India | Pakistan

Efforts are underway to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the Air India plane crash this month that killed 260 people, and identify contributing factors, India’s civil aviation ministry said on Thursday. The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed moments after takeoff from India’s Ahmedabad city on June 12, killing 241 of the 242 people on board and the rest on ground in the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade. The black boxes of the plane — the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) — were recovered in the days that followed, one from the rooftop of a building at the crash site on June 13, and the other from the debris on June 16. They were transported to national capital Delhi on Tuesday, where a team led by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau began extracting their data, the ministry said in a statement. “The Crash Protection Module (CPM) from the front black box was safely retrieved, and […] the memory module was successfully accessed and its data do...

India on Thursday refused to endorse the joint communique issued at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Defence Ministers’ meeting in Qingdao, China, after its attempt to link Pakistan to the recent Pahalgam attack was dismissed by member states.

Nasa retiree turned private astronaut Peggy Whitson was launched on the fifth flight to orbit of her career early on Wednesday, joined by crewmates from India, Poland and Hungary heading for their countries’ first visit to the International Space Station (ISS). The astronaut team lifted off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at about 2:30am EDT (11:30am PKT), beginning the latest mission organized by Texas-based startup Axiom Space in partnership with Elon Musk’s rocket venture SpaceX. The four-member crew was carried aloft on a towering SpaceX launch vehicle consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule perched atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket. Live video showed the towering spacecraft streaking into the night sky over Florida’s Atlantic coast trailed by a brilliant yellowish plume of fiery exhaust. Cameras inside the crew compartment beamed footage of the four astronauts strapped into their pressurized cabin, seated calmly side by side in helmeted white-and-black flight suits as their spacec...

ENGLAND opener Ben Duckett plays a shot during the first Test against India at Headingley on Tuesday.—Reuters LEEDS: A superb century from Ben Duckett helped steer England to a sensational five-wicket win in the first Test against India after a thrilling day five on Tuesday, the hosts reaching a target of 371 — the 10th highest successful run chase in Test history. Having turned the match on its head at Headingley after India had been 430-3 in their first innings, England appeared to be cruising to a dramatic win as openers Duckett and Zak Crawley eased their side to lunch on 117-0 in their second innings. Duckett continued his imperious form with another four through the covers to reach his sixth Test hundred, before Crawley fell for 65, their 188-run partnership the second-highest England opening fourth-innings stand in Tests. Two wickets in two balls — Duckett and Harry Brook — dragged India back into the enthralling contest and when Ben Stokes fell for 33 attempting an ambitious reverse sweep, England’s h...

KARACHI: The Indian aggression against Pakistan has not hurt, strangely enough, the inflow of foreign investment into treasury bills, while outflows from the equity market has been much higher than inflows during the same period. The State Bank’s latest update for May shows that foreign inflows in T-bills during the month (up to May 23 of FY25) reached $73.6 million. This was strange since India attacked Pakistan on May 6. It is believed that foreign investment quickly leaves a country during an international crisis. The war did not hurt inflows in t-bills, but outflows from the equity market reflected its negative impact. The State Bank data for May shows that while inflows in T-bills were $73.5m, outflows amounted to $66m. The highest inflow of $50 million came from UAE, while Britain received the biggest outflow of $62m But figures for foreign investment in equity market show that during May, inflows were $38.7m and outflows totaled $64.6m. Although the situation has remained calm in Pakistan so far despit...

