Breaking News - Pakistan sees friends’ $5 billion pledge as political boon

LAHORE: According to breaking news, Pakistanis see the $5 billion aid pledges made by donor countries in a conference in Tokyo as “a development [that] has as much political as economic significance in bolstering a beleaguered civilian government”, the Washington Times reported.

Ashfaq Hassan Khan, a former chief economic adviser in Pakistan, told the newspaper that the funds were a “significant achievement”.

“Firstly, Pakistan got $5.28 billion instead of $4.25 billion, which it asked for from the friends of Pakistan... Secondly, the pledges have come as a big message from the world that it is genuinely interested in Pakistan’s stability and progress and it is willing to cooperate,” he told the Washington Times. “I think the announcement of assistance to Pakistan is more of a political importance than it is of economic significance.”

The newspaper said the pledges “reflect international concern about expanding Taliban influence in Pakistan. Militants exploiting economic discontent and unemployment have moved in recent months far beyond Tribal Areas on the border with Afghanistan to Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous state”.

In approving new aid at the Tokyo conference, “the participants... noted concern about the security situation in Pakistan and the impact on development, the investment climate and growth”, co-chairs Japan and the World Bank said in a statement.

“Aid is to be targeted at health, education, governance and building democracy,” the Washington Times said. “Pakistan is also seeking to build hydroelectric dams, roads and other projects aimed at improving security along the Afghan border.”

Zafar Moeen Nasir, chief economic researcher at the state-run Pakistan Institute of Developmental Economics in Islamabad, told the Washington Times the new aid would “help compensate Pakistan for $35 billion he said had been lost due to the country’s participation in the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda”.

“I think the pledges at Tokyo are indications that US and other friends of Pakistan want Pakistan to be a stable country,” he told the newspaper.

However, Abdul Mateen, a former Pakistani diplomat at the United Nations, said he was “not optimistic that the money would solve Pakistan’s fundamental economic problems”.

“Aid and assistance is only good if it is spent productively, as it generates resources, skills, learning and so on,” he said. “Unless it leads to development, the aid or loan is dysfunctional. The pledges made at Tokyo for Pakistan would give the country relief and even growth but would not insure development, which is badly required.”

Political and security analyst Hassan Askari Rizvi welcomed the emphasis on building the capacity of Pakistani institutions in the new US administration’s reviewed policy for the region. “The American administration is trying to complement the use of force with socioeconomic diplomacy,” he told the Washington Times.

The Obama strategy “is also better than past policies because it is the product of more consultation with Pakistanis at both official and non-official levels”, the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Shafqat Mahmood, a former senator, said the motive remains “securing the American homeland as well as US forces in South Asia and the Middle East from Muslim extremist attacks. Pakistan will get assistance only if it implements US aims”, he said. “It is not radically different strategy as may be perceived,” he told the Washington Times. “Rather, its focus is quite narrow. It means Americans think foreign elements are there and Pakistan must ensure that they should not be a threat to US interests in the region.”

Tahir Amin, chairman of the International Relations Department of Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, agreed. The new policy “is still focused on military force and drone attacks,” he told the newspaper. “The most sad aspect of the Obama strategy is that it is focused on American interests without taking into consideration that of Pakistan. It seems the strategy calls for imposing an American mission on Pakistan while it has put the Kashmir issue on the back burner.”

Amin said the fallout of the new strategy would be “negative for both the US and Pakistan”.

“Intending or otherwise, the implementation of Obama strategy would push Pakistan towards chaos as acts of terrorism would proliferate in the length and breadth of the country, and this has very much started happening. For Americans, it would cultivate far deeper antagonistic feelings in Pakistan,” he told the Washington Times.

Retired Lt Gen Talat Masood, a security analyst, said the most important aspect of the shift is that “Pakistan has been looked at as part of a much greater zone of conflict, not as an individual issue”. He said the strategy “also shows more sensitivity to Pakistani concerns over US infringement on its sovereignty”, according to the breaking news.

Breaking news - Mel Gibson Costly Divorce

"It's a billion-dollar divorce!" says celebrity divorce lawyer Raoul Felder.

Yesterday's headlines that Mel Gibson, 53 and his wife Robyn Moore, also 53, were filing for divorce after 28 years of marriage has now been eclipsed by a handful of thornier follow-up questions. Namely, how much will the split cost the A-lister? How will it affect his reputation? Will it jeopardize the projects he has in development? And perhaps, most tantalizing of all, will it be the costliest celebrity divorce ever?

In short, the answers are: lots, remains to be seen, not likely, and almost certainly yes.

With no indication that the couple had hammered out a prenuptial agreement before their 1980 wedding, Gibson's low-profile wife is now legally entitled to half of everything he's earned over their nearly-three decades together, according to Felder, which could translate into roughly $500 million.

People.com estimates Gibson's fortune to be in the neighborhood of $1 billion (The Passion of the Christ, a labor of love project he directed and produced, pulled in $600 million at the box office, alone), which puts the split on track to be the richest celebrity divorce ever. Other celeb splits with lots of zeroes include Michael Jordan paying $168 million in his 2006 divorce from his wife Juanita, Steven Spielberg's shelling out $100 million in his 1989 split from actress Amy Irving, and Sir Paul McCartney's $48.6 million 2008 settlement with Heather Mills.

Obviously, half of a billion is still a nice chunk of change to have left in your bank account. So don't cry for Gibson yet. The stickier issue, however, may be whether the split will tarnish Gibson's reputation as a devoted father (Gibson and Moore have seven kids ranging in age from 9 to 28) and a devout Christian -- an image already damaged by his 2006 arrest for drunken driving and the bizarre tirade that accompanied it.

"If he was Matthew Broderick or Tom Hanks, the answer would be yes," says Felder. "But the public has been desensitized already to this fellow, so I don't think it's going to affect him at all."

Felder doesn't expect the divorce to have much effect on Gibson's upcoming projects, beyond the fact that his wife will have to be bought out for her share in them. And that could get complicated since he has more than a dozen films in various stages of development, ranging from Mad Max 4 to an adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. "This divorce could be very difficult because he's one of the few stars who acquires properties and gets involved with them on different levels, like directing and producing," says Felder. "These are very hard to value, and that makes it not a simple divorce."

Still, Felder doesn't expect that the couple will turn their split into a drawn-out battle. "If [Moore] is like any other wife, she'll want her money now. She doesn't want to be a partner in a movie that may or may not be made 10 years from now. I think she'd want to be paid up front. Until then, I'd try to keep it quiet. Because one of the problems with these divorces is, if you unleash the dogs of war, you can never put them back in the bottle again, to mix metaphors. But who knows, it may wind up being World War III -- you can't tell."