Pakistan

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The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is investigating a syndicate suspected of smuggling alleged human placenta from hospitals to produce anti-ageing injections, the BBC reported on Friday. According to the BBC, officials uncovered 500 kilogrammes of what is believed to be human placenta during a raid on an illegal processing facility in Islamabad last week, leading to the arrest of five people. Photographs shared by the agency showed trays of dried placenta arranged in trolley carts inside a house that had been “converted into a facility for storing and processing placenta,” the report added. FIA officials were also reported to have intercepted a 100kg shipment of placenta at Islamabad airport on Wednesday, which was bound for Vietnam. The five suspects bought the placenta from hospitals in Islamabad and Rawalpindi at about Rs800 per piece, Hina Kanwal, an officer at the Human Organ Transplant Authority (HOTA), said, according to the BBC. The ring is accused of buying 200kg of the organs from various hospi...

India approved on Friday the purchase of a range of military equipment for its defence forces worth $5.46 billion, including missiles, electronic warfare systems and Kamikaze drones. The acquisition was approved “in-principle” by the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) comprising top military officers and headed by the defence minister, according to a government statement. The statement said the estimated cost of the deal would be about INR520 billion. It did not specify the period over which the acquisitions would be made or whether the systems approved for purchase will be imported or domestically produced. New Delhi over the last decade has sought to reduce its dependence on Russia, its traditional main supplier of military equipment, turning to other countries like the United States and France, as well as boosting domestic production. The deal included the purchase of anti-drone and electronic warfare systems, medium range surface-to-air and portable anti-tank missiles and a “jet based kamikaze drone system...

More than 90pc of the Gaza Strip has been destroyed and more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in the 1,000 days since Israel started bombarding the besieged enclave following the retaliatory Hamas attack of Oct 7, 2023, according to the local government’s media office. The Palestinian government’s media office released key statistics on the destruction and death toll on Thursday, marking 1,000 days since the start of the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. As of July 2, Israel has seized control of more than 80pc of the Gaza Strip, while 2.4 million people in the territory were being subjected to genocide, starvation and ethnic cleansing, the statement said. A plume of smoke rises above buildings in Gaza City on October 7, 2023 during an Israeli air strike. — AFP/File Of those killed by the Israeli military, more than 21,500 were children and more than 12,500 were women. More than 1,000 of the children killed were under the age of one, the statement said. “More than 520 infants were born and subsequent...

LAHORE: Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif on Friday visited Kahna to meet the families of children who lost their lives in the recent tuition centre roof collapse, offering condolences and announcing financial assistance for the affected families.

Egypt have reached the FIFA World Cup knockout stage for the first time in their history, with Mohamed Salah once again at the heart of their success. But while the Pharaohs have long embraced him as their greatest modern footballer, can this campaign persuade the rest of the world to view him the same way? There was once an Egyptian king who ruled on the banks of the River Mersey. For nine years, Liverpool’s faithful sang his name as Mohamed Salah cemented his place among the club’s greatest players. Back home, however, Salah never wore a crown. He carried something heavier — the hopes of a nation that had spent decades searching for a place among football’s elite. On Friday, in the city of Dallas, Texas, those hopes will accompany Egypt into unfamiliar territory. For the first time in their history, the Pharaohs will play a FIFA World Cup knockout match, with the man who conquered Anfield now attempting to add another defining chapter to a career that has already transformed Egyptian football. Egypt had nev...

ISLAMABAD: Internet services across Pakistan have returned to normal after a fault in the SEA-ME-WE 5 (SMW5) international submarine cable system was repaired, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said on Friday.

TEHRAN: Chief of Defence Forces Field Marshal Asim Munir arrived in Tehran on Friday to attend the funeral prayers of Iran's late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

LAHORE: A Lahore court on Thursday handed over four suspects to police on a five-day physical remand in connection with the alleged abduction and rape of two foreign women in the Defence Housing Authority (DHA) area.

India is investigating a data breach at Tata Electronics that exposed documents linked to Apple’s unreleased iPhone 18 Pro, the country’s IT secretary said on Thursday in the government’s first public comments on the incident. Sensitive lists of components and suppliers as well as photos of iPhone 18 Pro models are among files that were posted on the dark web by a ransomware group that stole data from Tata Electronics, Apple’s Indian supplier. “We are investigating,” S. Krishnan, secretary at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, told reporters. Krishnan said the incident had been reported to India’s Computer Emergency Response Team, the main agency responsible for computer security issues. The breach threatens the carefully negotiated, highly sensitive business of building the iPhone, which Apple assembles using a collection of suppliers worldwide. Apple is expected to release its iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max in September. The leak contains at least six files that expose which companies are pr...

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday directed a ban on the production and use of substandard syringes to prevent infectious diseases. The directives came as the premier chaired a meeting in Islamabad on measures taken to prevent the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C, the Prime Minister’s Office said (PMO). According to the statement, he said that action should be taken against individuals and hospitals found using illegal syringes or guilty of criminal negligence in preventing their use. He further ordered the formation of a special committee of experts to control infectious diseases, whose recommendations should be presented after consultations with the provinces. He also directed the law ministry to propose amendments to the legal and regulatory framework. “Formulating a comprehensive strategy at the national level and ensuring its effective implementation is the solution to the problem,” he said. Shehbaz also instructed the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan, in consultation with the medical devices indu...

