.

KARACHI: Pakistan is losing the Iranian rice export market of $500 million because commercial banks are reluctant to open letters of credit and issue Form-E even after the lifting of sanctions in January 2016. Iran was a key importer of Pakistan’s super basmati rice, but the trade came to a virtual halt after the imposition of sanctions on Tehran. After sanctions and an economic embargo were lifted 14 months back many countries restarted trading with Iran but Pakistan has yet to normalise trade relations with its neighbour. Even during sanctions, there was no food embargo on Iran, and India kept supplying food items including basmati rice to Iran in barter arrangement. Pakistan, however, ceased trade with Iran, which allowed Indian exporters to capture the Iranian market. Today India exports one million tonnes of Basmati rice worth $1 billion. ADVERTISEMENT Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (REAP) Chairman Mahmood Moulvi told Dawn that he took up the issue wit

An American couple of Pakistani origin announced $15 million for the University of Notre Dame to create an institute that will aim to deepen knowledge of religion and seek to explain how the traditions and practice of various faiths influence world events, a  New York Times report  said. Rafat and Zoreen Ansari, who moved the US more than four-decades ago, are medical doctors who were born in Pakistan. They spent their lives giving back to the country which gave them their fortune, giving away an estimated $1 million and countless hours to non-profit organisations which focus on children with autism, a condition which affect one of their own children. After more than a year of deliberation, the Ansari family decided to donate $15 million dollars to develop the Rafat and Zoreen Ansari Institute for Global Engagement With Religion at the University of Notre Dame. “We came as immigrants, and this country has given us so much,” Zoreen said acoording to NYT, ahead of the announcement

KARACHI: A day after his mysterious arrest and release, Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan head Dr Farooq Sattar on Saturday blamed the Sindh government for supporting the Altaf Hussain-led party because its policies suited it. “The interests of the PPP are with what happened on Aug 22 and not with Pakistan,” he said while speaking at a programme organised to celebrate the MQM’s 33rd foundation day at the KMC ground in PIB Colony. A large number of party workers, inclu­ding women, attended the programme. The Altaf Hussain-led MQM-London did not hold any event in Karachi, as they observed the foundation day as “Mohajir Day” at a programme in London. Dr Sattar said that his party had parted ways with the London-based founder after his Aug 22 incendiary speech, but it seemed that the PPP-led Sindh government was standing with the Aug 22 events. He complained that the leader of the opposition in the Sindh Assembly had not been granted time to hold a meeting with Chief Minister Mu

India has fast-tracked hydropower projects worth $15 billion in India-held Kashmir in recent months, three federal and state officials said, ignoring warnings from Islamabad that power stations on rivers flowing into Pakistan will disrupt water supplies. The swift approval of projects that had languished for years came after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested last year that sharing the waterways could be conditional on Pakistan clamping down on anti-India militants that New Delhi says it shelters. Pakistan has opposed some of these projects before, saying they violate a World Bank-mediated treaty on the sharing of the Indus river and its tributaries upon which 80pc of its irrigated agriculture depends. The schemes, the largest of which is the 1,856-megawatt (MW) Sawalkote plant, will take years to complete, but their approval could prove a flashpoint between the nuclear-armed neighbors at a time when relations are at a low ebb. ADVERTISEMENT "I say the way you

INDIAN WELLS: Elena Vesnina denied Venus Williams another comeback win, beating the seven-time Grand Slam champion 6-2, 4-6, 6-3 on Thursday night to reach the semi-finals of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. Vesnina staved off six break points in the last game, falling behind 40-love to start, before closing out the 71-minute match with two forehand winners. Venus overcame three match points on her serve on three straight errors by Vesnina in the eighth game that featured six deuces and lasted for nine minutes. “I was really fighting like it’s the last game of my life,” Vesnina said. “I start serving with a little bit less power and a bit more pace. Couple of kind of big points she gave me unforced error, and I stick to this game. I was like, ‘I’m never going to lose this game’.” The 14th-seeded Russian will play Kristina Mladenovic for a place in the final after the French player’s 3-6, 7-6 (7-4), 6-2 victory over former world number one Caroline Wozniacki. The 23-year

