Pakistan | Pakistan

India’s Neeraj Chopra and Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan will battle for javelin gold in Tokyo next week, the latest chapter in a brotherly rivalry which has soured since a deadly military conflict between their countries. The Tokyo Olympic champion, Chopra, and his successor in Paris, Nadeem, will line up at the athletics world championships for their first encounter since the nuclear-armed neighbours engaged in a four-day conflict in May, their worst since 1999. Chopra, who took Olympic silver behind his great rival a year ago, had often spoken about his friendly relations with Nadeem despite the tensions between their countries. After Nadeem won gold and Chopra stood alongside him on the podium in Paris, Nadeem’s mother Raziah Parveen said: “Winning and losing is part of sport, but they are like brothers.” Chopra’s mother Saroj said she took some solace in Nadeem beating her son because the Pakistani “is also our boy”. But publicly at least that changed after the conflict. The 27-year-old Chopra, who will defen...

ISLAMABAD - Bahrain’s Interior Minister, Lieutenant General Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, on Wednesday visited Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior on Wednesday, where he was warmly received by Federal Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi.

Pakistan seeks UNSC meeting on Qatar strike

Pakistan on Wednesday requested an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) following Israeli strikes in Qatari capital Doha, which targeted Hamas leadership. With Tuesday’s strikes, Israel is expanding military actions that have ranged across the Middle East to include the Gulf Arab state, where the Palestinian group has long had its political base. Qatar, which has acted as a mediator alongside Egypt in talks on a ceasefire in the almost two-year-old conflict in Gaza, condemned the attack as “cowardly” and called it a flagrant violation of international law. In a post on X, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar wrote that Pakistan requested the meeting along with Somalia and Algeria, after “unprovoked illegal Israeli aggression” in Qatar to “discuss the situation and seize itself of this grave matter”. “Pakistan expresses its complete solidarity and firm support with the government and brotherly people of Qatar,” Dar wrote. ‘Our enemies are not safe anywhere’: Israel Meanwhile, Israel warned its...

Pakistan on Wednesday requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to address the unprovoked and illegal Israeli aggression against the State of Qatar.

ISLAMABAD - A two-day National Consultation on Pakistan’s Gender Parity Framework, organized by the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW), concluded on Tuesday in Islamabad with strong consensus among provinces, regions, development partners, academia, and civil society on the need for a unified, standardized.

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan and Kazakhstan on Tuesday expressed the resolve to expand ties and enhance regional connectivity as the two sides held bilateral talks here.

ISLAMABAD - Ambassador-designate of Pakistan to the Kyrgyz Republic, Altamash Wazir Khan, and Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan, Murat Nurtleu, called on President Asif Ali Zardari at Aiwan-e-Sadr on Tuesday.

ISLAMABAD - Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday said that Pakistan was keen to enhance bilateral trade, investment, people-to-people exchanges and connectivity through air, rail and road with Kazakhstan.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s strategic ports are attracting increasing international attention, with both the United States and Kazakhstan expressing keen interest in investing and enhancing regional connectivity. Following a recent agreement to harness natural resources, a US delegation visited the Ministry of Maritime Affairs on Tuesday. Federal Secretary Syed Zafar Ali Shah briefed the delegation on Pakistan’s port facilities, operational capacities, and investment opportunities. The delegation was informed that Karachi Port handles 54pc of Pakistan’s trade, with an annual capacity of 125 million tonnes. The port’s infrastructure includes three private container terminals, bulk and liquid cargo facilities, and dry cargo berths. It has recently improved its global ranking to 61st among 405 container ports, and successfully managed the country’s largest vessel, measuring 400 metres. Discussions also centred on investment prospects at Port Qasim, particularly in bulk, break-bulk, containerised cargo handling, and of...

Pakistan on Tuesday condemned in the strongest terms the Israeli aggression against the State of Qatar, calling it a grave violation of international law and a serious threat to regional stability.

The National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW), in collaboration with UNFPA, UN Women, Group Development Pakistan and the Embassy of the Netherlands, has concluded a two-day national consultation to finalise a unified framework for Pakistan’s first-ever National Gender Parity Report, scheduled for launch on International Women’s.

