Dawn
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Dawn - 08:20 Aug 11, 2026
Students of Cambridge International Education’s (CIE) AS and A Level across Pakistan received their results for the June 2026 exam series on Tuesday. The CIE, part of Cambridge University Press and Assessment, offers internationally recognised exams to schools in 160-plus countries. In Pakistan, O Levels (grades 9–10) cover a broad subject range, while A and AS Levels (grades 11–12) are more specialised and advanced, providing pathways to higher education in Pakistan and abroad. While almost 368,000 students of AS & A Level worldwide received their results today, over 315,000 who appeared for Cambridge IGCSE and O Level exams around the world will get their results on August 18, said a CIE press release issued on Tuesday. Over 100,000 students from over 850 schools across Pakistan sat for the June 2026 exam series for Cambridge International AS & A Level, Cambridge O Level and IGCSE this year. The most popular subjects in the country were Physics, Mathematics, Business, Chemistry and Computer Science. This ye... -
Dawn - 07:59 Aug 11, 2026
KARACHI: A judicial magistrate on Monday convicted a man of spreading false and fabricated information and sentenced him to one-year imprisonment. However, the court released him into the custody of a probation officer after he pleaded that he was the sole breadwinner of his family and the offence was committed due to “lack of knowledge and illiteracy”. Accused Muhammad Ibrahim was booked in a case pertaining to running an “anti-state” campaign on social media platforms in February 2025 to incite “attacks on oil tankers” during a Sindhi nationalist party’s protest against a project to construct new canals. Judicial Magistrate Gulraiz Memon (East) sentenced him to one-year imprisonment for committing the offence under Section 26-A (punishment for false and fake information) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca) and imposed a fine of Rs10,000. Magistrate releases convict in custody of probation officer Considering his plea and quantum of sentence, the court observed: “The convict is a young man, age... -
Dawn - 07:31 Aug 11, 2026
In a phone call with Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Dr Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani congratulated Pakistan on the signing of the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement, the Foreign Office (FO) said on Tuesday. The joint defence agreement, signed on August 7 between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, aims to strengthen collective deterrence and empowers its signatory states to treat an attack against one of them as an attack against all of them. In a post on X, FO said that the two leaders spoke last night, during which Dar’s Bahraini counterpart congratulated him on the agreement between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkiye and also expressed intentions to visit Pakistan in the near future. Dar, for his part, welcomed the Bahraini foreign minister’s desire to visit and expressed appreciation for his comments. FO said that during the call, DPM Dar “reiterated Pakistan’s firm commitment to promoting dialogue and diplomacy to achieve peace and stability in the region ... -
Dawn - 07:23 Aug 11, 2026
KARACHI: The National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) has summoned four Karachi residents on a complaint filed by Sindh Senior Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon over “false and malicious content on social media against him and his son” in connection with the Mir Raza Ali murder case. The NCCIA’s notices, dated August 10 and seen by Dawn, stated that the agency was “conducting an inquiry into the subject matter concerning allegations of defamation through electronic/digital means, which was initiated on the basis of a complaint submitted by Naqvi Law Associates on behalf of Sharjeel Inam Memon, son of Inamul Haque Memon”. “The complaint pertains to the alleged dissemination of defamatory and fabricated content through digital platforms, which […] has caused damage to his reputation and has attracted provisions of applicable cybercrime laws,” the notices said. All four individuals have been directed to appear in person at the NCCIA Karachi office on Aug 13 at 11:30am. The notices said the respondents were r... -
Dawn - 06:59 Aug 11, 2026
The Higher Education Commission has taken two big steps on artificial intelligence. It has notified a compulsory three-credit-hour AI course for every undergraduate and postgraduate degree in the country, starting from Fall 2026. It has also circulated a draft policy on the use of generative AI in our universities. Both steps are welcome. But the rules the draft sets for students rest on two ideas that will not hold. It bans students from submitting AI-generated work as their own, and it asks them to declare which tools they used and why. These are honest instincts. They are also unenforceable. No teacher can verify either one, and the draft admits as much when it rules, correctly, that no student may be punished on the basis of an AI detection report alone. The problem is not that these rules are wrong. It is that they aim at something we cannot see. We keep arguing about what a student may do at home, when the question we can actually answer is what we choose to grade. Start with one claim, because everythi... -
