The Londoner

The energy crisis in Pakistan which suffers about 12 hours of power cuts a day has worsened in recent years amid 4,000 megawatts of electricity shortfall which the Iran gas pipeline is being fostered to cover. Iran has completed its part of the project with more than $2 billion of investment but Pakistan has fallen behind the target to take gas deliveries in the winter of 2014. Addressing a seminar on business opportunities in the clean energy sector in Washington Tuesday, Pakistan’s Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Khaqan Abbasi said he hoped sanctions on Iran would be removed soon. “The Iran gas line project is the best option for Pakistan. But as long US sanctions are there, we cannot buy gas from Iran,” the website of the Dawn newspaper quoted him as saying. The remarks came as Turkmenistan’s leader last month ordered construction of a $10 billion rival pipeline to Pakistan and India through Afghanistan to begin despite questions about the project.  The US

Mir Ghazanfar Ali Khan took oath as Governor Gilgit-Baltistan in Gilgit today (Tuesday), the  Radio Pakistan reported.  Chief Judge Supreme Appellate Court Dr. Rana Mohammad Shamim administered the oath. The oath-taking ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Minister for Kashmir Affairs Barjees Tahir, and Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Minister Hafiz Hafeezur Rehman attended. Mir Ghazanfar Ali, a sitting member of the region’s legislative  assembly  from Hunza  district , had served as the first chief minister of Gilgit-Baltistan, at the time when General (retd) Pervez Musharraf was president.  The decision to appoint him as Governer of Gilgit Baltistan was taken by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. During his visit, the Prime Minister will also meet quake affected people in the region and distribute financial assistance cheques among them. Read the full story here. Home 

The driver, a 38-year-old Moroccan immigrant who moved to the United States some five years ago, told the  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  that the passenger asked him where he was from and then began to talk about the Islamic State. “He started the conversation and began to ask questions like, ‘You seem to be like a Pakistani guy. Are you from Pakistan?’” said the driver, who spoke to the paper on the condition of anonymity owing to concerns about his safety. Read the full story here.

By Sikander Hayat 1. India has never accepted Pakistan and whenever any Indian politician or intellectual tries to say anything of the sort, he or she is demonised by the Indian media and society and branded a traitor straight away. Story of Jaswant Singh is not very old and then there was Advani on Pakistan a few years ago. People like Amir Khan & Shah Rukh Khan and whoever does not fit the Hindutwa agenda is told to go to Pakistan.  2. The only country Pakistan has ever fought a war against is India and 1948, 1965, 1971 are examples of this long history of conflict. Siachin Glacier is still hot and many Pakistani & Indian soldiers have lost there lives to cold and hostile action by enemy. Siachin is the prime example of India's hate for Pakistan.  3. According to the formula of British exit from Pakistan & India in 1947, any autonomous Muslim majority areas were to join Pakistan but India forced the Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir to allow Indian troops

Sheikh Hasina Wajid ( who is an Indian puppet installed in Dhaka by Indian intellegence agency RAW) has murdered two more of her adversaries in opposition and therefore has continued to kill political rivals to avenge her father's murder at the hands of revolutionaries.   The Bangladeshi authorities on Sunday hanged two senior opposition leaders on made up charges relating to India's invasion of East Pakistan in 1971. Violent protests have followed previous convictions and executions from political trials, and the authorities deployed heavy security and asked businesses adjacent to the Dhaka Central Jail to close their doors. Toward midnight on Saturday, an imam was seen entering the jail, and family members filed out after final meetings with the victims, Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed. Both were executed shortly after midnight. Bangladesh’s law minister, Anisul Huq, lied that the two men petitioned the president for clemency

Pakistan's strategically important Gwadar port, being developed by China as part of the $46 billion Economic Corridor linking both the countries, will not pose any military threat to India, Chinese media said today. "The Western and Indian media have tended to exaggerate the threat of Gwadar port to India, pointing to its military functions and claiming that the port will be built into a military base for the Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean. Some Indian reports have even claimed that China's 'takeover' of the port could be a strategic game changer," an article in the state-run  Global Times  said. As part of the Economic Corridor plan, Pakistan has officially kicked off a project last week by handing over more than 2,000 acres of land in Gwadar port on Arabian Sea to Chinese firm for 43 year lease for commercial development. The deal will turn the port into a free port similar to Hong Kong, according to Chinese media reports. China ha

