ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s northernmost territory goes to the polls on Sunday for the first time in six years, after elections originally scheduled for February were postponed when winter snows rendered many of its mountain constituencies effectively unreachable. Nearly 960,000 voters are registered across Gilgit-Baltistan’s 24 general constituencies. The problems they want fixed are the same ones they brought to the ballot box in 2009, 2015 and 2020: electricity blackouts lasting up to 22 hours a day, broken roads in remote valleys, schools without teachers, and an unemployment crisis among a young population with few prospects. None of the major parties campaigning across the region in recent weeks has offered any serious plan to address them.
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Bahria Town CEO’s overseas assets frozen in Pakistan money-laundering probe
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s premier anti-corruption agency said on Saturday it had frozen $4.5 million held in foreign bank accounts linked to the chief executive of Bahria Town, the country’s most prominent real estate developer, and his wife — the latest salvo in a sweeping money-laundering investigation that has ensnared one of Pakistan’s most powerful business dynasties.
Police arrest 72 members of banned JAAC protest group, allege weapons and foreign contacts
MUZAFFARABAD: Police in Azad Jammu and Kashmir arrested at least 72 members of a freshly banned protest movement in a sweep conducted over roughly 18 hours, authorities said on Saturday, alleging that some detainees were found carrying weapons, communication devices and documents suggesting coordination with foreign individuals.
Temperatures to hit 51°C as Pakistan faces severe heatwave through mid-June
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s national weather authority issued a sweeping heatwave warning Saturday covering most of the country, forecasting temperatures that in some districts of Sindh and Balochistan could climb as high as 51 degrees Celsius — a level of heat that poses acute risks to human life — and cautioning that the scorching conditions would persist through at least June 12.
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia sign deal to develop 140-acre Karachi Port waterfront
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has signed a preliminary agreement with a Saudi-linked investment group and two domestic firms to explore developing a 140-acre commercial district on prime waterfront land controlled by the Karachi Port Trust, as Islamabad deepens its courtship of Gulf capital for large-scale infrastructure.
Pakistan races to save US-Iran ceasefire after new exchanges of fire
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s interior minister landed in Tehran on Saturday carrying personal messages from the country’s prime minister and its most powerful general, as Islamabad scrambled to hold together a ceasefire between the United States and Iran that appeared increasingly at risk of unraveling.
On eve of Gilgit-Baltistan vote, Imran Khan’s PTI cries rigging as police pour in from across Pakistan
SKARDU: At a busy road cutting through this northern district, cars pass draped in the banners of rival political parties. Election symbols flicker from storefronts and party flags snap in the mountain wind. Gilgit-Baltistan, a dramatic swath of glacier and granite that borders China, Afghanistan, and Indian-administered Kashmir, is preparing to go to the polls for the first time in six years.
Pakistan’s largest data centre project takes shape with $230 mln Huawei tie-up
KARACHI: A Pakistani data centre venture backed by the Gul Ahmed Energy Group said it had signed a partnership agreement with Huawei’s local unit to build the country’s largest Tier III data centre, with an initial investment of $230 million that could climb to $600 million within four years.
Pakistan pitches Saudi investors on long-delayed motorway projects
ISLAMABAD: The communications minister invited Saudi Arabia’s leading business council on Friday to take a financial stake in three major highway projects, including a 306-kilometer motorway through Sindh that has languished in planning documents for the better part of three decades, as Islamabad pressed to close a persistent gap in its national road network and draw Gulf capital into an infrastructure push central to its economic recovery.
Days before budget, ECC hands out billions — including lawmakers’ pet projects
ISLAMABAD: Less than a week before the federal budget is set to be unveiled, the government’s top economic decision-making body approved more than Rs40 billion in supplementary spending grants on Friday, extended a Rs100 billion sovereign-backed borrowing facility to the cash-starved national oil company, and quietly expanded a lucrative bonus program — worth up to six months of additional salary — to several more government ministries.