Washington, Aug 27: Pakistan can no longer hide its poor governance under the cover of accusations that its eastern and western neighbours were behind the internal strife it was passing through. And, in order to alter its foreign policy fortunes, Islamabad needs much more than former president Pervez Musharraf’s departure from its political scene, says an analysis published in the Yale Global online on the prevailing politics in Pakistan.

According to it, Islamabad will finally have to recognise that cross-border belligerence, on its east (read Afghanistan) and west (read India), “cannot overcome its own inequality and poor governance”.

Islamabad, Aug 27: If sources in Pakistan Petroleum Ministry are to be believed, Balochistan has demanded its share in the transit fee for the part of the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline to be passed through the province.

The demand was made during a top-level meeting on August 18, the Daily Times quoted the sources as saying.

Baloch leaders have for long accused the successive federal government of adopting a step-motherly treatment in allocating development funds for the area.

London, Aug 27: Afghanistan is now more dangerous for British troops than Iraq has ever been, a new report has revealed.

It shows eight out of every 1,000 UK servicemen are being killed in NATO’s mission to tame the Taliban in the Afghan badlands. That is more than the coalition death rate of 7.5 per 1,000 personnel during the worst of the fighting in Iraq.

In newly pacified Baghdad and Basra, the rate is now down to less than three per 1,000, The Sun reported.

London, Aug 27: British and American activists arrested by the Chinese for protesting about Tibet during the Olympics have said that they were locked to their chairs for marathon interrogation sessions and deprived of sleep.

The activists, including eight Americans, a German and Amanda McKeown, a mother of two from Bristol, were sent home on Sunday during the games closing ceremony.

They said they were kept in cells and allowed to leave only for interrogations, which dragged on for up to 16 hours at a time, The Telegraph reported.

With lights shining on them, prisoners were locked into high-backed metal chairs with bars across their laps.

Almaty, Aug. 26: The five republics of Central Asia and Russia need to consider adopting a united approach to ward off external threats, particularly from the West, said a Kazakh professor of history.

Speaking to ANI on the sidelines of a Central Asian and Caucasian security cooperation moot, Professor Marat E. Shaikhutdinov, Director of the Institute of World Economy and Politics (IWEP), said that recent conflict between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia had left the leaderships and people of Central Asia quite concerned about Central Asian and Euro- Asian security.

Beijing - China again used rockets to disperse clouds so that rain would not dampen the fireworks at the Olympics closing ceremony, state media said Monday.