Dawn
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Dawn - 05:54 Jul 22, 2025
MUMBAI: An Indian court acquitted on Monday 12 men previously convicted for a series of bomb blasts that ripped through packed commuter trains in Mumbai in 2006 that killed 187 people. The men were convicted in 2015 of murder, conspiracy, and waging war against the country over the attacks during the evening rush hour of July 11, 2006 that also injured more than 800 people. Five were sentenced to death, while the other seven were given life imprisonment. But, 10 years later, the Bombay High Court set aside a lower court’s verdict and acquitted the 12 men. Justices Anil Kilor and Shyam Chandak said in their judgement, the prosecution had “utterly failed to establish the offence beyond the reasonable doubt against the accused on each count”. The men were ordered to be released from jail “if they are not required to be detained in any other case”. The prosecution can appeal against the order in the Supreme Court. A total of seven blasts ripped through the trains after the bombs, packed into pressure cookers, wer... -
Dawn - 05:47 Jul 22, 2025
LONDON: The defamation trial between Brigadier (retd) Rashid Naseer and UK-based former army officer Adil Farooq Raja opened today at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. The proceedings, scheduled to continue until July 24, centre on a series of online allegations made by Mr Raja against the retired intelligence officer, which Brigadier Naseer claims are defamatory and untrue. Mr Raja, who runs a YouTube channel and has positioned himself as a whistleblower, is accused of making multiple defamatory statements on social media, including allegations of corruption, electoral interference, judicial manipulation, and human rights abuse, all of which Brigadier Naseer strongly denies. Brigadier Naseer appeared in person in the court, whereas Mr Raha appeared via video link. Mr Raja’s witness former accountability tsar Shehzad Akbar appeared in person, whereas Shaheen Sehbai and Syed Akbar Hussian appeared online from the US. Naseer told the UK High Court that he and his family had faced threats to their lives, ha... -
Dawn - 04:22 Jul 22, 2025
HONG KONG: China’s Premier Li Qiang announced construction had begun on what will be the world’s largest hydropower dam, on the eastern rim of the Tibetan Plateau, at an estimated cost of at least $170 billion, the official Xinhua news agency said. Commencement of the hydropower project, China’s most ambitious since the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, was seized by Chinese markets as proof of economic stimulus, sending stock prices and bond yields higher on Monday. Made up of five cascade hydropower stations with the capacity to produce 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, equal to the amount of electricity consumed by Britain last year, the dam will be located in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo. A section of the river tumbles 2,000 metres in a span of 50km, offering huge hydropower potential. India and Bangladesh have already raised concerns about its possible impact on the millions of people downstream, while NGOs warned of the risk to one of the richest and most diverse environments... -
Dawn - 19:00 Jul 21, 2025
Russia and Ukraine will hold new peace talks on Wednesday as a follow-up to two rounds in Istanbul that made little progress on ending their war, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced. “Today, I discussed with [Ukrainian Security Council chief] Rustem Umerov the preparations for the exchange and another meeting in Turkey with the Russian side. Umerov reported that the meeting is scheduled for Wednesday,” Zelensky said in his daily address on Monday. He added that more details would be released on Tuesday. The rival sides met in Istanbul on May 16 and June 2 amid US pressure to agree on a ceasefire. Despite the urging of US President Donald Trump, no breakthrough was made. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators have so far only agreed to hold prisoner exchanges. And Russia has since launched intense air attacks on Ukraine and seized more frontline territory. Russia has demanded that Ukraine give up four regions, on top of Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. The Kremlin also insists that Ukraine give up any idea of j... -
Dawn - 17:53 Jul 21, 2025
At least 20 people were killed and 171 injured as a Bangladesh air force training jet crashed into a college and school campus in the capital, Dhaka, on Monday after experiencing a technical problem shortly after take-off, according to a military statement. The F-7 BGI jet took off at 1:06pm (0706 GMT) from the Bangladesh Air Force base in Kurmitola, Dhaka, as part of a routine training mission, but encountered a mechanical failure, said the spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Sami Ud Dowla Chowdhury. “The pilot … made a valiant attempt to divert the aircraft away from densely populated areas. Despite his best efforts, the aircraft … crashed into a two-storey building belonging to Milestone School and College,” he said. The pilot was among those killed in the incident, the military said, adding that a committee had been formed to investigate its cause. The F-7 BGI is the final and most advanced variant in China’s Chengdu J-7/F-7 aircraft family, according to Janes Information Group. Bangladesh signed a contract ... -