Popular social networking website Facebook will send a delegation to Pakistan for investigating content which the government considers to be blasphemous, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Interior said. The government had approached Facebook earlier this week regarding access to the records of three controversial pages accused of spreading blasphemous content, the director general of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Mazhar Kakakhail had said. Read more:  IHC wants blasphemous content on social media blocked Facebook in its reply said it is aware of the government's reservations and that it wants to resolve the issue via bilateral dialogue and mutual understanding, the interior ministry spokesperson added. The official further said that Facebook has also named a focal person to communicate with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). The IHC is hearing a case pertaining to the dissemination of blasphemous content through social media. The case, filed by

ISLAMABAD: Emphasising the need for revival of dialogue, Pakistan told India on Saturday that while terrorism remains a serious challenge to deal with there are other issues of equal importance that the two countries should address to bring improvement to their ties. Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit said that apart from terrorism other issues like Kashmir, Siachen and Sir Creek had also impacted the ties. These are the core issues required to be dealt with simultaneously, he added. The candid talk from the ambassador came in response to queries from the host of India Today’s TV programme ‘India Conclave 2017’ telecast on Saturday. Terror issue alone cannot define entire gamut of bilateral ties, says Pakistan envoy Mr Basit maintained that the issue of terrorism could not alone define the entire gamut of ties between Pakistan and India. “By creating hype around it [terrorism], you cannot wish away other issues like Jammu and Kashmir.” He urged the Indian go

ASK people around you to identify the three greatest threats facing Pakistan. Ordinary people, chatterbox anchors, mullahs, generals and politicians will name everything from corruption, bad governance and religious terrorism, to Indian and American conspiracies, and general moral decay. But few, if any, waste sleep worrying about the country’s exploding population. Some educated people do have misgivings, but they show concern only when prodded. Fortunately, the ultra-religious sorts — which this land is abundantly blessed with — are free from useless doubt. For them more is better. Every newborn, say the ultras, comes with a guaranteed rizq (provision) stamped on its forehead. Now let’s assume, ignoring the visible contrary evidence, that this is correct. Yet there shall remain an impossibly difficult problem even if food and water were to drop miraculously from the skies. Fact: Pakistan will eventually run out of physical space. This is what the law of exponential growth says.

ISLAMABAD: Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani on Friday termed the accord reached between political parties on the revival of military courts unfortunate, fearing that the term of extension might go beyond 2019. While chairing Friday’s session, he pointed out that two bills pertaining to military courts had been passed in 2015, yet two years later, the country found itself back to square one. Read:  Accord on military courts’ revival for two years He said the Senate’s Committee of the Whole had taken steps before the cut-off date for military courts mentioned in the sunset clause of the Army Act 2015 and the Constitutional Amendment Act 2015, and had unanimously passed two bills on Jan 18, 2016. He regretted, however, that no headway had been made. He observed that the present situation could have been avoided, had the bills been used as working papers. He said the two houses of parliament would do what they wanted on the issue of military courts, but hoped that the situation w

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) are leading the charge to ensure the passage of the 23rd amendment — seeking the revival of the military courts — which the government plans to present before both houses of parliament next week. In background discussions, leaders of almost all major political parties revealed that so far only the PML-N and PTI had taken practical steps to ensuring the maximum presence of their members in the National Assembly and Senate when the government presents the bill for passage, as per the understanding reached between all parties last week. Other parties, despite agreeing on the proposal to extend the term of the military courts for another two years, do not appear so enthusiastic about the exercise. Both parties scrambling to ensure maximum attendance for passage of constitutional amendment; Rabbani may abstain in protest After a series of exhaustive meetings, the government and the oppositi