Pakistan and China have agreed to enhance cooperation in space science, astronaut training, and the establishment of a Pakistan Space Center under a five-year action plan.

Pakistan and Kazakhstan on Tuesday signed the Action Plan of Cooperation to boost bilateral ties, according to a statement by the Foreign Office. The two countries maintain friendly diplomatic relations, with Kazakhstan being Pakistan’s top export destination among Central Asian countries. According to Kazakh envoy Yerzhan Kistafin, bilateral trade was growing and surged to $239 million. Earlier today, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar held a “tête-à-tête” with his Kazakh counterpart Murat Nurtleu, the FO said in a post on X. They held a meeting in Islamabad where both sides “reaffirmed their resolve to deepen their political and economic ties”, state media Radio Pakistan reported. “The two sides also vowed to enhance regional connectivity and maintain close coordination ahead of the forthcoming [Kazakhstan’s] presidential visit in November this year,” it added. In another post, the FO noted that the delegations held high-level talks on the “full spectrum of Pakistan- Kazakhstan cooperation...

ISLAMABAD - The upcoming Inter-Parliamentary Speakers’ Conference (ISC), set to be hosted by the Senate of Pakistan in Islamabad this November, was officially launched with a curtain raiser ceremony attended by Parliamentary Leaders, Diplomats, and senior officials.

The United Nations has allocated $5 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to bolster Pakistan’s response to devastating floods affecting large parts of the country, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher announced on Monday.

ISLAMABAD: The government announced on Monday that Pakistan and China had agreed to form a consortium of bilateral and multilateral partners to finance the $7 billion Mainline-1 (ML-1) railway project, along with a four-year action plan (2025-29) for the second phase of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Speaking at a news conference, Planning and Development Minister Ahsan Iqbal said that during Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s recent visit to China, the two sides had agreed to constitute a consortium of financiers, including the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), China and Pakistan, for the 1,700-km Karachi-Peshawar railway line. He said China had assured financing not only for ML-1 but also for the Karakoram Highway. Negotiations with multiple financiers would be concluded within a month. He added that ML-1 and the Sukkur-Hyderabad Motorway would already have been completed, had it not been for the 2018 political change, alleging that the subsequent PTI gove...

Pakistan has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) worth $500 million with an American metals company, the US Strategic Metals (USSM), it emerged on Monday. The USSM, based in the state of Missouri, is focused on producing and recycling critical minerals, which the United States Department of Energy has defined as essential in a variety of technologies related to advanced manufacturing and energy production. The USSM is a company that specialises in extracting critical metals from old lithium-ion batteries and mining cobalt, nickel and copper, according to its website. According to the American embassy, the US Department of Energy has defined critical minerals as essential in a variety of technologies related to advanced manufacturing and energy production. A press release from the US Embassy, published on Sunday, stated that Acting Deputy Chief of Mission Zach Harkenrider accompanied a USSM-led delegation to sign an MoU with the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) at the Prime Minister’s House. Speaking a...

Pakistan is set to host Sri Lanka for a series of one day international (ODI) matches in Rawalpindi from Novermber 11-15, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) announced on Monday. A day earlier, the PCB announced that it was set to host Sri Lanka and Afghanistan for a T20 International (T20I) tri-series for the first time from November 17 to 29 in Lahore and Rawalpindi. In a press release, the PCB noted that this would be Sri Lanka’s first bilateral ODI series in Pakistan since 2019, when they last visited for a three-match series that the Green Shirts won 2-0, with the first ODI in Karachi abandoned due to rain. “Sri Lanka’s most recent visit to Pakistan came in 2023, when they participated in the ACC Asia Cup and played against Afghanistan in Lahore,” the press release read. The PCB reiterated that the nation’s maiden tri-series will be held after the ODI matches, while the Green Shirts will host two ICC World Test Championship matches and six white-ball games against South Africa from October 12 to November 8....

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Murat Nurtleu arrives in Pakistan today (Monday) on a two-day official visit, accompanied by a high-level 13-member delegation, including the Kazakh minister of transport.