India became the first cricket team to lose a Test despite five of their batters scoring centuries in the first Test against England at Headingley. A magnificent century from Ben Duckett helped steer England to a sensational five-wicket win in the first game after a thrilling day five on Tuesday. The hosts reached a target […]

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif reiterated that Pakistan is prepared to hold constructive dialogues with India on all unresolved matters including Jammu and Kashmir, water, trade, and terrorism. He shared these thoughts during a phone call with Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, Prince Mohammed bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, on Tuesday. The […]

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif has praised Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and his team for their ‘effective’ diplomatic visit to the United States and Europe, successfully countering India’s recent propaganda against Pakistan. PM Shehbaz spoke during a meeting with Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who visited him in Islamabad on Tuesday. At […]

A superb century from Ben Duckett helped steer England to a sensational five-wicket win in the first test against India after a thrilling day five on Tuesday, the hosts reaching a target of 371 — the 10th highest successful run chase in test history. Having turned the match on its head at Headingley after India […]

Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk on Tuesday launched its blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy in India, three months after Eli Lilly began marketing its rival product Mounjaro in the world’s most populous nation. Wegovy is already under distribution and is expected to be in pharmacies by the end of the month, Novo Nordisk India Managing Director Vikrant Shrotriya said at a briefing. Lilly and Novo have been part of obesity awareness programs in India in the lead-up to their drug launches there. The market potential in India, a nation of more than 1.4 billion, is significant, with obesity and diabetes rates steadily climbing. Sales of Lilly’s weight-loss drug Mounjaro jumped 60 per cent between April and May, industry experts said. Analysts said Wegovy, a once-a-week injection, had been priced competitively to Mounjaro in India, and that is likely to encourage wider adoption of those drugs. Global demand for both Mounjaro and Wegovy has skyrocketed in recent years, with supply limited, leading to shortages in coun...

India’s aviation regulator said on Tuesday it had found multiple instances of aircraft defects reappearing “many times” at Mumbai and Delhi airports, two of the country’s busiest, indicating what it said were inadequate checks on jetliners. The findings were part of a special audit being carried out by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to strengthen safety in the wake of a deadly Air India crash that killed 271 people earlier this month. The regulator did not name the airlines where the defects were found or detail the type of defects. The two airports in the world’s third-largest aviation market serve major Indian airlines such as IndiGo, Air India and Air India Express, as well as many international carriers. The repeated instances of defects indicated “ineffective monitoring and inadequate rectification action”, the DGCA said. The government body also found other violations such as an aircraft maintenance engineer not taking prescribed safety precautions, not addressing defects in some place...

LAHORE: Despite India’s heavy subsidies on exports, Pakistan’s rice shipments remained largely unaffected due to a strategy adopted by local exporters that prioritised agility and quality. India recently re-entered the international rice market after a two-year hiatus imposed to ensure domestic food security. The lifting of export bans by New Delhi generated considerable excitement in Indian media, which predicted a significant economic blow to Pakistan’s rice exports, which had been performing robustly in the interim. For the three months preceding India’s return (July to September 2024), Pakistan’s rice exports averaged a strong 550,000 tonnes per month. Indian officials, trade bodies, and think tanks anticipated that a surge in cheaper Indian rice would undercut Pakistan’s global market share. However, Pakistani exporters countered with a swift, quality-centric strategy, avoiding a direct price war and instead focusing on premium offerings. According to sector expert Hamid Malik, this approach paid off as ...

Following new visa rules by the Trump administration, the United States Embassy in India on Monday asked all applicants for F, M, or J nonimmigrant visas to make their social public accounts public for vetting. US President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday ordered the resumption of student visa appointments but significantly tightened its social media vetting in a bid to identify any applicants who may be hostile towards the country, according to an internal State Department cable reviewed by Reuters. US consular officers are now required to conduct a “comprehensive and thorough vetting” of all student and exchange visitor applicants to identify those who “bear hostile attitudes toward our citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles”, said the cable, which was dated June 18 and sent to US missions on Wednesday. In a post on X today, the US Embassy in India said: “Effective immediately, all individuals applying for an F, M, or J nonimmigrant visa are requested to adjust the pr...

