Pakistan - The News from Pakistan

Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai, 15, was a longtime foe of the Taliban as an advocate for girls' education in her country's conservative Swat valley. She blogged about her fight, did TV interviews, demonstrated for her rights. Then in October, a Taliban assassin put a bullet through her head and wounded two of her friends as the girls were coming home from...

How does religion influence the law in Pakistan?
Blasphemy is addressed in Pakistan's penal code, and has been since British colonial laws in the mid 19th-century. The addition of capital punishment or life in prison as a penalty came under hardline Islamist dictator Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.

What are drone strikes?
What the cross-border strikes are that have taken out terrorists and stirred anger within Pakistan.

What is causing Pakistan's flooding?
Pakistan is awash in devastation over the summer 2010 flooding that has killed at least 1,600 and left some 4 million homeless. What is causing the calamity that has surpassed the humanitarian aid scope of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Pakistan's 2005 earthquake and the 2010 Haiti quake?

Pakistan Aid Needs Eclipse Many Recent Disasters
The U.N. is now scrambling for aid to help Pakistan recover from its worst flooding in 80 years, a disaster that isn't registering too high on the news but the scope of which has surpassed the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Pakistan's 2005 earthquake and the Haiti quake in January, the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, in terms of devastation but not in terms of deaths (currently estimated at 1,600).

U.N. Report: Pakistan Security for Bhutto 'Fatally Insufficient'
The United Nations report investigating the assassination is especially damning of Pakistan, alleging that evidence at the crime scene was deliberately destroyed and that Pakistani authorities deliberately conducted a sloppy investigation of the Dec. 27, 2007, suicide attack in which former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was killed after a campaign rally.

Pakistan Arrests Family Members of Times Square Bombing Suspect
Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen and Connecticut resident who recently spent five months in Pakistan, was arrested Monday night on a Dubai-bound plane (that he had been able to board in New York despite being on a federal no-fly list) and charged with setting the homemade SUV bomb in Times Square.

Pakistan Fashion Week
Pakistan's fashion week -- a four-day event that was postponed twice due to security concerns in a country wracked by tensions between Islamist factions and the more westernized urban areas -- showed a couture, even racy side of a region that makes many think of the hijab or burqa.

Pakistan News
Pakistan has held a key place in the headlines since the decade's war on terrorism began, and now the world anxiously watches to see what the post-Musharraf era holds in this critical juncture of the West and the Muslim world.

News Still Swirls Around Mumbai Gunman
The lone gunman to survive the bloody November rampage on Mumbai is reportedly of Pakistani origin, but the national security adviser who leaked the information has been fired and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani says no Pakistanis would be extradited in connection with the investigation.

Mumbai Gunman Allegedly Claims Pakistan Terror Training
Ajmal Qasab wasn't only captured on camera at the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai on Wednesday; he was the only of the gunmen who terrorized the city for some 60 hours who was captured by police instead of being killed in the battle.

Brown: Three-Fourths of Terror Plots Come From Pakistan
The prime minister of Britain, acting on a report about where MI5 determines that terror plots against the UK originate, and understandably still rattled after the Pakistan-based attack launched on Mumbai, told Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari that the buck needs to stop with him.

IMF Bailing Out Pakistan at $7.6B Price Tag
Bailing out the economically ill Pakistan is not only an effort to stave off poverty and unemployment, but takes on special significance when you consider how extremism can flourish in economic instability.

Pakistan
A profile of the country of Pakistan.

Asif Ali Zardari
A profile of Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto and 14th president of Pakistan.

Death Toll Climbs in Pakistan Marriott Bombing
The message from the gruesome suicide bombing of the Marriott in Islamabad was clear: Pervez Musharraf is no longer around to use his martial law and other tactics against terrorists; Asif Ali Zardari is in power, and al-Qaida and the Taliban are telling him to change course now.

Bhutto's Widower Is New Pakistani President
Opposition leader Asif Ali Zardari, head of the Pakistan People's Party since his wife Benazir Bhutto was assassinated last year, succeeded Pervez Musharraf as president on Saturday with a little more than two-thirds of the vote in parliament.

Taliban Claim Attempt on Pakistani P.M.'s Life
Seems that Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani is now in Pervez Musharraf's shoes, even though presidential elections aren't until Saturday: The role of being a marked man, that is.

Musharraf Steps Down
It's big news, no doubt, but is it the best news for Pakistan and for those fighting against terrorism?

Musharraf Reportedly Ignoring Advice to Resign as Impeachment Looms
Dawn reports that President Pervez Musharraf refuses to step down even after being told there's no option but to resign.

Musharraf Reportedly to Resign
The Financial Times leans on a member of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's inner circle and government officials in breaking this story.

Pakistan Launches Border Offensive
Pakistani forces hit at the lawless tribal region near the Khyber Pass, hunting for Taliban militants in the NWFP.

Internal Fighting Threatens anti-Musharraf Coalition
The disagreement between the PPP and PML-N is all a matter of tactics: Nawaz Sharif wants confrontation with Pervez Musharraf now, while Asif Ali Zardari wants to wait.

Pakistan Elects First Female Speaker of National Assembly
Fahmida Mirza, 51, a doctor by trade who hails from Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, was elected Wednesday with 249 votes out of 342 seats in the parliament (exceeding the two-thirds majority needed; at least four members of the assembly abstained from voting, according to the Daily Times).

The Political Situation in Pakistan
President Pervez Musharraf's future is on the line as opposition lawmakers form a coalition and vow to oust the former general. But will the instability allow fundamentalist forces to gain ground?

What's the Story Behind All the 'Stans?
Why there are all those countries with the suffix "stan" at the end.

CIA World Factbook - Pakistan
A primer on Pakistan's leaders, geography, demographics, economy, military, infrastructure, and more.