Islamabad - Pakistan was rescheduling flights, blocking-off luxury hotels, and -- according to one report Friday -- collecting 3,500 pigeons and colourful balloons to release during a welcome ceremony for Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Islamabad - Pakistani authorities Wednesday vowed to carry out a "massive" crackdown targeting hate speech and extremism on social media, as a minister boasted arrests have already been made.

Islamabad - Thirty years after Iran called for the killing of Salman Rushdie, the British novelist remains a figure of hate for extremists across the Muslim world, and though the level of outrage has dropped, the issue of blasphemy is as incendiary as ever.

Islamabad - One of Pakistan's leading women's rights activists has been released from police custody, she told AFP Thursday, after Amnesty International said she and others had been detained "arbitrarily".

Islamabad - Five policemen raise their guns and fire dozens of times into a parked car at point-blank range in Pakistan. Then they reach inside, around the bodies of the dead, to pull out three crying children.

Islamabad - Politicians have been assassinated, European countries threatened with nuclear annihilation and students lynched, all in the name of combating blasphemy in Pakistan, where the legal punishment for insulting the Prophet Mohammed is death.

Islamabad - Asia Bibi, the Christian woman at the centre of a blasphemy row which has ignited violent protests, been linked to two assassinations and spotlighted religious extremism in Pakistan, is expected to leave the country after its top court Tuesday upheld h...

Islamabad - The fate of a Christian woman enmeshed in a years-long blasphemy row could finally be decided Tuesday, when Pakistan's Supreme Court will decide whether to allow an appeal against its decision to acquit Asia Bibi.

Islamabad - Pakistan's Supreme Court will decide on January 29 whether to allow an appeal against its acquittal of a Christian woman at the centre of a blasphemy row, a lawyer involved in the case said Thursday.

Islamabad - Leading US Senator Lindsey Graham vowed Sunday to urge President Donald Trump to meet Imran Khan to boost Washington's Afghanistan peace efforts, calling the Pakistani prime minister an "agent of change".

Peshawar - Shahzad Alam has proposed marriage to several women and been rejected each time for the same reason, he says: their discovery that he is not the Pakistani shoe shop owner they thought he was, but an Afghan refugee.

Islamabad - Freelance reporter Asad Hashim was named as winner of the 2018 Agence France-Presse Kate Webb Prize on Monday for his coverage of the plight of ethnic Pashtuns and blasphemy issues in his native Pakistan.

Islamabad - Pakistan's national flag carrier has fired 50 staffers including three pilots for holding fake high school degrees, an airline official said Monday, in the latest embarrassing mishap to hit the troubled airline.

Quetta - A Pakistani separatist wanted over an attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi in November has been killed in a suicide blast in Afghanistan, his group has confirmed.

Islamabad - Former Pakistani leader Nawaz Sharif was sentenced to seven years in prison for corruption Monday, state media reported, the latest conviction in a series of allegations which saw him ousted from power last year.

Islamabad - Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi will celebrate Christmas under guard, despite being cleared of the blasphemy charges that kept her in jail since 2010.

Islamabad - Pakistan on Saturday welcomed President Donald Trump's decision to slash US troop numbers in Afghanistan, calling it a step towards peace in the war-torn nation.

Islamabad - British Airways will resume flights to Pakistan next summer, the carrier announced Tuesday, in a major vote of confidence from a Western airline a decade after suspending operations due to security fears.

Islamabad - Talks aimed at ending the Afghan conflict were held Monday in the United Arab Emirates, the Pakistan government said, with US and Taliban representatives believed to be in attendance.

- At the Tanjai Cheena school in northwest Pakistan students squeeze into makeshift classrooms where plastic tarps serve as walls and electricity is sparse, as a surging population overstretches the country's fragile education system.