The newly elected prime minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir told business leaders and students on Saturday that his government would restore internet access at schools and lift road restrictions with Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa within days, an attempt to calm a region shaken by months of deadly protests and a communications blackout that has choked commerce and closed classrooms.
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Pakistan retires record Rs1.2 trillion in central bank debt ahead of schedule
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan repaid 1.2 trillion rupees of debt owed to its central bank ahead of schedule, the largest single early-repayment tranche the government has undertaken, an adviser to the finance minister said, as authorities press ahead with an effort to trim refinancing risk less than two months into the new fiscal year.
25 Pakistani fishermen freed from Indian jails, cross home through Wagah border
LAHORE: Twenty-five Pakistani fishermen walked back into their home country on Saturday afternoon, released from Indian prisons and escorted across the Wagah-Attari border crossing in a repatriation, the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi confirmed later in the day.
Govt disputes reports on Imran Khan’s prison conditions, medical care
ISLAMABAD: The government on Saturday moved to counter what it described as misleading foreign media coverage of the imprisonment of former prime minister Imran Khan, issuing a detailed rebuttal that touched on his living conditions, family access, and a medical dispute now before the country’s Supreme Court.
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.
Eight officials suspended, face criminal charges over deadly Islamabad hospital fire
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered the suspension of eight hospital and government officials on Saturday and directed that criminal charges be filed against them, after an official inquiry into a nursery fire that killed 14 newborns found the hospital lacked basic fire alarms, a workable evacuation plan, and had ignored warnings from a nearly identical fire just weeks earlier.
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.
Minister Kamal calls health system ‘rotten’ after deadly Pims fire
ISLAMABAD: The health minister told lawmakers on Friday that “no one will be spared” in the aftermath of a nursery fire that killed 14 infants at a government hospital here, as members of parliament from across the political spectrum demanded an independent accounting of how flames were able to sweep through a neonatal ward at the country’s most prominent medical facility.
Pakistan pulls telecom land-access bill after backlash over property rights
ISLAMABAD: The government withdrew legislation that would have granted telecommunications companies broad authority to install infrastructure on private and public land, bowing to criticism that the measure trampled constitutional property protections and opened the door to forced entry onto private premises.
Azad Kashmir swears in new premier after contested nomination, narrow party revolt
MUZAFFARABAD: Barrister Syed Iftikhar Ali Gillani, a 46-year-old lawyer whose political career has been defined as much by sudden reversals as by steady ambition, was sworn in on Friday as prime minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, capping a 15-year rise that included an unlikely by-election upset, a cabinet post, an electoral defeat, and finally a phone call from the top of his party that few had seen coming.