Pakistan

PTI founder Imran Khan’s lawyers boycotted the proceedings of a Rawalpindi anti-terrorism court (ATC) on Tuesday after connectivity issues appeared to affect communication with the incarcerated former prime minister, who briefly joined the hearing via a WhatsApp call. An ATC in Rawalpindi was hearing a case against Imran pertaining to an attack on the army’s General Headquarters GHQ) on May 9, 2023, when the PTI founder’s arrest had sparked violent protests across the country, during which state buildings and military installations were torched and vandalised. During today’s hearing, Imran was included via a WhatsApp call, following the court’s dismissal of a plea for his in-person appearance last week. His lawyers, Salman Akram Raja and Faisal Malik, sought Judge Amjad Ali Shah’s permission to talk to the ex-premier. But during the call, Imran’s voice was disrupted and his face appeared blurred on screen, leading his lawyers to boycott the court proceedings. They stated that such a trial was “unfair”. The co...

In a significant move to curb illegal travel abroad, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has made a state-of-the-art immigration technology system operational at Sialkot International Airport.

China’s top internet regulator said Tuesday it would take action against ByteDance-owned news app Jinri Toutiao and Alibaba’s internet browser company UCWeb for allegedly displaying harmful content, a day after announcing a two-month social media crackdown. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) vowed on Monday to combat content containing “malicious incitement of conflict” and “negative outlooks on life such as world-weariness”. Beijing requires social media companies to moderate content on their platforms, with posts strictly controlled to avoid anything deemed to be too subversive, vulgar, pornographic or generally harmful. The CAC had already announced penalties this month against three popular digital platforms — micro-blogging platform Weibo, short video app Kuaishou and Instagram-like Xiaohongshu — for allegedly neglecting content management duties. Authorities have not specified what punitive actions are being taken against those platforms. The CAC said Tuesday that measures taken against news a...

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has arrived in the United States to participate in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) session after concluding his visit to the United Kingdom.

A new report published by the World Bank (WB) on Tuesday called attention to the rising national poverty rate in Pakistan, highlighting the need for sustained and people-centred reforms to protect vulnerable populations. The report, titled “Reclaiming Momentum Towards Prosperity: Pakistan’s Poverty, Equity and Resilience Assessment”, marks the first comprehensive evaluation of poverty and welfare trends in the country since the early 2000s, according to a WB press release today. According to the release, the national poverty rate has begun to rise again since 2020, after a steady decline from 64.3 per cent in 2001-02 to 21.9pc in 2018-19. “This is largely owing to compounding shocks — including COVID-19, inflation, floods, and macroeconomic stress — but also because the consumption-driven growth model that delivered early gains has reached its limits,” it said. The report explored data from 25 years of household surveys, now casted projections, and geospatial analysis, as well as unique sources of administrat...

The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Tuesday granted rights activist Advocate Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir and her husband Hadi Ali Chattha transit bail, three days after the couple was booked following a clash with the president of the Islamabad High Court Bar Association (IHCBA). The police had registered a case against Mazari, her spouse, Zainab Janjua and several PTI-linked lawyers, including Naeem Panjhuta and Fateullah Barkiunder, under anti-terror laws after the IHCBA alleged that the bar leadership was “assaulted” by the lawyers, the suspects had also raised slogans against state institutions. Mazari and the other booked lawyers had staged a protest on the premises of the IHC to oppose the suspension of Justice Tariq Mahmood Jahangiri from judicial work. The hearing was presided over by PHC judge Justice Syed Mohammad Attique Shah, who granted a protective bail to the couple and asked them to appear before a relevant court by October 9. Mazari and her spouse appeared in the court today along with their lawye...

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’.