Dawn - 17:49 Jul 21, 2025
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Monday stated that Pakistan is targeting using 60 per cent renewable energy by 2030 during his address to the General Debate of the Ministerial Segment of the UN High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) in New York, according to a statement from the Foreign Office (FO). Pakistan assumed the UNSC Presidency for the month of July 2025, making it the country’s eighth term on the Security Council as a non-permanent member. Islamabad began its current two-year term as a non-permanent member in January 2025 and will serve through the end of 2026. The presidency involves a focus on multilateralism, peaceful dispute resolution, and regional cooperation. According to the FO, Dar reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and outlined key policy measures driving growth, climate resilience and economic reform in his address. “The compounding effects of the pandemic, the food, fuel, and finance crises, as well as intensifying climate im... -
Dawn - 17:43 Jul 21, 2025
At least three tourists were killed, four others were injured and 15 went missing after floods triggered by heavy rain swept through Gilgit-Baltistan’s (GB) Babusar area in Diamer district on Monday. Monsoon rains, which fall across the region from June to September every year, continue to lash many parts of the country, prompting authorities to release an urban flooding warning for several cities. According to Faizullah Firaq, spokesperson for the GB government, three bodies were recovered from flood debris today, while four injured people were transported to a hospital in Chilas. “Fifteen other tourists have gone missing, as eight tourist vehicles were washed away in the raging flood,” Firaq said in a statement. “Medical assistance for the injured is ongoing, with one individual in critical condition.” The spokesperson added that communication systems were disrupted due to a fibre optic break, while thousands of tourists were stranded and communication with their homes had been cut off. “The government has ... -
Dawn - 17:07 Jul 21, 2025
An Air India Airbus A320 flight veered off the runway as it landed during heavy rain at the Mumbai International Airport on Monday, briefly shutting the runway and damaging the underside of one of the plane’s engines. All passengers and crew members have since disembarked, Air India said, without saying whether anyone was injured. Air India flight AI2744 had flown from Kochi in southern Kerala state to Mumbai. The Mumbai airport said in a statement that there were “minor damages reported to the airport’s primary runway” due to what it described as a “runway excursion”, and a secondary runway had been activated to ensure operational continuity. The aircraft has been grounded for checks, Air India added. A Times of India report, citing sources, said three tyres had burst on the aircraft after the landing. TV footage from NDTV and India Today showed the outer casing of the engine damaged, with some apparent cracks. In a separate incident reported by Indian media, an Air India flight from Delhi to Kolkata was abo... -
Dawn - 16:50 Jul 21, 2025
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday launched the Digital System for Licensing and Registration of Medical Devices, which will accelerate the registration process, state media Radio Pakistan reported. The registration of life-saving medical devices and diagnostic products in Pakistan became a critical issue earlier this year. The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Drap) was under scrutiny over “sluggish” and “highly inefficient” operations for the approval and registration of medical devices. According to the chairman of Healthcare Devices Association of Pakistan, the situation was causing heavy financial losses to importers and disrupting patient care in hospitals. Speaking at the launch ceremony in Islamabad, he said that the process will be completed in the shortest possible time, stating: “Now, decisions will be made swiftly and transparently.” The premier hoped that the applications for registration of medical services and equipment would be decided within 20 days in a transparent and merit-based ... -
Dawn - 16:00 Jul 21, 2025
At least 11 more suspects, including a tribal leader, were arrested on Monday for their alleged involvement in the killing of a man and a woman in Balochistan after a video of the murder went viral on social media, with the case now handed over to the Serious Crimes Investigation Wing (SCIW), according to the police. SCIW Superintendent of Police (SP) Syed Saboor Agha told Dawn.com, “Eleven people have been arrested, including a tribal leader who issued directives to shoot the couple, and all of them will appear before a judicial magistrate today.” The viral video showed a group of men leading a couple out of vehicles and into a desert before gunning them down with pistols and shooting the bodies. Political figures and activists said it was an ‘honour’ killing incident. On Sunday, Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti announced on X that he had directed the Balochistan Police to take immediate action, following which one suspect was apprehended. According to a first information report (FIR) — a copy of whi... -
Dawn - 15:52 Jul 21, 2025
