Pakistan

The Punjab government has announced a series of postings and transfers following the recent promotions of several officers.

Pakistan’s atmosphere is “almost clear” of the ash plume from a volcanic eruption in Ethiopia, Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) spokesperson Anjum Nazeer Zaighum said on Tuesday, adding that the ash cloud was now present over parts of India. The Hayli Gubbi volcano, located in Ethiopia’s Afar region about 800 kilometres northeast of Addis Ababa near the Eritrean border, erupted for several hours two days ago. The eruption sent a column of ash and smoke rising nearly 45,000 feet into the atmosphere. The dangerous ash plume from the eruption had drifted across the Red Sea and disrupted operations on one of the world’s busiest air routes. By Monday, the plume had spread east over Yemen and Oman and was tracking toward the airspace of Pakistan and India, forcing airlines to cancel flights or fly costly detours. The Met Office spokesperson said the ash plume was first detected in Pakistan about 60 nautical miles south of Gwadar around 10am on Monday. Zaigham said the ash plume remained over areas in Pakist...

Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Sahir Shamshad Mirza has expressed his satisfaction over the combat readiness of Pakistan Air Force and the progress achieved through its modernization and up-gradation initiatives.

Alphabet’s Google and venture capital firm Accel will partner to fund at least 10 early-stage Indian AI startups, marking the US technology giant’s first such funding partnership, top executives at the companies said on Thursday. The move comes as several US tech firms like Microsoft, Amazon and OpenAI make a beeline for the world’s most populous nation, seen as a critical growth market where nearly a billion users access the internet. Under the partnership, Google’s AI Futures Fund and Accel will co-invest up to $2 million in each startup, Prayank Swaroop, partner at Accel, told Reuters in an interview, with the investments focused on the wide areas of entertainment, creativity, work and coding. The announcement comes after Google in October said it would invest $15 billion over five years to set up an AI data centre in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, its biggest-ever investment in the country. Its AI Futures Fund, launched six months ago, has funded over 30 companies, including Indian webtoon s...

Outgoing Chairman Joint Chief of Staff Committee (CJCSC) General Sahir Shamshad Mirza paid a farewell visit to Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) Field Marshal Asim Munir at General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, the military’s media wing said on Tuesday. During the meeting, the army chief commended General Mirza for his “exemplary leadership, strategic foresight, and dedicated service to the Pakistan Armed Forces”, according to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR). “He (COAS) lauded the CJCSC’s pivotal role in enhancing tri-services synergy, strengthening joint operational preparedness, and advancing Pakistan’s national security objectives at the strategic level,” ISPR said. Furthermore, Field Marshal Munir also highlighted General Mirza’s contributions towards regional stability, military diplomacy, and the strengthening of Pakistan’s partnerships with friendly countries, as per ISPR’s statement. “General [Mirza] expressed gratitude to the COAS and the armed forces for the support extended during his c...

Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman on Tuesday strongly objected to recent legislations aimed at reducing domestic violence, protecting children from child marriages, and safeguarding transgender community’s rights. On November 13, the National Assembly also passed a bill — awaiting the Senate’s approval — to protect people against domestic violence in Islamabad. A day later, the Balochistan Assembly adopted a bill to ban child marriages with a majority, amidst a protest by opposition lawmakers, including JUI-F’s Younis Zehri. In September, the Balochistan cabinet approved the province’s first-ever transgender policy to ensure the community’s social and economic inclusion. Addressing the media in Islamabad today, the JUI-F chief said, “Some legislation has been enacted regarding the marriage of children below the age of 18 years, regarding transgenders, and regarding domestic violence.” View this post on Instagram The Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill 2025 aims to es...

The forties may have gained a reputation for being the age when bad things happen to a woman’s body, but there is no magic to this number. Every woman goes through these physiological changes in their own time. The 40s is, however, the age when perimenopause is most likely to hit women, and it is good to know what changes to expect and how to combat them. Perimenopause can be loosely defined as the prep time that a female body takes to transition into menopause, and it is here that hormones such as oestrogen and progesterone start to destabilise. The most notable changes a woman faces physically at this time are weight gain, a deteriorating skin texture, and exhaustion. Doctors have noted that this particular weight gain is not just visible on the scale — it settles distinctly on the hips, giving the body a more rotund look. The loss of oestrogen and progesterone is directly responsible for saggy and more dehydrated skin, fine lines and the loss of skin suppleness due to decreasing collagen. Dr Kazi Azmiri Ho...

