May 9

BBC - Pro-Taleban militants say they are holding six soldiers in a tribal region in north-western Pakistan.

A spokesman for the militants said 24 other soldiers had been freed in Bajaur agency. The military says just one soldier was captured.

Elsewhere in the region a soldier was killed and at least two others wounded in an attack in the Swat Valley.

Violence in the region has increased in recent days after militants suspended peace talks with the government.

Washington | May 9

NYT - When the Pentagon announced in March that Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood would become the senior American officer based in Pakistan, it reflected the military’s aim to put a crisis-tested veteran in a critical job at a pivotal time in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

But nearly two months later, the military has quietly canceled the assignment of General Hood, a 33-year Army veteran who was excoriated in the Pakistani news media for one of his previous jobs: commander of the United States prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

During General Hood’s command from 2004 to 2006, military authorities force-fed with tubes detainees who were engaging in hunger strikes at the Guantánamo prison, a step they justified as necessary to prevent the prisoners from committing suicide to protest their indefinite confinement. Also during General Hood’s tenure, reports that an American guard may have desecrated a Koran stirred wide protests in the Islamic world.

May 7

Bloomberg - Prachanda, the former rebel leader whose party won most seats in Nepal's elections last month, told his commanders the process of integrating fighters into the national army will begin once a new government is formed.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is in ``last minute'' talks to set up a new administration and the process of army integration will begin after that, he told heads of the People's Liberation Army yesterday in the capital, Kathmandu, Nepalnews.com reported. Nepal's seven main parties are scheduled to meet May 9 to determine the composition of the government.

Prachanda, who will probably head the new government, has put ``democratizing'' Nepal's army and making the PLA ``professional'' at the top of the agenda, Nepalnews.com said.

The Maoists sent 23,500 fighters into camps, from where they are due to be integrated into the national army, as part of a 2006 peace agreement that ended Nepal's decade-long civil war. Nepal's military doesn't want to accept the fighters now because they are still politically motivated, the head of army public relations said last month.

Peter Spiegel & Greg Miller | Washington | May 7

LA Times - Amid criticism of a lack of oversight on spending, the U.S. has denied or deferred about $81 million in requests from Pakistan, the Government Accountability Office says.

The Pentagon has rejected or deferred millions of dollars in military aid requests from Pakistan amid criticism that the Islamabad government has squandered U.S. funding and allowed Al Qaeda to rebuild a haven in its western tribal regions.

In February, the Defense Department turned down or delayed more than $81 million requested by Pakistan, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

The rejection represents a small portion of the nearly $1 billion a year Pakistan has received through a program called Coalition Support Funds, launched after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But it marks a sudden change in U.S. policy toward Pakistan, which for years has spent American military aid without having to show results in the fight against Al Qaeda and other militant groups. Even some officials in the Pentagon have acknowledged shortcomings in U.S. funding strategy.

Eric Schmitt | Washington | May 1

NYT - Terrorist attacks against noncombatants more than doubled in Pakistan from 2006 to 2007, reflecting the growing violence in the country’s turbulent tribal areas and new bombings against Pakistani government officials and security services, according to a report released Wednesday by the State Department.

The report also said the number of deaths from the attacks in Pakistan quadrupled in that time period, to 1,335 fatalities, casting doubt on the American-backed counterterrorism policies of President Pervez Musharraf that the new government in Islamabad is now reshaping.

April 30

BBC - Leaders of Pakistan's new government are to hold urgent talks on Wednesday on the country's sacked judges, in the coalition's first real test.

Former PM Nawaz Sharif will meet Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leader Asif Zardari, at whose Dubai residence talks are to take place.

The month-old government's deadline to reinstate the judges ends on Wednesday.

The sides differ over how much power to give to judges whom President Musharraf sacked under emergency rule last year.

Failure to resolve differences over the issue has put the month-old coalition under strain.

Sriharikota, PTI | April 28

PTI - At the end of the 52-hour countdown, the PSLV-C9, with a lift-off mass of 230 tonne, blasted off from the launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre and soared into the clear sky in a textbook launch.

Setting a world record, India's Polar rocket on Monday successfully placed ten satellites, including the country's remote sensing satellite, into orbit in a single mission.

