Pakistan

United States President Donald Trump on Thursday called his telephone conversation with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping a “very good phone call” and stated that the countries’ respective teams “will be meeting shortly”. Earlier, China’s state-run news agency Xinhua reported that the call took place at Trump’s request, as bilateral relations have been strained by trade disputes. In a post on social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote that the one and a half hour call discussed the “intricacies of the trade deal” and that it “resulted in a very positive conclusion for both countries”. “There should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of rare earth products. Our respective teams will be meeting shortly at a location to be determined,” the president wrote, adding that the US will be represented by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. The post added that Xi “graciously invited” both Trump and First Lady Melania to visit...

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Afghan women working for the United Nations in Kabul have been threatened by unidentified men because of their jobs, the organisation and several women told AFP on Thursday. Multiple women working for various UN agencies told AFP on condition of anonymity they had been threatened on the street and over the phone by men warning them to “stay home”. UN staffer Huda — not her real name — said that for weeks she has been bombarded with messages abusing her for “working with foreigners”. “The messages keep coming and they are always harassing us … saying, ‘Don’t let me see you again, or else’,” the young woman told AFP. She said her office had advised her to work from home until further notice. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) confirmed that UN staff had been threatened. “Several United Nations female national staff members in the Afghan capital Kabul have been subjected to threats by unidentified individuals related to their work with the UN,” it said in a statement. Considering the th...

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Thursday her government planned to extend the ban on full-face Islamic veils in public places and apply it to schools and universities as well. She also said she wanted to see an end to prayer rooms at universities but stopped short of calling for an outright ban. “God has to step aside. You have the right to your faith and to practice your religion but democracy takes precedence,” she told Danish news agency Ritzau. In August 2018, Denmark banned the wearing of full-face Islamic veils such as the burqa and niqab in public places, with offenders subject to a fine. Human rights campaigners and religious groups have criticised the ban as discriminatory and as a violation of both freedom of religion and women’s freedom of choice. Supporters argue it enables Muslims of immigrant backgrounds to better integrate into Danish society. Frederiksen alleged that prayer rooms at universities could be used for “social control and oppression”. She said her government would st...

Worshippers prayed on Mount Arafat during the high point of Haj on Thursday as authorities urged them to avoid the hottest hours of the day after tragedy struck last year. Thousands of white-robed pilgrims recited verses from the Holy Quran from dawn on the 70-metre rocky rise near Makkah, where the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) gave his last sermon. But numbers thinned by midday following official warnings for pilgrims to stay inside between 10am and 4pm, a year after 1,301 people died in temperatures that hit 51.8 degree Celsius. “I came here early to [avoid] the sun and later I will pray inside my tent,” said 54-year-old Adel Ismail, from Syria. Saudi authorities have taken several steps to reduce the risk from heat at Haj, which has drawn more than 1.6 million pilgrims to one of the world’s hottest regions, according to fresh figures published on Thursday. A surveillance drone flies past a Muslim pilgrim as he prays at dawn on Saudi Arabia’s Mount Arafat, also known as Jabal al-Rahma or Mount of Mercy,...

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday said that Pakistan’s recent appointment to key UN committees reaffirmed the international community’s trust in the country’s counterterrorism credentials. A day ago, Pakistan was appointed chair of the committee established under Resolution 1988 (2011), which oversees the implementation of sanctions against the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan was also named vice chair of the Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC), which monitors implementation of Resolution 1373 (2001), a core component of the UN’s global counterterrorism architecture. Additionally, Pakistan will serve as co-chair of two important subsidiary bodies: the Informal Working Group on Documentation and the newly formed Working Group on Sanctions. In a post on X, the prime minister said the appointments were a “matter of great pride”. He added: “These key appointments validate the international community’s confidence and trust in Pakistan’s counterterrorism credentials as well as an acknowledgement of...

A high-level defence delegation from Belarus, led by Major General Andrei Yevgenyevich Lukyanovich, Commander of the Belarusian Air Force and Air Defence, visited the Air Headquarters in Islamabad, according to a statement from Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) on Thursday.

The National Elec­t­ric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) on Thursday notified a negative fuel cost adjustment (FCA) of Rs2.98 per unit for K-Electric (KE) consumers in June’s bills for power consumed in March. According to a notification issued by Nepra today, the authority “decided to allow a negative FCA of Rs2.9898/kWh (negative Rs4.045 billion) for March 2025, to be passed on to the consumers in the billing month of June 2025”. Nepra said the negative FCA would apply to “all the consumer categories except lifeline consumers, domestic protected consumers, Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (EVCS) and prepaid electricity consumers of all categories who opted for pre-paid tariff”. The adjustment would be shown separately in the consumers’ bills on the basis of units billed to the consumers in the respective month to which the adjustment pertains, it said. “In case any bills of June 2025 are issued before the notification of this decision, the same may be applied in the subsequent month,” the notification s...

A petition has been lodged with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) seeking the disqualification of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur over the allocation of Rs 50 million in public funds to the Lahore Bar Association — a legal body based in Punjab.

A Japanese startup will attempt a tricky lunar touchdown on Friday with an unmanned lander named Resilience, two years after its first try which crashed onto the moon’s surface. If successful, it will be only the third private mission to the Earth’s rocky natural satellite ever completed, and the first by a company based outside of the United States. The startup, ispace, says touchdown is expected at 4:17am Japan time on Friday (1917 GMT on Thursday) with the potentially nail-biting attempt streamed on its website. Resilience is “ready to attempt a historic landing on the moon” and “we are confident in our preparations for success”, ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said last week. “We have leveraged the operational experience gained in Mission 1 and during this current voyage to the moon,” he said in a statement. Only five nations have soft-landed spacecraft on the moon: the Soviet Union, the US, China, India and Japan. Companies are vying to offer cheaper and more frequent space exploration opportunities than gov...

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered an investigation into what Republicans claim was a “conspiracy” to cover up Joe Biden’s declining cognitive health during his time in the White House. The move, which was slammed by Biden, is the latest in a long-running campaign by Trump — with the backing of Republican Party politicians and their cheerleaders in the conservative media — to discredit his predecessor. But it also comes as a growing chorus of Democrats begin to acknowledge the former president appeared to have been slipping in recent years. Those concerns were thrown into stark relief by a disastrous debate performance against Trump during last year’s presidential campaign, in which the then-81-year-old stumbled over his words and repeatedly lost his train of thought. “In recent months, it has become increasingly apparent that former president Biden’s aides abused the power of presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden’s cognitive decline,” a presidential memorandum iss...