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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...
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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...

3 arrested in connection with young doctor's killing during robbery near Karachi's Teen Talwar

Three suspects have been arrested in connection with the murder of a young doctor who was shot dead during a robbery near Teen Talwar in Karachi’s Clifton area, according to a press release issued by South Zone police on Wednesday. Dr Akash Kumar, a doctor at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), was killed on Monday after robbers intercepted his vehicle near Teen Talwar and escaped with around Rs2 million that he was carrying after withdrawing cash from a private bank. In the press release issued on Wednesday, police provided details of the events leading up to the robbery. They said that Dr Akash arrived at a bank on Monday to withdraw Rs5m, of which he kept Rs2m and Rs3m in separate white envelopes. It said that the vehicle with Dr Akash, his father and the cash envelopes was intercepted by four robbers on two motorcycles when they arrived at their location, which was a second bank. It said that one of the suspects opened the car door and fired at Dr Akash, who then die...

Pakistan publishes its agriculture census, revealing the federation beneath our fields

The state’s desire to count is never entirely innocent. British India turned censuses, land records and irrigation maps into technologies of rule: enumeration made people and property legible, while the canal colonies linked land settlement, water allocation and revenue to a powerful bureaucracy. Pakistan inherited that administrative apparatus. Yet the same numbers that can help a state extract can also help citizens see what is changing and demand a response. The Agricultural Census 2024 deserves to be read in that critical but constructive spirit. It is Pakistan’s seventh agricultural census and the first to combine agriculture, livestock and farm machinery in one digital exercise. This 2024 census is the first to combine agriculture, livestock and farm machinery in one digital exercise Fieldwork was carried out in two phases between September 2024 and February 2025. It was sample-based rather than a literal count of every farm. (This was a different approach from work done befo...

Ethnic targets

THE murder of five workers from Punjab in Mashkel is another grim reminder that ethnic violence remains a persistent feature of Balochistan’s fragile security landscape. The targeting of civilians on the basis of their ethnicity underscores the continued ability of terrorist groups to exploit fault lines and perpetuate insecurity in the province. Such killings must be unequivocally condemned. The attack is part of a fresh surge of terrorism, that defies ongoing counterterrorism operations , in which security forces have killed 109 terrorists since early July. It is clear that decades of operations, militant losses and official assurances have not achieved the desired results, and tactical victories against terrorist groups have yet to translate into lasting security for ordinary citizens. The targeted killing of workers from Punjab is not a new development. Over the years, workers and travellers hailing from Punjab have been singled out after identity...