Dawn - 06:51 Aug 11, 2026
Rescue efforts across western Colombia carried into a second day on Tuesday as emergency workers dug through collapsed buildings and flattened homes, amid expectations that the death toll from the country’s most powerful earthquake in decades could rise. The 7.4-magnitude earthquake tore through Colombia’s coffee-growing heartland early on Monday, killing at least 164 people. The quake reduced multi-story buildings to rubble in cities such as Pereira and Cali, and cracked apart one of the towers of a historic cathedral in the city of Manizales. Emergency teams aided by police, soldiers and volunteers worked through the night with excavators and, at times, their bare hands, hunting for survivors beneath debris. Rescuers work at the site of a collapsed building following an earthquake, in Cali, Colombia, August 10, 2026. — Reuters In Cali, home to about 2.2 million people, at least 85 people were killed. Dozens of buildings were left leaning precariously or destroyed outright, forcing residents into the streets... -
Dawn - 06:01 Aug 11, 2026
Bangladesh is scrambling to save a six-match cricket tour by neighbour India next month, with the foreign ministers of both nations roped in to try to salvage the series. Comprising three one-day internationals and three T20 matches, the white-ball series was originally planned for August last year but postponed after political relations soured between Dhaka and New Delhi. “It is being worked on at the ministerial level,” Bangladesh Sports Minister Aminul Haque said late Monday, adding talks were ongoing between the foreign ministers of both nations. Dhaka and New Delhi have been at odds since Bangladesh’s 2024 mass uprising toppled then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India, her long-time ally, where she remains in hiding. In February, Bangladesh refused to send a team to India for the T20 World Cup, citing security concerns. The International Cricket Council (ICC) refused Bangladesh’s request to play their matches in Sri Lanka, and Scotland was drafted in to replace them. “We want to quickly resol... -
Dawn - 05:15 Aug 11, 2026
SAHIWAL: A woman, who had taken possession of her inherited land after being illegally occupied for around 30 years, was allegedly abducted, tortured and humiliated by 12 armed attackers, including three women, at Chak 93/9-L. The victim, Mardan Bibi, got possession of her land she had inherited under Ghori Pal Scheme, with the help of Pera Force, police, revenue department and the district administration, following 30 years of illegal occupation. As per the First Information Report (FIR), registered under sections 50, 148, 149, 447, 511, 365, and 354 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) on the complaint of her son, Nomir Abbas, the attackers, armed with pistols and rifles, kidnapped Mardan Bibi, subjected her to torture, and fled on the arrival of a team of Yousafwala police, which came to rescue her. As per police sources, the land inherited by the victim had been illegally occupied by one Khudayar Baloch and others for nearly three decades. After repeated appeals by Mardan Bibi, Sahiwal Commissioner Asif Tufai... -
Dawn - 05:01 Aug 11, 2026
After a days-long delay, President Asif Ali Zardari gave his assent to the appointment and confirmation of additional judges for various high courts on Tuesday. “The president has approved the appointment of additional judges in the Lahore High Court (LHC), Sindh High Court (SHC), Peshawar High Court, Islamabad High Court, and Balochistan High Court,” the Presidency said in a statement, adding that he had also given his assent to the confirmation of certain additional judges of the SHC and LHC as permanent judges. The appointments and confirmations were pending since July 20 and 21, when the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) — the body responsible for appointing judges to the superior judiciary — recommended them. The JCP had recommended the confirmation of four additional judges of the Peshawar High Court, a six-month extension for an additional judge of the SHC, and the appointment of 19 additional judges to the Lahore, Islamabad, Sindh and Balochistan high courts. Under Clause 8 of Article 175-A of the... -
Dawn - 04:31 Aug 11, 2026
KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday sought a report from an anti-terrorism court (ATC) on an application filed against a delay in the trial of the Mustafa Amir murder case. A two-judge regular bench of the SHC headed by Justice Muhammad Iqbal Kalhoro also said that the report must carry details about the progress made so far in the case at the trial court. The prime accused Armaghan, along with his accomplice Sheraz, has been facing trial for allegedly abducting and killing 23-year-old Mustafa Amir at the house of the main accused in the Defence Housing Authority in January last year as well as setting the body along with his car ablaze in the Hub area. Complainant Wajeeha Amir, mother of the victim, through her lawyer, filed a criminal miscellaneous application before the SHC against a delay in conclusion of the trial. The counsel argued that the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, provides for an expeditious trial, but despite the passage of over one-and-a-half years, there was hardly any progress in the ca... -
