Pakistan

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has said Pakistan received “recent assurances” from Afghan authorities that the neighbouring country’s soil would not be used for terrorism — a key issue of contention between Islamabad and Kabul. Both countries have witnessed an improvement in bilateral relations after taking steps to improve ties, such as the revival of the Joint Coordination Committee (JCC) and upgrading diplomatic ranks. Dar visited Kabul earlier this month, where an agreement was signed for the Pakistan, Uzbek­istan and Afghanistan railway project to boost regional connectivity. According to a Foreign Office (FO) statement issued on Saturday, Dar engaged with the Pakistani-American community at the Pakistan Consulate in New York, where he “shared Pakistan’s expectation that Afghan soil would not be used for terrorism, noting recent assurances received from Afghan authorities in that regard”. The foreign minister also highlighted the “country’s outreach to Afghanistan with a view to enh...

Thailand and Cambodia have agreed to Malaysia acting as a mediator in their border conflict, the Malaysian foreign minister said on Sunday, as the combatants each said the other had launched further artillery attacks across contested areas. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Thai Acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai are expected in Malaysia on Monday evening, Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan told state news agency Bernama. “They have full confidence in Malaysia and asked me to be a mediator,” Mohamad said, adding he had talked with his Cambodian and Thai counterparts and they agreed no other country should be involved in the issue. The talks in Malaysia come after Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, chair of the regional Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) forum, had proposed a ceasefire on Friday and US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the two leaders had agreed to work on a ceasefire. Four days after the worst fighting in more than a decade broke out between the Southeast Asian neig...

A suspected honour killing in Rawalpindi’s Pirwadhai area has taken a dramatic twist after the victim’s second husband surrendered to police late Saturday night, officials confirmed.

A tragic incident has deeply shaken the village of Pandu Nalai in Jhelum Valley, Azad Kashmir, where an 8-year-old girl was killed in a leopard attack on July 25, 2025.

Corps Commander Balochistan, Lieutenant General Rahat Naseem Ahmad Khan, conducted a special interactive session with university students from across Balochistan.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar has appreciated and acknowledged the vital role and contribution of Pakistani diaspora in strengthening bilateral relations between Pakistan and the United States.

The death toll from floods in Gilgit-Baltistan stood at 10 as search and rescue operations continued across the region and stranded tourists were moved to safer locations, officials said on Sunday. The devastating impacts of climate change have become more visible in GB as unprecedented heat­­waves, erratic weat­her patterns and glacial melting have triggered cloudbursts and intense floods across the region. Floods swept across GB on Monday, causing landslides, leaving many stranded, and damaging more than 500 houses, roads and other infrastructure. In a statement today, GB government spokesperson Faizullah Faraq said flood-related incidents in the region have claimed 10 lives since Monday, when four were killed and 15 went missing in Babusar. The toll in Babusar has risen to seven, while two deaths were reported from Diamer’s Thore Valley and another from the Astore district, Faraq added. The body of an unidentified woman was recovered from the Indus River in Chilas’s Minar area. “The body could be that of o...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Islamabad on Saturday confirmed three new polio cases in the country, taking the total number of cases detected this year to 17. Pakistan is one of the last two countries in the world, alongside Afghanistan, where polio remains endemic. Despite global efforts to eradicate the virus, challenges such as security issues, vaccine hesitancy, and misinformation have slowed progress. The latest cases include one each from the Lakki Marwat and North Waziristan districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one from Sindh’s Umerkot district, a statement by the Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme (PPEP) said. A 15-month-old girl from Takhtikhel in Lakki Marwat, a six-month-old girl from North Waziristan’s Mir Ali tehsil and a five-year-old boy from Umerkot’s Chajro were the latest polio cases confirmed by the NIH’s Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication. With these new detections, the total number of polio cases in Pakistan in 2025 has risen to 17 — including 10 from KP, f...

Nine passengers died and 30 others were injured after the bus they were travelling on fell into a ditch near Balkassar Interchange in Punjab’s Chakwal district on Sunday morning. According to a spokesperson of Chakwal Rescue 1122, the bus was heading to Lahore from Islamabad when one of its tyres burst near the Balkassar Interchange on the Islamabad-Lahore Motorway (M2). The driver lost control of the bus, causing the vehicle to fall into a ditch and overturn. “Nine people died in the accident and 30 were injured,” Dr Saeed Akhter, chief executive officer of the Chakwal District Health Authority (DHA), said in a statement. It added that Chakwal Deputy Commissioner Sarah Hayat and Assistant Commissioner Zeeshan Sharif also visited the injured at the District Healthquarters (DHQ) Hospital. DC Hayat, who was briefed on the accident’s details, directed that all possible medical facilities be provided to the wounded. Eight passengers died on the spot, while one succumbed to her injuries at the hospital, according ...

