China-Pakistan Economic Corridor: A Case Study Of Internal Security Challenge Faced by Pakistan

The strongest and most crucial strategic and economic links in the south Asian region are the friendships between Pakistan and China. China and Pakistan assert that the people who live on either side of the Himalayas have interacted with one another in a trustworthy and sincere manner from ancient times. Chinese investment in the CPEC represents the greatest sum (62 billion dollars) ever between two friendly nations. China and Pakistan are dealing with numerous internal and external security challenges as a result of their strong friendship and significant investment in this project. Both nations, such as India and Afghanistan, are posing security problems to Pakistan, which has several security issues. The USA, India, the UK, and Israel are also causing strife and tension in Pakistan. These nations are also causing internal problems by sponsoring terrorist organizations like the Taliban and ISIS as well as nationalist organizations like the Baloch, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and Sipah Muhammad. The challenges to Pakistan's internal security are discussed in this study.

Chemical Composition and Biological Antioxidant and Antimicrobial Activities of Essential Oils from Selected Plants of Pothohar Plateau

Essential oils of different medicinal and aromatic plants have been potential candidates as source of food preservation, pharmaceuticals, alternative medicines and natural therapies in addition to their pharmacological properties like hepatoprotective, carminative, anticarcinogenic and antiviral effects. In present study some selected plants from Pothohar plateau were collected and subjected to essential oil extraction by hydrodistillation followed by assessment of their physical parameters like color, specific gravity, % yield etc and their biological activities including antioxidant, antimicrobial and cytotoxic attributes. The oils were then characterized by using GC and GC-MS techniques to find the chemical constituents. Overall the examined oils exhibited good antioxidant and antimicrobial behavior. To the best of our knowledge the essential oil of Parthenium hysterophorus has never been reported with regard to its composition as well as biological activities before present study. In general, Trachyspermum ammi and Cuminum cyminum essential oils showed significant activity in most of the assays performed in this study. Both showed remarkable potential for scavenging of DPPH free radical with IC50 values 2.61and 16.86 μg/mL, respectively and inhibited linoleic acid by 80.73 and 79.36% respectively. For T. ammi most sensitive bacterium was Streptococcus mutans (Inhibition zone=19.7mm; MIC=1.41 mg/mL) and fungus was Ganoderma lucidum (Inhibition zone=17.0mm; MIC=1.72 mg/mL) while for C. cyminum most sensitive bacterium was Bacillus subtilis (Inhibition zone=27.3mm; MIC=1.10 mg/mL) and fungus was Ganoderma lucidum (Inhibition zone=27.0mm; MIC=1.40 mg/mL). Both T. ammi and C. cyminum exhibited minimum hemolysis of human erythrocytes i.e. 7.98 and 4.51% respectively at 0.5 mg/mL concentration. GC-MS analysis revealed that thymol (37.75%) was the major component of T. ammi essential oil while cumaldehyde (24.10%) in C. cyminum essential oil. All the experiments were done in triplicate and mean ± S.D. was calculated.