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif departed from Islamabad on a one-day official visit to Iran to attend the funeral of Iran's late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) has forecast rain, windstorms and thunderstorms in Kashmir, upper Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northeastern Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan on Friday, while most other parts of the country are expected to experience hot and dry weather.

Palestinian Mohammad Salameh was building a home for his family in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where his recently engaged son was meant to start married life. Instead, before construction was complete, a group of Israeli settlers seized the property. Video filmed earlier in the week and verified by Reuters showed at least six settlers moving around on the roof of the two-storey house, which sits below a nearby hill. Salameh said appeals to the Israeli military and police brought no help. Now he fears his home, which like many others in the Palestinian territory is surrounded by Israeli settlements and smaller outposts, is lost forever. Other houses in the area could suffer the same fate, he said. “Only God knows, if there is law and order then they will leave,” Salameh said. “If they succeed in taking one, then the rest will follow.” Reuters was unable to reach the settlers for comment. One of them could be seen walking on the house’s roof on Thursday. An Israeli settler sits on the roof of the Palestinia...

Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz on Friday urged parents not to leave their children unattended and to ensure their safety when sending them out of the house. The statement comes after the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Sargodha and a roof collapse incident at a private tuition centre in Lahore, which claimed the lives of 14 children. The chief minister spoke about both incidents in a televised address to the National Paigham-i-Aman Committee on Friday. Citing the Sargodha incident, CM Maryam recalled that the child had gone to a shop alone, after which the shopkeeper murdered her and hid her body. “It was a spot of blood on the foot of her slipper which led to the identification of the murderer,” she recalled, adding that she had taken notice of the incident immediately and directed authorities to apprehend the suspect. “I can provide transport, health and other facilities; however, if you are not safe within your houses, then I believe I have not succeeded in my position as the chief ministe...

LAHORE: A court on Friday granted police five-day physical remand of four suspects arrested for the alleged abduction and sexual assault of two foreign women. On Thursday, police had booked five suspects on charges of kidnapping for ransom and sexually assaulting two foreign women, who were nationals of the Netherlands and Venezuela. Subsequently, four of them were arrested. According to the FIR, the women were abducted by five suspects, including a close relative of a senior political personality, who demanded ransom and subjected them to sexual assault during their captivity. On Friday, the investigating officer from the Defence C police station produced four of the suspects, with their faces covered with masks, before Judicial Magistrate Azhar Mehmood at the Cantonment Courts. At the outset of the hearing, the magistrate instructed the suspects to remove their masks. A public prosecutor asked the magistrate to grant police 14-day physical remand of the suspects. He said the prime suspect had been identifie...

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) announced on Friday that internet services in the country were back to normal after issues with the SEA-ME-WE 5 (SMW5) international submarine cable system were resolved. In a statement, the authority said that the fault in the cable system, which had led to widespread connectivity issues in the country on Thursday night, had been resolved, adding that internet traffic had returned to normal. It said Transworld Associates’ (TWA) international transit capacity has been restored. According to its website, TWA is the only private-sector operator with exclusive ownership of submarine fibre-optic cable systems. Subsequently, internet service provider Nayatel said that “international traffic has returned to normal”. “Our teams continue to closely monitor the network to ensure service stability,” it said. On Thursday night, the PTA had said that a technical fault along the SMW5 route was affecting data traffic. It had said that “some internet users may experience interm...

Source: FBR THE first year of Pakistan’s unified agriculture income tax regime has exposed a stark gap between policy ambition and revenue collection, with provincial tax authorities collecting barely 2 per cent of the agricultural income declared by taxpayers during fiscal year 2025-26. The figures raise fresh questions about the effectiveness of the landmark reform introduced last year under a fiscal restructuring programme backed by the International Monetary Fund. Despite a harmonised legal framework and uniform tax rates across all four provinces, provisional data shows that around 445,000 taxpayers declared Rs306 billion in agricultural income in tax year 2025, while provincial governments provisionally collected only Rs5.62bn in agriculture income tax (AIT) during the outgoing fiscal year. Structural weaknesses, weak enforcement, political considerations and the influence of large landowners continue to undermine the provinces’ ability to collect AIT. Although the four provinces agreed on a harmonised ...

WASHINGTON/UNITED NATIONS: The United States has reiterated its support for Pakistan’s right to defend itself against terrorist attacks, while the United Nations struggles to maintain consensus on its core global counterterrorism framework. “The Pakistani people have suffered greatly at the hands of terrorists,” the US State Department said, according to a statement reported by Reuters. Washington “supports Pakistan’s right to defend itself against terrorist attacks” as an intermittent conflict between Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan continues, the State Department added. The remarks come after Pakistan on Sunday night acted against terrorist infrastructure along the Afghan border, in response to a terrorist attack on a local headquarter of the Pakistan Rangers Sindh in Karachi’s Gulistan-i-Jauhar area. In February, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Allison Hooker had expressed similar support for Islamabad, saying Washington “continues to monitor the situation closely” and backs Pakistan...