Pakistan News

IN early January, the Supreme Court opened up a case relating to katchi abadis that had been dormant for almost a decade, triggering panic amongst millions of working people across the country. The case revolves around a mass eviction in 2015 in Islamabad when the then PML-N government and the Capital Development Authority (CDA) ruthlessly ran bulldozers through the capital’s biggest katchi abadi, rendering more than 20,000 working people homeless. Situated in Sector I-11 of the federal capital, right next to the city’s main sabzi mandi, the settlement was over 30 years old. It had come into existence in the mid-1980s due to the influx of Pakhtun migrant workers from Mohmand and other tribal areas. Like the Punjabi, Kashmiri, Seraiki and other migrant workers before and after, the former residents of the katchi abadi have literally built Islamabad’s cityscape with their hands. They wake up at 3am every morning to deliver fruit and vegetables to the capital’s bazaars. They are t...

Todd McLellan couldn’t be off to a much better start as the new head coach of the Detroit Red Wings . Detroit rallied from a 2-0 first period deficit to earn a 3-2 victory over the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday, capturing its fourth game in a row. Dylan Larkin scored the insurance marker in the shootout and had a goal in regulation. Lucas Raymond also scored in the shootout and Michael Rasmussen scored in regulation for the Red Wings (25-21-5) who’ve gone 12-4-1 since McLellan became head coach Dec. 26. McLellan said he asked his team for more and received it after a tough first. “We didn’t have enough players going (in first) and that was the conversation we had in between periods,” he said. “We had 10 or 12 players that were giving us what we needed and we had passengers. “The challenge was to find three or four more in the second period. We didn’t know who was going to step up and where it was going to come from, but we found two or three more in the second and two or three mor...

The Foreign Office on Thursday expressed Pakistan’s desire to improve economic ties with the United States, a day after a delegation of investors led by Gentry Beach, US President Donald Trump’s close aide, met with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Pakistan and the US have delicate and complex ties, shaped by shared security concerns and divergent strategic priorities. In a press briefing today, FO spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan said, “We want to further improve economic ties with the United States.” Responding to queries, Shafqat termed members of the visiting delegation as “good businessmen”. He clarified that the visit was not organised through the FO, adding that businessmen touring Pakistan was a “routine” matter. Shafqat said that further questions about the visit should be referred to the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC). Beach also stated yesterday, “We plan on investing billions of dollars in Pakistan across several different areas, including critical minera...

Swarming throngs of devotees bathed in rivers at India’s Maha Kumbh Mela festival on Thursday, undeterred by a stampede a day earlier that killed at least 30 people. The Kumbh Mela attracts tens of millions of Hindu faithful from around India every 12 years to the northern city of Prayagraj, but has a woeful record of deadly crowd incidents. Yesterday’s pre-dawn disaster, which saw a surging crowd spill out of a police cordon and trample bystanders, prompted some spooked pilgrims to leave the festival. Police said 30 people were killed in the crush and 90 were injured, but sources told Reuters the death toll was nearly 40. But many more were still arriving in the stampede’s aftermath to participate in what they said was a matter of religious obligation. “We’ve obviously heard about the stampede,” 21-year-old Naveen Pradhan, who arrived at the festival with his family hours after the disaster, told AFP . “But this is a holy thing, a religious thing, something we should do as ...

A few miles from the Melbourne Cricket Ground where Australia and England started the women’s Ashes test on Thursday, a group of Afghan refugee cricketers played their first match as a team since fleeing Taliban rule. The players of the Afghanistan Women’s XI were among hundreds of athletes who fled their home nation when the Taliban returned to power in 2021, bringing sweeping restrictions on women. Of the 25 Afghan women contracted by the country’s cricket board in 2020, most resettled in Australia with humanitarian visas, starting new lives in Melbourne and other cities. While Afghanistan has an established men’s team and enjoys funding from the International Cricket Council (ICC), the women are unfunded and unsanctioned by the global body despite pleas for support from the players. Their exhibition match at the Junction Oval on Thursday against a team arranged by Cricket Without Borders, a non-profit supporting women cricketers, was facilitated by Cricket Australia and carrie...

