Pakistan News

KARACHI: The manufacturers of essential foreign items in Pakistan have not experienced significant declines, unlike foreign soft drink, mineral water, and fast food sales, which have been adversely affected by consumer boycott in response to the massacre of thousands of Palestinians by Israeli forces over the past year. For example, Nestlé Pakistan’s sales for the nine months ended Sept 30 stood at Rs149.2 billion, reflecting a decline of meagre 1.3pc compared to Rs151bn in the same period last year. However, the company’s profit-after-tax (PAT) plunged 29.50pc to Rs12.2bn from Rs15.8bn the previous year. Nestle said this was a decline primarily influenced by the implementation of taxes in the Finance Act, passed on to consumers, leading to price hikes and reduced demand. Additionally, challenges such as rising commodity and energy prices and increased investment in the brands contributed to decreased operating profit. Nestle maintains a cautious outlook for the rest of the year w...

ISLAMABAD: PTCL group, the country’s largest tele­com conglomerate, appears to be heading down a similar troubled path as other beleaguered state-owned entities like Pakistan Steel Mills, PIA and Pakistan Railways, struggling with financial losses despite increasing revenue streams. Like previous occasions, the recent financial results announced by the PTCL group showed a revenue increase of 15.3 per cent to Rs160.6 billion in the first nine months of the current year compared to the same period in 2023. The company attributed this strong performance to the consumer segment, particularly driven by fixed broadband, mobile data, and wholesale and business solutions. However, the PTCL group reported a net loss of Rs15.3bn during this period. The Pakistan government awarded the management control of PTCL to the UAE group Etisalat in 2006 as part of a $2.6bn deal to acquire a 26 per cent stake in the company. That year, the company reported a profit of Rs28bn, but a downward trend has pe...

VANCOUVER — Saturday wasn’t the first time Arshdeep Bains scored a goal at Rogers Arena. When he was “about six” years old, he played during the Vancouver Canucks ’ intermission and was pretty sure he scored during his Surrey Minor Hockey’s intra-squad game. Roughly 17 years later, Bains scored his first goal for the Canucks — his first goal in the National Hockey League — as his boyhood team rallied from two goals down to beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 4-3 on Hockey Night in Canada. It was the night the Canucks honoured defenceman Tyler Myers, who logged his 1,000 th  NHL game last Saturday in Philadelphia. Undrafted in junior, years before he led the Western Hockey League in scoring, and undrafted in the NHL, Bains was playing his 12 th  game for the Canucks after signing as a free agent 2 ½ years ago. “I can’t really even put it in words,” Bains told reporters. “It just happened so fast, and all the guys were so happy. It was a special moment. I think everyone, you know, ...

Ever since they brought out that word, we stood warned. “Reputed judicial maverick sworn in as new chief justice,” said Stratfor . “Pakistan’s maverick chief justice aims to restore court’s credibility,” said the Christian Science Monitor . “Justice Qazi Faez Isa — Pakistan’s judicial maverick,” said Dawn . On and on it went: here was a rebel, a daredevil, a correction to the post-Saqib era. That the word itself belonged to Samuel Maverick , a Texan rancher whose main act of defiance was refusing to brand his cattle (rather than free his slaves) wasn’t mentioned. If anything, the m-word invoked a more modern hero: Top Gun’s Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell — that rule-breaking, head-tossing navy pilot from back when the Cold War was still a thing. It’s a film so furious, viewers forget that Captain Maverick’s rebellion is limited to silly personality quirks; that he never questions the broader agenda of the military-industrial complex; and that any tension he does have with the deep stat...

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minis­ter Shehbaz has once again asked the officials to speed up reforms in the Federal Board of Revenue and complete the process on time. While chairing a meeting on the progress of reforms in the FBR on Thursday, the prime minister stressed the need for a “cordial and friendly” environment for taxpayers in the organisation. He said the use of modern technology was imperative to make taxation and revenue collection systems more effective. PM Shehbaz also instructed the officials to formulate a strategy for the restructuring of Pakistan Revenue Automa­tion Limited. Pays tribute to polio workers He also called for enhancing the professional capabilities of FBR officers and ensuring their effective utilisation. The prime minister gave dir­ections to further streng­then the system to check smuggling. Active Taxpayers’ List The FBR has also made changes to the system of the Active Taxpayer’s List (ATL) to ensure proper documentation of tax-paying citizens. The l...

WASHINGTON: More than 60 members of the US House of Representatives wrote to President Joe Biden on Wednesday, calling for the release of political prisoners in Pakistan, including former PM Imran Khan. The group, led by Congressman Greg Casar, called on the president “to centre human rights in US policy towards Pakistan”. “We echo the calls for Khan’s immediate release and for an end to widespread arbitrary detention of party members and activists in Pakistan,” the members wrote . “We ask your administration to urgently secure the guarantees from the Pakistani government for Khan’s safety and well-being and urge US embassy officials to visit him in prison.” Co-led by Jim McGovern and Summer Lee, the letter is signed by Democrats such as Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Barbara Lee, Brad Sherman, Debbie Wass­erman Schultz and Ro Khanna, among others. “We join our Pakistani American constituents, as well as community leaders and elected officials thro­ughout o...

A high-value target was among nine militants killed during an intelligence-based operation (IBO) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bajaur district, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said on Thursday. “On the night of Oct 23/24, the security forces conducted an IBO on the reported presence of khawarij where “[own] troops effectively engaged the khawarij location”, the ISPR said in a statement . “After [an] intense fire exchange, nine khawarij including two suicide bombers and a high-value target khariji ring leader Said Muhammad alias Qureshi Ustad were sent to hell,” it added. The statement further said a “large quantity of weapons, ammunition and explosives was recovered from killed khawarij , who remained actively involved in numerous terrorist activities against the security forces as well as innocent civilians”. A sanitisation operation was being carried out to eliminate any other terrorists in the area, the military’s media affairs wing said. It added: “[The] security forc...