Pakistan

Minister of State for Interior Tallal Chaudhry on Monday said the PTI hired “foreign companies” to run paid hashtags and social media trends to disseminate “selective narratives and propaganda”. “The companies create fake accounts in the name of women and news agencies that are being operated from foreign countries,” said the minister while addressing the media in Islamabad. Chaudhry also showed a video, saying all evidence in the video was taken from “documents provided by X” (formerly Twitter). Briefing on the entire mechanism of the operation, he said, “The companies were hired through auction and paid via foreign funding [by PTI]. These companies then create social media accounts, which are mostly operated outside Pakistan in countries that are considered our enemies. The account users [handlers who operate the accounts] are neither PTI members nor people from Pakistan.” The accounts were owned by companies that “frequently change the accounts’ names as per the requirements,” he added. He added that a com...

Punjab is set to raise a separate force for handling “unlawful” protests and mobs, as the Punjab Assembly’s Standing Committee on Home Affairs on Monday cleared a sweeping amendment to the Police Order, 2002, to tighten control over riots, violent protests and unlawful assemblies across the province. The proposed Police Order (Second Amendment) Act, 2025, introduces a dedicated Riot Management Unit (RMU), empowered to manage riots across Punjab with modern gear and training specifically for crowd control. The RMU will operate under an additional inspector general of police (AIG), supervised by the provincial police officer. A key feature of the bill is the formal declaration of “riot zones.” Under the new law, the deputy commissioner and district police officer can jointly declare any affected area a riot zone, allowing authorities to cordon off roads, evacuate civilians and appoint an incident commander to coordinate all departments during operations. The bill grants legal protection to police and RMU person...

Federal Health Minister and Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) leader Mustafa Kamal shared key features of his party’s draft constitutional amendment, proposing the disbursement of districts’ shares through the National Finance Commission (NFC) as the provinces failed to transfer funds to local bodies. He was addressing a gathering held at the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industries on Monday. Kamal said regional autonomy comes when all stakeholders are empowered and autonomous decision-making powers are devolved from the chief minister to union council chairmen. He said that there is a mechanism for disbursing funds from the federal government to the provinces, but no mechanism for transferring funds from provinces to local bodies. “It’s up to a person’s will to either grant Rs1,000 billion to someone or to grant nothing to another.” He highlighted that Article 140a of the Constitution stressed the devolution of political, administrative, and financial powers to elected local representatives. “Ever...

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Monday reduced its policy rate by 50 basis points to 10.5 per cent, effective from December 16. In a statement, the monetary policy committee (MPC) noted that inflation remained within the 5-7pc target range on average during July-November FY26, though it said that core inflation proved to be “relatively sticky”. “On balance, the inflation outlook remains broadly unchanged, mainly owing to the relatively benign global commodity prices and anchored inflation expectations, amidst [a] prudent monetary policy stance,” the statement read. The MPC further observed that economic activity was increasing based on an improvement in key high-frequency indicators, including a higher-than-anticipated increase in large-scale manufacturing during the first quarter of the 2026 fiscal year. “Nonetheless, the committee noted that the global environment remains challenging, particularly for exports, which may have some implications for the macroeconomic outlook,” the statement read. “In this ...

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has taken notice of the frequent offloading of passengers travelling abroad, ordering the constitution of a committee to look into the matter, Federal Minister for Overseas Pakistanis Chaudhry Salik Hussain said on Monday. Over the past few months, numerous incidents have been reported of travellers being offloaded from flights at various airports, despite possessing valid travel documents. The actions came after a crackdown was launched on migrant smuggling following the Greece boat tragedy in 2024, one which claimed several Pakistani lives. In a statement issued today, the minister stated that PM Shehbaz had formed a “special committee” to look into the issue of offloading passengers at airports and to ensure safe migration. “Recently, despite having complete documentation, some passengers have still been offloaded,” the minister said. “People who held valid visas were offloaded as well.” The committee will prepare “recommendations regarding the safe migration of people,” the m...

