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Dawn - 16:50 Jul 27, 2025
Donkey meat was seized on Sunday in Islamabad’s Tarnol area by the Islamabad Food Authority, according to a press release by the authority. “On the tip of the AFSO [assistant food safety officer] team, a cafe was raided, and 25 maunds of donkey meat were recovered,” the statement said. A case has been registered against a foreign national present at the scene, according to the police. The case was registered under Sections 11 (Selling food against the law), 12 (Substandard or misbranded food), 13 (Unsafe food) and 14 (Unhygienic or unsanitary place for food) of the Islamabad Capital Territory Food Safety Act, 2021. As per the first information report (FIR), 1,000 kilogrammes of donkey meat was found at the scene. “Investigations are underway regarding the supply of donkey meat,” a police spokesperson said in the statement. Local people involved in the supply of donkey meat are being traced. “The police are investigating the matter from various angles,” the spokesperson added. He added that food samples were b... -
Dawn - 14:47 Jul 27, 2025
Israel said on Sunday it would halt military operations for 10 hours a day in parts of Gaza and allow new aid corridors as Jordan and the United Arab Emirates airdropped aid to the enclave, where images of starving Palestinians have alarmed the world. Israel has been facing growing international criticism over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with Amnesty International already declaring its actions in Gaza as a “genocide”, which Tel Aviv rejects. Indirect ceasefire talks in Doha between Israel and Hamas have broken off with no deal in sight. Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza on March 2 after ceasefire talks broke down. In late May, it began allowing a small trickle of aid to resume, amid warnings of a wave of starvation. Military activity will stop from 10am to 8pm (12pm to 10pm PKT) until further notice in Al-Mawasi, a designated humanitarian area along the coast, in central Deir al-Balah and in Gaza City, to the north. The military said designated secure routes for convoys delivering food and medicine... -
Dawn - 14:32 Jul 27, 2025
Ukrainian drones targeted St Petersburg on Sunday, Russian authorities said, forcing the airport to close for five hours as Russian President Vladimir Putin marked the country’s Navy Day in the city, despite the earlier cancellation of its naval parade due to security concerns. St Petersburg usually holds a large-scale, televised navy parade on Navy Day, which features a flotilla of warships and military vessels sailing down the Neva River and is attended by Putin. Last year, Russia suspected a Ukrainian plan to attack the city’s parade, according to state television. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Sunday that this year’s parade had been cancelled for security reasons, following first reports of its cancellation in early July. Putin arrived at the city’s historic naval headquarters on Sunday by a patrol speed boat, from where he followed drills involving more than 150 vessels and 15,000 military personnel in the Pacific and Arctic Oceans and Baltic and Caspian Seas. “Today we are marking this ho... -
Dawn - 13:47 Jul 27, 2025
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Sunday announced that Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates have agreed on multiple visa waivers for diplomatic and official Pakistani passports, and vice versa. Pakistan and the UAE share close diplomatic, economic, and cultural ties. The UAE is one of Pakistan’s largest trading partners in the Middle East and a major source of remittances, with a large Pakistani expatriate population living and working there. In a post on X, Dar announced the agreement with the UAE’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, hailing the decision between “our two brotherly countries”. “I have been informed by the UAE authorities that the visa waiver for diplomatic and official Pakistani passports entering the United Arab Emirates has been activated, effective July 25, 2025, at all UAE airports,” the foreign minister wrote. “We agreed [on] mutual visa waivers on diplomatic and official passports between our two brotherly countries an... -
Dawn - 13:39 Jul 27, 2025
Pakistan women’s cricket captain Fatima Sana on Sunday said that her team will look to continue their winning momentum on the upcoming Ireland tour. On Wednesday, the Pakistan Cricket Board named the squads, with Fatima continuing to lead the team, as the national selection committee named a 15-member squad for the forthcoming T20 International series in Ireland. The three-match T20 series against Ireland will be played at the Clontarf Cricket Club in Dublin from August 6 to 10. In their last encounter in April, Pakistan women defeated Ireland by 38 runs in a low-scoring thriller to win the opening One-Day International (ODI) encounter of the ICC Women’s World Cup 2025 Qualifiers. Led by Fatima, Pakistan subsequently qualified for the World Cup after winning the tournament unbeaten, which was held in Lahore earlier this year Responding to a question by Dawn.com at the National Stadium in Karachi, Fatima said, “Despite the difference in conditions, batters are confident and since our Qualifiers went well, we a... -
Dawn - 13:27 Jul 27, 2025
Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) activists marked the 12th day of their sit-in in Islamabad on Sunday, demanding the release of their jailed leaders, as protesters alleged police were asking to see their Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs). BYC, a Baloch advocacy group active since 2018, has been campaigning against enforced disappearances. Its chief Dr Mahrang Baloch and other activists were arrested on March 22 for allegedly attacking Quetta Civil Hospital and inciting violence, a day after police cracked down on their protest. Earlier this month, an anti-terrorism court remanded them into 15-day police custody. The Islamabad sit-in began on July 16, with BYC leaders and members demanding the release of its activists. Political leaders, journalists and activists have joined the sit-in over the past few days. Last week, the BYC continued the demonstration on the road leading to the National Press Club in Islamabad, as the route had been blocked by police with barbed wire, preventing activists from re... -
Dawn - 13:18 Jul 27, 2025
The Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) said on Sunday it has formed an inquiry committee to probe “serious irregularities” during the Fisu World University Games 2025 in Germany, including the reported disappearance of two athletes. The Fisu World University Games is a tournament that brings together students from all over the world every two years to compete across 18 sports. This year, 8,500 students from across the world took part in the event, which was held from July 16 to July 27, according to its website. In a statement issued today, the PSB said Pakistani contingent’s participation in the tournament faced “significant administrative failures”, including a “lack of transparency in the selection of team officials, discipline issues, logistical mismanagement, and the alarming disappearance of two student-athletes”. One of the many “failures” was that “two student-athletes were reported missing or suspected of fleeing during the event”, the PSB said, citing the Higher Education Commission (HEC). The sports board... -
Dawn - 13:15 Jul 27, 2025
Passengers on a US domestic flight were forced to evacuate onto a runway due to a brake fire just ahead of the plane taking off in Denver, the airline said. American Airlines Flight 3023 was departing for Miami on Saturday but “experienced a mechanical issue” while accelerating ahead of takeoff at Denver International Airport, the airline told AFP, adding all 173 passengers and six crew “deplaned safely”. One passenger sustained a minor injury and was taken to a hospital for evaluation, American Airlines said. View this post on Instagram Blown tires and the deceleration of the plane while braking resulted in an isolated brake fire, which was extinguished by city firefighters, according to the airline. Social media videos published by US media outlets showed passengers frantically evacuating an American Airlines plane via an emergency slide as smoke billowed from beneath the aircraft. A man held a child as they rushed down the slide, stumbling as he hit the ground. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sai... -
Dawn - 12:34 Jul 27, 2025
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has said Pakistan received “recent assurances” from Afghan authorities that the neighbouring country’s soil would not be used for terrorism — a key issue of contention between Islamabad and Kabul. Both countries have witnessed an improvement in bilateral relations after taking steps to improve ties, such as the revival of the Joint Coordination Committee (JCC) and upgrading diplomatic ranks. Dar visited Kabul earlier this month, where an agreement was signed for the Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan railway project to boost regional connectivity. According to a Foreign Office (FO) statement issued on Saturday, Dar engaged with the Pakistani-American community at the Pakistan Consulate in New York, where he “shared Pakistan’s expectation that Afghan soil would not be used for terrorism, noting recent assurances received from Afghan authorities in that regard”. The foreign minister also highlighted the “country’s outreach to Afghanistan with a view to enh... -
Dawn - 12:08 Jul 27, 2025
Thailand and Cambodia have agreed to Malaysia acting as a mediator in their border conflict, the Malaysian foreign minister said on Sunday, as the combatants each said the other had launched further artillery attacks across contested areas. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Thai Acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai are expected in Malaysia on Monday evening, Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan told state news agency Bernama. “They have full confidence in Malaysia and asked me to be a mediator,” Mohamad said, adding he had talked with his Cambodian and Thai counterparts and they agreed no other country should be involved in the issue. The talks in Malaysia come after Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, chair of the regional Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) forum, had proposed a ceasefire on Friday and US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the two leaders had agreed to work on a ceasefire. Four days after the worst fighting in more than a decade broke out between the Southeast Asian neig... -
