MUZAFFARABAD: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz appeared headed into Friday’s vote for a new Azad Jammu and Kashmir prime minister with its own house in disorder, after the party’s central leadership passed over two senior regional figures in favour of a young barrister barely four days into his legislative career — and those passed-over leaders responded by saying they would boycott the election entirely.
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After 14 newborns die in PIMS fire, questions turn to negligence and safety
ISLAMABAD: A committee appointed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif began investigating on Thursday what caused a fire to tear through a hospital nursery here, killing 14 newborns and leaving a nation searching for someone to blame.
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.
Pakistan weighs scrapping tiered gas pricing for single rate
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s government is considering scrapping its tiered natural gas pricing system in favor of a single uniform rate for all consumers, Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik said, a shift that would mark one of the most significant overhauls of the country’s energy subsidy regime in years.
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.
Rangers soldier killed in ambush during Kashmir road-clearing operation
MUZAFFARABAD: A paramilitary soldier was shot dead and a second wounded on Wednesday when gunmen opened fire on security forces conducting a road-clearing operation in the Sarsawa-Thorar-Thal area, officials said, the latest episode of violence in a region that has been convulsed by months of unrest.
Security forces kill 11 militants in Bannu, South Waziristan, Balochistan raids
ISLAMABAD: Security forces killed 11 militants in a series of intelligence-based raids across the country’s volatile northwest and southwest on Thursday, the government said, the latest in a string of operations that officials describe as central to an intensifying campaign against insurgent groups along the Afghan border.
Pakistan says army chief Munir went to Iran as mediator, not Trump envoy
ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office on Thursday pushed back hard against reports that the country’s top military officer travelled to Iran last week on behalf of US President Donald Trump, insisting that Field Marshal Asim Munir went to Tehran as a mediator acting for Pakistan, not as an emissary of the United States.
Fire tears through PIMS hospital newborn ward, killing 14 babies
ISLAMABAD: Fourteen infants died early Wednesday when a fire tore through the newborn nursery of Pakistan’s largest public hospital in Islamabad, an inferno that investigators say began with an exploding air conditioner and was fed by oxygen equipment keeping the youngest patients alive.
After 50 years, France closes its consulate in Karachi
KARACHI: For half a century, the French tricolour flew over a consulate that Pakistanis in this sprawling port city had come to think of as a fixture, a quiet outpost of Paris on the edge of the Arabian Sea. This week, that chapter closed.