Police have arrested all suspects involved in the brutal murder of a 19-year-old newlywed bride, allegedly carried out on the orders of a local jirga in the Pirwadhai area of Rawalpindi.

Mushaal Mullick, wife of jailed Kashmiri Hurriyat leader Yasin Malik, has strongly condemned the continuing oppression and human rights violations in Indian-occupied Kashmir, calling the situation “unbearable” under India’s draconian laws.

The Islamabad Food Authority (IFA) on Sunday seized 25 maunds of donkey meat during a major raid in the Tarnol area, following a tip-off about illegal activity.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday directed the Ministry of Aviation to arrange special flights for Zaireen as part of the government’s new facilitation policy.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has formally issued warnings to seven Members of the Provincial Assembly (MPAs) from Malakand Division for failing to attend a scheduled meeting regarding preparations for the party’s August 5 protest.

At least six people were crushed to death at a popular Hindu temple in northern India’s Uttarakhand state on Sunday, officials said, after a massive crowd surge. The stampede occurred on the stairway leading to the Mansa Devi temple in the Hindu holy city of Haridwar, on the banks of the Ganges River, and left many injured. “Six dead and more than 10 injured are admitted to the hospital,” senior city police official Parmendra Dobhal told AFP. Uttarkhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said relief and rescue operations were underway. “I am constantly in touch with the local administration regarding this matter, and continuous monitoring of the situation is being done,” he said in a statement. Deadly stampedes and crowd crushes are a common occurrence at Indian religious festivals. In June, a sudden crowd surge at a Hindu festival in the coastal state of Odisha triggered a stampede that killed at least three people and injured several others. The previous month, six people were crushed to death in the wester...

K-Electric on Saturday confirmed that electricity supply has been successfully restored to the Pipri water pumping station following a planned maintenance shutdown, carried out in coordination with the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KW&SB).

Iran executed two members of the outlawed Mujahideen-e-Khalq opposition group for targeting civilian infrastructure with homemade projectiles, the judiciary news outlet Mizan reported on Sunday. Mehdi Hassani and Behrouz Ehsani-Eslamloo, “operational elements” of the MEK, were sentenced to death in a verdict upheld by the Supreme Court, Mizan said. “The terrorists, in coordination with MEK leaders, had set up a team house in Tehran, where they built launchers and hand-held mortars in line with the group’s goals, fired projectiles heedlessly at citizens, homes, service and administrative facilities, educational and charity centres, and also carried out propaganda and information-gathering activities in support of the MEK,” the report said. The defendants were indicted with “moharebeh”, an Islamic term meaning waging war against God, destroying public property and “membership in a terrorist organisation with the aim of disrupting national security”. Semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Sunday that Ehsani-...

LAHORE: A major controversy has emerged over the methodology used by the Crop Reporting Centre (CRC) Punjab in determining provincial cotton output, with serious allegations of inflated and misleading statistics surfacing. It has been revealed that CRC Punjab is allegedly estimating total cotton production using hypothetical calculations — extrapolating yields based on the number of bolls per plant across an acre or, in some districts, from small sample plots as small as eight feet by six feet. This has exposed a long-standing discrepancy between the figures reported by CRC Punjab and those of the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA), with the former consistently reporting significantly higher production. Ihsan-ul-Haq, Chairman of the Cotton Ginners Forum, stated that this variance has long complicated decision-making for stakeholders in the cotton industry. He noted that while some attribute the CRC’s inflated figures to unrecorded lint sales by certain ginners, the presence of two conflicting national...

Addressing at Regional Chiefs of Defence Staff Conference, Gen Asim Munir says deeper military-to-military coop, strategic dialogue and mutual trust is paramount to handle complex hybrid challenges Participating army leaderships recognises Pakistan’s constructive role in promoting peace and regional solidarity.

ISLAMABAD - Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday granted approval for the formation of a modern and globally standard digital ecosystem in Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), besides directed hiring of internationally renowned experts.