A Taliban judge was killed in an explosion in Nangarhar province located in eastern part of the country, the security authorities said Tuesday. The incident took place in Asmar district after an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) went off, leaving the group’s district shadow judge dead. The security sources further added that two other Taliban militants were killed while they were planting an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in Greshk district of southern Helmand province. The incident…
Posts published in “Day: July 7, 2016”
The recently appointed chairman of the High Peace Council (HPC), Pir Sayed Ahmad Gillani, appears to have major differences with his senior staff, six of them have resigned as a result. According to documents leaked to TOLOnews, Gillani has appointed 60 more guards for his house, adding a further financial burden of 18 million Afs on the government annually. This was one of the main reasons leading to the resignations of key managers of the…
PESHAWAR: Kidnapping of high-profile foreign nationals, particularly hailing from the United States and other western countries as well as Afghan dignitaries, has always proved a profitable deal for the Afghan Taliban to secure the release of captive colleagues or receive huge ransom. According to Taliban sources, so far, US soldier Bowe Bergdahl had proved the “most useful prey” to them in their campaign to kidnap important foreign nationals or military officials in war-ravaged Afghanistan. After…
There could not be a more telling backdrop to the visit of the Senator John McCain-led congressional delegation over the weekend. In Kabul, the terrorists had ambushed five police buses and killed dozens of cadets; in Istanbul, they bombed the airport complex killing and injuring scores of passengers; they butchered 20 foreigners in a Dhaka café and exploded a car bomb in Baghdad claiming lives of some 200 Eid shoppers. In this sea of chaos…
Decoding the visit of Senator John McCain to Pakistan and Afghanistan is fraught as the messages at either end of his shuffle between the two are capable of a variety of interpretations. He is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a powerful and influential post and he told Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah when he called to see him on July 4 that he has pressed the leaders of Pakistan (but presumably not the…
The MTR Corporation will question a mainland Chinese manufacturer about the quality of nine new high-speed trains and another 93 urban trains it purchased after it was revealed that 35 faulty subway trains produced by it were being secretly shipped back from Singapore to the mainland for repairs. The alarm bells were raised as online news platform FactWire reported that the mainland Chinese-made trains in Singapore had cracks in their bodies and key structural components.…
More than a year ago, Chinese authorities detained Phan Phan-Gillis, an American business consultant, for alleged espionage in a case that her husband and both governments have little about publicly. A panel of United Nations experts is now raising concerns about apparent human-rights violations during her detention. The panel considers Ms. Phan-Gillis to be in “arbitrary detention” because Chinese officials haven’t brought her before judicial authorities or given her access to legal counsel since detaining…
A Chinese court sentenced former Politburo member Ling Jihua to life in prison Monday for accepting more than $11.6 million in bribes. His downfall caps paramount leader Xi Jinping’s purge of political rivals under cover of an anticorruption campaign. Mr. Ling was consigliere to Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao. While the “tiger hunt” for top-level cadres may be over, that doesn’t mean Mr. Xi has consolidated power. China’s political struggle continues in other guises. This…
BEIJING — What do the subjects of these Chinese news reports have in common? ■ The decay of moral standards in villages in northeastern China. ■ Arson on a bus in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. ■ A girl from Shanghai flees from a Lunar New Year dinner at her boyfriend’s family home in the south because of appalling living conditions. The powerful Cyberspace Administration of China, whose mission is to censor online information…
In the biggest case of its kind this year, Ling Jihua, the one-time high-flying aide to former president Hu Jintao, was exposed as part of a corrupt web of businessmen and politicians reaching across the nation’s north, east and southeast. Yet there was no mention of the web extending into coal-rich Shanxi, where Ling spent the first 23 years of his life. Ling, 59, was sentenced to life in prison for taking more than 77…
The Second China Military and Civilian Integration Expo opened on Monday in Beijing featuring the most recent developments in virtual reality (VR) and unmanned technology, which experts said will be used more extensively in military and civilian applications. More than 200 Chinese State-owned and private companies participated in the three-day expo. Yunzhou Tech Corporation displayed the unmanned surveying boat ME300, which has been used to survey hydrological information and map islands in the sea. A…