Around | Pakistan

ISLAMABAD:  Around 3.3 million jobs may have been affected by the 2025 floods in Pakistan, according to an assessment conducted by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The ILO — a specialised United Nations agency — announced on Tuesday that it had undertaken an employment and livelihoods loss assessment for 14 of the worst-affected districts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. According to the ILO, the assessment showed that the majority of employment losses and disruptions were borne by the nine flood-affected districts in Punjab. It further indicated that rural areas accounted for nearly 78 per cent of the total estimated employment losses, with agriculture emerging as the most affected sector, followed by services and industry. According to the statement, the assessment was in support of the review and validation by the Preliminary Assessment of 2025 Flood Damages, a collective exercise supported by the United Nations, Asian Development Bank, European Union, and the World Bank, with the United Natio...

Around 250 people, including children, were feared missing after a boat carrying Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi nationals capsized in the Andaman Sea, the United Nations said on Tuesday. “The trawler, which departed from Teknaf in southern Bangladesh and was on its way to Malaysia, reportedly sank due to heavy winds, rough seas, and overcrowding,” the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement. Thousands of Rohingya, Myanmar’s persecuted Muslim minority, risk their lives every year fleeing repression and civil war in their country. They travel by sea, often aboard makeshift boats. The Rohingya on board this latest boat were likely leaving huge camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, where more than a million refugees forced to flee Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine live in squalid conditions. Rakhine state has been the scene of fierce fighting between the military and the Arakan Army, an ethnic minority rebel group, over control of the territory. The exact circumstances surroundi...

Around a million children were missed and 53,000 refusals were reported during the year’s first nationwide polio campaign. The largest share of refusals, i.e. 58 per cent, was reported from Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi. The campaign concluded on February 5 in most cities, while the campaign ran till February 8 in Sindh. During the campaign, polio drops were administered to more than 44.3 million children, marking a significant milestone in Pakistan’s continued efforts to eradicate polio. While the data shows that the polio programme achieved overall household coverage of 98pc, with 2pc children missed, the number of missed children is still huge and worrisome given Pakistan’s population. Overall, 0.95m children were reported as missed during the campaign. A large proportion of these (0.67m) were missed because children were not available at home at the time of vaccination. During the campaign, 2.5 million guest children were vaccinated, likely covering a substantial share of children recorded as not being...

Jemele Hill and Kate Fagan return to ESPN’s Around the Horn for one-day appearance ahead of show’s May 23 finale.