Pakistan

After nearly 50 days of closure, Pakistan has partially reopened the Torkham and Chaman border crossings with Afghanistan to allow United Nations humanitarian cargoes.

An Islamabad district and sessions court rejected on Thursday an application submitted by lawyer and rights activist Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir, seeking her acquittal in a controversial social media posts case. Judge Muhammad Afzal Majoka, who was presiding over the proceedings, also rejected an application moved by Mazari and her husband, co-accused Hadi Ali Chattha, challenging the appointment of a counsel by the state to represent them in the case registered with the National Cybercrime Investigation Agency (NCCIA). Both of them have been accused of attempting to incite divisions on linguistic grounds through social media posts and of creating the impression that the armed forces were engaged in terrorism within the country. At the hearing today, Mazari and Chattha, along with lawyer Sher Afzal Marwat, Islamabad Bar Association (IBA) President Naeem Ali Gujjar, Islamabad Bar Council member Raja Aleem Abbasi and other legal representatives, appeared before the court. The court’s previous orders were read out...

Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz has approved the formation of a 15-member steering committee to eliminate child labour across the province.

When Rano was airlifted to Islamabad on November 5, 2025, the 25-year-old Himalayan brown bear left behind more than just a confined, concrete enclosure at Karachi Zoo. She left eight years of untreated injuries and the memory of her companion — an Asiatic black bear who died five years ago. Her relocation to a rehabilitation centre under the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB) came by court order, pushed by animal rights activists who had watched her deteriorate for years. Rano isn’t the first animal to be relocated from a zoo in Pakistan. Last year, the elephant Madhubala was relocated, following an outcry in the wake of viral videos of the distressed and disease-addled animal, to the sprawling Safari Park in Karachi. Before that, another elephant called Kaavan, dubbed the “loneliest elephant on the planet”, was relocated from a zoo in Islamabad to a wildlife sanctuary in Cambodia. Such relocations have been hailed as symbolic victories by animal rights’ activists in Pakistan; rare moments of optimis...

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has formally placed its key financial demands before the federal government during the inaugural session of the 11th National Finance Commission (NFC), calling for the inclusion of the former FATA region in the award and substantial revision of provincial allocations.

Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan on Thursday reaffirmed their commitment to strengthen bilateral relations across multiple sectors, including politics, trade, connectivity, energy, agriculture, education, defence and culture.

Kyrgyzstan’s President Sadyr Nurgozhoevich Zhaparov was accorded a grand ceremonial welcome at the Prime Minister House on Thursday as he commenced his two-day maiden state visit to Pakistan.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday dismissed Indian media reports claiming that a man arrested in the US for illegal possession of a machine gun was Pakistani, clarifying that he is an Afghan national.

Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said on Thursday that a man arrested by the US police last week in Delaware after he was found in possession of a handgun, ammunition and written plans for an attack was not of Pakistani origin and was an Afghan. “He is not [a] Pakistani national or [of] Pakistan origin. He is an Afghan, spent a few years as a refugee [in Pakistan] and then went to the US, where he spent most of his life,” Andrabi said in a statement shared with journalists. His clarification came after several media reports, including those from Indian and American news outlets, identified the suspect as a man of Pakistani origin. A USA Today report said the arrested man, Luqman Khan, was a Pakistan-born US citizen, who was arrested on November 24. Similarly, reports by the New York Post and India’s Hindustan Times and Times of India, among others, also identified him as a Pakistani immigrant. According to a report by The Associated Press from earlier today, which also does not identify Khan as ...

The last supermoon of 2025 is set to light up skies across Pakistan tonight and tomorrow night, according to state-run Radio Pakistan. A supermoon occurs when the moon reaches its closest point to Earth in its elliptical orbit, causing it to appear unusually large and bright — up to 14 per cent larger and nearly 30pc brighter than a typical full moon. The final supermoon of the year, known as the Cold Moon, will be visible across Pakistan tonight and tomorrow night, Radio Pakistan said, quoting the Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (Suparco). “It marks the third consecutive supermoon of the year and the last supermoon of 2025,” it said. Suparco encourages the public, astronomy enthusiasts, students, and families to observe this natural spectacle, the report said. “No special equipment is required; the supermoon will be easily visible to the naked eye, provided the skies remain clear,” it added. According to CNN, the moniker ‘Cold Moon’ indicates that it’s the full moon event closest to t...

The Pentagon’s independent watchdog said US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the commercial messaging app Signal to discuss strikes on Yemen could have put American troops at risk, US media reported on Wednesday. The probe by the inspector general’s office concluded that Hegseth did not, however, violate rules on classification because he has the authority to declassify information, the reports said, citing sources familiar with the results of the investigation. The watchdog’s conclusion — which has been transmitted to Congress — is nonetheless likely to reignite debate over conduct by Hegseth, who is already under fire over US strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats that experts say amount to extrajudicial killings. The probe was sparked by the Atlantic magazine’s revelation in late March that its editor-in-chief was inadvertently included in a Signal chat in which US officials, including Hegseth and then-national security adviser Mike Waltz, discussed strikes on Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels. Th...

