Pakistan

Punjab Group Chairman Mian Amer Mahmood on Tuesday underscored the need for creating new provinces in Pakistan, stressing that smaller administrative units would ensure equitable resource distribution, equal rights, and improved governance.

Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunications Shaza Fatima Khawaja on Tuesday said Pakistan’s IT sector is witnessing steady progress, with an annual growth rate of 20 percent.

Three people were injured after a grenade exploded at a scrap shop in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Mardan district, police said on Tuesday. Confirming these details to Dawn.com, District Police Officer (DPO) Zahoor Babar Afridi said, “The police had collected evidence from the site of the explosion, and they were further investigating the matter.” According to a statement from Mardan Rescue 1122, the injured have been identified as 40-year-old Abbas, 17-year-old Saeed and 24-year-old Amrad. “The injured were immediately given first aid and rushed to Mardan Medical Complex,” the statement said. Mardan Rescue 1122 spokesperson Syed Abbas Shah separately told Dawn.com that the “injured are in stable condition and most of the injuries are on their legs.” Earlier this month, three people were injured in a grenade attack in the Hazarganji area of Quetta in Balochistan. Police said unidentified motorcyclists hurled a hand grenade at an office of a private company in the Hazarganji area and sped away. In March, three policem...

Pakistan has welcomed the recent announcements by several countries recognizing the State of Palestine, calling the move a victory for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.

The Punjab Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) has released a detailed report on the destruction caused by unprecedented flooding in the Ravi, Sutlej, and Chenab rivers, which has left millions displaced and entire villages buried under sand.

Eleven of the world’s leading economists, including two Nobel laureates, urge govts to recognise and uphold the economic value of public interest media in the age of AI Expert Opinion by High-Level Panel on Public Interest Media Governments around the world are chasing the AI dream, pinning their hopes on these technologies to drive economic prosperity. And yet, they are not investing in the foundational resource that underpins all our 21st century economies — independent, verifiable information. Well-functioning economies rely on widely accessible, verified, and trustworthy information. Public interest journalism provides a vital supply of such information: it exposes corruption, fraud, and market manipulation, brings stability to financial markets, checks misinformation, and it empowers economic actors to make informed investments. Without it, national economies, international trade, and capital flows between countries cannot function properly, with wide-ranging and negative impacts on social welfare. But t...

The devastation caused by ongoing floods continues to grip Punjab, as wheat worth millions of rupees was destroyed in Multan and a widow with six children was left homeless in Uch Sharif after losing her husband and belongings to the floodwaters.

In September last year, militants attacked a police station in Swat district, martyring one policeman and injuring two others. The attack itself wasn’t out of the ordinary — after all, Swat is no stranger to terrorist attacks. What was different about this attack was the modus operandi adopted by the militants. Over the course of the next several days, investigators pieced together clues on the attack, which they later confirmed was carried out using an improvised explosive device (IED). “They had used an improvised explosive device, made of a power bank, which is mostly used for charging mobile phones,” District Police Officer Dr Zahidullah later told Dawn. The investigators, said Dr Zahidullah, pored over hours of CCTV footage to identify one of the militants, who in turn gave up the names of two other suspects. But the biggest breakthrough came during the course of the investigation when the militants admitted that they never used common means of communication to contact each other. Rather, they would comm...

US President Donald Trump on Monday linked autism to childhood vaccine use and the taking of popular pain medication Tylenol by women when pregnant, elevating claims not backed by scientific evidence to the forefront of US health policy. In an extraordinary news conference at the White House, the Republican president delivered medical advice to pregnant women and parents of young children, repeatedly telling them not to use or administer the painkiller and suggesting that common vaccines not be taken together or so early in a child’s life. The advice from Trump, who acknowledged he is not a doctor, goes against that of medical societies, which cite data from numerous studies showing that acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, plays a safe role in the well-being of pregnant women. View this post on Instagram “I want to say it like it is, don’t take Tylenol. Don’t take it,” Trump said. “Other things that we recommend, or certainly I do anyway, is … don’t let them pump your baby up with the largest pil...

Airports in Copenhagen and Oslo reopened on Tuesday, police said, hours after unidentified drones in their airspace caused flight diversions and other travel disruption. In the Danish capital Copenhagen, police said several large drones seen over the airport for several hours late on Monday eventually flew away on their own. “The drones have disappeared and the airport is open again,” Deputy Police Inspector Jakob Hansen told reporters. “We didn’t take the drones down,” he added. Hansen said police were cooperating with the Danish military and intelligence service to find out where the drones had come from. He said police were also working with colleagues in Oslo after drone sightings in the Norwegian capital also caused the airport to close for several hours. “We had two different drone sightings,” Oslo airport spokeswoman Monica Fasting told AFP. “We reopened the airport around 3:15 am (6:15 am PKT),” she said. Flights were diverted to nearby destinations during the closures, and officials at both airports ...