The seat-adjustment arrangement between the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and opposition arrangement came through in the Senate elections in the province on Monday — with the treasury winning six and the opposition bagging five seats, according to unofficial results. The treasury and the joint opposition alliance had agreed on a seat-sharing formula under which six seats would go to the treasury, which has 92 members in the KP Assembly, and five seats to the opposition, which is 53-strong. On Sunday, it emerged that what initially shaped up to be a three-way contest — among PTI, PTI “dissidents” and opposition lawmakers — turned out to be almost a two-way match after the size of PTI’s “disgruntled” faction was effectively reduced to just one candidate. PTI’s Murad Saeed, Faisal Javed, Mirza Afridi and Noorul Haq Qadri were elected as senators on general seats, according to the unofficial results. Murad Saeed received 26 votes, Mirza Afridi and Faisal Javed both bagged 22, and Noor-ul-Haq Qadri 21. PTI’s Azam ... -
Dawn - 15:50 Jul 21, 2025
The government detained several traders on Monday after they protested at the Pakistan-China border against taxes and announced the closure of the dry port on the call of the Pak-China Trades Action Committee, a traders organisation in Gilgit-Baltistan. Traders have closed the Karakoram Highway at several places in Hunza and Nagar districts, due to which travellers and a large number of tourists from the two districts have been stranded. “Traders had blocked the Karakoram Highway by staging a sit-in at two places in the Hunza area, in which the Murtazaabad sit-in ended,” Hunza Deputy Commissioner (DC) Huzaifa Anwar told Dawn.com. “However, a sit-in is ongoing in the Sost area of the Pak-China border. Talks are being held with the traders there. It is likely that it will be cleared in two to three hours,” DC Anwar added. He said that three traders were detained at the Sost Dry Port after the announcement of the sit-in, one of whom has been released, but two are in custody. The DC said that the traders were not... -
Dawn - 15:17 Jul 21, 2025
United States President Donald Trump’s lunch meeting with Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir prompted a private diplomatic protest from India in a warning to Washington about risks to their bilateral ties while New Delhi is recalibrating relations with China as a hedge, officials and analysts said. The meeting and other tensions in the US-India relationship, after decades of flourishing ties, have cast a shadow in trade negotiations, they said, as Trump’s administration weighs tariffs against one of its major partners in the Indo-Pacific. India blames Pakistan, especially the military establishment, for supporting what it alleges is cross-border terrorism and has told the US it is sending the wrong signals by wooing Field Marshal Munir, three senior Indian government officials directly aware of the matter told Reuters. It has created a sore spot that will hamper relations going forward, they said. Pakistan has denied accusations that it supports militants who carried out an attack in Ind... -
Dawn - 14:07 Jul 21, 2025
Three terrorists belonging to a proscribed militant outfit were killed during an operation in Mastung district, Balochistan’s Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) said on Monday. Pakistan has witnessed an uptick in terror activities over the past year, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, after the proscribed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ended its ceasefire with the government in November 2022. According to a statement by the CTD spokesperson, “All three suspects, who were killed, were linked to Daesh and were planning future acts of terror.” Daesh refers to the banned militant Islamic State (IS) group, a globally proscribed terrorist organisation. The CTD conducted an operation during which a “high-value Daesh suspect”, who was involved in the abduction and murder of a minor, was being taken to identify a suspected hideout in the outskirts of Mastung’s Dasht area, the statement said. “The suspect had been under CTD custody and was involved in a brutal case of kidnapping for ransom, where the a... -
Dawn - 13:38 Jul 21, 2025
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday issued contempt notices to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other members of the federal cabinet for failing to submit a response in the case of Dr Aafia Siddiqui. Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a neuroscientist and educator, was convicted by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on charges of attempted murder of US personnel in Afghanistan and has been serving her sentence at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Carswell in the US since 2010. On July 12, the IHC expressed dissatisfaction over the federal government’s failure to submit a report in the case concerning Aafia’s release, health and repatriation, with Justice Sardar Ejaz Ishaq threatening to “summon the entire cabinet” if the report is not presented. Justice Ishaq presided over a hearing for the case today. The judge said in his court order that he had warned the additional attorney general while passing his previous ruling that further inaction on the part of the government would lead to... -
Dawn - 13:27 Jul 21, 2025
