Pakistan

A special Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) in Lahore has dismissed a police request to conduct polygraph and photogrammetric tests on the founder of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in connection with the May 9 incidents.

Shares at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) hit an all-time high of 124,000 points on Wednesday as the proposed federal budget for the upcoming fiscal year was well-received by investors for being “neutral-to-positive”. Maintaining an aggressive stance on fiscal consolidation, as required by the Int­ernational Monetary Fund (IMF), the government yesterday still managed to offer some notional relief to the salaried class in the budget for FY2025-26, along with incentives for the real estate and construction sectors to revive the struggling industrial sector and stimulate economic growth. While there had been uncer­tainties surrounding the taxation measures ahead of the budget announcement, the PSX remained bullish yesterday and gained nearly 400 points to cross the 122,000 point-mark, just before the budget was presented in the National Assembly. The benchmark KSE-100 index crossed the 124,000-point barrier at around 11am. It then witnessed a slight decline before resurging to 124,588.17 points at 3:30pm — 2,5...

Former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on Wednesday lambasted India for attempting to “sabotage President Donald Trump’s peace efforts” in South Asia, stressing that Pakistan was willing to solve all issues through dialogue. His statement came against the backdrop of Pakistan’s recent conflict with India triggered by a deadly April 22 attack on tourists in Occupied Kashmir’s Pahalgam. New Delhi, without evidence, accused Islamabad of backing the attackers — an allegation that led to a four-day military escalation between the two nuclear-armed countries before the United States brokered a ceasefire on May 10. To present Pakistan’s stance on the escalation and dismiss Indian propaganda, the government constituted a high-level delegation, chaired by Bilawal, to visit major world powers. After holding meetings in the US, the delegation is now in the United Kingdom, after which it will head to the Belgian capital of Brussels to hold talks with the members of the European Commission. Addressing a press conf...

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will undertake an official visit to the United Arab Emirates tomorrow (Thursday) to discuss bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest during some high-level meetings. Over the last few months, UAE expressed the country’s commitment to strengthening its long-standing partnership with Pakistan and announced a $2 billion debt rollover soon after. In April, the two nations signed and exchanged multiple memoranda of understanding (MoU) to further strengthen the bonds between the people of both nations. A press release issued by the Foreign Office today said that the visit reflected the “deep-rooted fraternal ties” between Pakistan and the UAE, marked by mutual trust, shared values, and close cooperation across multiple sectors. “The PM will be accompanied by a high-level delegation, including the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, federal ministers, and other senior officers,” the press release said. “PM Shehbaz will hold high-level meetings with the ...

Iran threatened on Wednesday to target United States military bases in the region if conflict breaks out, while US President Donald Trump said he was “less confident” about reaching a nuclear deal. Iran and the United States have held five rounds of talks since April to thrash out a new nuclear deal to replace the 2015 accord that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018. Since returning to office in January, Trump has revived his “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran, backing nuclear diplomacy but warning of military action if it fails. “All its bases are within our reach, we have access to them, and without hesitation we will target all of them in the host countries,” Iran’s Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh said in response to US threats of military action if the talks fail. “God willing, things won’t reach that point, and the talks will succeed,” the minister said, adding that the US side “will suffer more losses” if it came to conflict. The United States has multiple bases in the Middle East, with th...

A fire broke out at a petrochemical complex in southern Iran on Wednesday, killing at least three people, state television reported. “Given the scale of the incident, the number of injuries and deaths is likely to increase,” the broadcaster added, airing images of smoke rising from the Kaveh Petrochemical Complex in Bushehr province, 1,200 kilometres south of Tehran. The governor of Dayyer county, Alireza Sajadi, told the television that the fire had broken out in the complex’s dedicated port but “has been contained”. The director general of crisis management for Bushehr province, Kourosh Dehghan, said “an explosion and fire resulting from a welding operation” led to the casualties. The fire comes little more than a month after a massive blast at Shahid Rajaee port in Bandar Abbas killed 58 people and caused extensive damage. Officials blamed it on “negligence”.

The first post-Hajj flight from Saudi Arabia, PK732, has arrived at Islamabad International Airport.

Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar, accompanied by Prime Minister’s Media Coordinator Badar Shehbaz, visited the residence of senior anchorperson Fariha Idrees to offer condolences on the passing of her mother.

Posts from PTI supporters on multiple social media platforms on Tuesday shared a clip of PTI’s interim Chairman Barrister Ali Gohar allegedly urging overseas Pakistanis to participate in a protest on June 14 against the army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir. However, the video is a deepfake and he has not issued any such message. A senior trade delegation from Pakistan is due in Washington this week for talks with United States officials on the recently imposed American tariffs and related economic issues, diplomatic sources told Dawn. The PTI claims that Field Marshal Asim Munir would visit Washington around the same time, something that neither the US nor Pakistani officials have confirmed. While official dates for these visits are being withheld due to political sensitivities, the PTI, which has long opposed the current Pakistani establishment, has announced plans to stage large-scale demonstrations during the visit. In a tweet posted over the weekend, PTI’s Secretary for Overseas Affairs, Sajjad Burki, cal...

UK High Commissioner, Jane Marriott, called on Deputy Prime Minister/ Foreign Minister (DPM/FM), Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar, here and discussed bilateral cooperation at the multilateral fora, particularly at the UN Security Council.

The Islamabad High Court has postponed the hearing of sentence suspension petitions filed by former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, in the 190 million pounds Al-Qadir Trust corruption case.

Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has said that the budget 2025-26 envisages measures such as tariff reforms to increase the competitiveness of Pakistan's exports.

Punjab Information Minister Azma Bokhari has lauded the federal budget as a relief-oriented initiative aimed at supporting the middle class, salaried individuals, and pensioners, while criticising elements she says are unhappy with Pakistan’s improving economic outlook.

Police have arrested three more inmates who escaped during the recent jailbreak at Malir Jail, bringing the total number of recaptured prisoners to 152 out of the 225 who initially fled, officials confirmed on Wednesday.

Former Foreign Minister and Chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, reiterated Pakistan's commitment to peace while condemning India's continued war rhetoric during a media interaction in London alongside a Pakistani delegation.

A delegation of Pakistan Muslim League (Q), led by Federal Minister for Overseas Pakistanis Chaudhry Salik Hussain, met Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday.

Greenland’s ice sheet melted 17 times faster than the past average during a May heatwave that also hit Iceland, the scientific network World Weather Attribution (WWA) said in a report Wednesday. The Arctic region is on the frontline of global warming, heating up four times faster than the rest of the planet since 1979, according to a 2022 study in scientific journal Nature. “The melting rate of the Greenland ice sheet by, from a preliminary analysis, a factor of 17… means the Greenland ice sheet contribution to sea level rise is higher than it would have otherwise been without this heat wave,” one of the authors of the report, Friederike Otto, associate professor in climate science at the Imperial College London, told reporters. “Without climate change this would have been impossible,” she said. In Iceland, the temperature exceeded 26 degrees Celsius on May 15, unprecedented for that time of year on the subarctic island. “Temperatures over Iceland as observed this May are record-breaking, more than 13 degrees...

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and Donald Trump’s former adviser, said on Wednesday he regretted some of his recent criticisms of the United States president, after the pair’s public falling-out last week. “I regret some of my posts about President [Donald Trump] last week. They went too far,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X. Musk’s expression of regret came just days after Trump threatened the tech billionaire with “serious consequences” if he sought to punish Republicans who voted for a controversial spending bill. Their blistering break-up — largely carried out on social media before a riveted public since Thursday last week — was ignited by Musk’s harsh criticism of Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful” spending bill, which is currently before Congress. Some lawmakers who were against the bill had called on Musk — one of the Republican Party’s biggest financial backers in last year’s presidential election — to fund primary challenges against Republicans who voted for the legislation. “He’ll ...

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday hailed the record surge in the stock market to 124,000 points, saying that the bullish trend reflected the confidence of investors and businessmen in the pro-people budget presented by the government on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif will embark on an official visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Thursday, June 13, accompanied by a high-level delegation, the Foreign Office announced on Wednesday.