ISLAMABAD: Nine press freedom and human rights organisations, spanning both Pakistan and the international community, sent a letter on Friday to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif demanding immediate action on a rapidly deteriorating environment for journalists in the country.
People
Lahore High Court halts order to expel Afghan medical students
LAHORE: A Lahore High Court judge on Friday suspended government directives ordering Afghan medical students to leave Pakistan, granting at least temporary relief to 13 students who argued they had been expelled from their colleges without being given a chance to respond.
Cricketer Rizwan, Haq grilled by cyber crime agency over alleged dressing-room leaks
LAHORE: Two of Pakistan’s most prominent cricketers, Mohammad Rizwan and Imam-ul-Haq, presented themselves before the country’s National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency in Lahore on Thursday, as officials pressed ahead with an inquiry into alleged leaks from the team’s dressing room during its troubled tour of England.
Afghan medical students take fight over Pakistan’s expulsion order to Lahore court
LAHORE: Thirteen Afghan medical students filed suit against Pakistan’s top medical regulator on Thursday, asking a provincial court to block an order that would send them home to Afghanistan before they finish the degrees they have spent years pursuing.
Sindh minister apologises to judicial panel probing Mir Raza Ali’s death
KARACHI: The Sindh home minister stood before a judicial commission Thursday and apologised without qualification, seeking to put to rest a dispute that had briefly stalled the panel’s inquiry into the death of a 25-year-old businessman whose family has insisted for weeks that he was murdered.
Afghan women studying medicine in Pakistan ordered home to a country that bars them from university
LAHORE: Twenty Afghan medical students at King Edward Medical University were given 24 hours to report to the administration and begin the process of leaving Pakistan. Seven were in their final year of training. For the women among them, the order does not just interrupt a degree. It sends them back to a country where they are barred from attending university at all.
Senators clash in fiery hearing over Gujranwala sanitation worker’s death
ISLAMABAD: A Senate hearing into the death of a Gujranwala sanitation worker descended into open hostility on Wednesday, as two senators traded sharp words across the committee room while officials from Suthra Punjab faced sustained questioning over the circumstances of his death.
Eleven militants killed as security forces foil highway ambush and raid bomb-making hideout
ISLAMABAD: Security forces have killed 11 militants and seized nearly three tonnes of explosives in two operations in restive Balochistan province, the military said, in the latest in a string of raids as the south-western region grapples with a marked rise in violence.
Thousands of Afghan medical students told to leave Pakistan as deportation drive widens
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s medical regulator has ordered thousands of Afghan nationals studying at medical and dental colleges across the country to return home, in one of the most far-reaching measures yet in Islamabad’s escalating campaign against Afghan citizens living within its borders.
Babar Azam blindsided by Pakistan cricket cull as England eye series whitewash
LAHORE: Babar Azam has revealed he was given no warning of the extraordinary shake-up that saw his head coach sacked and seven players sent home mid-series, telling reporters in Birmingham that the sweeping changes were “news to me” as well.