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan expressed disappointment over the party’s defeat in the by-elections, saying their mandate was still not being recognised.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Inspector General of Police (IG) Zulfiqar Hameed on Tuesday said the perpetrators of yesterday’s suicide attack on the Federal Constabulary (FC) Headquarters in Peshawar were likely Afghan citizens. Investi­gators and intelligence agencies are hunting for facilitators and support networks behind the attack, which saw three personnel embrace martyrdom and 12 sustain injuries. The attack, which began after a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance, was swiftly repulsed as personnel engaged and shot his two accomplices dead before they could enter the installation to inflict any major damage. Questioned about the progress of the investigation and whether any evidence had come to the fore about the assailants being Afghan citizens, IG Hameed said: “We are saying this because, based on the evidence so far, when someone does not have a citizenship record, they are assumed to be Afghan or something similar.” He confirmed that authorities had identified the location where the terrorists spen...

Badruddin Umar, who died in Dhaka on September 7, 2025, at the age of 93, was often introduced as a Marxist theorist and a figure of the Bangladeshi left. That label never captured the real centre of gravity of his life’s work. His lasting contribution was scholarly. Umar left behind a meticulous body of English-language writing and translated work that gave international readers an empirically grounded view of East Bengal’s history, culture and class formation. The best of his English books and essays are neither slogans nor memoirs; they are archives in prose — dense with references, patient with evidence and consciously written to carry Bangladesh’s history beyond the limits of a single language community. For students of South Asia who read him first in English, Umar appears primarily as a historian of structures, a cartographer of class conflict and a translator who understood translation as an intellectual act. In the notice of his passing, Bangladeshi outlets described him as a public intellectual, res...

Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General (DG) Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry refuted allegations by the Afghan Taliban on Tuesday that Pakistan had conducted overnight strikes in Afghanistan, state media reported. The statement by the head of the military’s media wing came hours after the Afghan Taliban spokesperson accused Pakistan of attacks in Khost, Kunar and Paktika provinces. According to state broadcaster Pakistan TV, the military spokesperson refuted the claims of conducting strikes inside Afghanistan. “Pakistan Army has not attacked civilians inside Afghanistan,” it quoted him as saying. “Whenever Pakistan attacks someone, it announces it,” he said, according to local media. “In our view, there are no good and bad Taliban,” he said, adding that there was “no distinction” between terrorists. “The Taliban government should make decisions as a state, not as non-state actors,” said Gen Chaudhry. He also wondered how long the current set-up in Afghanistan would remain an interim o...

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday directed the relevant authorities to ensure world-class standards, transparency, and complete digitisation in the execution of the Jinnah Medical Complex and Daanish University projects.

Pakistani military spokesman Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry has urged the public to avoid speculation over the court martial of former senior military officer Faiz Hamid.

Information Minister Attaullah Tarar on Tuesday said banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) chief Noor Wali Mehsud planned the November 11 suicide blast outside Islamabad’s Judicial Complex. The attack killed 12 people and injured 35 others, with the government saying days later that it had arrested four terrorists belonging to the TTP. Addressing a press conference in Islamabad today, Tarar detailed the correspondence between these four facilitators and TTP commanders in Afghanistan. Displaying their pictures, Tarar identified them as the suicide bomber’s handler Sajidullah alias Sheena, Kamran Khan, Muhammad Zali and Shah Munir. The minister said Mehsud “planned this attack through his commander Daadullah”, whom Sajidullah met in 2023, 2024 and in August 2025 as well. He added that Daadullah and Sajidullah “remained in touch through an app”. Tarar identified Daadullah as a resident of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bajaur, adding that he was currently in Afghanistan. He also played a video statement of the man he ...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in its Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment Report on Pakistan, has called for the robust implementation of the National Tariff Policy 2025–30, stressing the need for continued reforms to simplify the country’s complex tariff structure.

Federal Information Minister Attaullah Tarar on Tuesday said that the November 11 suicide attack in Islamabad was orchestrated from Afghanistan by banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Noor Wali Mehsud.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) has rejected the 27th constitutional amendment, calling it unnecessary and harmful to the Constitution.

Security forces killed twenty-two Indian-sponsored Khwarij during an intelligence-based operation in Bannu district.

Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar met Ali Lari­ja­­ni, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Secu­ri­­ty Council, on Tuesday, with the two sides reaffirming their commitment to “enhancing cooperation on regional and international issues of mutual interest”, according to the Foreign Office (FO). The two also agreed to “deepening bilateral ties in diverse areas” between Islamabad and Tehran, the FO posted on social media platform X. Lari­ja­­ni reached Pakistan on Monday and is expected to meet Pakistan’s political and military leadership during the visit. His trip follows Speaker of Iranian Parliament Bagher Ghalibaf’s visit to Islamabad last month, marking the second high-level Iranian delegation to Pakistan in weeks. In a post on X before landing in Pakistan, Larijani said: “Iran and Pakistan are two important and influential countries in ensuring lasting security in the region, and we always pay close attention to the brotherly relations between the countries of the region.” He also said that “Iranians wil...

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi has said that lasting development and prosperity cannot be achieved without restoring peace in the province.