Pakistan

The Supreme Court of Pakistan has ruled that employees working under cantonment boards are not classified as civil servants, meaning their service-related appeals cannot be heard by the Federal Service Tribunal.

ISLAMABAD: After charging Rs1.63 per unit as positive fuel cost adjustment (FCA) this month, power companies have sought another Rs1.64 per unit for April bills as demand increased. The Central Power Purchasing Agency (CPPA) demanded the higher fuel cost on account of power consumed in February, even though more than 75 per cent of power generation came from domestic and cheaper sources. Electricity consumption was reported to be around 11.42pc higher than the same month of last year but about 15pc lower than January 2026. Once approved, the power companies would charge an additional amount of about Rs12.2bn to consumers of all the power companies, including ex-Wapda Distribution Companies (Discos) and K-Electric, in the billing month of April. The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has called a public hearing on March 31 to examine the request for additional FCA charges for consumers. The CPPA also filed the petition for a higher FCA for February consumption. The power companies have claime...

Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said on Wednesday that Pakistan is prepared to play a constructive role in easing rising tensions in the Middle East amid the intensifying conflict involving Iran, the United States and Israel.

Maryam Nawaz met with China’s newly appointed Consul General Sun Yan in Lahore, where both sides reaffirmed the longstanding friendship and strategic partnership between Pakistan and China.

The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) on Wednesday morning suspended its flights to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the next 48 hours in view of the “security situation” as the Middle East war persists. In a statement, the carrier’s spokesperson said that for the time being, PIA flights to the UAE will only be operated to Al Ain. The decision comes amid the ongoing Middle East conflict, which began on February 28 with US-Israeli strikes on Iran and the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As its leadership continues to be targeted by the US and Israel, Iran has kept up retaliatory strikes targeting US assets and bases in Gulf countries, disrupting air travel as airlines periodically cancel flights. Indian airline Air Indigo has also suspended operations to Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Sharjah, Doha, Kuwait, Bahrain and Dammam until March 28. A day earlier, the UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority announced the “temporary and full closure” of the country’s airspace, ...

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has announced a temporary suspension of its flights to Fujairah for 48 hours due to the prevailing security situation in Gulf countries.

WASHINGTON: A federal judge has ordered the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) to recall more than 1,000 Voice of America (VOA) journalists and staff by March 23 and restore the broadcaster’s operations. In a sweeping decision announced on Tuesday, US District Judge Royce C. Lamberth found that actions taken under the agency’s previous leadership to shut down large parts of VOA and its sister networks violated federal law and the agency’s statutory mandate. The ruling directs USAGM to return VOA and affiliated networks to the air and reinstate employees who had been dismissed or placed on leave. The dispute stems from restructuring measures carried out in 2025 under Kari Lake, an American political figure and former television news anchor who later became a prominent supporter of US President Donald Trump. In early 2025, the Trump administration brought Lake into USAGM — the independent federal agency that oversees VOA and other US government-funded international broadcasters. She was named senior adviser to ...

A woman on an evening walk in Macau was briefly hospitalised after a humanoid robot startled her and left her feeling unwell, police told AFP on Wednesday. Police said they had received a call for assistance for the woman, who “was startled when she suddenly noticed a robot behind her while using her mobile phone”. Video widely shared online showed a woman angrily confronting a robot as it waved its metallic arms at her, while a crowd of curious onlookers gathered around. “With so many other things to do, why bother me? Are you crazy?” the woman yelled at the unperturbed bot in Cantonese, as she gestured agitatedly towards it. The woman did not suffer injuries and there had been no physical contact with the robot, but she required hospital treatment, police said in a statement. “She has since been discharged and has not pressed charges regarding the incident,” which took place earlier this month, the statement said. Social media videos showed officers leading a forlorn robot away, though police stressed they ...

The arrival of petrol and crude oil tankers continues at Port Qasim as the government steps up efforts to ensure fuel availability amid the ongoing Middle East crisis.

Asif Ali Zardari has approved a summary to cancel the Pakistan Day parade and all related events scheduled for March 23, 2026, citing the ongoing Gulf oil crisis and prevailing austerity measures.

Maryam Nawaz has directed authorities to launch a province-wide crackdown on transporters charging excessive fares during Eid travel.

Light rain in Lahore and its adjoining areas during the early hours of Wednesday brought a noticeable drop in temperature, prolonging the winter-like conditions in the region.

LARKANA: Despite a decision taken in January to send a cluster of coins dug out from Mohenjo Daro to a lab in Karachi in order to establish their age, the purported artefacts are still lying at the site. Trust deficit is cited as the reason, as a couple of officials concerned without mincing words had expressed their apprehension that the object might be stolen or damaged in the process. The coins — believed to be belonging to the era of Kushan Ruler Vasudeva-I (c. 200-225 AD) — weigh 5.55kgs and were found stuffed in an earthen pot (jar). The object was discovered on Nov 16, 2023 during the repair and restoration work in the ‘Divinity Street’ of Mohenjo Daro’s stupa in its western SD-area. On January 19, the Director General of Archives and Antiquities, Abdul Fatah Shaikh, had told media personnel that the object would be sent to a Karachi lab for an analysis and to ascertain the age/period of the coins. Coins weighing 5.55kgs dug out from Mohenjo Daro were supposed to be sent to a Karachi lab in January to ...