Dawn - 04:24 Aug 11, 2026
DISCUSSIONS are happening about how so many of the young protesters that rocked the Modi government recently came from families that have been faithfully voting for the right-wing prime minister. A crucial fact that seems to elude the discussants is that liberal or communist or fascist ideologues are not hatched in hatcheries. Unlike Narendra Modi, they are not ‘non-biological’ beings that gatecrash our earthly world. To begin with, it would be useful to bear in mind that the jailed left-wing student leader Umar Khalid had transcended to secular left politics from circumstances in which his father was a member of a major Muslim revivalist body. Likewise, Neha Bora, president of the pro-communist All-India Students’ Association who fasted for 23 days at the protest, tells you sans demur that she broke away from a family tradition of voting for the Muslim-baiting BJP. The flow can be in the opposite direction too. Howard Fast, as the despairing chief of the US Communist Party, famed for writing the story of Spa... -
Dawn - 04:23 Aug 11, 2026
AUG 11 occupies a special place in our history because it was on this day in 1947 that Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah set out what citizenship in the new state ought to mean. Addressing the Constituent Assembly, he spoke of a country in which people were free to go to their temples, mosques or other places of worship, and where religion, caste or creed would not determine their standing before the state. He insisted that citizens should enjoy equal rights, privileges and obligations, and that discrimination between communities had no place in the order Pakistan was attempting to build. These remarks formed part of a wider vision of government based on law, impartiality, protection of life and property, and the safeguarding of religious belief. It is fitting, then, that minority rights activists will gather outside Mazar-i-Quaid in Karachi today to recall that promise and demand that it be honoured. The Minority Rights March has put forward 11 demands, including stronger safeguards against forced conversions... -
Dawn - 04:03 Aug 11, 2026
THE past couple of weeks have been packed with news and not just of the international kind. There were elections in Azad Kashmir, verbal duelling between the PPP and PML-N and an intense debate on a system that has collapsed. And in the midst of this came the matter of superior sounding administrative units versus local governments. What more could a journalist want? Yet more bad news it seems. For there was a relatively unimportant news item in the oft-ignored city pages of this paper, which announced a new underpass at the injunction of Margalla Road and Eighth Avenue. It seems as if someone, somewhere in the hallways of CDA has decided the short wait at the crossing is a wait too long. And Dubai-like, the rich residents of Islamabad should also not have to wait at all, for modernity means zooming around wide roads. So a new underpass the city shall have — at a junction where the avenue is called Faisal Avenue, for it leads up to the mosque, in the green lap of the Margallas. It is hard to keep count of the... -
Dawn - 03:57 Aug 11, 2026
THE Gaza peace plan championed by US President Donald Trump and his Board of Peace has encountered major turbulence, as the American leader’s Israeli friends have rejected the deal. On Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, after a cabinet meeting, said his military would not withdraw from Gaza until Hamas is “genuinely disarmed”. These verbal gymnastics indicate that Tel Aviv has no intention of ending its occupation of the Strip. Hamas had agreed to surrender its weapons to a Palestinian committee last month, and the disarmament process and Israeli withdrawal were supposed to take place in tandem. Trump had then said the development was “monumental”. It seems his Israeli allies do not share his enthusiasm. Israel does not play by the rules, and shifts the goalposts when things are not going its way. Hamas says it remains committed to the plan. From the Nakba to the Oslo Accords to the present day, it is the Arab side that has been expected to make all the compromises, while Israel is treated like a spoilt chil... -
Dawn - 03:52 Aug 11, 2026
Menlo Park (California): Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg called for lower US barriers for open-source AI to better compete with Chinese rivals as the social media giant released a new open-weight model on Monday and said more would follow soon. The new model, Muse Glimmer, is smaller than leading AI models from rivals and is instead designed to run agentic tasks on a Mac or PC with a single graphics card, aiming to tap demand for AI systems that run directly on people’s devices. “We’ve got even bigger models that are coming soon,” Zuckerberg said in a video post accompanying his 14-page essay titled The Future is for Everyone in which he championed spreading AI rather than leaving it in the hands of a few. “The notion AI is so dangerous that the only safe path is an extreme concentration of power seems inherently problematic.” Zuckerberg’s statement marks the latest show of support for open-weight AI, which is gaining traction as businesses grow wary of ballooning AI bills and worry about recent cybersecur... -
