Pakistan

Peshawar - Under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Ali Amin Khan Gandapur, a series of consultative meetings is underway to finalize the upcoming Annual Development Programme (ADP).

The Punjab government has officially scrapped all fees for birth and death registrations across the province, effective immediately under the newly enforced Punjab Birth and Death Registration Rules 2025.

Tragedy struck the village of Walihaar in Sindh’s Umerkot district, where three children lost their lives after drowning in a pond while playing.

IN October 2023, when the Supreme Court struck down the military trials of civilians, the detailed judgement began with the following quote: “even amid the clash of arms, the laws were not silent, that they spoke the same language in peace and in war”. The majority judgements were authored by Justices Munib Akhtar and Ayesha Malik. Even in the darkest of times, the court affirmed, fundamental rights must remain in every part of our territory. On May 7, the Constitutional Bench overturned this decision, and sanctioned the military trials of civilians. The verdict is a surrender of fundamental rights, and a defeat for the Constitution. A law first introduced by Ayub Khan in 1967 has been restored. This means civilians can be court-martialled going forward. The law allowing the court martial of civilians was part of a series of oppressive Ayub-era laws. Under the Defence of Pakistan Ordinance, 1965, and the rules made thereunder, citizens could be preventatively detained on vague grounds including “suspicion” th...

Bangladesh on Sunday began the first trial at a special court prosecuting former senior figures connected to the ousted government of Sheikh Hasina, the chief prosecutor said. The court in the capital Dhaka accepted a formal charge against eight police officials in connection with the killing of six protesters on August 5 last year, the day Hasina fled the country as the protesters stormed her palace. The eight men are charged with crimes against humanity. Four are in custody and four are being tried in absentia. “The formal trial has begun,” Tajul Islam, chief prosecutor of Bangladesh’s domestic International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), told reporters. “The prosecution believes that this prosecution will be able to prove the crimes done by the accused.” It is the first formal charge in any case related to the killings during last year’s student-led uprising, which ended Hasina’s iron-fisted rule of 15 years. Up to 1,400 people were killed between July and August 2024 when Hasina’s government launched a brutal cam...

Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif has expressed deep grief over the loss of lives in incidents caused by strong winds and heavy rainfall across the province.

Pakistan Army spokesperson Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry has accused India of using Afghan soil to wage terrorism against Pakistan and urged the Afghan people not to allow their land to be used for such activities.

Two more students, Sheema Ibrahim and Muskan, succumbed to their injuries while receiving treatment after the recent terrorist attack on a school bus in Khuzdar, raising the death toll to eight, according to security sources.

US President Donald Trump defended on Sunday his administration’s move to block foreign students at Harvard after a judge suspended the action, branded by the top university as unlawful. “Why isn’t Harvard saying that almost 31 [per cent] of their students are from foreign lands, and yet those countries, some not at all friendly to the United States, pay nothing toward their student’s education, nor do they ever intend to,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “We want to know who those foreign students are, a reasonable request since we give Harvard billions of dollars, but Harvard isn’t exactly forthcoming.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday revoked Harvard’s ability to enrol foreign nationals, throwing the future of thousands of students and the lucrative income stream they provide into doubt. She had threatened last month to block international students at the school unless it turned over records on visa holders’ “illegal and violent activities”. But a judge quickly suspended the m...

A Liberian-flagged container ship with hazardous cargo has sunk off the coast of Kerala in India’s south, the navy said on Sunday after rescuing all 24 crew members safely. India’s navy said the MSC ELSA 3, listed as a 184-metre-long freight ship, which was sailing from the Indian port of Vizhinjam to Kochi, ran into trouble on Saturday and issued a distress call. Navy aircraft scrambled to the area and spotted two life rafts, with the container ship listing at a dangerous angle, some 38 nautical miles southwest of Kochi. “All 24 crew members on board were rescued,” the Ministry of Defence said in a statement, with the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) and a navy patrol boat collecting the sailors, who were from Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, and the Philippines. “The vessel went down with 640 containers, including 13 with hazardous cargo and 12 containing calcium carbide,” the statement said. The Defence Ministry did not specify what was inside the containers it said were hazardous. Calcium carbide is used in the chemical...

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar today held a telephone conversation with the Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan, Saidov Bakhtiyor Odilovich.

Government has decided to launch operation against illegal constructions in Islamabad.

