New York, Aug 6 : Dr Aafia Siddique, the Pakistani-American neuroscientist and mother of three who has been accused of Al-Qaeda links and shooting at US officers in Afghanistan, has declined all the US allegations levelled against her, including that she tried to kill US agents and military officers, in a New York court here today.

Wearing a maroon headscarf, she talked very softly and was asked by the judge to speak up.

Down with the weakness and having a bullet wound in her leg she refused to admit allegations levelled against her by nodding her head slowly, reported The News.

Rawalpindi, Aug 6 : The hearing into the murder case of former premier Benazir Bhutto was yesterday adjourned till September 6.

The Rawalpindi Police submitted a separate challan to the court against one of the accused Atizaz Shah who was declared juvenile in a medical report and arrested for his alleged involvement in assassination of former the premier.

Lahore, Aug 6 : Amid the ongoing row over ISI’s role, or influence, in Pakistan’s governance, senior PPP leader Munir Ahmed Khan has reportedly said that intelligence agencies should not have any “political role” since their basic objective was to protect the country against terrorism.

Khan said that the current government was a democratic one and intelligence agencies had no political role except fulfilling their basic objective, which was to eliminate terrorism from the country, reported the Daily Times.

He said that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s visit to the US, which was coincided with ISI row, had been very successful, and it would help Pakistan in getting 15 billion dollars in aid.

London, Aug 6 : A Pakistan national and taxi-driver by profession allegedly used his deceased daughter’s passport to try and smuggle a girl orphaned in the 2005 earthquake into the UK.

After being held guilty, he was given a four-month prison sentence and suspended as a taxi driver for 18 months, besides being ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work.

Identified as Saftain Mahmood, the taxi driver applied for a passport using his deceased daughter Farah’s details, but enclosed pictures of the other child, reported the Daily Times.

Farah had died of a brain haemorrhage eight years ago. Her father attempted to deceive the authorities after a recent visit to Pakistan to help victims of the 2005 earthquake.

Islamabad - Pakistani Army aviators on Wednesday airlifted an Italian climber left stranded on K2, the world's second-highest mountain, by an ice fall last week, officials said.

Suffering from frostbite, Marco Confortola took five days to descend to an advance base camp at an altitude of 5,800 metres, but efforts to rescue him on Tuesday were hampered by foggy conditions.

"Confortola has been rescued by a military helicopter in the morning (on Wednesday)," Italian embassy spokesman Sergio Oddo told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Oddo said the mountaineer was being flown to the town of Skardu where he would undergo a medical check-up and later depart for Islamabad by "first available flight."

Karachi, Aug 6 : Dr Fauzia Siddiqui, the sister of Dr Aafia Siddiqui who was reportedly arrested in Afghanistan on terror charges and extradited to the US this earlier week, has alleged that the latter was detained and tortured for five years in Afghanistan, thereby contradicting the US claims that she was arrested only a few weeks ago.

Besides Dr Fauzia, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has also levelled the same allegation.

Accompanied by HRCP’s Iqbal Haider, Dr Fauzia maintained that her sister was innocent and that no charges had been proven against her since she was picked up in 
2003 from Karachi with her three children.