KARACHI: For more than a week, a rumour has been moving through Pakistani media and social media: that President Asif Ali Zardari’s trip abroad was really about arranging a marriage for his son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the 38-year-old chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party. The party has now denied it twice, in effect — once flatly, and once by staying silent as an even more detailed version of the story emerged anyway.
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Pakistan, Saudi Arabia set $3 billion target for agricultural trade
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia agreed to nearly double Pakistan’s agricultural and food exports to the kingdom, targeting $3 billion within two years as the countries deepen commercial ties beyond their traditional defence and security partnership.
CDWP recommends 20 percent cut to Gwadar water pipeline cost, refers project to ECNEC
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s central planning authority recommended cutting the estimated cost of a long-delayed pipeline project supplying water from Mirani Dam to the port city of Gwadar by roughly 20%, as part of a broader package of infrastructure and education projects worth 60.26 billion rupees cleared or advanced on Sunday.
Health minister Kamal proposes ending permanent hospital jobs after fatal newborn fire
ISLAMABAD: The health minister called for eliminating permanent civil-service positions at government hospitals, proposing instead that a chief executive recruited from the private sector be given full hiring and firing authority — a sweeping restructuring plan floated just days after a fire killed 14 newborns at a hospital in the capital.
PM Sharif departs for Kyrgyzstan as regional bloc marks 25th year
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif left for Kyrgyzstan on Monday for a three-day visit that will place him at the same summit table as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the first time since the two nuclear-armed neighbours fought a brief conflict last year, part of a gathering of regional leaders marking a quarter-century of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia open first defence talks under new mutual-security pact
ISLAMABAD: Senior Pakistani officials arrived in Turkey for the first formal meeting of a strategic committee established under a new trilateral defence pact with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which commits each nation to treat an attack on any one of them as an attack on all three.
Karachi mayor knocks down reports of Bhutto scion’s European wedding
KARACHI: The mayor of Karachi moved late on Saturday to shut down a wave of speculation that has consumed Pakistani social media for days: reports that Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party and son of President Asif Ali Zardari, was engaged to marry a woman from the tiny European principality of Liechtenstein.
Kashmir’s new prime minister pledges to lift internet blackout, reopen roads within days
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.
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.