Islamabad- In a rare rebuke to Pakistan's powerful military, the top court on Wednesday prohibited them from engaging in political activities and directed spy agencies like the ISI to operate within the law. Delivering a landmark verdict on the 2017 Faizabad sit-in by the hardline Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and other smaller groups, a two-member Supreme Court bench also ordered the government to act against those propagating "hatred, extremism and terrorism". "We direct the federal and provincial governments to monitor those advocating hate, extremism and terrorism and prosecute the perpetrators in accordance with the law," the bench comprising Justice Qazi Faez Isa and Justice Mushir Alam ruled. The court directed all government agencies and departments, including those run by the army like spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to operate within the limits defined by the law. The bench ordered that members of the Armed Forces were prohibited from engaging in any kind of political activity, which includes supporting a party, faction or individual. "The government of Pakistan through the Ministry of Defence and the respective Chiefs of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force are directed to initiate action against the personnel under their command who are found to have violated their oath," the court said. Several experts were of the view that Prime Minister Imran Khan was supported by the country's powerful army in the last year's general election. Pakistan's powerful military has ruled the country through various coups for nearly half of the country's history since independence in 1947. The military plays an important role in the country's decision making. The apex court also outlawed religious edicts called fatwas that aimed to harm others. "A person issuing an edict or fatwa, which harms another or puts another in harm's way, must be criminally prosecuted under the Pakistan Penal Code, the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 and/or the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016," the court ruled. The court upheld that subject to reasonable restrictions imposed by law, citizens have the right to form and to be members of political parties. They can also assemble for peaceful protest. It said the right to assemble and protest is circumscribed only to the extent that it infringes on the fundamental rights of others, including their right to free movement and to hold and enjoy property. The court ordered that those protesters who obstruct people's right to use roads and damage or destroy property must be proceeded against in accordance with the law and held accountable. It initiated suo motu proceedings on November 21, 2017 after TLP blocked a main highway leading to Islamabad. During the 20-day long protest in 2017, daily life in Islamabad was disrupted when protesters belonging to the TLP, Tehreek-i-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah, the Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat and the Pakistan Sunni Tehreek occupied the Faizabad Interchange which connects Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the busiest roads in the twin cities....

 British Prime Minister Theresa May is preparing to delay the second parliament vote on her Brexit deal until the end of February, the Telegraph newspaper reported late on Wednesday. The Prime Minister's chief enforcer, or whip, indicated at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday that the vote would not be held next week as expected because May will not have renegotiated her deal in time, the report said, without citing its sources. Last month, British lawmakers rejected May's original deal that set out the terms by which Britain would exit the European Union. They voted to demand May seek changes to the treaty. But the EU has will make no new offer, European Council President Donald Tusk said on Wednesday. The vote on a new deal is now being planned for the week beginning February 25, just over a month before Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29, according to the report. May is set to travel to Brussels on Thursday to tell EU leaders they must accept legally binding changes to the Irish border arrangements of the divorce deal or face the prospect of a disorderly no-deal Brexit. London and Brussels are arguing over whether the Brexit deal clinched in November can be changed, raising the possibility of a delay to Brexit, a last-minute deal or a no-deal exit. On Tuesday, the Telegraph reported that ministers had discussed delaying Brexit by eight weeks....

Dhaka- Hollywood megastar Angelina Jolie on Tuesday said Myanmar must show “genuine commitment” to end violence against the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state and create conducive environment for their return to resolve the world’s worst refugee crisis. Over 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have taken refuge in Bangladesh after fleeing from Rakhine state in neighbouring Myanmar to evade atrocities, which the UN called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, following the military clampdown in August 2017. Jolie, the special envoy for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), visited various refugee camps on the outskirts of Cox’s Bazar and spoke to Rohingyas and listened to their horrifying stories. “I urge the Myanmar authorities to show the genuine commitment needed to end the cycle of violence and displacement and improve the condition of all communities in Rakhine state including the Rohingya,” the special envoy of the UN Refugee Agency told reporters. The 43-year-old Hollywood actor arrived here yesterday and visited a refugee camp in Teknaf near the Myanmar border. Jolie said any government’s “test and measure” was reflected in its treatment to the most vulnerable people of the society and how “they (governments) treat those who stand up for the vulnerable and speak out for the atrocities committed against them”. “The people responsible for human rights violations (in Myanmar) must be held accountable for their action,” she said after visiting the world’s largest refugee settlement ahead of a new UN appeal to raise nearly USD one billion for the Rohingyas in Bangladesh. Describing Bangladesh as a “generous country with rich culture and history but with limited resources”, she said it must not be left to tackle the crisis alone. She urged the international community to continue to provide the humanitarian aid necessary to meet the needs of the refuges as well as support the local community who generously hosted the huge numbers of displaced Rohingyas. “I am humbled and proud to stand with you (Rohingyas) today, you have every right to living security, to be free to practice your religion and to coexist with people of other faiths and ethnicities, you have every right not to be stateless and the way you have been treated (in Myanmar) shames us all,” she said. The special UNHCR envoy will conclude her Bangladesh tour tomorrow when she is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Foreign Minister A K Abdul Momen. During the meetings, Jolie was expected to discuss how the UN Refugee Agency could best support the current response led by the Bangladeshi government, along with the need for safe and sustainable solutions to their plights, an official said. The UN said it was set to launch of a new appeal for the humanitarian situation in Bangladesh - the 2019 Joint Response Plan - which seeks to raise some USD 920 million to continue meeting the basic needs of Rohingyas and the communities so generously hosting them. This is Jolie’s first visit to Bangladesh but she also met Rohingyas during a visit to Myanmar in July 2015 and in India in...

