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A PALESTINIAN woman stands amid the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli strike on the Shujaiyah neighbourhood of Gaza City, on Saturday.—AFP CAIRO: The Israeli military said it killed a Palestinian it accused of involvement in the October 7 attack on Israel in a vehicle strike in Gaza, while medics said at least 32 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes across the enclave overnight and into Saturday. The escalation comes as leaders of Hamas were expected to arrive in Cairo on Saturday for ceasefire talks with Egyptian officials, days after Israel and Hezbollah agreed to ceasefire in Lebanon , two officials of the group told Reuters . Later on Saturday, medics said nine people were killed when an Israeli air strike targeted a vehicle near a gathering of Palestinians receiving aid in the southern area of Khan Younis south of the enclave. Residents and a Hamas source said the vehicle targeted near a crowd receiving flour was used by security personnel tasked with ov...

The Lahore Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) has denied PTI founder and ex-prime minister Imran Khan post-arrest bail in a case related to the May 9 riots, observing he was “guilty”, according to a written order issued on Saturday. Following the arrest of the ex-premier on May 9, 2023, from the Islamabad High Court’s premises, riots erupted across the country and went on for at least 24 hours. The state subsequently launched a crackdown against him and his party, filing several other cases against Imran since the events of May 9, in many of which he has been acquitted. The ATC on Wednesday had dismissed Imran’s petitions seeking post-arrest bail in eight May 9 cases, including an attack on the corps commander’s residence. ATC-I Judge Manzer Ali Gill had reserved a verdict after hearing the final arguments of the lawyers for the petitioner and the prosecution, which he announced later in the evening. The written court order on the case, registered at the Mughalpura Police Station about a...

ISLAMABAD: The government deci­ded on Friday to close several slow-moving development projects and transfer their funds to initiatives ready for completion by June 2025. The decision was made during a review meeting of the Public Sector Development Programme ( PSDP ), chaired by Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, who is also the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. The meeting also agreed to formulate three-year financing plans for priority projects. “The projects that have been going on and on for years and are still far from completion should be closed. They are sick projects and have become a planning liability,” the minister was quoted as directing the relevant ministries. He added that the funds allocated for white elephants should be diverted in the remaining two quarters of the year to projects that were nearing completion. “Top financing priority in the next seven months (December 2024 to June 2025) should be projects which could be completed by June 2025” to ensure their...

LAHORE: While incarcerated leaders of the PTI have sought to suspend the ongoing protest movement, a message shared on “Islamabad massacre” from party founder Imran Khan’s X handle called Nov 26 a black day in the history of Pakistan. The protest movement was abruptly suspended after the state machinery pushed the PTI protesters away from Islamabad’s D-Chowk, but Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Min­ister Ali Amin Gandapur announced , “Our sit-in at D-Chowk will continue until our leader Imran Khan will call it off.” Incarcerated leaders Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Senator Ejaz Chaudhry, Dr Yasmin Rashid, Mian Mahmoodur Rasheed, Omar Sarfraz Cheema and others in Kot Lakhpat jail, through an open letter delivered to media persons on Friday, called for suspending the protest movement and urged the party leadership to announce a countrywide mourning. They said condolence meetings should be organised across the country for recitation of Holy Quran, while party leaders visit the bereaved families ...

LONDON: Britain on Thursday set out stronger sanctions against employers who exploit foreign workers, following research showing abuses, particularly in the social care sector. Businesses that repeatedly flout visa rules or commit serious employment breaches, such as not paying the minimum wage, will be barred from recruiting foreign workers for two years, up from the current 12 months, the government said. Seema Malhotra, the minister for migration and citizenship, said worker exploitation was unacceptable. “Shame­fully, these practices have been seen particularly in our care sector, where workers coming to the UK to support our health and social care service have all too often found themselves plunged into unjustifiable insecurity and debt. This can, and must, end.” Britain opened up a new visa route for social care jobs in 2021 to fill thousands of vacancies, but a range of factors, including low pay and poor working conditions, have made migrant workers in the sector more v...

About seven in 10 people in the country are facing health issues because of smog with the most common symptoms being cough, flu and breathing difficulties, according to a report by international insights firm Ipsos. The recent smog situation was declared a “ calamity ” in Punjab last month. According to the international Air Quality Index Scale, an index value of 300 or higher results is “hazardous” to health and Pakistan has regularly tipped over 1,000 on the scale. Around two million people visited medical facilities across Punjab with breathing problems and other respiratory diseases in a month as record-breaking smog choked the province. The Ipsos survey, titled “Smog in Pakistan: Awareness, Perceptions and Practices” and dated November 26, was conducted from Nov 18 to 22 using computer-assisted telephone interviews with a sample of 1,000 people from all four provinces and Islamabad. Screenshot taken from IPSOS survey report. In its first section on people’s awareness and...

