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HEC’s new rules on student AI use won't work

The Higher Education Commission has taken two big steps on artificial intelligence. It has notified a compulsory three-credit-hour AI course for every undergraduate and postgraduate degree in the country, starting from Fall 2026. It has also circulated a draft policy on the use of generative AI in our universities. Both steps are welcome. But the rules the draft sets for students rest on two ideas that will not hold. It bans students from submitting AI-generated work as their own, and it asks them to declare which tools they used and why. These are honest instincts. They are also unenforceable. No teacher can verify either one, and the draft admits as much when it rules, correctly, that no student may be punished on the basis of an AI detection report alone. The problem is not that these rules are wrong. It is that they aim at something we cannot see. We keep arguing about what a student may do at home, when the question we can actually answer is what we choose to grade. Start with...
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Bangladesh, India scramble to save white-ball series

Bangladesh is scrambling to save a six-match cricket tour by neighbour India next month, with the foreign ministers of both nations roped in to try to salvage the series. Comprising three one-day internationals and three T20 matches, the white-ball series was originally planned for August last year but postponed after political relations soured between Dhaka and New Delhi. “It is being worked on at the ministerial level,” Bangladesh Sports Minister Aminul Haque said late Monday, adding talks were ongoing between the foreign ministers of both nations. Dhaka and New Delhi have been at odds since Bangladesh’s 2024 mass uprising toppled then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India, her long-time ally, where she remains in hiding. In February, Bangladesh refused to send a team to India for the T20 World Cup, citing security concerns. The International Cricket Council (ICC) refused Bangladesh’s request to play their matches in Sri...
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Afghanistan's gold rush upends lives, landscapes in northeastern Badakhshan province

In Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan province, dozens of excavators operate day and night to extract gold from the mountains where villagers and their livestock once roamed. Thousands of miners are deployed across the Shiwa area, about 50 kilometres northeast of the provincial capital Faizabad, extracting gold for investors nationwide. Some residents in the area have profited from the gold rush, only to regret it later, such as farmer Muhammad Amin. “Before, the river was deep, the water was clean,” said the 74-year-old from Pul-i-Ziri Ban valley. Since mining got under way, “the water of the river is not drinkable; you can’t even wash your body with that water”, he told AFP . This photograph taken on July 28, 2026 shows an Afghan miner pouring water over a sieve to separate dirt and stones from gold nuggets at Gulak-Dara valley in Shiwa area of Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan province. — AFP With tears in his eyes, Amin said the grass along t...
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'Work is work, it has to be done': Brickmakers in Pakistan scorched by sun above and fire below

As dark plumes billow from overhead smokestacks, brickmakers at a kiln in Sheikhupura district crush coal through small holes beneath their feet into the fiery chambers below. Workers already have to endure extreme conditions at traditional brick kilns, which burn at over 1,000°C and demand constant monitoring to ensure they remain hot enough. But they are becoming almost unbearable as climate change makes summers even hotter in a country already used to temperatures well over 40°C . A man works at a brick kiln in Sheikhupura, Punjab on July 20, 2026. —AFP Abid Hussain, a 35-year-old labourer whose clothes were covered in dark soot, told AFP the work felt like being trapped between fire below and, increasingly, above. He is one of hundreds of thousands working in an industry that labour advocates say is poorly regulated, badly paid and becoming more dangerous as temperatures rise. “The heat is undoubtedly extreme but when you think about the financial ...
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Kuwait felicitates Pakistan on Makkah defence deal

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar received a phone call from Kuwait’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Jarrah Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, wherein the latter felicitated the former on the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, the Foreign Office (FO) said on Monday. According to the FO, the two dignitaries spoke late on Sunday and also “exchanged views on the regional situation, including occupied East Jerusalem”. They also discussed bilateral relations between the two countries and “matters of mutual interest, including the follow-up to FM Jarrah’s recent visit to Pakistan and further enhancing cooperation and investment in key sectors”. “The two sides agreed to remain closely engaged,” the FO added. Earlier, DPM Dar had also spoken to Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand. “The two exchanged views on the regional situation, including the recently signed Makkah Joint Defence Agreement betwe...
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Police form new team to probe Mir Raza Ali's murder; murder charge added to FIR

KARACHI: The investigation team probing the killing of 25-year-old businessman Mir Raza Ali has been reconstituted while the murder charge has been added to the case registered on his father’s complaint. Ali’s body was found in bushes in Karachi’s Gulistan-i-Jauhar last month, a day after he went missing on July 28. While his family is convinced that he was kidnapped, tortured and murdered, police had previously been building the case around the possibility that he died by suicide. However, an order released by the Sindh inspector general of police’s (IG) office on Sunday, notifying the reconstitution of the investigating team, showed that the murder charge had been added to the first information report. The order, seen by Dawn , said the new investigating team was formed in light of Ali’s second postmortem report, which contradicted the one released after his first postmortem, to “supervise the investigation of FIR no. 795/2026 u/s 365/ 302/ 201 of the PPC”. Initially, the first i...
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On-duty cop martyred, another injured in Lakki Marwat attack

LAKKI MARWAT: A constable was martyred and another sustained bullet wounds while on duty in an attack in the Saeedkhel area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Lakki Marwat district on Sunday, police said. District police officer’s spokesperson Qudratullah Khan told Dawn that the cops were attacked near the Saeedkhel graveyard, in the limits of the City Police Station. “The terrorists opened fire on the rider squad personnel while they were patrolling the area,” he said, adding that Constable Sajidullah lost his life in the attack while Constable Muhammad Waqas was seriously wounded. The body of the deceased constable and the injured policeman were taken to the Government City Hospital, he said. Meanwhile, a large police contingent reached the site of the attack, surrounded the area and launched a search for the assailants, he said. Security personnel and law enforcers have been coming under attack in KP, which continues to face terrorism. According to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict a...
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