Pakistan

An international operation against Indian organised crime groups has led to 24 arrests, US officials said on Tuesday, including in connection with the assassination in Canada of a prominent Sikh figure. The sting involved law enforcement officials operating in the United States, Canada and Europe, who had together been probing crime syndicates that engage in racketeering, targeted killings, shootings, extortion and drug trafficking. Dozens of people have been charged, including two who US officials say ran their global criminal syndicates while in prison in India. All but 10 of them are now in custody. “Transnational criminal gangs who spread fear, drugs, and violence will face the full force of justice and the weight of the federal government,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli. Among the crimes alleged in indictments unveiled Tuesday is the 2023 killing of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent campaigner for “Khalistan” —a separatist movement that seeks an independent hom...

Oil prices gained more than 2 per cent on Wednesday after the US military launched airstrikes against Iran and reimposed crude sales sanctions, raising fears their fragile truce was unravelling and Middle East supplies could be disrupted again. Brent crude futures gained $1.92, or 2.6pc, at $76.08 a barrel at 0400 GMT. US West Texas Intermediate crude climbed $1.82, or 2.6pc, to $72.26 a barrel. Both benchmarks rose about 3pc on Tuesday after the US revoked the general licence authorising the sale of Iranian crude following the Iranian attacks. “While the revocation doesn’t fundamentally change oil market dynamics, it’s important from a sentiment perspective. It heightens the risk of a breakdown in the temporary deal between the US and Iran,” ING commodity strategists said on Wednesday. The US airstrikes were in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz, US Central Command said on Tuesday. “The current conflagration is a reminder to the market of how fra...

Calls Madrid a 'terrible partner' in NATO as ‌he rails against allies for not supporting the war on Iran

The briefing covers the latest developments related to the security situation in the province

Turkey, a NATO member, has long criticised Israeli operations in Gaza, ​Lebanon and Syria

Phantom Studios alleges sequel unauthorised continuation of 2013 film

OpenAI will publicly launch its most capable model, GPT-5.6, on Thursday, after delaying the launch last month on the US government’s request amid national security concerns that powerful AI systems could be misused. This comes on the heels of the US government lifting curbs on Anthropic’s latest Fable and Mythos AI models last week, less than three weeks after the company was ordered to suspend their access over national security risks. Washington has increased scrutiny of advanced AI model releases to identify potential threats on concerns that the technology could be misused by military or intelligence in China, Russia or other countries of concern. Axios, which broke the news on the OpenAI launch, reported citing a source familiar with the matter, that the US Department of Commerce had approved a broad launch of GPT-5.6, following additional government testing under Washington’s new oversight framework for frontier AI. OpenAI had limited the model’s access to a small group of vetted partners whose details...

United States and China are in a race to develop cutting-edge ​AI models

Kyiv's 'mid-strike' drones, flown via Starlink, can hit targets dozens of kilometres behind front lines accurately

KARACHI: A power breakdown by K-Electric at the Dhabeji Pumping Station on Tuesday disrupted operations of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation (KWSC) and is expected to reduce the city’s water supply by nearly 100 million gallons per day (MGD). According to a KWSC spokesperson, the electricity outage affected the K-2 Pump House, where the manifold chamber and main valves developed a fault. “Work is being carried out at full pace to remove accumulated water from the affected valves, after which repair work will begin immediately,” he said. He added that the water utility had directed technical teams to undertake emergency repairs. “Engineers and maintenance staff are present at the site to identify and fix the fault as quickly as possible”, the official said. The spokesperson said that as a result of the malfunction, three major pumps at the K-2 Pumping Station had been temporarily shut down. “The disruption is expected to reduce Karachi’s daily water supply by around 100 million gallons,” he added. It ...

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said on Wednesday they had hit dozens of US military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait in response to American strikes, in a statement carried by state broadcaster IRIB. “In an initial response to this aggression, the IRGC Navy and Aerospace Force carried out a joint missile and drone operation, striking 85 key US military facilities” in the two countries, while also shooting down an MQ-9 drone, the statement said. The statement came after the US military unleashed a new wave of strikes against Iran on Tuesday and revoked a licence allowing the country to sell oil after three tankers were hit by projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz, putting pressure on an already fragile ceasefire. After a day in which huge crowds mourned Iran’s assassinated supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the holy city of Qom, US Central Command (Centcom) said it hit over 80 targets in a series of strikes intended to impose what it called “heavy costs”. The military command said it struck more than 6...

