Opposition urges government to stop monologue, start dialogue with protesting farmers

The Opposition parties on Thursday tore into the government in the Indian Parliament for its handling of the ongoing farmers' protests against three new contentious farm laws. Lawmakers said ministers should end monologue and start dialogue, and slammed the government for heavy barricading with barbed wires and spikes to block protesting farmers from entering into the national capital. The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf legislator Farrukh Habib has claimed that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's PML-N party conceded before the scrutiny committee of the Election Commission that it had received funds from Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The Scrutiny Committee had summoned PML-N and PPP leaders in the foreign funding case. Locals in the illegally-occupied region of Pakistan-administered Kashmir have expressed anger over rising inflation, owing to Islamabad's incompetent policies. They blamed the economic losses faced by Pakistan due to policy paralysis are compensated from regions under its illegal control. The Pentagon has reiterated that any withdrawal from Afghanistan will be conditions-based and that no decision has been made in this regard yet. Pentagon’s spokesman John Kirby in a question about a possible increase in the number of US forces in Afghanistan on Wednesday said that the US Defense Secretary is assessing all options, but said that the best solution to the conflict in Afghanistan is a political settlement of the conflict.