ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office again warned on Thursday that any deliberate effort by India to block the flow of water across their shared border would constitute an act of war under the United Nations Charter, issuing another public rebuke as New Delhi increased its aggressive posture over one of South Asia’s most volatile fault lines.
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Pakistan’s economy hits record size but misses growth target as Middle East conflict bites
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s economy expanded at its fastest pace in four years in fiscal 2026, hitting a record nominal size of $452 billion, yet fell short of the government’s own growth target as a confluence of floods, US tariff uncertainty and an escalating Middle East conflict weighed on output in the second half of the year.
US and Iran trade fire across the Gulf, testing a ceasefire neither side has fully honored
ISLAMABAD: The United States and Iran exchanged military strikes early on Wednesday, drawing three American-allied Arab states into the crossfire and threatening to collapse the most significant diplomatic opening between Washington and Tehran in decades, as President Trump alternated between warning that Iran would “pay the price” and insisting that a comprehensive peace deal remained tantalizingly close.
Islamabad locks in June 12 budget date after three delays, coalition wrangling
ISLAMABAD: The Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb will present the federal budget for fiscal year 2026–27 to the National Assembly on Friday, capping weeks of political horse-trading that saw the date shift three times and exposed deep fissures between the federal government and its provincial partners over the division of national revenues.
Supreme Court acquits two MQM members in 2012 Baldia factory fire, citing gaps in evidence and doubt over JIT report
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Wednesday threw out the convictions of two men sentenced to death for their alleged roles in the 2012 Baldia Town factory fire in Karachi — a blaze that killed more than 260 garment workers and stands as the deadliest industrial disaster in the country’s history — ruling that prosecutors had failed to establish their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Pakistan braces for storms and flooding even as Karachi swelters under historic heat
KARACHI: The thermometer read 37 degrees Celsius when afternoon arrived Wednesday in this coastal megacity of some 20 million people, but for anyone stepping outside, that number told only part of the story.
Pakistan extends austerity drive to June 30, eases corner store hours
ISLAMABAD: The government extended its austerity and fuel conservation program by nearly three weeks on Wednesday, pushing the expiry date to June 30 and granting small grocery and neighbourhood convenience stores an extra hour of trading time each day, in the latest adjustment to a belt-tightening drive that has reshaped the country’s commercial calendar since March.
Pakistan’s $4.5 billion Balochistan refinery bets on deep-conversion technology to cut import bill
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is moving to establish its first deep-conversion greenfield refinery, a $4.5 billion project in the coastal industrial district of Hub that its developers say could reshape the country’s energy import profile and anchor a broader petrochemical buildout along its southwestern coast.
Ten killed, including children, after van plunges into ravine and burns on Islamabad-Murree road
ISLAMABAD: They had set out from Multan in the middle of the night, 23 members of the same family, bound for the cool air and pine-forested hills of Murree. By Wednesday morning, 10 of them were dead — among them children — killed not only by the crash that sent their van tumbling into a roadside ravine but by the fire that followed, and by a sliding door that would not open.
Pakistan remittances hit record $4.3 billion in May, setting up historic annual total
KARACHI: Pakistan received a record $4.3 billion in workers’ remittances in May, the State Bank of Pakistan said Wednesday, driven by surging inflows from the Gulf states and the United Kingdom that have put the country on course for an unprecedented full-year total as it navigates a delicate IMF-backed stabilization program.