The ten pack launch of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) saw the 230-tonne Polar Satellite launch Vehicle (PSLV-C9) carry the heaviest luggage--824 kgs--and put into orbit an Indian Mini Satellite and eight foreign nano satellites besides the Cartosat-2A remote sensing satellite.

Katmandu | April 26

AFP - Nepal's former rebel Maoists have won 220 of 601 seats in the constituent assembly elections after final adjustments were made, an election official said. "The Maoists have won 120 seats under first past the post (system) and 100 under proportional representation," election official Raju Man Singh Malla told reporters.

The surprise win makes the Maoists the largest party by far in the assembly that is set to abolish the monarchy and write a new constitution for the impoverished Himalayan nation.The Nepali Congress (NC), their nearest rivals and election favourites before the poll, won a total of just 110 seats, the election official said.

Muhamalai, Sri Lanka | April 23

BBC - At least 52 Tamil Tiger rebels and 15 soldiers have been killed in clashes in the Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka, the country's military says.

More than 70 soldiers were wounded in the heavy fighting, which broke out along the front line in the Muhamalai area at 0200 (2030 GMT), it added.

Amelia Gentleman | New Delhi | April 20

The Observer - Top-range salaries tempt back tens of thousands of highly skilled Indians who had moved to the West

Ashutosh Gupta's home in Richmond Park has all the lifestyle comforts that many educated Indians of his generation left India to attain - lush and peaceful gardens, a gym, a pool and, most important, unwavering electricity and water supplies.

This luxury block in the ultra-modern Delhi suburb of Gurgaon (about 4,000 miles from Richmond, London) houses several hundred Indian families who have recently returned from living in the West, part of a 'reverse brain drain' migration which is gathering speed.

Indian politicians are beginning to highlight, approvingly, the emerging phenomenon of 'brain gain', as large numbers of Indian-born executives decide that job opportunities and living conditions are as good, if not better, in India and make their way home.

Inal Ersan | Dubai | April 19

Reuters - Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan, who went missing in February in the Khyber region, appeared on Arabic television on Saturday saying he was being held by the Taliban and urged Islamabad to meet their demands.

Ambassador Tariq Azizuddin appeared in a video tape on Al Arabiya television surrounded by armed militants to make his first public statement since going missing.

"We were kidnapped by mujahideen from the Taliban," the ambassador, wearing an open-necked shirt and looking calm, said in the remarks which were translated from Urdu into Arabic.

Julian Borger | Lahore | April 17

The Guardian - After more than seven years in exile, Pakistan's former PM is back in power and doing his best to depose the president. Julian Borger goes to visit him at the family home outside Lahore

The road to Nawaz Sharif's house performs some radical zigzags along the way. This is presumably for security purposes - forcing would be suicide-bombers to slow down enough for the guards to take a shot. But the winding drive must also serve as a daily reminder for Sharif of the precarious route to power in Pakistan.

He has twice been prime minister. His last term was cut short in 1999 by a coup by his army chief, Pervez Musharraf. Nine years on, Musharraf is still president but has been haemorrhaging authority for months in the face of public disdain.

Sharif is back from exile and back in power, this time as part of a new democratically elected coalition, and working hard to sideline the president with the aim of eventually forcing him out.

US offers Pakistan government $7bn in non-military aid to fight terrorism

· Civilian cabinet told drone air strikes will be curbed
· New strategy marks break with Musharraf and army

Amanda Gentleman & Hari Kumar | New Delhi | April 17

NYT - The Olympic torch made a strange and lonely procession through central Delhi on Thursday, with the event so overshadowed by fears of the anti-Chinese protests that marred its appearances in other cities that no members of the public were allowed close enough to witness it.

The 70-odd Indian athletes and celebrities who carried the torch down Delhi’s widest avenue were outnumbered by thousands of watchful members of India’s security forces, who managed to stamp out any pomp and excitement, transforming the occasion into a tense security operation.

India has the world’s largest population of exiled Tibetans, about 100,000, who fled their homeland after China crushed an uprising there in the 1950s, and their presence had made Olympic organizers particularly anxious about this stage of the torch’s journey to Beijing, where the Games will begin on Aug. 8.