Kabul- President Ashraf Ghani is being pushed to the sidelines as the Taliban ignores his overtures for peace and negotiates instead with his friends, and enemies, over the future of Afghanistan. From Doha to Moscow, the insurgents are meeting an array of envoys with competing interests in Afghanistan, from the United States eager to withdraw their troops to political leaders in Kabul jostling for power. Experts say regional powers-including US foes Iran and Russia-are angling for an audience with the Taliban, who are already outlining their vision for Islamic rule once foreign troops leave. The elephant in the room is Ghani, whose US-backed administration has not been invited to the table, despite a failed year-long effort to spark a dialogue with the Taliban. “The sad irony is that Afghanistan’s government is in danger of getting written out of the script of its own peace process,” analyst Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, told AFP. Ghani’s allies in Washington insist Afghans should lead the peace process, and ostensibly the months-long push by the US to engage the Taliban has been aimed at convincing them to negotiate with the government in Kabul. Those efforts culminated in an unprecedented six days of talks between the US and the Taliban in Doha in January. The marathon negotiations ended with both sides touting “progress”-spurring Afghan fears the US could cut a deal with the militants to withdraw its forces before a lasting peace with Kabul is reached. “It’s a major snub because without the Americans, the government in Kabul cannot survive,” said Gilles Dorronsoro, a French researcher specialising in Afghanistan. A week later, the Taliban agreed to a rare sit-down in Russia with some of Ghani’s biggest political rivals. The talks in Moscow hosted by an Afghan diaspora group in Russia-which are separate from the US negotiations-start on Tuesday and would canvass the “end of occupation, enduring peace in homeland and establishment of an intra-Afghan Islamic system of governance”, the Taliban said. Frozen out for a second time, a furious Ghani vowed he would not be an idle spectator as his country’s future was debated abroad. “Even if I have one drop of blood in my body, I am not going to surrender to a temporary peace deal,” he railed in a speech on Sunday, as details of the Moscow conference broke. The frustration and sense of betrayal in Kabul is palpable. Amrullah Saleh, a Ghani ally, accused those Afghan leaders travelling to Moscow for the Taliban talks-including former president Hamid Karzai-of “begging to terrorists”. “A smile to the enemy is a blow to the national spirit,” Saleh said. The Taliban, who brutally ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, has always refused to break bread with Ghani and Kabul, who they view as US stooges. Instead, the insurgents are marching ahead with their diplomatic...

Abu Dhabi- Pope Francis, the first leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics to visit the Arabian Peninsula, will attend an interfaith meeting in the UAE on Monday as part of his outreach to Muslims. The pontiff arrived in a modest black Kia at Abu Dhabi’s presidential palace, where he was welcomed with a lavish military parade. Officers fired 21 shots in the air, while jets flew overhead leaving white and yellow trails—the colours of the Vatican City flag. The pope’s highly publicised 48-hour visit to the United Arab Emirates will also include an open-air mass on Tuesday for 135,000 of the Muslim country’s million Catholic residents, set to be the largest public gathering in the country’s history. The pope was expected to raise the issue of Yemen, devastated by a war in which the UAE is a key player, in talks with Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. Yemen is the scene of what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, triggered by the intervention of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their allies in a war between the government and Huthi rebels. More than 10 million Yemenis now risk imminent starvation. Sheikh Mohammed said on Monday that UAE rulers were “delighted” to meet the pontiff “in our homeland of tolerance”. “We discussed enhancing cooperation, consolidating dialogue, tolerance, human coexistence and important initiatives to achieve peace, stability and development for peoples and societies,” he tweeted. Pope Francis, who made history when he touched down in Abu Dhabi on Sunday night, said he came “as a brother, in order to write a page of dialogue together, and to travel paths of peace together”. To mark the occasion, the pontiff offered the crown prince a framed medallion of the meeting between St. Francis Assisi—the pope’s namesake—and the Sultan of Egypt Malek al-Kamel, in 1219. Sheikh Mohammed, in turn, offered a deed for the plot of land on which the first church in the UAE was built. The pope was set to meet with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb—imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s prestigious seat of learning—later Monday. Sheikh Ahmed greeted the pope personally with an embrace on Sunday night as the pontiff arrived in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi. The emirate’s crown prince was also at the airport to greet the pontiff, who has made strengthening ties between Christianity and Islam a cornerstone of his papacy. Hours before he flies back to Rome on Tuesday, the pope will lead a mass at a stadium in the capital. The UAE has dubbed 2019 its “year of tolerance”, but rights groups have criticised the country for its role in Yemen, where an estimated 10,000 people have been killed since the Saudi-led alliance including the UAE joined the government’s fight against the Huthis in 2015. Rights groups, which have slammed the UAE over its intolerance of dissent, have also urged the pope to raise the issue of Ahmed Mansoor, an Emirati activist serving a 10-year prison term. Before heading to the Gulf on Sunday, Pope Francis urged warring parties in Yemen to respect a truce agreement and allow deliveries of food aid. “The population is exhausted by the lengthy conflict and a great many children are suffering from hunger, but cannot access food depots,” he said. “The cry of these children and their parents rises up to God.” The UAE, which prides itself on its religious diversity in the Gulf, is a member of the US-led coalition battling the Islamic State group in both Syria and Iraq. The UAE has eight Catholic churches. Oman, Kuwait and Yemen each have four. Qatar and Bahrain have one each, while ultra-conservative Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia bans all non-Muslim places of...