A soldier was martyred during a counter-insurgency operation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Dera Ismail Khan district on Monday, in which seven terrorists were killed, the military’s media wing said in a statement. According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), an intelligence-based operation (IBO) was carried out in DI Khan’s Kulachi area on the reported presence of terrorists belonging to the Indian proxy Fitna al Khawarij. Fitna-al-Khawarij is a term the state uses for terrorists belonging to the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). “During the conduct of [the] operation, own troops effectively engaged the khwarij location and after an intense fire exchange, seven khwarij were sent to hell,” the statement read. During the battle, Naik Yasir Khan, 34, a resident of Mardan, embraced martyrdom after “having fought gallantly [and] paid the ultimate sacrifice”, the ISPR said. The statement added that weapons and ammunition were seized from the dead terrorists, who were involved in terrorist activity in t...

Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb underscored Pakistan’s strategic shift from seeking aid-based support towards trade- and investment-led engagement to ensure long-term economic sustainability and mutually beneficial partnerships, particularly with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. In an interview with CNN Business Arabia, Aurangzeb highlighted the vision of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, which reflected Pakistan’s renewed economic confidence and reform momentum. He said that Pakistan has followed a comprehensive macroeconomic stabilisation program for the past 18 months, which has delivered tangible and measurable results, while inflation has declined to single-digit levels from an unprecedented 38%. On the fiscal front, Pakistan has achieved primary surpluses, while the current account deficit remains well within targeted limits. According to the finance czar, the exchange rate has also stabilised, and foreign exchange reserves have improved to approximately 2.5 months of import cover, reflect...

The 75th meeting of the Board of Advanced Studies and Research (BASR) was held at Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), during which 12 PhD and 87 MPhil research scholars from the Faculty of Education, the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities & the Faculty of Sciences defended their research synopses.

The educational institutions across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will observe black day on December 16 to commemorate the victims of the tragic Army Public School (APS) attack, one of the most painful incidents in Pakistan’s history.

The constitutional bench of the Sindh High Court has issued bailable arrest warrants for the Director General of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) after he failed to comply with a court order directing the payment of pension to a retired officer.

Claims circulated by Israeli, Indian, and Afghan-linked media accusing Pakistan of involvement in a recent terrorist attack near Sydney have been debunked by official records and statements.

Islamabad High Court (IHC) Justice Tariq Jahangiri on Monday expressed a lack of confidence in the bench headed by Chief Justice Sardar Sarfraz Dogar hearing a case related to his academic degree and requested that the matter be transferred to another bench.

Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri appeared before the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday, presenting arguments in his defence against challenges to the legitimacy of his law degree and appointment as a judge while also raising objections over the division bench hearing the case. The controversy surrounding the IHC judge’s law degree originated from a letter that began circulating last year on social media, purportedly from the University of Karachi’s (KU) controller of examinations. Subsequently, a complaint pertaining to his allegedly fake degree was submitted to the Supreme Judicial Council — the top forum for judicial accountability that probes allegations of misconduct against judges — last year in July and a petition challenging his appointment was also filed in the IHC earlier this year by lawyer Mian Dawood. A two-member IHC bench, led by Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Sarfraz Dogar and also comprising Justice Muhammad Azam Khan, took up the matter on Monday in a packed courtroom. The same bench had dec...

Dear Auntie, I am a 19-year-old girl who just cleared her Medical and Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT) and, luckily, secured a seat in a government medical college in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. I consider myself extremely lucky to have gotten into a government college, considering the tough competition in our province. However, now that I am in my post-MDCAT phase, strangely, I am questioning my career choice. Do I really want to do this? What about the saturation in this field? What if I am jobless after all the hard work and extensive studies? Is pursuing this field in a country with a faltering economy the right career choice? These questions are popping up in my head every now and then. My dream was to clear the MDCAT and I really put in all my efforts to achieve it. Now, after I am done with it, I am actually clueless. I am wondering if I really wanted to become a doctor or was it just the craze of clearing the MDCAT and proving myself to people. Or is it just the poor situation of doctors these days in ou...