A cockpit recording of dialogue between the two pilots of the Air India flight that crashed last month supports the view that the captain cut the flow of fuel to the plane’s engines, said a source briefed on US officials’ early assessment of evidence. The first officer was at the controls of the Boeing 787 and asked the captain why he moved the fuel switches into a position that starved the engines of fuel and requested that he restore the fuel flow, the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity because the matter remains under investigation. The US assessment is not contained in a formal document, said the source, who emphasised the cause of the June 12 crash in Ahmedabad, India, that killed 260 people remains under investigation. There was no cockpit video recording definitively showing which pilot flipped the switches, but the weight of evidence from the conversation points to the captain, according to the early assessment. India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is leading the inv... -
Dawn - 13:04 Jul 21, 2025
Incarcerated PTI leader Yasmin Rashid’s health deteriorated again in jail on Monday after she was discharged from a hospital, according to her lawyer Rana Mudassar. Rashid has been in prison for almost a year now in connection with multiple cases against her regarding the events of May 9, 2023, when countrywide protests and riots broke out after the arrest of PTI founder Imran Khan. Last week, she was moved to a hospital in Lahore after her health deteriorated in Kot Lakhpat Jail. She was hospitalised in May and July of last year as well. Mudassar, Rashid’s advocate, told Dawn.com that Rashid had a severe infection in her stomach and was also having difficulty breathing. “Rashid was forcibly discharged from the hospital on Saturday. She underwent various tests, but she was not fully treated in light of the reports.” He added Rashid was “transferred to jail without informing her family and lawyers” upon being discharged. “Yasmin Rashid has a fundamental right to health and medical facilities,” Mudassar said. M... -
Dawn - 12:38 Jul 21, 2025
China’s Premier Li Qiang has announced that construction had begun on what would be the world’s largest hydropower dam on the eastern rim of the Tibetan Plateau, the country’s official Xinhua news agency reported — sending stock prices and bond yields higher on Monday. The commencement of the hydropower project at an estimated cost of at least $170 billion, China’s most ambitious since the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, was seized by Chinese markets as proof of economic stimulus. Made up of five cascade hydropower stations with the capacity to produce 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, equal to the amount of electricity consumed by Britain last year, the dam will be located in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo. A section of the river tumbles 2,000 metres in a span of 50km, offering huge hydropower potential. India and Bangladesh have already raised concerns about its possible impact on the millions of people downstream. China asserts that the project has undergone rigorous scientific ... -
Dawn - 11:37 Jul 21, 2025
The Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) on Monday announced stringent new measures to clamp down on “age fraud” in junior-level (Under-21) sports events, declaring such acts a serious violation of its code of ethics and governance in sports. “The Pakistan Sports Board has declared age fraud a violation under the Pakistan Code of Ethics and Governance in Sports and any such act is liable to sanctions,” read a notification issued by the PSB, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com. “Globally, age fraud in sports, especially in junior categories, poses a serious threat to fair competition, athlete safety, and the integrity of sporting structures,” the notification added. The PSB said that youth sports worldwide are classified on the basis of chronological age to ensure equal opportunity and fair play, adding, “It is suspected that athletes are participating in age-restricted competitions with falsified or inaccurate age documentation.” The PSB continued that all athletes under the age of 21 participating in junior ev... -
Dawn - 10:49 Jul 21, 2025
Two men were arrested on Monday for injuring three people, including two children, in a shooting incident in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Lower Dir, police said. Police spokesperson, Adnan Haider, told Dawn.com, “A man — along with his son — shot his brother-in-law over a monetary dispute in Mayar Bazaar.” Haider said that during the shooting, two children who were passing by were also injured. “The children were identified as residents of Shekhanu Kaly, Lower Dir,” he said. A press release by the district police said that the two suspects had been taken into custody, and a case had been registered against them for further investigation. “An investigation is underway so that all aspects of the incident can be fully exposed.” Haider said that the injured were moved to the Mayar Hospital for medical assistance and a first information report (FIR) was registered at the police station. “The Lower Dir DPO (district police officer) appreciated the timely and successful action of the police team and made it clear that the L...
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