Lahore | April 13

Daily Times - * US president says terror plans in Afghanistan would be routed out with firepower
* Says US has no intention of attacking Iran

If another September-11 style attack is being planned, it probably is being plotted in Pakistan and not Afghanistan, the AP news agency quoted US President George Bush as saying on Saturday.

In an interview with a US TV channel, Bush said if terrorists planning such attacks were in Afghanistan, they would be routed out. “We’ve got plenty of firepower to take on Al Qaeda cells in Afghanistan,” he said, although more US and NATO troops are headed to Afghanistan.

Kathmandu | April 10

M&C - Nepalese across the country took part in a landmark election Thursday that appeared largely peaceful except for sporadic scuffles, officials said.

According to government officials, the country has seen no large-scale violence and turnout has been good. But voting was suspended in at least 11 constituencies, the majority of them in southern Nepal, due to minor scuffles.

UPDATE April 12

Surprise lead for Maoists spells end of the line for Nepal's King

Former rebels are poised to take power in the beleaguered kingdom, which has been devastated by civil war. But they must put aside a crime-tainted past and deliver reforms

Caracas | April 9

AFP - Venezuela and India on Tuesday signed a five-year, 400-million-dollar joint venture to drill for oil and gas in Venezuela's oil-rich southeastern Orinoco region, Oil and Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said.

"It's the first association agreement between the two countries," Ramirez said after signing the agreement with his Indian counterpart Murli Deora, the first energy minister from India to visit Venezuela.

Sudha Ramachandran | April 8

Asia Times Online - With its bamboo forests beginning their twice-a-century flowering cycle, northeastern India is the epicenter of a rat explosion. To forestall a food crisis, the government has launched a counter-rat campaign, mobilizing the army and offering a bounty for each eradicated rodent. The restive region has yet to forget the last rat attack in 1958-59 which redefined local politics, triggered an insurgency and remapped the area's boundaries.

April 8

BBC - A gas leak in Pakistan has killed two people at a heavy water plant run by the country's atomic energy agency in Punjab province, officials say.

They say that the leak at the Khushab heavy water plant happened when it was closed for annual maintenance.

It is believed to be the first fatal accident at any of the country's nuclear facility.

The main function of the plant at Khushab is the production and refinement of plutonium.

Somini Sengupta | New Delhi | April 4

IHT - Since protests against China broke out among the Tibetans who make their home in exile here, India has urged the Dalai Lama to refrain from talking politics and assured Beijing that the Olympic torch will pass unmolested when it arrives here this month.

That delicate stance has disappointed some, like the Dalai Lama, who has chided India as "overcautious." But it is just one leg of an emerging Indian approach to the world — one part caution, one part competition, with a dash of mimicry sprinkled in — that is ever mindful of the more powerful giant that has risen on its eastern flank.

The Tibetan issue is one thing. Perhaps more to the point was another, less noticed development this week, as the Indian prime minister warmly welcomed the second in command in Myanmar's junta, a general named Maung Aye, barely six months after a crackdown there on Buddhist monks.

Salman Masood | Islamabad | April 3

NYT - Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s atomic weapons program who confessed four years ago to having run an illicit global nuclear proliferation network, expressed hope in an interview published Wednesday that the new government would end his house arrest and lift the restrictions on his movements.

In the interview, his first since 2004 when he was put under house arrest in Islamabad, Dr. Khan, 72, bitterly complained about his confinement and what he described as his deteriorating health.

The interview was published by Nawa-i-Waqt, an Urdu-language newspaper, and its sister English-language publication, The Nation. It was unclear precisely when the interview had been conducted and whether it had been done in person or by telephone. Ayesha Khan, one of Dr. Khan’s two daughters, said in an interview on Wednesday evening that there were no signs of her father’s immediate release and that the family had not been approached by any official of the government of Yousaf Raza Gilani, the new prime minister. “Nobody has come to us,” she said.

“The hope has always been there, but we are not holding our breath,” Ms. Khan said when asked if the family was optimistic about the lifting of the restrictions on her father.

