Days after Iran effectively blocked shipping through the Strait of Hormuz following the start of US and Israeli attacks in late February, two Pakistani electric motorbike (EV) outlets 1,400 km away found themselves overwhelmed with enquiries. Haseeb Bhatti, who retrofits petrol-fuelled bikes with battery-powered motors in the northern city of Rawalpindi, said his March sales surged 70 per cent. For Ali Gohar Khan, who owns a 7-year-old electric motorbike retail franchise with branches across Pakistan, the recent surge in sales is the steepest ever. “People have this fear that maybe in the near future, they might not get petrol at all,” Khan said. The Middle East crisis has sent global fuel prices soaring, compounding pain for Pakistanis already hit by inflation and a post-pandemic economic downturn. As the nation imports nearly all its oil through the Strait of Hormuz, shortage rumours took hold despite the government’s supply assurances. Workers assemble an electric motorcycle at D.S. Motors Pvt. Ltd, in Hyd...
LAKKI MARWAT: At least five policemen including an officer were injured in an explosion in the Shahbazkhel town of Lakki Marwat district, police said on Tuesday. A spokesperson for the district’s police, Qudratullah, confirmed that the attack was carried out by Fitna-al-Khawarij on the Bannu-DI Khan section of the Peshawar-Karachi Indus Highway. Fitna al Khawarij is a term the state uses for terrorists belonging to the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). He said that terrorists had fitted an improvised explosive device (IED) to a motorcycle parked along the roadside, which later exploded with a loud bang. The official added that a police patrol from Shahbazkhel police station was the target of the blast. A police van seen after being damaged in an attack in Lakki Marwat. —Photo provided by author The police spokesperson said that “the explosion was heard throughout the area and left one assistant sub-inspector (ASI) and four constables injured”, adding that the police van they were patrolling in was also...
The four astronauts of Nasa’s Artemis II mission flew deeper into space on Monday than any humans before them, as they cruised through a rare flyby of the shadowed far side of the moon that revealed a lunar surface under cosmic bombardment. The six-hour survey of the normally hidden hemisphere of Earth’s only natural satellite was highlighted by the astronauts’ direct visual observations of “impact flashes” from meteors pelting the darkened and heavily cratered lunar surface. About two dozen scientists packed a conference room adjacent to mission control at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston to record the lunar phenomena witnessed by the Artemis crew in real time as their Orion spacecraft, about the size of an SUV, sailed around the moon roughly a quarter million miles (402,000km) from Earth. The six-hour flyby, which swooped to within 4,070 miles of the lunar surface, came six days into a spaceflight marking the world’s first voyage of astronauts to the vicinity of the moon since Nasa’s Cold War-era Apol...