Pakistan

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar on Friday received a telephone call from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, during which the two leaders discussed evolving regional dynamics and ongoing diplomatic efforts.

Pakistan repaid the $3.45 billion deposit to the United Arab Emirates, the State Bank of Pakistan confirmed on Friday. The central bank said the $1bn deposit was repaid to the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development on April 23 and $2.45bn was repaid to the UAE “last week”. “This completes the repayment of total deposits of $3.45 billion to UAE,” said the SBP in a post on X. A senior official said earlier this month that Pakis­tan had decided to return $3.5 billion in debt to the UAE before the end of this month. The official described the move as a cost the country was willing to bear to uphold “national dignity”, even as it is set to significantly draw down foreign exch­ange reserves. These funds were part of external financing support extended by the UAE in 2019 to help stabilise Pakistan’s balance of payments. In March, Islamabad failed to secure an agreement with the UAE to roll over the $3.5bn facility, marking the first such failure in seven years and raising concerns about near-term financing gaps. In a separa...

LAHORE: A woman, accused of killing her three children a day earlier, was handed over to police custody on a five-day physical remand on Friday. On Thursday, the police claimed that three children who were found murdered at their house near Lahore’s Shah Jamal Colony were killed by their mother over estrangement with her husband. The investigating officer presented the accused before Judicial Magistrate Irshad Hussain on Friday and sought a 14-day physical remand so that evidence of the murder could be recovered. The IO further stated that the accused’s DNA, polygraph and other medical tests had to be conducted as well. However, the judicial magistrate granted a five-day physical remand. According to initial reports on Thursday, the children had their throats slit in a room at a multi-storey residential building near Shah Jamal in Lahore. Later in the day, Deputy Inspector General (Operations) Faisal Kamran said that the children were allegedly slain by their mother over a domestic dispute with her husband. T...

The warming El Nino weather phenomenon, which pushed global temperatures to record highs the last time around, is expected back in the middle of this year, the UN said Friday. The United Nations’ weather and climate agency said El Nino conditions were likely as early as the May to July three-month window. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) meanwhile said early signs indicated a strong event. El Nino is a naturally-occurring climate phenomenon that warms surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. It brings changes in winds, pressure and rainfall patterns. Conditions oscillate between El Nino and its opposite La Nina, with neutral conditions in between. The last El Nino contributed to making 2023 the second-hottest year on record and 2024 the all-time high. “After a period of neutral conditions at the start of the year… there is high confidence in the onset of El Nino, followed by further intensification,” said Wilfran Moufouma Okia, the WMO’s climate prediction chief. “M...

ISLAMABAD: The National Price Monitoring Committee (NPMC) on Friday claimed transport fares remained unchanged, while chicken prices eased back to pre-Middle East conflict levels following earlier volatility. An NPMC meeting, chaired by Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, however, did not provide a breakdown of transport fares, even though public transport has seen sharp increases on both intra-city and inter-city routes following the recent surge in petroleum prices. Over the past month, provincial governments have intervened by extending subsidies to goods transporters, which may have helped contain freight charges. However, the official statement issued after the meeting did not specify any details on transport fares. During the briefing, officials informed the meeting that transport fares had not witnessed any increase, while chicken prices had returned to pre-conflict levels following earlier volatility linked to tensions in the Gulf region. Officials from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) briefed the c...

The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) has forecast rain-windstorms and thunderstorms at scattered places in upper parts of the country during next 24 hours, while hot and dry conditions are expected to persist in most other regions.

Security forces killed 22 terrorists in a joint intelligence-based operation (IBO) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Khyber District, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said on Friday. According to the ISPR, on April 21 (Tuesday), security forces and law enforcement agencies conducted a joint IBO in Khyber on the reported presence of terrorists. During the operation, after an intense exchange of fire, “22 khawarij belonging to Indian-sponsored Fitna-al-Khwarij were sent to hell”, it said. Fitna al Khawarij is a term the state uses for terrorists belonging to the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). “Due to cowardice and fear of getting apprehended alive, khawarij resorted to indiscriminate firing, which resulted in [the] martyrdom of a 10-year-old innocent child,” the ISPR added. The military’s media wing added that weapons and ammunition were also recovered from the terrorists, who were actively involved in numerous terrorist activities in the area. A sanitisation operation is being conducted to eliminate any ...

Chinese startup DeepSeek released a new artificial intelligence model with “drastically reduced” costs on Friday, more than a year after it stunned the world with a low-cost reasoning model that matched the capabilities of US rivals. The AI race has intensified the rivalry between China and the United States, and the White House on Thursday accused Chinese entities of a massive effort to steal artificial intelligence technology. Hangzhou-based DeepSeek burst onto the scene in January last year with a generative AI chatbot, powered by its R1 reasoning model, that upended assumptions of US dominance in the strategic sector. The new version, DeepSeek-V4, “features an ultra-long context of one million words”, the company said in a statement on social media platform WeChat, hailing it as “world-leading… with drastically reduced compute (and) memory costs” in a separate announcement on X. The model’s context length, which determines how much input a model is able to absorb to help it complete tasks, “(achieves) lea...