BAHAWALPUR: Two persons, including a minor boy, were subjected to gang rape in Bahawalpur and Vehari district’s area of Karampur in Mailsi tehsil. Two persons allegedly gang-raped a 12-year-old egg-seller at the General Bus Stand in the limits of Civil Lines police station, Bahawalpur, on Monday night. According to police spokesperson, the victim studies in a seminary during day-time and sells boiled eggs at night at the general bus stand. On Monday night, when he was selling eggs, three suspects sitting in a van demanded eggs from him. As he boarded the van, two of the suspects raped him, while their third accomplice stood guard outside the van. Police have yet to arrest the suspects. In another incident, two friends took a tailor-master to a graveyard in Mailsi tehsil’s Karampur area where they criminally assaulted him after tying with a rope. The accused also shaved his eyebrows and moustaches besides making his video and threatened him with dire consequences if he disclosed i...

Former Supre­­me Court judge Faqir Mu­­hammad Khokhar, who was recently appointed as the new chairman of an inquiry panel on enforced disappearances, died on Wednesday due to prolonged illness. It had emerged last week that the government had appointed Justice Khokhar as the new chairman of the Com­mission of Inquiry on Enf­orced Disappearance (CIED), replacing Javed Iqbal who had been heading the panel since September 2011. Justice Khokhar’s son, Tahir Mehmood, confirmed to Dawn.com that his father passed away today due to prolonged illness. The former SC judge had been admitted to Lahore’s Services Hospital for the past 12 days and was battling cancer, Mehmood said. According to an obituary issued by the Lahore High Court (LHC), the retired judge’s funeral will be held at 4:15pm today after Asr prayers at a mosque in Phase 8 of the city’s Defence Housing Authority (DHA). Justice Khokhar was one of the four judges who, out of the 19 SC judges back then, had taken oath unde...

India and China have agreed to work on resolving differences over trade and economic issues, New Delhi has said, as relations continue to thaw after a deadly 2020 border clash. Following a meeting on Monday in Beijing between India’s top diplomat Vikram Misri and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, India’s foreign ministry also said that both sides would negotiate a framework on the resumption of flights after five years at an “early date”. China’s foreign ministry confirmed today that flights would resume, and said Wang had told Misri that China and India should commit to “mutual support and mutual achievement” rather than “suspicion” and “alienation”. “Specific concerns in the economic and trade areas were discussed with a view to resolving these issues and promoting long-term policy transparency and predictability,” the Indian statement said without going into detail. Analysts say sluggish economies and trade threats from US President Donald Trump are encouraging China and In...

Pakistan and China reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening bilateral ties as Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar held a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador Jiang Zaidong on Tuesday, the Foreign Office said. A day earlier, the FO rejected “baseless and unfounded” allegations targeting Pakistan’s commitment to China’s policies, stressing that Beijing continued to be Islamabad’s “all-weather strategic partner”. The development came in response to growing criticism of Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi’s participation in an event sponsored by the New Federal State of China (NFSC), an anti-China group. The FO described the One-China Policy as a consistent cornerstone of Pakistan’s foreign policy, emphasising that the country’s stance remains the same. Pakistan has held strong bilateral relations with China which has supported it through many investments and development projects such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project which was termed as a “lifeline” for ...

LAHORE: The tickets for next month’s ICC Champions Trophy featuring top eight cricketing nations will go on sale from Tuesday, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) announced on Monday. All matches of the event will be held across three venues in Pakistan — Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi — from Feb 19 to March 9 except for India’s games which will be staged in Dubai. While the PCB announced the prices of the group-stage matches to be held in Pakistan, the rates of the tickets of Dubai’s matches, as well as one semi-final and the final have not yet been decided. “Tickets for group-stage matches and the second semi-final to be played in Pakistan will go on general sale on Tuesday, Jan 28, at 13h00 Gulf Standard Time (GST) / 14h00 Pakistan Standard Time (PST),” a PCB statement said on Monday. “Members of the ICC Family will enjoy exclusive early access, with a two-hour priority window to purchase tickets which is open now. “General stand ticket prices will start from PKR 1,000, with more ...

