KARACHI: Moody’s Ratings raised Pakistan’s sovereign credit rating one notch to B3 from Caa1 on Monday, pointing to a steady rebuild in foreign-currency reserves and a lighter debt-servicing burden that has given the government more room to maneuver after years of fiscal strain.
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Pakistan’s military chief returns to Tehran as US prepares toughest sanctions yet on Iran
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s top military officer arrived in the Iranian capital on Monday for his fourth visit since the outbreak of the war between Iran and the United States, meeting with Iran’s interior minister just hours before Washington was set to unveil what US officials have billed as the harshest round of sanctions ever imposed on the Islamic Republic.
Opposition leader’s failure to unite parties let defence bill sail through parliament, JUI-F chief says
PESHAWAR: Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the head of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl, used a party workers’ convention here Sunday to deliver a pointed critique of Pakistan’s fractured opposition, arguing that its failure to coordinate a unified response allowed the government to push through sweeping new military command legislation with almost no scrutiny.
Nawaz Sharif warns brother against another constitutional crisis
MUZAFFARABAD: Nawaz Sharif summoned the senior ranks of his party to Muzaffarabad on Sunday, opening a meeting that was ostensibly about naming the next prime minister of Azad Kashmir but that drifted, inevitably, into weightier terrain: the health of his political rival, the temper of the Supreme Court, and the durability of his brother’s government in Islamabad.
Police widen inquiry into Rawalpindi woman’s death as husband, servant remain in custody
RAWALPINDI: A duty magistrate here ordered the husband and household servant of a young woman found dead in her apartment last week held in police custody for three additional days, as investigators press forward on a case that has drawn condemnation from the country’s first lady and members of its Parliament.
In Lahore, the daughter of a revolutionary poet fights to sell lunch
LAHORE: For one day last week, Tahira Habib Jalib ran a food stall in the Karim Block market here, selling home-cooked meals she had prepared herself. She made 2,800 rupees, or about $10. Then the city took the cart away.
Cricket greats urge Pakistan PM to honour court order on Imran Khan’s medical care
Twenty-two former international cricketers, including 21 who captained their countries, have written to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, urging his government to comply fully with a Supreme Court order on the medical treatment of the jailed former prime minister Imran Khan.
Imran Khan sent back to jail without recommended heart scan, party says
For the second time in a week, doctors recommended that Imran Khan, Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister, undergo a cardiac imaging test to check for blocked arteries. For the second time, it did not happen — and now his party is accusing the government of deliberately steering him away from the one hospital equipped to perform it.
JI chief threatens countrywide shutdown, march on Islamabad over fuel levy
LAHORE: The head of Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami party said on Sunday that his organisation would call for a nationwide shutter-down strike once a major Islamic religious observance concludes this week, sharpening a confrontation with the federal government over fuel prices that has kept protesters camped outside government buildings in four provincial capitals for more than a week.
Police say father, brother orchestrated TikTok star’s killing
RAWALPINDI: For nine days, the killing of a TikTok star known to more than a million followers as Ayesha Gilamana had the shape of a familiar tragedy: a young woman gunned down by men chasing an unpaid debt, her grieving father the one who ran to police.
By Saturday, investigators were telling a different story. The father, they said, was the one who ordered her death.