Pakistan News

Zahir Zakir Jaffer on Tuesday sought a review of the Supreme Court verdict that upheld his death sentence for the gruesome 2021 murder of Noor Mukadam in Islamabad. Noor, aged 27 years, was found murdered at Zahir’s Islamabad residence in July 2021, with the probe revealing she was tortured by him before being beheaded. Zahir’s death sentence by the trial court had already been upheld by the Islamabad High Court (IHC). The 47-page review petition, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com , was filed by Advocate Khawaja Haris on behalf of Zahir under Article 188 of the Constitution (review of judgments or orders by SC). The state and Noor’s father, Shaukat Ali Muqadam, were made the respondents. The petition contended that the “plea of unsoundness of mind and mental incapacity was also given short shrift by the learned trial court”. It further said that “hype created on social media […] constantly created hatred towards the petitioner throughout the investigation and the ...

LAHORE: An important meeting of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) is being held on Thursday in Dhaka where Pakistan’s participation in this year’s Asia Cup in India will come under discussion. Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Mohsin Naqvi as the head of the ACC was expected to leave for Dhaka on Tuesday night to head the said meeting. The ACC meeting is considered important, particularly in the backdrop of the the Asia Cup, scheduled to be held in India in the month of September. According to reports, no official of the BCCI will visit Bangladesh to attend the ACC meeting. There are also media reports that Sri Lanka, Oman and Afghanistan may also not attend. Though the Asia Cup is an impo­rtant continental event, due to strained political relations between India and Pakis­tan, particularly after the military encounter between the nuclear-armed neighbours in May this year, the fate of the said competition is hanging in the balance. On its part, the BCCI has said that the politic...

Iran has no plans to abandon its nuclear programme, including uranium enrichment, despite “severe” damage to its facilities after US strikes last month, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Monday. For now, enrichment “is stopped because, yes, damages are serious and severe”, Araghchi told Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier”. “But obviously we cannot give up enrichment because it is an achievement of our own scientists,” he continued, calling it a source of “national pride”. He stressed that any future nuclear deal would have to contain the right to enrichment. When asked whether any enriched uranium had been saved from the strikes, Araghchi said he had “no detailed information”, but that Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation is “trying to evaluate what has exactly happened to our nuclear material, to our enriched material”. Washington bombed three nuclear facilities in Iran on June 22 to support Israel’s 12-day military offensive, including the Fordow underground ura...

At least 25 children were among the 27 dead pulled from scorched buildings after a Bangladesh Air Force jet on a training mission crashed into a college and school campus in Dhaka, officials said on Tuesday, with 88 people being treated in hospital. The F-7 BGI aircraft crashed soon after it took off at 1:06pm (12:06pm PKT) on Monday from the airbase in Kurmitola in the capital on a routine training mission. The military said the plane experienced a mechanical failure. Visuals showed rescue workers scouring the charred buildings for debris as distressed family members surrounded the site. Sayedur Rahman, special assistant to the chief adviser on health, told reporters that 27 people had died and 88 were admitted to hospital with burn injuries. Those dead included 25 children, a teacher and the pilot. The government announced a day of mourning, with flags at half-mast and special prayers at all places of worship. The F-7 BGI is the final and most advanced variant in China’s Cheng...

KARACHI: Nolberto Solano’s last managerial job might have not gone too well but the Newcastle United legend will look to turn a page on that when he takes over as the head coach of Pakistan’s senior and under-23 teams next month. Solano is the first major appointment by the freshly-elected Pakistan Football Federation leadership with president Mohsen Gilani telling Dawn on Monday that he expected the former Peru winger to help the national team reach new heights. “He will bring more zest and energy to the national team … especially in our style of play,” Mohsen added, noting Solano’s experience as the assistant coach of the Peruvian national team. During his seven-year stint as assistant to Ricardo Gareca, Solano helped his country qualify for their first FIFA World Cup appearance in 36 years as Peru made it to the 2018 tournament in Russia. Solano, who also helmed the under-23 side, stayed till 2022, leaving after Peru fell to Australia in an intercontinental playoff for th...

Plastic pollution is one of the most severe forms of pollution because, once created, it takes hundreds of years to break down in the environment. It is also one of the few types of pollution that equally impacts land, air, and water. The primary contributor is single-use plastic products, with plastic shopping bags being the most significant. In countries like ours, the low cost and the lack of equally convenient safe alternatives are the two main reasons for their ever-increasing use. Plastic particles suspended in the air are a major cause of air pollution and contribute to smog during the winter season. Additionally, the dumping of plastic bags into water bodies, which eventually flow into the sea, significantly harms marine life. The world became aware of the disastrous environmental impacts of plastic pollution in the late 1980s, and many developing countries, including Pakistan, began efforts to control it in the late 1990s. However, they still continue to struggle to elimi...

More than a decade ago, Pakistan’s banking industry saw a highly unusual transaction. Failing to meet the capitalisation requirements, Khadim Ali Shah Bukhari (KASB) Bank was sold to BankIslami for a price of Rs1,000. To this day, this transaction remains a topic of discussion among nerdy individuals and is surely an interesting nugget in the sector’s history. While it may have been controversial, KASB was somewhat easy to manage, for it was among the few bad apples in an otherwise healthy industry. What should the regulator do when an entire sector — almost a trillion rupees of assets — is on the same path and refuses to show any signs of improvement? This has been the predicament facing microfinance banking, which has recorded aggregate losses every year since 2019 and continued that ritual in Q1FY25 with a net income of negative Rs2.3 billion. As a result, its capital buffers have been depleting for 12 quarters straight and now stand at 1.2 per cent of total risk-weighted assets, ...