India’s counter-terrorism agency said on Sunday it has arrested two men in Indian-Occupied Kashmir for allegedly harbouring gunmen behind a deadly attack on civilians that sparked a days-long conflict between the two countries. India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) claimed the two suspects were from the Pahalgam area, where gunmen killed 26 people two months ago. “The two men had provided food, shelter and logistical support to the terrorists, who had… selectively killed the tourists on the basis of their religious identity,” a statement by NIA said. The agency identified the two men as Parvaiz Ahmad Jothar and Bashir Ahmad Jothar, claiming the duo “have disclosed the identities of the three armed terrorists involved in the attack”. New Delhi accused Pakistan of backing the attack without making public any evidence — an allegation that Islamabad denies. The April 22 killings triggered a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic measures by the nuclear-armed countries and led to intense exchanges of missile, dron...

The Indian Ministry of Civil Aviation has introduced Aircraft Demolition Rules 2025 to indicate and remove structures, such as tall buildings, towers, or trees, that could be a threat to flight operations near airports. This decisive step has been taken to strengthen flight safety in the wake of the Ahmadabad Air India crash on June […]

Shubman Gill to lead India in Test series against England

Amazon will invest more than $233 million in India in 2025 to expand and update its operations infrastructure, develop new technology for its fulfilment network and improve delivery safety, it said on Thursday. The investment builds on top of Amazon’s prior investments for the creation of an operations network to deliver to all serviceable PIN-codes in the country, it added. In June 2023, the e-commerce major — which competes with Walmart’s Flipkart and billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail in India — had said it will take its investments in the country to $26 billion by 2030, without providing a breakdown. The new investment will be used to launch new sites and upgrade existing facilities across its fulfilment and delivery network, improving speed and processing capacity, it said. Additionally, Amazon plans to use technology to alert delivery associates about unsafe speeds and ensure equitable distribution of delivery routes. Some of the funds will also be used to expand initiatives to improve the heal...

India will send the black box recovered from the recent fatally crashed Air India plane to the US for analysis, local newspaper Economic Times reported on Thursday, citing people aware of the development. “The recorder sustained heavy external damage from post-crash fire making it impossible to extract data in India,” the ET report said, citing people aware of the development. India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment. Indian authorities are investigating the crash of an Air India Boeing Dreamliner, which last week killed 241 people on board and at least 30 on ground, marking the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade. The black box consists of two components — the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder (CVR). It provides crucial insights for crash investigators, including altitude and airspeed data and pilot conversation records that help determine probable causes of crashes. Data from the flight data recorder will be extra...

India is a perpetrator of foreign interference, Canada’s intelligence agency said in a report published on Wednesday, just after India’s and Canada’s prime ministers vowed to strengthen ties at a global summit hosted by Canada. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held what both sides called productive talks on Tuesday at the G7 summit in Alberta and agreed to reinstate top diplomats they had withdrawn last year. Carney drew outrage from some members of Canada’s Sikh community when he invited Modi to the G7. Canada-India relations have been tense since former prime minister Justin Trudeau in 2023 accused India’s government of involvement in the June 18, 2023, murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist leader in Canada. Modi’s government has denied involvement in Nijjar’s killing and has accused Canada of providing a safe haven for Sikh separatists. The intelligence report noted transnational repression “plays a central role in India’s activity in Canada”, though i...

At least 18 people have died since Monday as torrential rains lashed parts of India’s western Gujarat, state officials said. Disaster response teams have been deployed to help residents in the south of the state, who are bracing for more heavy monsoon rainfall. “Eighteen people have lost their lives in rain-related incidents, while dozens have been rescued across low-lying areas by disaster response teams,” the state government said late on Tuesday. The worst-hit areas included Palitana and Jesar towns, which on Tuesday registered 867 millimetres of rain over the past 24 hours. State relief commissioner Alok Kumar Pandey said the 18 deaths were the result of storms, lightning strikes and structural collapses due to rough weather. “The state is fully geared to handle the situation, and inter-departmental coordination is being intensified to ensure swift relief and rescue operations,” Pandey said. Those rescued included 18 farm labourers who were trapped in mango orchards in the Gadhada area and 22 people in Su...