PESHAWAR: Militants ambushed a security convoy in Pakistan’s northwest on Wednesday, and hours later a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden vehicle into a police station in a nearby city, leaving at least three police officers dead and 20 wounded in the latest sign that violence is intensifying along the border with Afghanistan.
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Vitol turns Pakistan’s Gwadar into bunkering bet as Hormuz risk grows
KARACHI: Vitol Group has started supplying marine fuel at Pakistan’s Gwadar Port, a wager that the deep-sea facility can carve out a share of the lucrative bunkering trade as shipping lines look for alternatives to Persian Gulf hubs rattled by the conflict between Israel and Iran.
PTI to mark three years of Imran Khan’s imprisonment with nationwide rallies
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the party of imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan, announced on Wednesday it will hold rallies in cities across the country on Aug. 5, the date that will mark three full years since Khan’s arrest set off one of the most turbulent chapters in the nation’s recent political history.
Pakistan tightens travel rules for dual nationals with expired NICOPs
ISLAMABAD: Dual-national Pakistanis living abroad will no longer be permitted to board flights to Pakistan if they are carrying an invalid, expired, or cancelled National Identity Card for Overseas Pakistanis, according to officials who said the government has ordered airlines to begin verifying the documents before passengers reach the gate.
Banned Kashmiri rights group delays protest march as mediators seek deal to end deadly unrest
A banned protest coalition that has led weeks of unrest in the mountainous Azad Kashmir region agreed on Wednesday to postpone a long-threatened march on the regional capital, a reprieve that came after back-channel negotiations raised hopes for a lasting settlement to a standoff that has left at least nine people dead in the past two days alone.
Pakistan crypto regulator presses clerics to split bitcoin from ssset-backed tokens
The head of Pakistan’s virtual assets regulator has asked the country’s most influential Islamic seminary to distinguish between speculative cryptocurrencies and digital tokens backed by real assets, an attempt to contain the fallout from a religious ruling that has unsettled the government’s crypto ambitions.
Pakistan appoints ADB to advise on Islamabad airport privatisation under IMF reforms
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan formally appointed the Asian Development Bank as transaction adviser for the outsourcing of Islamabad International Airport on Wednesday, deploying a multilateral institution for the first time in the country’s privatisation program as it works to meet commitments tied to its International Monetary Fund loan.
FM Aurangzeb says Pakistan’s provincial funding formula is unsustainable
ISLAMABAD: Finance minister said the government must overhaul the formula that determines how the country distributes federal tax revenue among its four provinces, arguing that a system weighted overwhelmingly toward population size has become untenable as the nation grapples with one of the world’s fastest-growing populations.
Pakistan moves to shield Chinese mine after warning of shutdown over militant unrest
ISLAMABAD: The government pledged on Wednesday to significantly expand security around the country’s largest Chinese-operated copper and gold mine, responding to an unusually blunt warning from the mine’s operator that a monthlong spiral of violence in the southwestern province of Balochistan could force production to a halt within weeks.
Balochistan offensive kills three more militants, pushing toll past 125
QUETTA: Security forces killed three more militants on Wednesday as a joint military and police offensive in restive Balochistan province pushed its death toll to 88, state media reported, part of a broader crackdown that has claimed 126 lives since early July.