Coty relinquishes rights a year early for $400 million

On Tuesday, gold prices declined by Rs2,500 to Rs434,936

KASUR: A woman allegedly threw acid on a man over betrayal on Tuesday near village Rangpur, in the limits of the Saddar police station. Police claimed that accused Rimsha Bibi called Ehsan and asked him to take her to the Rangpur village on his bike. There, she allegedly took out a bottle from her purse and threw acid on him at a deserted place. The accused, later, escaped from the crime scene, police claimed. Police said the accused woman was divorced two months after her marriage and was currently working at a departmental store. Police said that Ehsan of Kot Molvi Abdul Qadir had previously divorced three women and wanted to marry Rimsha Bibi. Police said that Rimsha Bibi was unaware of the victim’s previous marriages and was shocked when she learnt about the fact and decided to take a revenge. Police shifted the injured man to the DHQ Hospital from where he was referred to Lahore. Police claimed that the acid was diluted causing minor wounds. Police lodged a case against Rimsha Bibi and were investigating...

Police says suspects' DNA samples, fingerprints obtained, now need time to recover vehicle, laptop, cash, weapon

Chinese women embrace DIY repair courses, defying gender norms and gaining skills for safer, self-reliant living

PAKISTAN’S economic debate is trapped in a distracting quarrel — whether banks lend too much to government and too little to enterprise. Allocation matters, but it is not the binding constraint. On the State Bank’s consolidated estimates, with the share of development spending shrinking, a rupee of government spending now multiplies about 0.71 in output on average while a rupee of private investment returns 1.2 to 1.3. The private rupee works nearly twice as hard yet, strip out productivity — ie, the efficiency with which inputs become output — and even that collapses towards 1.0. Adjusted for our stalled productivity, no rupee in Pakistan truly compounds. We accumulate without amplifying. The distinction is decisive. A rupee invested where productivity is rising earns more each year as workers learn and firms innovate; a rupee in a stagnant system merely buys more of the same. Pakistan’s productivity sits near 0.28 on comparable estimates, against India’s 0.48 and Sri Lanka’s 0.42, and the export scoreboard ...

KARACHI has been ranked among the ‘least-liveable cities in the world’, ranking 170th among 173 cities on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Global Liveability Index 2026. The only cities ranked below Karachi include Dhaka, Tripoli and Damascus, while war-torn Tehran (164) and Kyiv (166) scored slightly higher. According to EIU, issues such as congested roads and crime tend to punish the index’s biggest cities. The EIU’s ranking, which evaluates living conditions across 173 cities, provides a globally recognised benchmark for urban liveability and resilience. It measures measuring indicators such as stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure, and quantifies the challenges presented to an individual’s lifestyle in any given location. Getting an overall score (out of 100) of 43 — the same as Algiers — Karachi’s scored poorly in nearly all metrics, except education. It scored 20 on stability, 54 on healthcare, 36 in culture and environment, 75 in education and 52 in infras...

KSE-100 Index falls 6,751 points to 179,504 by midday as investors continue broad-based selling

THE spectacle of a number of cabinet ministers at an investment conference in Istanbul last week offers an insight into the current government’s perception of how to fix Pakistan’s problems. Of course, the inseparable duo of the prime minister and deputy PM was there too. The two may well have secured a place in the Guinness World Records for the most world tours undertaken together. They were apparently there to project Pakistan’s potential for foreign investment. No one denies the significance of such conferences for attracting foreign investment critical for economic growth. But the ministers’ presence at every conference will not, on its own, draw investor interest. What matters more is fixing things at home to create the environment and capacity for both domestic and foreign investment. Chaotic governance and inconsistent policies have been a major impediment in the way of any investment coming to the country. Over the past few years, Pakistan’s top leadership has addressed investment conferences in seve...