“Pakistan” on The Daily Caller

Pakistani fishermen needed at least five cranes to reel in a 40-foot-long whale shark from the waters at a harbor in the port city of Karachi on Tuesday, according to the Express Tribune newspaper. (more)

Diplomats and foreign officials have always handled official American relations in Pakistan. Unofficially, however, they have been handled by Khan Afsar, bartender for the Khyber Club. (more)

When a YouTube video featuring Marines urinating on Taliban corpses surfaced earlier this month, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta responded quickly and clearly: “I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.” The directness contrasted with the more indefinite conclusion of an eight-month Air Force investigation into the motive of an Afghan pilot who killed eight of his U.S. Air Force mentors in a suicidal shooting spree at Kabul International Airport (KIA) last April. The report found that shooter Ahmad Gul — who spent 18 months at a fundamentalist mosque in Pakistan before recently returning to Afghanistan because he “wanted to kill Americans” — prayed all night before the attack at his pro-Pakistan Kabul mosque and shouted in between shots for “good Muslims [to] please stay away.” Yet even with the writing seemingly on the wall — indeed, he wrote “Allah is one” on a wall with his blood and died of his self-inflicted wounds chanting “Allah, Allah” — the report found no conclusive motive. It did, however, partially rule out one: “none of the co-workers believed subject was a religious radical.” (more)

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the killing of a Voice of America journalist in Pakistan Wednesday, The New York Times reported. (more)

Microsoft’s youngest professional has died, aged 16. (more)

BANNU, Pakistan (AP) — An American drone strike killed four Islamist militants in Pakistan, the first such attack since errant U.S airstrikes in November killed two dozen Pakistan troops and pushed strained ties between the two nations close to collapse, Pakistani intelligence officials said Wednesday. (more)

Pervez Musharraf, who resigned as Pakistan’s president in 2008, will be arrested on arrival in the country later this month, the Press Trust of India reported, citing a prosecutor. (more)

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s top military commander has issued orders to the country’s troops to return fire should they come under attack again from U.S.-led coalition forces, a move that’s likely to increase tensions after an American-led air raid on two border outposts last week killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. (more)

Afghan troops who came under fire while operating near the Pakistan border called in the NATO airstrikes that allegedly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at two posts along the frontier, Afghan officials said Sunday. (more)

Minnesota Repubican Rep. Michele Bachmann may find herself in hot water for information she provided during Tuesday evening’s national security-focused Republican primary debate. (more)

U.S. Army Major General Peter Fuller was relieved of his command in Afghanistan earlier this month because, when asked about Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s recent hand-over-heart vow that “if there is war between Pakistan and America, we will stand by Pakistan,” he called Karzai “erratic” and asked, “Why don’t you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You’ve got to be kidding me.” But what was more surprising than MG Fuller’s reaction — which, if one considers the 1,800 Americans killed protecting Afghanistan, was restrained — was that of a “Western diplomat” who, wishing to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of his statement, observed, “The phraseology could have been better.” In other words, weeks after Joint Chiefs Chairman (Ret.) Michael Mullen’s testimony specifically confirming Pakistani intelligence’s support of the Taliban’s September attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul, which killed 25 people, six months after the U.S. hunt-down of Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani Army town of Abbottabad, and 10 years into a war against a Pakistan-fueled insurgency, criticizing the grammar of a pro-Pakistan statement remains one step too far outside the shade for the coalition of the willing. (more)

As of this writing, text messages containing the words “poop,” “damn,” “athlete’s foot,” “monkey crotch” and “flogging the dolphin” are still making it over the airwaves in Pakistan. The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) recently moved to ban the shameless trafficking in profanity, but they appear to have run into enforcement difficulties and postponed the measure. (more)

Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani knocked media coverage of U.S.-Pakistani relations Wednesday and said his country seeks to become independent of American aid. (more)

Even The New York Times is shocked. Here’s how the story begins: (more)

Afghanistan to back Pakistan if wars with US: Karzai (more)

ISLAMABAD — A Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA track Osama bin Laden before U.S. special forces killed the terrorist leader should be charged with treason, the official Pakistani inquiry into bin Laden’s presence in the country recommended Thursday. (more)

Angelina Jolie, a current United Nations goodwill ambassador to the High Commissioner for Refugees, has accepted an expanded position of Special Representative on the Afghan refugee situation, the UN announced Tuesday in Geneva, Switzerland. (more)

The attention of the world has been riveted to Israel, Palestine and Iran in light of the Palestinians’ decision to seek U.N. recognition and Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York City to once again rub America’s nose in his war-mongering, Holocaust denials and 9/11 conspiracy theories. (more)

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) predicted the lower chamber would withhold all U.S. assistance to Pakistan at some point. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top al-Qaida operative was killed earlier this week in Pakistan’s tribal areas, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Thursday. The death landed another blow against the besieged terrorist network. (more)