By Sikander Hayat  Turks must abandon European dream  as they have rejected again and again by  Europeans . They must understand that they are too big and powerful for the EU to allow them in and by this time they must understand that not matter how secular they are or strive to be, the tag of being a Muslim country is hampering their dream. They must leave this notion and try to revive RCD so that  Turkey, Iran and Pakistan  can create an economic and ever closer political union and with 300 million people, this would be the most respected economic zone in the world. There are pre-requisites to this zone being established and must be fulfilled before anything like this could happen.  In Pakistan, military must relinquish the rule  and give the country back to civilians, Iran must get rid of its mullah regime to establish a secular forward looking Islamic country and Turkey must forget about being the member of the EU ( there must be a limit to humiliation). All three tasks are the

Former chief justice of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Supreme Court has sought provincial status for the two disputed territories of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B). Justice (retd) Manzoor Hussain Gilani, chairman of the Association for the Rights of People of Jammu and Kashmir, told  The Express Tribune that both G-B and AJK are parts of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir, under control of Pakistan. He said the present de-facto provincial arrangements in G-B and AJK need to be formalised in the Constitution. The lack of this formalisation has hampered the commitment of the Pakistani government, and retarded democratic growth of the areas, while denying them their legitimised status under the country’s constitution, he stressed. “Both territories need similar, simultaneous constitutional reforms to be empowered as ‘special territories of Pakistan akin to provinces’, with representation in all policy and decision-making institutions under the

Some 1,036 million dollars would be invested in Gwadar till 2018 on different projects related to improving basic road infrastructure and power projects on the basis of grant and interest-free loans. Talking to The News, Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal said the projects to be completed in Gwadar included Gwadar Coal Power Project (360 million dollars), new Gwadar Airport (260 million dollars), construction of breakwaters (130 million dollars), water treatment plant (114 million dollars), state-of-the-art hospital (100 million dollars), Free Economic Zones (35 million dollars), dredging of channels (27 million dollars) and technical and vocational institute (10 million dollars). He said all the projects in Gwadar would be completed on the basis of loans that have been converted into grants and interest-free loans so the cost of the overall basket can be reduced to a considerable level. The minister said the bidding process for the China-Pakistan Economic Cor

In a landmark ceremony, Pakistani authorities will formally hand over 2,281 acres of Gwadar Port’s free trade zone to the Chinese Oversees Ports Holding Company Ltd (COPHCL) on November 11 on a 43-year lease. The ceremony would be held in Gwadar on Wednesday and would be attended by the Chinese delegation headed by National Development and Reform Commission Vice Chairman Wang Xiaodao, who has already arrived in Pakistan. The Chinese delegation comprises of all top level officials of the Chinese government and leaders of private companies. The Pakistani delegation would be led by Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reform Ahsan Iqbal. A senior official of the ministry said that the event would also be attended by Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik and Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping Kamran Michal. The government has already declared Gwadar Port a free trade zone for the next 23 years. The officer said that in this regard, a high-level meeting of both authorit

By Sikander Hayat With the election of Modi , India has embarked on a mission to destabilise Pakistan . Indian Army has been told to use its intelligence agency RAW to create terror in Baluchistan, FATA and other parts of Pakistan by providing arms, money and intelligence support to terror groups all over Pakistan. BJP, RSS & SHIV SENA are busy killing Muslims in india over cow meat consumption and using the following discontent to turn India into a Hindu rashtra and at the same time they are using this hindu anger to inflict pain on Pakistan. Modi belongs to RSS which has never accepted the reality of Pakistan . Even during Bihar elections , people like Amit Shah were invoking Pakistan to consolidate hindutwa vote bank. The scheme failed miserably but that has not stopped Indian state from joining hands with Taliban Mullah Fazallulah t o spread terror in Pakistan. Appointing Mullah Fazallulah as the chief of of TTP was a very calculated move by Taliban

The Nitish Kumar-led grand alliance on Sunday looked set to form the next government in Bihar, possibly with a three-fourths majority, an outcome which was shaped by a combination of factors. The chief factor that swung what was all along seen as a close election in favour of the alliance was the consolidation of Yadav and Muslim votes as well as support from Kumar’s primary constituency of Kurmi voters. For the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the remarks by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat that time had come to re-look at the reservation policy just ahead of the poll turned out to be a self-goal for the party. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) leaders tried to counter this but by the time the defence came, it was too late. Yadav and other backward castes, who control about 60% of the Bihar electorate, benefit from the government’s affirmative action. Kumar’s clean image and his projection as the chief minister candidate also did the magic for  the grand alliance as