India’s efforts to pare back a longstanding reliance on Russian military hardware is bearing fruit after the courting of new Western allies and a rapidly growing domestic arms industry, analysts say. At a time when Moscow’s military-industrial complex is occupied with the ongoing war in Ukraine, India has made the modernisation of its armed forces a top priority. That urgency has risen in tandem with tensions between the world’s most populous nation and its northern neighbour China, especially since a deadly 2020 clash between their troops. “India’s perception of its security environment vis-a-vis China has been dramatically altered,” Harsh V Pant, of the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation think-tank, told AFP . Relations between the two neighbours went into freefall after the clash on their shared frontier, which killed 20 Indian and at least four Chinese soldiers. “It has sort of shaken the system and there’s a realisation that we have to do whatever is best now, and ...

China has prohibited imports of sheep, goat, poultry and even-toed ungulates from African, Asian and European countries due to outbreaks of livestock diseases such as sheep pox, goat pox and foot-and-mouth-disease. The ban, which also includes processed and unprocessed products, comes after the World Health Organisation released information of disease outbreaks in various countries, according to a series of announcements by China’s General Administration of Customs dated January 21. The ban from the world’s largest meat importer affects Ghana, Somalia, Qatar, Congo (DRC), Nigeria, and Tanzania, Egypt, Bulgaria, East Timor and Eritrea. China also said it has stopped imports of sheep, goat and related products from Palestine, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal and Bangladesh due to sheep pox and goat pox outbreaks. It also blocked the imports of even-toed ungulates and related products from Germany following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, it said. from The Dawn News - Home ht...

Skipper Kraigg Brathwaite hit a fighting half-century on Sunday to lead the West Indies to 129-5 at lunch on the second day of the second Test against Pakistan in Multan. The tourists negotiated Pakistan’s spin attack aggressively to take their slender nine-run first-innings lead to 138 at the break in their bid to pull off a series-levelling win. Pakistan lead the two-match series 1-0 after winning the first Test by 127 runs, also in Multan. Left-arm spinner Noman Ali brought Pakistan back in the game with 4-59, trapping Alick Athanaze leg before for six on the cusp of lunch, while Justin Greaves was unbeaten on five. With the Multan Stadium pitch offering slow spin in comparison to day one, Brathwaite led the way with two sixes and four boundaries in his 31st Test half-century. Noman broke the solid 50-run opening stand by dismissing Mikyle Louis for seven after the tourists started their second innings in the morning. Brathwaite overturned two leg before decisions against him ...

LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) will “showcase its redesigned and redeveloped” Gaddafi Stadium here and Karachi’s National Bank Stadium in the tri-nation series involving the home side, New Zealand and South Africa from February 8, it said while announcing the tournament’s schedule on Saturday. The series was originally scheduled to be held in Multan as warm-up for the teams ahead of the ICC Champions Trophy , which will take place in Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi from February 19 to March 9. The PCB, however, decided to shift the tri-nation series to Karachi and Lahore to make use of it as a dress rehearsal opportunity for the revamped venues as well as to bury any doubts over the country’s preparation to host the Champions Trophy. The opening fixture of the tri-nation series will be played between Pakistan and New Zealand at the Gaddafi Stadium here before South Africa take on the BlackCaps on February 10 in a day encounter. The Pakistan-South Africa encounter of the s...

VANCOUVER — Growing up in Boston, Conor Garland said one of his favourite athletes was Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez. “He used to say, whenever they needed to win, he could find a way to just bring his game,” Garland, the Vancouver Canucks winger, explained late Saturday. “And Huggy is the same way — he has that sense when we need to win. You don’t want to call a game in January a must-win, but we needed this one tonight. He just finds a way to bring his best.” Huggy is what Quinn Hughes has been called by Canuck teammates since he arrived in Vancouver for his rookie season 5 ½ years ago. It’s short for Huggy Bear. But the defenceman has become more like a Spirit Bear for the Canucks — the rare white bear that is sacred in First Nations culture on the West Coast and, according to legend, was created to remind everyone that the world was once covered in ice. There has never been such a creature on ice for the Vancouver Canucks. As most around him have failed this season, Hughes...

