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1 missing, 6 injured in glacier burst incident in Swat's Kalam: Rescue 1122

SWAT: Search efforts were underway to trace a person who went missing after a glacier burst incident in Upper Swat’s Kalam Valley, Rescue 1122 said on Saturday. Six others were injured in the incident that took place in Kalam’s Matiltan area a couple of days. The glacier burst was reported once the survivors returned to the main Kalam bazaar. A man, identified as Syed Ali Shah, a resident of Khwazakhela, remained missing. According to his companions, he is believed to have died. However, his body has not yet been recovered. Initial reports indicated that three injured individuals received first aid from the Rescue 1122 medical team before being transferred from the Kalam Tehsil Headquarters Hospital to Central Hospital in Saidu Sharif for further treatment. Three other people sustained minor injuries and were reported to be safe. Rescue officials said that further verified information will be shared with the media and the public as it becomes availa...
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O, the passions of oily Turkish men

Even before the pehlwans square off in the mud, the air is already wrestling with a mix of bruised earth and olive oil. Men of all age and build, gleaming like magazine models from head to toe, prep for a day under the July sun in Edirne. For over six centuries, men have gathered in this northwestern Turkish city for Kırkpınar, the yağlı güreş or oil wrestling festival for what is considered the national sport. It has been around for so long that it was ancient by the time the Olympics were revived in 1896. “People say it’s all tall tales about the history of this festival. But whether you believe it or not, it’s all true,” says 59-year-old Yakup Kaya, as he weaves the taxi through Edirne’s cobbled streets and Ottoman-era lanes towards Sarayiçi Er Meydani, where Kirkpinar comes alive. Legend has it that in 1361 Suleyman Pasha, the son of the second Ottoman sultan, Orhan I, and his army of forty soldiers, marched through the Eastern Thracian province of Edirne. To kill time, the men ...

Wanted terrorist killed in intelligence-based operation in Dera Ismail Khan: CTD

The Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) said on Saturday that a wanted terrorist was killed during an intelligence-based operation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Dera Ismail Khan district. According to a CTD statement, the slain terrorist was identified as Khalid alias Commander, who was wanted in multiple cases, including the targeted killing of CTD Constable Muhammad Ali, who was martyred on March 17, 2025. The department said that it had received confirmed intelligence through its technical team that Khalid was present in the Korai area within the limits of Shorkot police station. Acting on the information, a CTD Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team launched a targeted intelligence-based operation in the early hours of July 18 on the Tank-Dera Ismail Khan Road, the statement said. “During the operation, the terrorist was surrounded and told to surrender several times and attempts were made to arrest him. However, instead of surrendering, he opened indiscriminate fire on personnel,” t...

Families of crew aboard crashed K2 Airways cargo plane push for international help to find black boxes

Relatives of the five crew members aboard a Boeing 737 cargo plane that crashed into the Arabian Sea off Karachi last week are urging an international search effort to find the flight recorders to determine the cause. Debris from the K2 Airways freighter was recovered shortly after the July 7 crash, but the water in the area is about 3,000 metres deep. Finding the “black boxes” would require a costly underwater search likely to need foreign assistance, according to aviation experts familiar with deepwater crashes such as Air France 447 in 2009 . The locator beacons on the 27-year-old plane were designed to transmit pings for only 30 days. Recovering the recorders could show whether a navigation system issue reported shortly before the crash was linked to a navigation component that relatives say was replaced before the flight. The Pakis­tan Airports Authority has not provided an update on the search operation for a week , and an industrial company with underwater search experti...

Xi pitches China as leader of new global AI order, challenging US dominance

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday cast ‌Beijing as the champion of a new global AI order , using China’s premier tech conference to promote open-source technology and challenge US influence over the rules governing the fast-moving sector. In a speech to the opening ceremony of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, Xi urged countries to “seize the rare and historic opportunity” of open-source AI, and pledged to help developing ​nations build AI capabilities, warning against the emergence of “new historical injustices” from unequal access to the technology. The remarks amounted to Xi’s clearest articulation yet ​of China’s ambition to shape global AI governance, framing its open-source models as a global public good and positioning Beijing ⁠as an alternative to Washington at a pivotal moment in the race for technological leadership. Comparing AI’s significance to the invention of the steam engine and electricity, ​Xi outlined a vision in which China sh...

House fire kills family of 6 in Peshawar: Rescue 1122

PESHAWAR: A house fire in the Tehkal Payan area of Peshawar killed a couple and their four children on Thursday, Rescue 1122 said. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Rescue 1122 spokesperson Bilal Ahmed Faizi told Dawn that the rescue service received the report of the fire at around 2:30am. After reaching the site of the incident, it took the rescue team 45 minutes to bring the fire under control. The team recovered the bodies of six people from a room during its search operation. These included a husband, wife and their four children — three girls aged 11, nine, and three years, and a four-year-old boy. The man was a local worker of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Fazl (JUI-F), according to a statement issued by the party about the incident. According to Faizi, the fire apparently started in a storage area, where furniture and mattresses were kept and spread to other parts of the residential house. However, he said that the blaze was so intense that the family was likely unable to leave the single room t...

US approves nearly $2bn in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia

The US State Department said on Wednesday it has approved the sale of an estimated $1.96 billion in weapons to bolster Saudi Arabia’s air defences, as the war ramps up in the Middle East. “This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a major non-Nato ally that is a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf Region,” the State Department said in a release. Among the weapons the Gulf kingdom seeks are up to 20,000 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon Systems and its warheads, which the US Navy’s website describes as “an inexpensive way to destroy targets while limiting collateral damage in close combat”. The principal contractor will be BAE Systems in Nashua, New Jersey, the department said. “The proposed sale will improve Saudi Arabia’s capability to deter current and future threats by strengthening its...