Pakistan

Pakistan’s Ambassador to China Khalil Hashmi held a meeting with Governor of Gansu Province Ren Zhenhe in Lanzhou, during which both sides discussed ways to further strengthen practical cooperation in agriculture, mining, new energy, equipment manufacturing and vocational training.

The Pakistan Navy (PN) and Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) rescued 20 crew members from a sinking cargo dhow east of Ormara, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said on Thursday. The military’s media wing said the vessel was experiencing severe flooding, adding that all crew members were successfully rescued in a “swift and coordinated emergency response”. The PNS Hunain and aerial assets were diverted for the operation upon receiving a distress call at the Joint Maritime Information Coordination Centre, it noted. “All 20 crew members were safely recovered from the distressed vessel due to the professionalism displayed by the rescuers,” the ISPR statement said, adding that those rescued — all Pakistanis — were being provided “necessary medical attention”. “The successful operation underscores Pakistan Navy’s and Pakistan Maritime Security Agency unwavering commitment to ensuring the safety of life at sea and its readiness to respond to maritime emergencies around the clock,” it further said. I...

ISLAMABAD: A local court on Thursday convicted three men, including a retired officer and a senior Bahria Town official, in a case regarding the illegal transfer of funds abroad for Bahria Town projects. The court handed down sentences of one year’s imprisonment and a fine of Rs500,000 to each of the three convicts. Additional District and Sessions Judge Nasaruminallah Baloch announced the verdict after hearing the final arguments from both sides. The three men convicted were Bahria Town Vice Chief Executive Colonel (retd) Khalilur Rehman, hawala operator Imran Kaka, and property dealer Mushtaq Ahmed. The court found them guilty under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act of illegally sending money abroad for various Bahria Town projects. According to the prosecution, the accused violated provisions of the Act by transferring funds through illegal channels instead of authorised banking channels. The latest conviction comes months after the same judge convicted Rehman in a separate high-profile money laundering ...

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday said the country’s civil and military leadership had taken a “mutual and singular decision” to end terrorism after multiple major terrorist incidents in Balochistan in recent days. He made the remarks at a meeting in Quetta of the Provincial Apex Committee on the National Action Plan, with Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) and Chief of the Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir also present. Chairing the meeting, PM Shehbaz declared, “One thing is decided: it is a mutual and singular decision of the civil and military leadership that we must end terrorism collectively.” He said the civil and military leaders had gathered in Balochistan after “very serious incidents took place in the past four days”, resulting in the martyrdom of policemen, soldiers and civilians. Noting that 54 terrorists were killed while responding to those attacks and in subsequent operations, he affirmed, “This war [against terrorism] will continue until the last fasaadi (vicious) terrorist in Pakistan i...

ISLAMABAD: The Cabinet Committee on state-owned enterprises on Thursday rejected a request from two circular debt-hit state-owned gas utilities — Sui Southern and Sui Northern — for exemption from international accounting and financial reporting standards to avoid being declared insolvent. However, the cabinet committee, headed by Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, “instructed the Petroleum Division to undertake further deliberations with the Finance Division and the Law and Justice Division and submit a revised proposal for consideration”, according to an official statement. The Petroleum Division had sought exemption for specified energy-sector state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from the applicability of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS-14 and IFRS-9), the statement added. Informed sources said a similar three-year exemption had already been availed of by these entities. The finance minister reportedly observed that such an exemption could not be allowed while the SOEs Act 2023 remained in pl...

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Federal Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi met United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the United Nations (UN) Headquarters in New York.

GUJRAT: A deportee hailing from Gujranwala was convicted by a local court on Thursday, taking the number of deportees from Libya and Greece sentenced over the past two weeks across three districts to 64. The deportees were handed 10-15 days’ imprisonment on average after summary trials in cases lodged against them by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in its three circles of the region. The courts of special judges central (SJCs) in Gujranwala, Gujrat and Sialkot districts also imposed fines of Rs25,000-50,000 on them after they confessed to illegally crossing the international borders. As per the court decisions, the period of their judicial custody —between 10 and 15 days — has also been considered to count towards their imprisonment, and they were released after the payment of their imposed fines. On Thursday, a special judge central in Gujranwala district convicted a man under section 17(1) (unlawful emigration) of the Emigration Ordinance 1979. The judge handed him a sentence for the period already s...

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Western Europe experienced its hottest June on record last month as a searing heatwave swept across a continent facing increasingly frequent and intense heat extremes, the European Union’s (EU) climate monitor said Thursday. The report comes as a new heatwave is battering Europe this week, following a record-breaking one in June and an unusually early spring hot spell in May. The average temperature in western Europe reached 20.74 degrees Celsius in June, more than 3℃ above the 1991-2020 norm, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. It broke the region’s previous record set in June 2025. “We will see more heatwaves in a warmer world,” said Samantha Burgess, strategic climate lead at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which operates Copernicus. “They will be more intense and they will last longer, and they will impact more geographical areas,” Burgess told AFP. It was the second hottest June on record for the world and for Europe as a whole, Copernicus said, as hum...

Pakistan received a record $41.6 billion in workers’ remittances in the last fiscal year (FY26), up by around 8.6 per cent compared to FY25, according to data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Thursday. Adviser to the Finance Minister Khurram Schehzad said the figure was Pakistan’s “highest-ever annual remittances in history”. “This historic milestone reflects the unwavering confidence of overseas Pakistanis and reinforces Pakistan’s external sector resilience, stronger foreign exchange buffers, and improving macroeconomic fundamentals,” he said on X. The adviser termed the inflows a “record achievement”, adding that the growth over the last three years had been “phenomenal, powered by millions of hardworking Pakistanis across the globe”. The latest figures were in line with the government’s expectations that total remittances would surpass the official target by the end of FY26 on June 30. The government had initially projected inflows of $41bn before revising the target to $40bn. While FY26 sa...