Dawn - 10:31 Jul 27, 2025
The death toll from floods in Gilgit-Baltistan stood at 10 as search and rescue operations continued across the region and stranded tourists were moved to safer locations, officials said on Sunday. The devastating impacts of climate change have become more visible in GB as unprecedented heatwaves, erratic weather patterns and glacial melting have triggered cloudbursts and intense floods across the region. Floods swept across GB on Monday, causing landslides, leaving many stranded, and damaging more than 500 houses, roads and other infrastructure. In a statement today, GB government spokesperson Faizullah Faraq said flood-related incidents in the region have claimed 10 lives since Monday, when four were killed and 15 went missing in Babusar. The toll in Babusar has risen to seven, while two deaths were reported from Diamer’s Thore Valley and another from the Astore district, Faraq added. The body of an unidentified woman was recovered from the Indus River in Chilas’s Minar area. “The body could be that of o... -
Dawn - 09:36 Jul 27, 2025
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Islamabad on Saturday confirmed three new polio cases in the country, taking the total number of cases detected this year to 17. Pakistan is one of the last two countries in the world, alongside Afghanistan, where polio remains endemic. Despite global efforts to eradicate the virus, challenges such as security issues, vaccine hesitancy, and misinformation have slowed progress. The latest cases include one each from the Lakki Marwat and North Waziristan districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one from Sindh’s Umerkot district, a statement by the Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme (PPEP) said. A 15-month-old girl from Takhtikhel in Lakki Marwat, a six-month-old girl from North Waziristan’s Mir Ali tehsil and a five-year-old boy from Umerkot’s Chajro were the latest polio cases confirmed by the NIH’s Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication. With these new detections, the total number of polio cases in Pakistan in 2025 has risen to 17 — including 10 from KP, f... -
Dawn - 09:19 Jul 27, 2025
Nine passengers died and 30 others were injured after the bus they were travelling on fell into a ditch near Balkassar Interchange in Punjab’s Chakwal district on Sunday morning. According to a spokesperson of Chakwal Rescue 1122, the bus was heading to Lahore from Islamabad when one of its tyres burst near the Balkassar Interchange on the Islamabad-Lahore Motorway (M2). The driver lost control of the bus, causing the vehicle to fall into a ditch and overturn. “Nine people died in the accident and 30 were injured,” Dr Saeed Akhter, chief executive officer of the Chakwal District Health Authority (DHA), said in a statement. It added that Chakwal Deputy Commissioner Sarah Hayat and Assistant Commissioner Zeeshan Sharif also visited the injured at the District Healthquarters (DHQ) Hospital. DC Hayat, who was briefed on the accident’s details, directed that all possible medical facilities be provided to the wounded. Eight passengers died on the spot, while one succumbed to her injuries at the hospital, according ... -
Dawn - 06:31 Jul 27, 2025
At least six people were crushed to death at a popular Hindu temple in northern India’s Uttarakhand state on Sunday, officials said, after a massive crowd surge. The stampede occurred on the stairway leading to the Mansa Devi temple in the Hindu holy city of Haridwar, on the banks of the Ganges River, and left many injured. “Six dead and more than 10 injured are admitted to the hospital,” senior city police official Parmendra Dobhal told AFP. Uttarkhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said relief and rescue operations were underway. “I am constantly in touch with the local administration regarding this matter, and continuous monitoring of the situation is being done,” he said in a statement. Deadly stampedes and crowd crushes are a common occurrence at Indian religious festivals. In June, a sudden crowd surge at a Hindu festival in the coastal state of Odisha triggered a stampede that killed at least three people and injured several others. The previous month, six people were crushed to death in the wester... -
Dawn - 06:07 Jul 27, 2025
Iran executed two members of the outlawed Mujahideen-e-Khalq opposition group for targeting civilian infrastructure with homemade projectiles, the judiciary news outlet Mizan reported on Sunday. Mehdi Hassani and Behrouz Ehsani-Eslamloo, “operational elements” of the MEK, were sentenced to death in a verdict upheld by the Supreme Court, Mizan said. “The terrorists, in coordination with MEK leaders, had set up a team house in Tehran, where they built launchers and hand-held mortars in line with the group’s goals, fired projectiles heedlessly at citizens, homes, service and administrative facilities, educational and charity centres, and also carried out propaganda and information-gathering activities in support of the MEK,” the report said. The defendants were indicted with “moharebeh”, an Islamic term meaning waging war against God, destroying public property and “membership in a terrorist organisation with the aim of disrupting national security”. Semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Sunday that Ehsani-... -
