Pakistan plans to release all Afghan Taliban prisoners still in its detention, including the group's former second-in-command, an official said on Friday, in the clearest signal yet that it backs reconciliation efforts. Regional power Pakistan is seen as critical to the success of U.S. and Afghan efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan, a task gaining urgency as the end of the U.S. combat mission in 2014 draws closer.
– CHICAGO A federal judge on Jan. 17 sentenced a Chicago immigration consultant to 14 years in prison for his role in supporting the Pakistani terrorist group that worked with Pakistan's intelligence service to carry out the 2008 Mumbai attacks and plot a follow-up strike in Denmark.
A U.S. Marine accused of urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters and then posing for photographs, a scene captured in a widely circulated video on the Internet, is due to be tried by court martial on Wednesday at a North Carolina military base. Staff Sergeant Edward W. Deptola is among a group of Marines to face disciplinary action after the video, posted on YouTube and other websites in January 2012, showed four U.S.
The chief of the Pakistani government's anti-corruption department rejected on Thursday a Supreme Court order to arrest the prime minister, television channels reported, providing some relief to a government gripped by political turmoil. On Tuesday, the court ordered the arrest of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in connection with alleged kickbacks in transactions involving rental power plants when he served as power minister.
The Pakistani army on Wednesday protested to India over the killing of one of its soldiers in Kashmir, the fifth fatality this year in heightened hostilities that have raised concerns about ceasefire violations between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa appointed a close ally as chief justice on Tuesday, two days after he controversially sacked the country's top judge for impeachment despite opposition from the Supreme Court. Mohan Peiris, a former attorney general, was sworn in, Presidential spokesman Mohan Samaranayake said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Tuesday there could be no "business as usual" with Pakistan after a clash last week along the line dividing the arch-rivals in Kashmir in which two Indian soldiers were killed and their bodies mutilated. Speaking to reporters at a ceremony to mark India's Army Day, Singh said that the killings on January 8 on the Line of Control, in which one of the soldiers was beheaded, were a "barbaric act".