Pakistan has termed India's decision to illegally and unilaterally suspend the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty as a grave violation of international law, including human rights law, the treaty law and customary international law.

In a groundbreaking move to transform Pakistan into a global leader in digital innovation, the government has announced the allocation of 2,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity in the first phase of a national initiative to power Bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence (AI) data centres. The government recently decided to legalise cryptocurrency to lure international investment in Pakistan. The Pakistan Crypto Council (PCC) was launched in March to “regulate and integrate blockchain technology and digital assets” into the country’s financial landscape. The federal government appointed entrepreneur Bilal Bin Saqib as the chief adviser to the finance minister on the council. A statement by the Finance Division says this ambitious initiative is spearheaded by the PCC — a government-backed body under the Ministry of Finance — as part of a broader strategy to “monetise surplus electricity, create high-tech jobs, attract billions of dollars in foreign direct investment, and generate billions of dollars for the gove...

For Najibullah Wazir, a resident of North Waziristan, May 28, 2018, marked a historic turning point. On that day, Pakistan’s Parliament passed the 25th Constitutional Amendment, formally abolishing the colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) and merging the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The decision was hailed as a watershed moment — an end to more than a century of legal and political exclusion for the region’s residents. The merger held out the promise of equal rights, access to courts, regular policing, improved infrastructure, and civic inclusion. For young voices such as Wazir, who had long advocated for the mainstreaming of Fata, it signified the dawn of a new chapter. “We believed we would finally be treated as citizens, not subjects,” he recalls. “They promised us development, peace and justice.” Seven years later, those promises remain largely unfulfilled. Despite legislative success, the implementation has faltered, undermined by bureaucratic inertia,...

The Pakistan Polio Programme on Sunday launched the third drive of the year against the crippling disease at the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC), Islamabad. Pakistan is one of the last two countries in the world, alongside Afghanistan, where polio remains endemic. Despite global efforts to eradicate the virus, challenges such as security issues, vaccine hesitancy, and misinformation have slowed progress. Earlier this week, two new cases of polio were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Lakki Marwat and Bannu districts, taking the tally for the current year to 10. “The Pakistan Polio Programme today launched its third National Immunisation Days (NIDs) campaign of the year at the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC), Islamabad,” a statement from the Centre read. The campaign was formally inaugurated by Prime Minister’s Focal Person for Polio Eradication Ayesha Raza Farooq, alongside members of the Polio Programme’s core group and representatives of partner organisations, the statement added. “To...

A private airline flight (FL-842) from Karachi to Lahore narrowly averted disaster on Saturday evening when it was caught in a violent storm while attempting to land at Allama Iqbal International Airport.

The Pakistan Polio Programme has officially launched its third round of National Immunisation Days (NIDs), marking another major step in the country’s drive to eradicate poliovirus.

LAHORE: The Punjab government has plans to enact a law to control criminal and anti-social persons commonly known as “goondas”, who make life difficult for the people, in the province. The new law, The Punjab Control of Goondas and Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2025, will serve as a modern, effective legal tool to tackle organised and habitual crime, protect public safety, and deter anti-social behaviour. The Act, after enactment, will repeal The Punjab Control of Goondas Ordinance, 1959. The Punjab home department has drafted the new law that provides a comprehensive legal framework for identifying, monitoring and restraining individuals commonly known as “goondas” who pose a threat to public order. The act provides the legal definition of goonda as “a person habitually involved in disorderly conduct, criminal activity, or anti-social behaviour that endangers peace or creates public nuisance”. The district intelligence committees (DICs) have been empowered to declare an individual a ‘goonda’ based on credible re...

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Saturday that an Israeli strike in the southern city of Khan Yunis at least nine children from the same family, with the Israeli army saying it was reviewing the reports. Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said civil defence crews retrieved “the bodies of nine child martyrs, some of them charred, from the home of Dr Hamdi al-Najjar and his wife, Dr Alaa al-Najjar, all of whom were their children”. He added that Hamdi al-Najjar and another son, Adam, were also seriously wounded in the strike on Friday. A medical source at Nasser Hospital, where Alaa al-Najjar works, gave Adam’s age as 10 years old. Footage of the aftermath released by the civil defence agency showed rescuers recovering badly burned remains from the damaged home. Asked about the incident, the Israeli military said it had “struck a number of suspects who were identified operating from a structure” near its troops. “The Khan Yunis area is a dangerous warzone,” it added. “The claim regarding harm to uninv...