The Trump administration on Wednesday announced increased vetting of applicants for H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, with an internal State Department memo saying that anyone involved in “censorship” of free speech be considered for rejection. H-1B visas, which allow US employers to hire foreign workers in speciality fields, are crucial for US tech companies which recruit heavily from countries including India and China. Many of those companies’ leaders threw their support behind Trump in the last presidential election. The cable, sent to all US missions on December 2, orders US consular officers to review resumes or LinkedIn profiles of H-1B applicants – and family members who would be travelling with them – to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others. “If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protec...

LAHORE: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) says criminal syndicates are operating in Southeast Asia targeting Pakistanis with fake job offers and warned all those availing themselves of such “phony opportunities” should thoroughly verify to save them from trouble. “Criminal syndicates operating in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia are targeting Pakistanis with fake job offers, especially in the IT sector – call center and relevant jobs, promising high salaries. However, upon arrival, these Pakistanis are forced into illegal activities, including cyber and financial crimes. Those who resist face severe consequences, including violence and extortion from the victim’s family,” FIA deputy director Mehmood Ali Khokhar said on Wednesday. He urged the aspirants to first verify such job offers through legitimate sources or report such suspicious activity or persons to FIA. “Beware of false promises! As your dream job offer could be a nightmare,” the FIA official said. Criminal syndicates operate in T...

KARACHI: Hours after the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) blamed the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Red Line for the tragic death of a three-year-old boy in an open manhole, the project’s management hit back, rejecting the allegation as “a serious oversight”, igniting a rare public showdown between two government bodies already under scrutiny for Karachi’s crumbling infrastructure. First it was an inquiry report by the KMC on the incident which attributed the tragedy to the “carelessness” of officials of the Red Line project and a department store adjacent to where the incident took place. The body of the child, who died after falling into an open manhole near Nipa in Gulshan-i-Iqbal on Sunday night, was found on Monday, around 15 hours after the incident. The report by the KMC said that the department had received instructions from Mayor Murtaza Wahab and the municipal commissioner to initiate an operation for recovering the body of the child from the drain. Assistant commissioner among five officials suspend...

WASHINGTON: The American workforce is growing older at an unprecedented pace, a new survey released on Tuesday by the US Census Bureau highlights a demographic challenge that could complicate President Donald Trump’s efforts to curb immigration. Workers aged 55 and older have been the fastest-growing group in the US labour force for more than two decades. Their share has risen from 10 per cent in 1994 to 24pc in 2022. Yet the distribution of older workers is far from uniform across industries and states. Some sectors and regions have far higher concentrations of older employees than others, according to the Census Bureau’s survey of Business Dynamics Statistics of Human Capital (BDS-HC). The utilities sector has seen the most dramatic shift. In 2006, 35pc of employment in this sector was at firms where at least a quarter of workers were over 55. By 2022, that figure had jumped to 80pc. Manufacturing and wholesale trades have also seen substantial increases: in 2000, only 14pc of employment in these sectors wa...

• Salman Akram Raja tasked with putting together ‘smaller body’, which will also include allies • PTI founder ‘heartbroken’ over lawmakers’ attendance at NDU workshop ISLAMABAD: Amid disagreements within the opposition party, PTI founding chairman Imran Khan has dissolved the party’s political committee in his first move after weeks of being incommunicado. A tweet posted on his X account, which the ex-prime minister does not have access to while incarcerated, said a smaller committee would replace the existing body and put Salman Akram Raja in charge of the reconstitution process. “I am dissolving the political committee of the PTI today. Party’s Secretary General Salman Akram Raja has full authority to form a smaller committee to formulate a political strategy and implement it,” the tweet based on the account of the Tuesday meeting said. It may be noted that a day earlier, Uzma Khan met her brother in prison after weeks of effort. PTI Information Secretary Sheikh Waqqas Akram told Dawn the political committe...

ISLAMABAD: After ne­a­rly two months of hal­ted cross-border cargo mo­v­ement, the Pakistani government has begun clearing humanitarian cons­i­g­n­ments for Afghan­istan, marking the first controlled reopening of transit trade since routine trade was suspended in October. The government has completely suspended customs clearance for both exports and imports, along with Afghan Transit Trade (ATT) cargos, at major border crossings — including Torkham, Ghulam Khan, Kharlachi, and Angoor Adda — effective October 12, and at the Chaman border from October 15. An official letter was issued to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and the Directorate Gen­eral of Transit Trade to initiate the movement of consignments belonging to three United Nations agencies through the border crossings at Chaman and Torkham. In the first phase, a total of 143 containers of humanitarian goods will be allowed for clearance at Chaman and Torkham. The breakdown shows that the containers incl­ude 67 containers of food assistance from the Wo...

PM announces live privatisation bidding; Reaffirms transparency; Hosts business leaders, company representatives

Provincial performance to come under spotlight

Kyrgyz president arrives on two-day visit