KARACHI: Pakistan’s chief selector has mounted a defiant defence of the cricket board’s decision to tear up its Test squad and coaching staff midway through the England series, insisting the wholesale changes were forced by a team that had simply stopped competing — even as the fallout threatened to consume the selection process itself.
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Torrential rains paralyse twin cities, force school closures
ISLAMABAD: A punishing overnight deluge sent floodwaters surging through Pakistan’s twin cities on Tuesday, submerging roads, breaching sealed basements and pushing a critical drainage channel to its highest level in three years, prompting authorities to shutter schools and mobilise the army alongside emergency crews.
The internet married Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. He would like a divorce
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari spent the weekend watching the internet marry him off. By Monday, the chairman of Pakistan Peoples Party had heard enough. In a video statement posted to social media, he said that he is not engaged, is not getting married, and has never met the Austrian noblewoman the rumors had already fitted him for a wedding suit alongside.
Zardari, son face fresh denial over engagement reports as speculation drags into a second week
KARACHI: For more than a week, a rumour has been moving through Pakistani media and social media: that President Asif Ali Zardari’s trip abroad was really about arranging a marriage for his son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the 38-year-old chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party. The party has now denied it twice, in effect — once flatly, and once by staying silent as an even more detailed version of the story emerged anyway.
Karachi mayor knocks down reports of Bhutto scion’s European wedding
KARACHI: The mayor of Karachi moved late on Saturday to shut down a wave of speculation that has consumed Pakistani social media for days: reports that Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party and son of President Asif Ali Zardari, was engaged to marry a woman from the tiny European principality of Liechtenstein.
Despite war’s shadow in Mideast, climbers flock to Pakistan’s highest peaks
GILGIT: In the high valleys of northern Pakistan, where five of the world’s 14 peaks above 8,000 meters rise within a few hundred miles of each other, more than 2,200 foreign climbers and trekkers arrived this summer to test themselves against some of the most punishing terrain on Earth — a number tourism officials say marks a clear rebound from a difficult year before, even as the broader region absorbed the shock of a war between the United States, Israel, and Iran.
Judge opens inquiry into Mir Raza Ali’s death as police file charges against protesters
KARACHI: A Sindh High Court justice opened the first hearing Friday in a judicial inquiry into the death of Mir Raza Ali, a 25-year-old businessman whose family has insisted for a month that he was murdered, even as police in a separate action filed charges against roughly 100 people accused of blocking one of the city’s main thoroughfares during a nightly vigil demanding answers in the case.
He lived his entire life in a hospital ward – and died there, too
For two months, a baby boy lived in a hospital nursery because no one would say who he belonged to.
Grief, fury mount in Islamabad as officials probe hospital fire that killed 14 infants
ISLAMABAD: The federal minister overseeing Pakistan’s health system said on Thursday that he would submit himself to the same accountability he has promised for anyone found responsible for a fire that killed 14 newborns at a major Islamabad hospital, as grieving families, opposition politicians, and international officials pressed for answers about how the tragedy unfolded.
Pakistan weighs scrapping Rs10 note as printing costs bite
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s central bank is considering scrapping its lowest-denomination banknote, the Rs10 note, as officials weigh the rising cost of printing currency that’s becoming increasingly expensive to produce.