Pakistan

Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday met representatives of the firms that won the bidding for two new teams in the Pakistan Super League (PSL).

The Balochistan provincial cabinet on Friday approved a series of initiatives aimed at improving public welfare, promoting economic activity and strengthening governance in the province.

Punjab Education Minister Rana Sikandar Hayat on Friday dismissed reports circulating on social media about an extension in winter vacations across the province, calling them false and misleading.

The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has taken disciplinary action against 19 of its officers and officials on charges of corruption, abuse of authority and negligence as part of an ongoing internal accountability drive.

Prime Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif on Friday chaired a high-level meeting to review the third-party validation of last year’s Ramadan package and discuss the proposed package for the upcoming Ramadan.

Heavy fog blanketed large parts of Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during the night between Thursday and Friday, forcing the authorities to close several sections of the motorway network as visibility dropped to dangerously low levels.

The Punjab government has decided to amend the Property Ownership Act to restore judicial oversight, marking a retreat amid growing legal challenges.

WASHINGTON: Pakistan has called for the launch of a high-level economic dialogue with the United States at the earliest and urged a shift in bilateral engagement from geopolitics to geoeconomics during a series of meetings between the country’s envoy Rizwan Saeed Sheikh and senior members of Congress. Meeting House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US said 2026 should be treated as a “year of action” to translate shared intentions into concrete economic cooperation. “Our focus is shifting from geopolitics to geoeconomics,” he said, according to one of two handouts issued after the meeting, and stressed the need for institutionalised engagement in sectors such as energy, defence, minerals, information technology and artificial intelligence. Ambassador Sheikh said Pakistan’s low-cost, high-quality manufacturing base positioned it well to meet growing US market needs, highlighting surgical instruments, textiles and ...

Former federal minister Fawad Chaudhry on Friday urged Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) President and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to play a role in resolving the ongoing political turmoil in the country.

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi has called for continued stringent action against mafias involved in human trafficking and illegal immigration, stressing a zero-tolerance policy towards those exploiting vulnerable individuals.

he Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan has announced the Chinese Government Scholarship High-Level Postgraduate Program 2026 (Type B) for Master’s and PhD studies at Tianjin University, China.

The visa sections of three Bangladesh missions in India have been closed temporarily on security grounds, Foreign Affairs Adviser Touhid Hossain said on Friday. “What I have done is that I have asked our three missions to keep their visa sections closed for the time being. It’s a security issue,” he told reporters at the foreign ministry, responding to a question on whether Bangladesh missions in India had restricted tourist visas for Indians. He did not name the missions. However, diplomatic sources said the visa sections of the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi, the Deputy High Commission in Kolkata, and the Bangladesh Assistant High Commission in Agartala have been closed. The visa sections at Bangladesh missions in Chennai and Mumbai, however, remain operational, sources said. Over the past few weeks, protests have taken place near Bangladesh missions in India. Following the ouster of the Awami League regime, the Indian High Commission restricted tourist visas to Bangladeshis, citing security concer...

Opposition alliance says many workers arrested by police from Lahore Unidentified individuals attacked protest march near Gujrat Tariq Fazal says talks, dialogue only sustainable solution.

LAHORE - The Punjab government has initiated a comprehensive rightsizing exercise across provincial departments as part of a broader fiscal reforms plan aimed at reducing administrative expendi­tures and long-term financial liabilities, official sources said.

A 5.8-magnitude earthquake jolted parts of the country early on Friday. According to the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), the 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck at a depth of 159km in the Tajikistan- Xinjiang border region at 2am. The European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC), which reports magnitude using the Moment Magnitude scale, said the earthquake had a magnitude of 5.3 and struck Tajikistan at a depth of 140km. The United States Geological Survey said Pakistan, Tajikistan, China and Afghanistan were among the affected countries. According to media reports, the tremors were felt in Islamabad and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. There were no immediate reports of any casualties. Pakistan falls on three major tectonic plates — the Arabian, Euro-Asian and Indian — which create five seismic zones under the country. The intersection of multiple fault lines means that tectonic movements remain a frequent occurrence in the region. In October 2025, a 3.2-magnitude earthquake was recorded in Karachi. ...

The annual elections of the Lahore Bar Association (LBA), the largest bar association in Asia, will be held tomorrow with biometric voting arrangements in place to ensure transparency.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that land strikes against drug cartels were on the way following maritime attacks in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, without providing further details. “We are going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico,” Trump told broadcaster Sean Hannity in an interview on Fox News that aired on Thursday night. Trump’s comments come after the brazen abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro last weekend, the culmination of months of mounting US military and economic pressure on the leftist leader. As part of that campaign, the United States has killed more than 100 people in strikes on alleged drug boats since September, and Trump has also said that the US forces conducted a land strike on a docking area for such vessels in Venezuela. But strikes on cartels in Mexico would mark a significant US military escalation. The left-wing interim government in Caracas has condemned US strikes on Venezuela as a threat to regio...

PESHAWAR: In what is being interpreted as a tac­it acknowledgement of Pak­­istan’s grouse with Ka­­bul, the leader of a notorious terrorist outfit has reportedly urged his ‘commanders’ to avoid recruiting and deploying foreign fighters — most notably Afghans — to fight in Pakistan, warning of serious consequences if his instructions are violated. The instruction was rel­ayed by Hafiz Gul Baha­dur, who heads the so-cal­led Ittehadul Mujahideen Pakistan, in an audio message released to his cadres a few days ago, The Khorasan Diary reported. This also seems to fly in the face of Kabul’s stance that the terrorist threat plaguing Pakistan is “an internal problem”. The issue of Afghan soil and fighters being used to stage terrorist attacks in Pakistan has remained a critical bone of contention between Islamabad and Afghanistan, escalating into border skirmishes and leading to the eventual closure of the Pak-Afghan border in October last year. In recent months, Pakis­tan’s civilian and military leadership has mainta...

ISLAMABAD: The International Crisis Group (ICG) says Pakistan is the worst-affected country by the Tali­ban’s 2021 takeover of Afgha­nistan, noting that even though a ceasefire holds for now, Islamabad is likely to strike again if militant violence persists. The Brussels-based independent and non-profit think tank, founded by prominent statesmen, says in a new report that relations between the two countries have tanked, mainly because of the Afghan Taliban’s refusal to crack down on the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Since 2022, violence in Pakistan has spiralled. In 2025 alone, militants killed more than 600 Pakistani soldiers and police, mostly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, the two provinces bordering Afghanistan. Islamabad blames the banned TTP for these attacks, along with Baloch insurgent groups, which it believes with evidence, are backed by arch-rival India. Brussels-based think tank says Islamabad may strike Afghanistan again if militant attacks continue “UN monitors assert that the TTP en...

US President Donald Trump said “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the status quo, according to an interview the New York Times published on Thursday. “He (Xi) considers it to be a part of China, and that‘s up to him what he’s going to be doing,” Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. “But I‘ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he‘ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that.” Trump made the comments in the context of an exchange about what lessons Xi might take away from Trump‘s audacious military operation in Venezuela and the abduction of the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro. The Republican president said he did not view the situations as analogous because Taiwan did not pose the same type of threat to China that he has said the government of Maduro posed to the United States. He also repeated his belief that Xi would not make a move against Taiwan during his presidency, which end...