Dawn - 06:02 Jul 27, 2025
LAHORE: A major controversy has emerged over the methodology used by the Crop Reporting Centre (CRC) Punjab in determining provincial cotton output, with serious allegations of inflated and misleading statistics surfacing. It has been revealed that CRC Punjab is allegedly estimating total cotton production using hypothetical calculations — extrapolating yields based on the number of bolls per plant across an acre or, in some districts, from small sample plots as small as eight feet by six feet. This has exposed a long-standing discrepancy between the figures reported by CRC Punjab and those of the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA), with the former consistently reporting significantly higher production. Ihsan-ul-Haq, Chairman of the Cotton Ginners Forum, stated that this variance has long complicated decision-making for stakeholders in the cotton industry. He noted that while some attribute the CRC’s inflated figures to unrecorded lint sales by certain ginners, the presence of two conflicting national... -
Dawn - 05:41 Jul 27, 2025
LAHORE: Justice Muhammad Amjad Rafiq of the Lahore High Court has underlined the need for modernising communication methods within the criminal justice system. In a judgment, the judge highlighted inefficiencies in the prosecution’s handling of case records and proposed the use of WhatsApp as a tool to streamline the process. The judge noted that delays in providing case records to prosecutors often waste valuable judicial time. The judge had taken notice of the situation during the hearing of a post-arrest bail petition, when he observed a female deputy prosecutor general attempting to collect the facts haphazardly to respond to the queries of the court. Asked by the court, the prosecutor said the record of the case had just been tabled before her in the court. Being irked with the response and waste of precious time of the court, the judge had summoned the prosecutor general of Punjab. Justice Rafiq criticised the practice of physically transporting documents that could easily be shared electronically. To a... -
Dawn - 05:30 Jul 27, 2025
BADIN: A village elder murdered his 22-year-old granddaughter by slitting her throat and surrendered before police in Fazil Rahu taluka of Badin district on Friday evening. Adam Abro told the police that he murdered his granddaughter, Fahmida Abro, “for honour” when she returned home after staying away for many days. The family is a resident of Adam Abro village, which is named after the elder and situated in the Fateh Abad union council. The area police went to his home and took the woman’s body into their custody for a post-mortem examination. They said the suspect used a knife to slit her throat. Fazil Rahu DSP Abdul Rahim Khaskheli told the media that circumstantial evidence suggested some other persons might also be involved in the murder. He said Abro surrendered before the Tarai police, who shifted him to the Model police station from where he was to be handed over to the Kario Ghanwer police for the registration of the murder case. Residents of the village told the media that the woman had left her ho... -
Dawn - 05:01 Jul 27, 2025
• CM Gulbar says region lacks funds to tackle flood damage • Seven districts affected; Diamer worst hit by daily flash floods • Villagers flee Rajanpur, Bhakkar, Layyah, Muzaffargarh as low-lying districts in Punjab submerged GILGIT / LAHORE / DERA GHAZI KHAN: Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Minister Haji Gulbar Khan on Saturday appealed to the federal government for Rs7 billion in emergency funds to deal with climate-induced disasters that have caused damages exceeding Rs20bn across the region. Speaking at a press conference at the CM House in Gilgit, the chief minister said the GB government lacks the financial capacity to handle the unprecedented disasters. CM Khan was accompanied by GB Home Minister Shams Lone, GB Assembly member Jamil Ahmed, Special Assistant on Information Eman Shah and Special Assistant on GB Disaster Management Authority Muhammad Ali Quaid. He said unprecedented floods had impacted seven districts, with Diamer being the worst affected. “People in GB are facing daily flood events. At least... -
Dawn - 04:39 Jul 27, 2025
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s exports to five Central Asian countries (CACs) declined by 31.63pc during the outgoing fiscal year (FY25), despite efforts to expand regional trade and implement transit agreements. At the same time, imports from the region surged more than fourfold, deepening the trade imbalance. According to data compiled by the State Bank of Pakistan, exports to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan fell to $197.06 million in FY25 from $288.23m in FY24. In contrast, imports from these countries jumped by 411pc to $245.09m, compared to just $47.94m in the previous year, with the bulk originating from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. Despite multiple high-level visits and the operationalisation of transit trade agreements — particularly with Uzbekistan — trade volumes remain below potential. Uzbekistan has begun utilising its transit agreement with Pakistan, and Tajikistan last year imported three truckloads of potatoes under a similar arrangement. Exports to five Cen...
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