The night the last full Heer was sung in a village in Jaranwala, the moon was so bright that old men swore Ranjha himself had returned to listen. Three brothers — Ghulam Haider, Allah Ditta and Mohammad Bakhsh — all past 90, sat on a cracked mud platform beneath a single bulb. They began after maghrib [sunset] and finished only at the fajr azaan [call to prayer at dawn]. That night, they moved through the old qissay [tales] — Heer Ranjha, Mirza Sahiban and others — without missing a single couplet. Twelve unbroken hours, thousands of couplets, not one repeated. When Sahiban begged Mirza to shoot her first, even the village dogs fell silent. The youngest listener was 63. No child was present. That was 2003. Today, the platform sells motorcycle parts, the bulb is gone and the brothers rest in the village graveyard. A THOUSAND YEARS IN MEMORY For a thousand years, the memory of Punjab lived in breath and melody rather than ink. From the salt hills of Soon Valley to the barley fields of Sargodha, every village on...

A Pakistan-origin man living in Sydney has said he had received death threats and was “terrified” to leave his home after his photo was widely shared online as the gunman responsible for the Bondi Beach shooting, it emerged on Monday. Two gunmen on Sunday had opened fire at a Hanukkah gathering in Sydney’s Bondi Beach, killing 15 in Australia’s worst incident of gun violence since 1996. Police have not yet disclosed the names of the suspects, who happen to be father and son, or their motives. However, various news outlets identified them as Sajid Akram and Naveed Akram, respectively. The father first came to Australia in 1998 on a student visa, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told reporters on Monday. He was killed at the scene. His son — an Australian-born citizen according to the home affairs minister — is critically injured and being treated in a Sydney hospital bed under police guard. Photos of a beaming man in a green Pakistan cricket jersey had subsequently pinged across social media. Some of the posts...

“From Plato to Nato, the history of command in war consists of an endless quest for certainty…historical commanders have always faced the choice between two basic ways of coping with uncertainty…to construct an army of automatons following the orders of a single man, allowed to do only that which could be controlled; the other, to design organisations and operations in such a way as to enable the former to carry out the latter without the need for continuous control. …the second of these methods has, by and large, proved more successful than the first…” — Martin van Creveld quoted by William Lind in Manoeuvre Warfare Handbook “He plunged past with his bayonet towards the green hedge,  King, honour, human dignity, etcetera  Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm  To get out of that blue crackling air  His terror’s touchy dynamite.” — The Bayonet Charge by Ted Hughes SITUATING THE ISSUE Among other changes brought in by the 27th Constitutional Amendment, one relates to the creation of the office of Chief of D...

A Lahore district and sessions court on Monday granted interim pre-arrest bail to YouTuber Rajab Butt and TikToker Nadeem Mubarak in a case related to the alleged promotion of gambling apps. The National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) has registered cases against several YouTubers on charges of promoting and encouraging a gambling application, including Butt and Mubarak. Both social media influencers appeared in front of Additional District and Sessions Judge Mansoor Ahmed Qureshi on Monday. Their lawyers contended that the two wanted to join the investigation against them to prove their innocence. The judge granted pre-arrest bail to Butt and Mubarak, restraining the NCCIA from arresting them till January 6. The judge also directed both suspects to join the investigation before the next date of hearing. The development comes days after the Islamabad High Court (IHC) granted 10-day protective bail to the social media influencers in response to a petition filed by Butt and Mubarak’s relatives, who ha...

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) is set to announce its new monetary policy today (Monday) and expected to keep the policy rate unchanged.

The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Monday declared null and void 80 decisions issued by the provincial ombudsperson under the Women’s Inheritance Protection Law, ruling that the authority had exceeded its legal mandate.