LAHORE: A sessions court on Tuesday extended the interim pre-arrest bail of TikTokers Rajab Butt and Nadeem Mubarak alias Naniwala in a case of promoting gambling apps on social media. Additional District and Sessions Judge Mansoor Ahmad Qureshi heard the bail petitions of the TikTokers, who appeared before the court on the expiry of their bail period. The judge summoned the complete investigation record of the case from the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA). The judge extended the bail of both Tiktokers till March 26. In September 2025, the NCCIA had booked the content creators for allegedly promoting online gambling apps on their social media accounts. BAIL: The Lahore High Court on Tuesday granted bail to three men arrested on charges of producing and selling substandard milk and allegedly attacking officials of the Punjab Food Authority (PFA). The court allowed the bail petitions of Waseem Ashiq and Gulfam against surety bonds of Rs100,000 each. During the hearing, a counsel for the petiti...

ISLAMABAD/Lahore: Rejecting media reports that she is opposing meetings between Imran Khan and party leaders, Aleema Khan on Tuesday questioned how she could stop such meetings when she herself has been unable to meet her brother. “People across Pakistan are demanding the release of Imran Khan. The whole world is raising the same demand. Just wait and see — people will come out of their homes and secure his release. Moreover, as the global situation changes, I am hopeful he will be released,” Ms Khan said while talking to media persons outside Adiala jail. “We are waiting here to find out whether we will be allowed to meet Imran. I believe we will not be granted permission, as they want to hide his health condition and what has been done to him. We had requested the chief justice to allow his medical treatment at Shifa International Hospital. We do not insist on meetings if he is allowed proper medical treatment,” she added. She said the Chief Justice had forwarded the request for medical treatment to chief c...

PARIS: The Large Hadron Collider has discovered a new particle, the 80th identified so far by the world’s most powerful particle smasher, Europe’s CERN physics laboratory announced on Tuesday. The new particle has been named “Xi-cc-plus”. The Large Hadron Collider is a 27-kilometre-long proton-smashing ring running about 100 metres below France and Switzerland. The latest discovery comes as CERN plans to build an even bigger particle smasher, the Future Circular Collider, to continue probing the mysteries of the universe. Scientists hope the particle, which is similar to a proton but four times hea­vier, will reveal more about the strange behaviour of quantum mechanics. All the matter around us, including the protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus of atoms, are made of baryons. These common particles are composed of three quarks, which are fundamental building blocks of matter. Quarks come in six “flavours”: up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom. Each has varying mass, electric charge and quantum pr...

• Islamabad maintains ex-Nato base targeted, presence of ammo dump confirmed by footage, secondary explosions • Afghan officials claim large numbers of casualties at ‘rehab centre’ • Taliban spox confuses ‘Omid Camp’ with Omid Hospital • Beijing seeks to ensure safety of personnel, interests in region • UN calls for probe; EU urges restraint ISLAMABAD: Following “targeted” overnight airstrikes in Kabul and Nangarhar, Pakistan on Tuesday maintained that it had targeted ‘Camp Phoenix’ — a former US military base currently being used by Afghan Taliban forces — even as Afghanistan claimed a drug rehabilitation centre had been bombed instead. According to Information Minister Atta Tarar, an ammunition storage facility was among the targets hit in the Afghan capital. However, reports emanating from Kabul said that a drug treatment centre known as ‘Omid Camp’ was targeted, with Afghan officials claiming hundreds dead and injured as a result. The UN called for a swift and independent investigation, the EU urged both ...

Iran’s national security chief Ali Larijani and the commander of paramilitary force Basij, Gholamreza Soleimani, were assassinated in US-Israeli strikes on Tuesday. The confirmation of Larijani’s assassination came hours after Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said he had been “eliminated last night”, along with the commander of Tehran’s Basij paramilitary force. “I have just been updated by the chief of staff that Larijani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and the head of the Basij — Iran’s central repression apparatus — (Soleimani), were eliminated last night,” Katz said in a statement released by his ministry. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council later confirmed Larijani’s assassination, saying: “The pure souls of the martyrs embraced the purified soul of God’s righteous servant, martyr Dr Ali Larijani.” It added that Larijani’s son and his bodyguards had died with him. “After a lifetime of struggle for the advancement of Iran and of the Islamic Revolution, he ultimately attained ...

Veteran Iranian politician Ali Larijani was one of the most powerful figures in the Islamic republic, an architect of its security policy, and a close adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei until the supreme leader’s assassination in an airstrike last month. Larijani, 67, was assassinated by a US-Israeli air attack as he was visiting his daughter in the eastern outskirts of a Tehran suburb, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said on Tuesday. The scion of a leading clerical family with brothers who ​rose to high positions after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Larijani was seen as canny and pragmatic but always fiercely determined to uphold Iran’s theocratic system of government. A Revolutionary Guard Corps commander during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, he became head of Iran’s ‌national broadcaster before stints running the Supreme National Security Council either side of his membership of parliament, where he was speaker for 12 years. His role as the ultimate insider in Ali Khamenei’s Iran gave him responsibilit...

The government on Tuesday said it will not hold the Pakistan Day parade and other ceremonial events on March 23 in light of the ongoing Gulf oil crisis and the resulting austerity measures announced by the government. Pakistan Day — observed on March 23 every year — commemorates the passing of the Lahore Resolution on March 23, 1940, when the All-India Muslim League demanded a separate nation for the Muslims of the British Indian Empire. A statement from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) stated that in the backdrop of the ongoing Gulf oil crisis and the consequent austerity measures announced by the government, it was decided that the Pakistan Day parade and associated ceremonial events shall not be held on March 23. “The day shall, however, be commemorated with dignity and reverence through a simple flag‑hoisting ceremony at appropriate levels,” the statement said. “This measure is being taken to ensure that the resilience and unwavering commitment of the nation to the ideals of Pakistan Day remain aligned w...