Salman Masood | Islamabad | March 26

NYT - The top State Department officials responsible for the alliance with Pakistan met leaders of the new government on Tuesday, and received what amounted to a public dressing-down from one of them, as well as the first direct indication that the United States relationship with Pakistan would have to change.

On the day that the new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, was sworn in, Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte and the assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, Richard A. Boucher, also met with the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, whom they had embraced as their partner in the campaign against terrorism over the past seven years but whose power is quickly ebbing.

The leader of the second biggest party in the new Parliament, Nawaz Sharif, said after meeting the two American diplomats that it was unacceptable that Pakistan had become a “killing field.”

“If America wants to see itself clean of terrorists, we also want that our villages and towns should not be bombed,” he said at a news conference here. Mr. Sharif, a former prime minister, added he was unable to give Mr. Negroponte “a commitment” on fighting terrorism.

The statements by Mr. Sharif, and the cool body language in the televised portions of his encounter with Mr. Negroponte, were just part of the sea change in Pakistan’s domestic politics that is likely to impose new limits on how Washington fights militants within Pakistan’s borders.

Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, also met with the Americans but did not speak to reporters afterward. Husain Haqqani, an adviser who attended the meeting with him, said, though, that the American officials had been given notice that the old ways were over.

“If I can use an American expression, there is a new sheriff in town,” Mr. Haqqani said. “Americans have realized that they have perhaps talked with one man for too long.”

Pakistan appears to be headed toward a clash between the civilian parliament and Musharraf. But the civilians, who are operating with real skill and courage, may have the upper hand.

Today, the Pakistani parliament elected Yousaf Gilani as their prime minister. Gilani, who has served as vice chair of Bhutto and Zardari's PPP as well as speaker of the National Assembly, won with a crushing margin over the challenger from Musharraf's camp. Sources from the PPP also say that Gilani is here to stay, despite speculation that Zardari could attempt to insert himself into the parliament and become top dog later on. In any case, with Zardari progressively extracting himself from the legal troubles (like this murder case) that have dogged him for more than a decade, the PPP looks to be in good shape, with multiple strong leaders in the spotlight.

March 24

Al Jazeera - One of Pakistan's most senior judges has been released from house arrest on the instruction of the newly appointed prime minister.

Crowds of supporters thronged the home of Iftikhar Chaudhry, the chief justice of the supreme court, on Monday after Yousuf Gilani ordered that the judge be freed.

The move is seen as further jeopardising the authority of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president.

Gilani, a former parliament speaker and aide to the late Benazir Bhutto, ordered the release of all the judges detained under a state of emergency in the run up to elections earlier in the year.

Gilani told parliament: "Today, democracy has been restored thanks to the great sacrifice of Benazir Bhutto."

thimpu | March 24

AP -

The secluded Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan was on its way to becoming the world's newest democracy Monday, as voters cast ballots to select a parliament and end more than a century of absolute monarchy.

And no one, apart from the king who is giving up his power, seems happy about it.

Candidates proudly call themselves monarchists. Party workers describe the vote as "heartbreaking." Voters fret about what will become of the Land of the Thunder Dragon when it trades its Precious Ruler for politicians.

Bhutan has long been an eccentric holdout from modernity - a mountainous land where Buddhist kings reigned supreme, allowing the Internet and television only in 1999 and coming up with the idea of Gross National Happiness, an all-encompassing political philosophy that seeks to balance material progress with spiritual well-being.

The election Monday is, in some respects, no different. Unlike the upheavals that have so often been the midwives of democracy around the world, Bhutan has never been more peaceful or prosperous. It is voting only because the king said it should.

Excuse me if I offend anyone in this article, but I would like to know what happened to the Democratic Party? I always thought of Democrats as those that supported Unions, workers, the middle-class, civil liberties and silly things like that. One thing I was also taught to do was to follow the money when it comes to whom really is supporting who in things such as criminal enterprises and of course, politics. I have been around for a while now, and I believe that I’m just as aware of what’s happening in my own country as anyone else. In fact, I believe that I’m really more aware of what’s happening than most. I am a voracious reader and I have a lot of time on my hands and I actually try to dig behind the rhetoric I hear. What I have found amazes me.