ISLAMABAD: Iranian missiles and drones struck Kuwait’s international airport Wednesday, killing at least one person and injuring dozens, as the United States carried out fresh strikes near the Strait of Hormuz and President Trump claimed, in a morning podcast interview, that Iran had already agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program — an assertion Tehran’s government flatly contradicted.
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Pakistan sets June 10 budget date as PM Sharif courts business elite on tax, exports
ISLAMABAD: The government has settled on June 10 to present its federal budget for fiscal year 2026-27, locking in the date after coalition consultations produced a rare show of cross-party consensus on spending priorities — even as the administration navigates the twin pressures of IMF compliance and the resistance of provinces unwilling to subordinate their development ambitions to national fiscal targets.
Pakistan braces for a punishing summer as El Niño tightens its grip
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is heading into a summer of dangerous heat and diminished rains, the country’s national weather service warned Wednesday, painting a picture of a nation caught between two gathering climate threats: the creeping warmth of El Niño in the Pacific and the accelerating melt of its own glaciers in the north.
PM Sharif pushes for fast-track implementation of China deals after $7 billion investment conference
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif pressed China’s ambassador on Wednesday to accelerate implementation of agreements reached during last month’s state visit to Beijing, singling out the next phase of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and a $7 billion slate of corporate deals as priorities demanding urgent action.
Pessimism Returns: Economic confidence in Pakistan plummets to pandemic-era lows
KARACHI: Just months after a surprising surge of optimism swept Pakistani public opinion, that confidence has largely dissolved.
OGDCL strikes oil in Sindh after reviving abandoned exploratory well
KARACHI: Pakistan’s state-owned Oil and Gas Development Company Ltd. made a fresh hydrocarbon discovery in Sindh province after engineers rescued a suspended exploratory well using an unconventional partnership with a local university — a find analysts say will add roughly Rs1.67 per share to annual earnings.
US revives tariff push against 60 nations, including Pakistan, citing forced labour as trade distortion
KARACHI: The US Trade Representative proposed new tariffs on imports from 60 economies — spanning trade giants including China, India, the European Union and Pakistan — alleging widespread failures to prohibit goods made with forced labor, as the Trump administration moves to reassemble its trade enforcement agenda after a series of legal reversals.
Business confidence in Pakistan slumps as Mideast conflict freezes investment plans
KARACHI: Foreign investors and businesses operating in Pakistan are shelving expansion plans at an accelerating pace, rattled by the Middle East conflict’s knock-on effects on inflation, fuel costs and supply chains — a deterioration in sentiment that arrives at an especially uncomfortable moment for a government days away from presenting its annual budget.
Electricity tariff set for Rs1.74/unit hike after LNG supply disruption, nuclear outages
ISLAMABAD: Electricity consumers face a Rs1.74-per-unit increase in their June bills after the country’s power sector regulator received a request for more than Rs16 billion in additional fuel-cost recoveries, driven by a US-Iran military confrontation that disrupted liquefied natural gas supplies and was aggravated by reduced output from a nuclear plant outside Karachi.
US and Iran trade fresh strikes as ceasefire talks founder
ISLAMABAD: American warplanes fired a Hellfire missile into the engine room of an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday, the sixth vessel disabled since Washington imposed a naval blockade on Iran in April, touching off a cascade of retaliatory strikes and counter-strikes that laid bare the fragility of a ceasefire that has never truly held.