BANNU: An incident in the Domel area of Bannu has left the community in mourning after two young men were abducted and later killed by unidentified militants on Thursday night, police said. According to local sources, the two men were travelling in a car late at night when they reached the Painda Khel area. Armed militants reportedly signalled them to stop, but when they did not comply, the attackers opened indiscriminate fire on the vehicle. As a result of the firing, one of the young men was killed on the spot, while the other sustained injuries. The militants then took them to an undisclosed location. Sources said one of the victims was later executed in captivity. The following morning, the bodies of the victims were recovered from separate locations. One body was found at Umarzai Chowk, while the other was found near Isparka Chowk. Both victims belonged to the Taus Khel tribe of the Hathi Khel Subdivision in Wazir, Bannu. Residents have urged the government and law enforcement agencies to take immediate ...

President Asif Ali Zardari has arrived in Lahore on a three-day visit on Thursday where he will hold important meetings.

KARACHI: An official of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) was allegedly shot at and wounded by the son of a former senior police officer in Clifton on Thursday, officials said. South-DIG Syed Asad Raza said that FBR inspector Shah Mir Lashari was shot at and injured in a firing incident carried out by Agha Sher, son of former SSP Agha Asghar, after a road accident in Clifton late Wednesday night. The suspect and his associate also assaulted the injured officer and his brother. The wounded officer was shifted to the Ziauddin Hospital, Clifton, for treatment. Clifton police have registered an FIR against Agha Sher and his gunman on the complaint of the wounded officer’s brother, Shahzeb Khan, under Sections 324, 337-A(i) and 34 of the Pakistan Penal Code. According to the contents of the FIR, the complainant said that he was a landlord by profession and lived in Clifton, Block-1. He and his brother Shah Mir Lashari were travelling in an SUV. When they reached opposite the Islamic Chamber in Block-9, Clifton at...

A US soldier faces charges for using classified information to bet on online prediction markets related to the US operation to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the Department of Justice said Thursday. US Army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, allegedly made over $400,000 by using the online platform Polymarket to bet on outcomes related to US forces arriving in Venezuela’s capital Caracas and deposing Maduro — an operation he helped plan and execute, according to justice officials. The US military launched strikes on Caracas on January 3, arresting Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores and whisking them to New York to face drug trafficking charges. “Our men and women in uniform are trusted with classified information in order to accomplish their mission…and are prohibited from using this highly sensitive information for personal financial gain,” Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. Polymarket said in a statement it had flagged the user who ...

Israel and Lebanon extended a shaky ceasefire by three weeks, President Donald Trump said on Thursday, as the United States remained at a standstill in negotiations with Iran to end the Middle East war. Trump announced the truce extension as he met with ambassadors of the two countries and despite recent Israeli strikes in Lebanon and fresh rocket fire from Hezbollah, which was not part of the talks in Washington. “I think there’s a very good chance of having peace. I think it should be an easy one,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. The initial truce had been set to expire on Sunday. Still, the US president said earlier he was in no rush to end the war with Iran, adding that “the clock is ticking” for the Islamic republic as a third American aircraft carrier arrived in the Middle East. Iranian media reported blasts over the capital Tehran, a first since the ceasefire in the Middle East war came into effect two weeks ago. It was not clear what caused the explosions, though an Israeli security source told AFP ...

• US president says in no hurry to end war, claims ‘total control’ over strait, orders navy to destroy all mine-laying vessels • Another Iranian tanker seized in Indian Ocean as country banks first proceeds from Hormuz tolls • Tehran air defence activated overnight • Third aircraft carrier arrives in Mideast • Pentagon fires navy secretary • Move seeking to curb Trump’s war powers defeated in Congress WASHINGTON: Bac­ked by Republican allies in Congress, President Don­ald Trump on Thursday ordered the US Navy to target and destroy any vessel laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, as US forces boarded a vessel transporting oil from Iran in the Indian Ocean. In subsequent remarks, he also ruled out the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, adding that while the US is in no rush to end the war, “the clock is ticking” for the Islamic republic. Despite an indefinite exte­nsion in the ceasefire by the US, there has been no progress regarding the second round of peace talks between the two countries, with Tehran sayin...

BAHAWALPUR - Patients are being treated without dis-crimination and no negligence will be tolerated , MS Sir Sadiq Abbasi Hospital.

MUZAFFARGARH - An incident of abduction involving a cou-ple who had entered into a love marriage occurred within the jurisdiction of Police Station Daira Din Panah.

VEHARI - Progress is not possible in today’s world without IT education, yet many of our students are still deprived of basic facili-ties like computer labs,” said Jahangir Khan Tareen while inaugurating a state-of-the-art computer lab established by the Tareen Education Foundation, em-phasizing that empowering students with modern.

FAISALABAD - The Government of Punjab has decided to abolish vacant posts in the Health and Population Welfare Department as part of measures to reduce expenditures.

MUZAFFARGARH - Commissioner Dera Ghazi Khan Division, Ashfaq Ahmed Chaudhry, visited Tehsil Alipur to review the performance of vari-ous government institutions and ongoing development projects.

MUZAFFARGARH - The devastating floods of last year had severely damaged Government Primary School Darmari, crippling educational ac-tivities as the building fell into disrepair and the environment became unsafe.