MUZAFFARABAD: Acting on the directives of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Chaudhry Anwarul Haq, a truck carrying essential medical equipment was dispatched on Friday to support a medical mission in the snow-affected areas of Neelum Valley. The supplies included an ultrasound machine, delivery tables, delivery kits, and gynecological emergency equipment, which were urgently required to cater to medical emergencies in the snowbound villages of Halmat and Janawai in the Gurez sub-valley of Neelum. On Thursday, a seven-member emergency medical response team—comprising four male and three female doctors—was airlifted to the upper reaches of Neelum Valley using military helicopters. This collaborative effort with the Pakistan Army was initiated following reports of insufficient healthcare facilities and rising medical emergencies in these isolated areas. Road to Taobutt cleared for the first time in January amid freezing temperatures On the night of January 18, a 21-year-o...

KARACHI: Teachers held protests at several public sector universities on Friday, condemning what they described as “chief minister’s harsh speech” made a day earlier at a programme. The remarks also attracted severe criticism from the Pakistan chapter of the Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association (Fapuasa) which announced its support to the ongoing strike of its Sindh chapter against the appointment of bureaucrats as heads of universities and hiring of teachers on a contractual basis. At the programme, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah had warned vice chancellors (VCs) “of universities experiencing protests ” to stop them or get ready to be held “accountable”. He had also justified the government move of changing the criteria for appointment of VCs while accusing some of them of sexual harassment and corruption, criticising the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for backing the protesting teachers’ demand. “There is a public outcry against his rem...

Noman Ali became the first Pakistan spinner to register a hat trick as the West Indies were dismissed for 163 on Saturday on the opening day of the second Test in Multan. Noman finished with 6-41 and fellow spinner Sajid Khan took 2-64 as the tourists were bowled out in 41.1 overs after winning the toss and opting to bat. It could have been worse for the tourists had Gudakesh Motie, who top scored with a career-best 55, not added an invaluable 68 runs for the last wicket with Jomel Warrican, who scored 36 not out with two sixes. Motie also added 41 for the ninth wicket with Kemar Roach (25) to delay the lunch break before Noman grabbed the last two wickets for his eighth five-wicket haul in an innings. Pakistan employed the same spin-heavy tactics which earned them a 127-run win in the first Test — also in Multan — with the ball turning from the first over. Noman came on to bowl as the first change, and trapped West Indian skipper Kraigg Brathwaite leg before for nine to spark a ...

Train stations and airports across China saw the biggest peak in travellers on Saturday ahead of the Lunar New Year, as millions of people returned home to spend the holidays with their families in an annual migration that is expected to be a record. The Chinese New Year, the Year of the Snake, begins on Wednesday. The Chinese enjoy eight consecutive public holidays, an opportunity to share festive meals with family, attend traditional performances or set off firecrackers and fireworks. At Beijing West Station, an AFP journalist saw thousands of travellers on Saturday wrapped up in parkas, many wearing face masks to avoid catching anything on packed trains, dragging their suitcases through the hallways before boarding the carriages. During the traditional 40-day period that runs before, during and after the holidays, some nine billion interprovincial passenger trips, on all forms of transport combined, are expected to be made, according to the official Xinhua news agency. Train ...

We say this every time a big-time player with significant term like Vancouver Canucks centre J.T. Miller finds himself in winter trade rumours; this would be a much easier deal to do in the summer. And when you consider that, not only would a team need to make Miller’s $8-million cap hit — with three more seasons to go after this one — work on the books, but Miller himself must sign off on any transaction thanks to a no-move clause, it starts to feel like a longshot that the 31-year-old will spend the next few months anywhere but British Columbia. And yet… When Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman is coming on Hockey Night in Canada and saying the Canucks were so close to a deal involving Miller the player was nearly held out of a game on Saturday night, the rumblings are starting to rattle windows. And, of course, if the Canucks wanted to quash all notion they’re looking to move Miller, general manager Patrik Allvin could have done so at his mid-season press conference on Monday. He...