Dawn - 03:06 Aug 11, 2026
LAHORE: The Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (PKI) has demanded immediate resignation of Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz, warning of a historic, nationwide ‘Million March” on Rawalpindi starting Sept 25 if their demand is not met. Addressing a press conference alongside PKI President Mian Umair Masood and Chairman Khalid Hussain Batth, stated that the farming community faces total devastation if the incumbent chief minister remains in office for another two and a half years. They clarified that the PKI harbours no enmity towards the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) as a party, but is strictly seeking Maryam Nawaz’s resignation, whom they accused of lacking political acumen and of treating agricultural projects as mere contracts for the favoured few. The farmer leadership painted a grim picture of the agrarian economy, alleging that growers suffered a staggering Rs2,200 billion loss due to the provincial government’s refusal to procure wheat. They condemned the federal decision to import 3.5 million tonne... -
Dawn - 03:05 Aug 11, 2026
ISLAMABAD: Expressing serious displeasure over reputational challenges, the World Bank has warned that redirecting funds from a multi-billion-rupee resilient housing programme for the flood-affected population to infrastructure projects would further aggravate poverty in Balochistan. “Based on the socio-economic profile of the eligible household, the risk is not simply that households remain without housing assistance; rather, it is that existing vulnerabilities become mutually reinforcing and deepen over time,” the World Bank said in detailed communication to the federal and Balochistan governments. In this case, 84 per cent of eligible beneficiaries are ultra-poor and vulnerable, with 28pc earning less than $30 and another 26pc earning between $31 and $70 per month, while 39pc are tenants, 37pc are daily-wage labourers and 8pc are small farmers. These groups typically have limited savings, weak access to formal credit, few productive assets and low capacity to absorb shocks, WB said. After meetings with the... -
Dawn - 02:57 Aug 11, 2026
KARACHI: Evolving geopolitical developments in the Middle East could push up global energy and other commodity prices beyond assumed levels, thereby affecting the macroeconomic outlook, warned the State Bank’s biannual Monetary Policy Report (MRR), issued on Monday. Aligning with the State Bank’s commitment to transparency in monetary policy decisions and the MPC’s reaction function, the SBP issued its biannual MPR. The report analyses macroeconomic developments and the outlook that influenced monetary policy since the January MPC meeting. The report highlighted climate-related risks, specifically the evolving El Nino conditions and floods, which could adversely affect the economy. Moreover, delays in implementation of structural reforms could further weaken exports, slow productivity gains, and reduce the economy’s capacity to sustain higher growth without generating inflationary and external account pressures, it added. Mideast conflict may lift energy, commodity prices The macroeconomic conditions and outl... -
Dawn - 02:52 Aug 11, 2026
PEREIRA: At least 111 people were killed after a powerful earthquake struck western Colombia early on Monday, knocking down buildings across several cities and injuring 87 others, with still more residents trapped in the rubble. The 7.4-magnitude quake, with its epicenter in the coastal Choco region at a depth of 100km, struck at 7:34am, triggering a frantic search for survivors in several cities and thrusting the new administration into its first major crisis as Colombia declared a state of emergency. “The national government is maintaining all its capacities deployed to protect lives, assist affected communities and deliver aid to every area that needs it,” President Abelardo de la Espriella stated from Bogota. The leader appointed just three days ago reported 111 deaths, 87 people injured and over 1,000 buildings were damaged. Govt declares emergency after 7.4-magnitude quake flattens dozens of buildings The city of Pereira was one of the worst-hit areas, with local authorities earlier announcing that a... -
Dawn - 02:49 Aug 11, 2026
KARACHI: Remittances sent by overseas Pakistanis in the first month of the current fiscal year met the government’s expectations, with significant growth compared with the preceding month. The latest data issued by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Monday showed that inflows were 13 per cent higher in July than in the same month of the previous fiscal year. The country received a total of $3.6 billion in July, compared with $3.2bn in the same month last year. Month-on-month, the growth was 4.5pc. The inflows are encouraging for the government, which has set an ambitious $44bn remittance target for FY27, up from $41.5bn in FY26. Inflows from Middle East stay robust amid ongoing war Despite more than five months of the war in the Middle East, remittances did not decline; instead, they increased compared with the preceding year. There were some reports of Pakistanis leaving the UAE, but remittances from the Emirates remained intact and, in fact, increased despite the war in FY26. Currency experts said that th...
12682 items