QUETTA: The Balochistan High Court (BHC) on Monday granted bail to tribal elder Sardar Sherbaz Khan Satakzai, who was arrested in July this year after the murder of a man and woman in the name of ‘honour’ in the Degari mining area of Quetta district. A single-judge bench, headed by Justice Muhammad Iqbal Kasi, after hearing arguments from both sides, granted bail to Sardar Sherbaz Satakzai against surety bonds of Rs500,000. He was released following the court’s approval of the bail application. Earlier, police had arrested Sardar Satakzai on the allegation that, as a tribal chief, he had endorsed through a jirga the killing of the woman and the man. Acting on the jirga’s order, the woman’s brother opened fire on his 40-year-old sister, Bano Bibi, in the presence of a large number of people from the area. At the same time, the man, Ehsanullah, was also killed at the same place. The incident came to light after a video of the firing went viral on social media more than a month after the killings had taken place...

The District and Sessions Court Islamabad on Tuesday upheld the arrest warrants issued for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur in the liquor and arms recovery case.

ISLAMABAD - The Capital Development Authority (CDA) and Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) have agreed to fast-track the replacement of decades-old gas pipelines in Islamabad’s G-6 sector and Blue Area, aiming to complete the work before winter to ensure uninterrupted supply for residents.

ISLAMABAD - Ambassador of Uzbekistan to Pakistan, Alisher Tukhtaev, on Monday highlighted the centuries-old cultural, spiritual, and historical ties between Uzbekistan and Pakistan, describing the two nations as ‘one family bound by history and faith’.

The Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) on Tuesday announced that it will conduct intra-party elections on September 27 in Quetta.

The Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee will convene in Islamabad on Tuesday to sight the crescent of Rabi-us-Sani 1447 Hijri.

Peshawar - A meeting of the Health Department held on Monday here at the Chief Minister’s Secretariat, under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Ali Amin Gandapur.

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court’s registrar office on Monday raised administrative objections to the petitions separately filed by five sitting judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) before the apex court. Justices Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri, Babar Sattar, Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan and Saman Raffat Imtiaz had appeared in person before the Supreme Court last Friday to institute constitutional petitions challenging the exercise of administrative powers by the IHC chief justice. According to the objections, the petitioners invoked the apex court’s original jurisdiction under Article 184(3) of the Constitution for the enforcement of fundamental rights, but the grievances raised were of an individual nature and thus not maintainable in view of the 1998 Zulfiqar Mehdi case. In that judgement, the SC had held that Article 184(3) could not be pressed into service for redress of personal grievances. Incidentally, the same case law was cited by the SC registrar while returning Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar’s pet...

• PA President Abbas calls on all states to follow suit • Dar attends, but doesn’t address high-level moot • PM due to meet Trump alongside Muslim leaders • Palestine flag unfurled at London mission NEW YORK: France and Monaco extended formal recognition to the State of Palestine at a high-level conference on Monday. “We must do everything within our power to preserve the very possibility of a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security,” French President Emmanuel Macron said before announcing the diplomatic move, drawing lengthy applause from the audience. Macron outlined a framework for a “renewed Palestinian Authority” under which France would open an embassy subject to factors such as reforms, a ceasefire and the release of all remaining prisoners held in Gaza. Andorra, Belgium, Luxembourg and San Marino were also expected to recognise a Palestinian state ahead of this week’s UN General Assembly, after Australia, Britain, Canada, Portugal and Malta did so over the we...

HYDERABAD: The water level in the Indus rises as a medium flood reaches Kotri.—PPI • Locals in three southern districts complain their houses still under water due to govt failure to plug breaches • Irrigation minister says 70 and 90pc area of Alipur and Jalalpur Pirwala, respectively, devastated LAHORE: The residents in different localities of Multan, Lodhran, and Bahawalpur districts remain homeless as the government has failed to plug the breaches at the Noraja Bhutta embankment along the Sutlej River despite the passage of 12 days. Communities in Noraja Bhutta, Bahadurpur, Basti Lang, Kanu, and Dipal in Jalalpur Pirwala; Tarut Basharat, Daily Rajanpur, and Belaywala in Lodhran; Dunyapur, Jhangra, and Muradpur Soiwala in Bahawalpur were forced to live on the banks of the embankment, as their homes remained inundated. Basti Lang resident Muhammad Bakhsh said the water was rising again in his union council, adding it would continue to rise if the Noraja Bhutta embankment was not plugged completely. “We are a...