Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi can certainly be put in the ranks of politicians and leaders with a penchant for making absurd remarks – a group that includes Bush Jr and our very own President Zardari and his predecessor Musharraf, to cite just the tip of the iceberg. Given how the whole international community has failed to deliver on flood aid because of the lack of credibility of the government, it was incredible to hear Qureshi state his “horror” over the fact that the issue of transparent use of aid …

The response to UN appeal for rescue and relief operation in flood-affected areas of Pakistan rose dramatically to over 800 million dollars by Friday and more pledges were expected to come in, according to Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.
Over the last two days of the UN General Assembly’s special session on Pakistan, the funding in response to a UN appeal for $460 million doubled.
The foreign minister, who had come to New York to attend the special United Nations General Assembly session on Pakistan’s floods, noted that the ‘tremendous response’ to …

The United Nations is to pull its non-essential foreign staff out of Afghanistan after a deadly Taliban attack on a guesthouse for UN workers that killed 5 UN workers. The UN has about 5,600 staff in Afghanistan, about 80 percent of whom are Afghans, and the relocations will affect around 12 percent of total deployment.
United Nations has total of 1100 foreigners in Afghanistan and about 600 expatriate staff will be temporarily relocated either within Afghanistan or abroad.
UN spokesman Dan McNorton said:
Around 600 non-Afghan staff will be temporarily relocated. The …

Celebrity couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt has donated $1,000,000  to a United Nation’s refugee agency to help Pakistanis displaced by fighting between pakistani army and Taliban militants. Angelina Jolie has visited Pakistan three times to witness United Nations relief operations since becoming a ‘goodwill ambassador’ for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in 2001.
Most Pakistanis forced from their homes are living in government buildings or with host families, but more than 260,000 of them are in camps run by UNHCR.

Miguel D’escoto Brockmann, the president of the UN General Assembly, termed Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza was a “monstrosity” and a marked failure for the United Nations.
He said:
“I think it’s a monstrosity; there’s no other way to name it. Once again, the world is watching in dismay the dysfunctionality of the Security Council.”
The Security Council once again failed to reach an agreement as US once agained blocked any consensus during the late-night emergency meeting. US blames Hamas for all the violance in Gaza stating Hamas must stop smuggling arms into …