Pakistan

District administration mobilises rescue teams, sets up camps

.

The government detained several traders on Monday after they protested at the Pakistan-China border against taxes and announced the closure of the dry port on the call of the Pak-China Trades Action Committee, a traders organisation in Gilgit-Baltistan. Traders have closed the Karakoram Highway at several places in Hunza and Nagar districts, due to which travellers and a large number of tourists from the two districts have been stranded. “Traders had blocked the Karakoram Highway by staging a sit-in at two places in the Hunza area, in which the Murtazaabad sit-in ended,” Hunza Deputy Commissioner (DC) Huzaifa Anwar told Dawn.com. “However, a sit-in is ongoing in the Sost area of the Pak-China border. Talks are being held with the traders there. It is likely that it will be cleared in two to three hours,” DC Anwar added. He said that three traders were detained at the Sost Dry Port after the announcement of the sit-in, one of whom has been released, but two are in custody. The DC said that the traders were not...

Bench questions CM's standing; petitioners term oath-taking at Governor House unconstitutional

Swati terms court directive unconstitutional

Flood prep, encroachments, drainage reviewed

In a shocking case of honour killing near Quetta’s Sanjadi-Degari area, the bodies of a man and a woman both brutally shot dead were exhumed on court orders for post-mortem examination, officials confirmed on Monday.

In a successful operation, the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) killed three terrorists in Balochistan's Mastung district, in the Dasht area.

United States President Donald Trump’s lunch meeting with Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir prompted a private diplomatic protest from India in a warning to Washington about risks to their bilateral ties while New Delhi is recalibrating relations with China as a hedge, officials and analysts said. The meeting and other tensions in the US-India relationship, after decades of flourishing ties, have cast a shadow in trade negotiations, they said, as Trump’s administration weighs tariffs against one of its major partners in the Indo-Pacific. India blames Pakistan, especially the military establishment, for supporting what it alleges is cross-border terrorism and has told the US it is sending the wrong signals by wooing Field Marshal Munir, three senior Indian government officials directly aware of the matter told Reuters. It has created a sore spot that will hamper relations going forward, they said. Pakistan has denied accusations that it supports militants who carried out an attack in Ind...

Three terrorists belonging to a proscribed militant outfit were killed during an operation in Mastung district, Balochistan’s Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) said on Monday. Pakistan has witnessed an uptick in terror activities over the past year, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, after the proscribed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ended its ceasefire with the government in November 2022. According to a statement by the CTD spokesperson, “All three suspects, who were killed, were linked to Daesh and were planning future acts of terror.” Daesh refers to the banned militant Islamic State (IS) group, a globally proscribed terrorist organisation. The CTD conducted an operation during which a “high-value Daesh suspect”, who was involved in the abduction and murder of a minor, was being taken to identify a suspected hideout in the outskirts of Mastung’s Dasht area, the statement said. “The suspect had been under CTD custody and was involved in a brutal case of kidnapping for ransom, where the a...

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday issued contempt notices to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other members of the federal cabinet for failing to submit a response in the case of Dr Aafia Siddiqui. Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a neuroscientist and educator, was convicted by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on charges of attempted murder of US personnel in Afghanistan and has been serving her sentence at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Carswell in the US since 2010. On July 12, the IHC expr­essed dissatisfaction over the federal government’s failure to submit a report in the case concerning Aafia’s release, health and repatriation, with Justice Sardar Ejaz Ishaq threatening to “summon the entire cabinet” if the report is not presented. Justice Ishaq presided over a hearing for the case today. The judge said in his court order that he had warned the additional attorney general while passing his previous ruling that further inaction on the part of the government would lead to...

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has formally launched the Digital System for Licensing and Registration of Medical Devices, under which the registration process will be completed online within 20 days.

A cockpit recording of dialogue between the two pilots of the Air India flight that crashed last month supports the view that the captain cut the flow of fuel to the plane’s engines, said a source briefed on US officials’ early assessment of evidence. The first officer was at the controls of the Boeing 787 and asked the captain why he moved the fuel switches into a position that starved the engines of fuel and requested that he restore the fuel flow, the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity because the matter remains under investigation. The US assessment is not contained in a formal document, said the source, who emphasised the cause of the June 12 crash in Ahmedabad, India, that killed 260 people remains under investigation. There was no cockpit video recording definitively showing which pilot flipped the switches, but the weight of evidence from the conversation points to the captain, according to the early assessment. India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), which is leading the inv...

The Lahore High Court on Monday issued a stay order against the proposed auction of several commercial shops in Jaranwala, following a writ petition filed by 40 long-time tenants opposing the move.

Incarcerated PTI leader Yasmin Rashid’s health deteriorated again in jail on Monday after she was discharged from a hospital, according to her lawyer Rana Mudassar. Rashid has been in prison for almost a year now in connection with multiple cases against her regarding the events of May 9, 2023, when countrywide protests and riots broke out after the arrest of PTI founder Imran Khan. Last week, she was moved to a hospital in Lahore after her health deteriorated in Kot Lakhpat Jail. She was hospitalised in May and July of last year as well. Mudassar, Rashid’s advocate, told Dawn.com that Rashid had a severe infection in her stomach and was also having difficulty breathing. “Rashid was forcibly discharged from the hospital on Saturday. She underwent various tests, but she was not fully treated in light of the reports.” He added Rashid was “transferred to jail without informing her family and lawyers” upon being discharged. “Yasmin Rashid has a fundamental right to health and medical facilities,” Mudassar said. M...

China’s Premier Li Qiang has announced that construction had begun on what would be the world’s largest hydropower dam on the eastern rim of the Tibetan Plateau, the country’s official Xinhua news agency reported — sending stock prices and bond yields higher on Monday. The commencement of the hydropower project at an estimated cost of at least $170 billion, China’s most ambitious since the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, was seized by Chinese markets as proof of economic stimulus. Made up of five cascade hydropower stations with the capacity to produce 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, equal to the amount of electricity consumed by Britain last year, the dam will be located in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo. A section of the river tumbles 2,000 metres in a span of 50km, offering huge hydropower potential. India and Bangladesh have already raised concerns about its possible impact on the millions of people downstream. China asserts that the project has undergone rigorous scientific ...

Pakistan is set to launch its first trackless, ticketless and solar-powered metro in Lahore.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, in his meeting with Balochistan’s Livestock Minist Sardarzada Mir Faisal Jamali, decided to exchange superior livestock breeds and to bolster cooperation in livestock development between the two provinces.

As rain continues to pour in Islamabad, the district administration has intensified monitoring efforts across the city, and Deputy Commissioner Islamabad, Irfan Nawaz Memon, has issued directives to ensure the safety of residents and maintain smooth traffic flow during the wet spell.

In a special ceremony held in Islamabad on Monday, President Asif Ali Zardari conferred the prestigious Nishan-e-Imtiaz (Military) on Vice Admiral Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Ghuraibi, Chief of the Royal Saudi Naval Forces.