15 March 2011

"It is tough enough living with a disability in the Pakistani city of Karachi, but being targeted by traffickers has added a new challenge: Hundreds of people with disabilities are being trafficked to neighbouring countries to beg there, according to the police. Many come from the southern province of Sindh, and are destined for Iran. In the past few months, said Khadim Hussain Rind, a district police officer in the Khairpur District of Sindh, 200-300...

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15 March 2011

"A Roman Catholic cardinal has accused the UK government of operating an 'anti-Christian foreign policy'. Cardinal Keith O'Brien has attacked plans to increase aid to Pakistan to more than £445m, without any commitment to religious freedom for Christians. Speaking in Glasgow, Cardinal O'Brien called on Foreign Secretary William Hague to seek human rights guarantees. The Foreign Office said it raised concerns and lobbied governments about persecution...

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15 March 2011

"The RCMP have charged two Canadians with terrorism-related offences in connection to a 2009 plot to blow up packed subway cars in New York. The RCMP allege that the al-Qaeda terrorists behind the plot were trained by a University of Manitoba student who has disappeared from Canada. Ferid Imam vanished from Winnipeg in 2007 and is now suspected of being in the lawless mountains of northwestern Pakistan. He is now being sought on terrorist-training...

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15 March 2011

"An Afghan civilian was killed over the weekend by the military shooting into a residential area in Goshta, in the eastern part of Nangarhar province on the Pakistani border. Despite the current furor over civilian casualties, neither the Afghan government, nor Afghan president Hamid Karzai - who is quite vocal in criticizing civilian casualties caused by NATO - nor the international media are drawing much attention to this incident. Afghan officials...

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