NEW DELHI: A cybersecurity firm co-founded by an Indian entrepreneur has become the bane of investigative journalism in several countries, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has said. It said whether based in the US, Switzerland, France or India, any media outlet investigating the “ethical hacking” of Appin, a company co-founded by Indian investor Rajat Khare, can expect letters demanding they retract their publication at best and legal prosecution at worst. “This type of pushback on journalism is not uncommon, yet the scale, impact and systematic nature of these letters and lawsuits are astonishing,” RSF said in a press release. The RSF investigation discovered that at least 15 media outlets worldwide received these notices, and five have been subjected to legal proceedings. The RSF said it strongly condemns these gag lawsuits. “Rajat Khare is ready to move mountains to avoid association with Appin, the cybersecurity training centre he co-founded in 2003. And for good reason: the New...

BEIJING: Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun has been placed under investigation for corruption, a report said on Wednesday, which would make him the latest official to fall in a sweeping crackdown on graft in the country’s military. Citing current and former US officials familiar with the situation, British newspaper the Financial Times said the investigation into Dong was part of that broader probe into military corruption. If confirmed, Dong would be the third Chinese defence minister in a row to fall under investigation for corruption. Asked about the report at a regular briefing on Wednesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said it was just “chasing shadows” and did not offer further information. A former navy commander, he was appointed defence minister in December following the surprise removal of predecessor Li Shangfu just seven months into the job. Li was later expelled from the ruling Communist Party for offences including suspected bribery, state media ...

A PANICKING administration is desperately trying to prevent raging crowds from storming the capital, breaking through all the barriers on their way. For the past several days, Islamabad has been in a virtual state of lockdown with containers blocking the main arteries. Most of Punjab’s motorways and highways were closed to stop the marchers. Yet all those measures seemed to have failed. The rampaging multitudes broke through the siege and entered the city. The army has been called in after a night of violence that left security personnel dead and wounded. According to reports, the troops have been given shoot-on-sight orders, as the situation is slipping from the hands of the civil administration. Troop deployment is generally seen as the last resort to prevent a looming collapse. It may not be the first time In the country that the army has been called in to act in aid of the civilian administration but never before has it faced such a challenging situation in the capital. The decis...

Supreme Court’s Justice Mansoor Ali Shah on Tuesday said that the essence of judicial independence was found in “resisting authoritarian overreach” at the time of its occurrence. The judge’s observation was made in his detailed additional note on the court’s March 6 ruling on the murder trial of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The Supreme Court had observed that the trial under the 1979 judgment that sent the PPP founder to the gallows did not meet the requirements of a “fair trial and due process”. Headed by then-chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa, a nine-judge bench announced its much-anticipated opinion on the long-pending presidential reference to answer whe­ther the Supreme Court could revisit its verdict, which the PPP and jurists regard as historical wrong. In Tuesday’s additional note, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com , Justice Shah said: “The independence of the judiciary is the cornerstone of justice, and its true test lies in a judge’s a...

COVID-19 may be a thing of the past for the rest of the world but in Pakistan, the lockdowns are here to stay. Lockdowns to control the smog and lockdowns to control demonstrations — the state has tried and tested all. One could perhaps argue that the internet is also in lockdown but for the fact that its slow speed and blocked apps are a constant state of affairs, while the notion of a lockdown is temporary, with an end in sight. The lockdown is here because the PTI is on its way again from KP to Islamabad with a crowd. Its size varies on social media, depending on who is commenting, while mainstream media too is in lockdown. On the latter, while discussions about the protest are aplenty, there is little to no reporting. And there are no visuals. In a way, it’s like the smog in summer — everyone knows it’s still there but it doesn’t need to be addressed because it’s less visible. No one can say whether the protest will end with Ali Amin Gandapur and Arif Alvi dancing to the tune of ...

A judicial magistrate in Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s (AJK) Sudhnoti district on Monday remanded two suspects into police custody for a week following their arrest in a case of allegedly blackmailing and extorting money from a married woman. A first information report (FIR) was filed at Baloch Police Station on Saturday under Sections 292 (obscene material), 322 (manslaughter), 384 (extortion), and 489-Y (related to harm to privacy of and reputation) of the Azad Penal Code as well as section 10(3) of the Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance, 1979. Complainant Arshad Mahmood, a resident of Kehala village currently working in Saudi Arabia, reported that he was informed by his brother-in-law on November 15 about his wife’s sudden hospitalisation due to a critical health issue. He said that hours later, he received another call from his brother-in-law about her death and returned home the following day for her burial. He said that while investigating the circumstances surroundi...

BARRICADING the capital , using cargo containers to block roads , closing highways, breaking up protest rallies, banning public gatherings, arresting opposition supporters, raiding homes of opposition leaders, policing the media, orchestrating internet outages, suspending mobile network services and instituting cases against political opponents. That being the state of play today, what does it all indicate? It speaks of a siege mentality on the part of the government and establishment — a state in which they see themselves in constant danger and fearful all the time of being overwhelmed by opponents. This urges them to take strong-arm measures, not occasionally but incessantly. Strong-arm actions do not signify a strong government. Instead, they signal weakness, a lack of self-confidence and, above all, a failure to address a political challenge by political means. It lays bare a government unsure of itself that has no political solution to a political problem. This, some would say, i...

ISLAMABAD: The government’s efforts to curb the spread of poliovirus appear to be failing as three more cases have been reported from Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The new cases were reported days after a Global Polio Eradication Initiative delegation met Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other officials to discuss “strategies to combat the poliovirus outbreak and to address emerging challenges”. Pakistan has now reported 55 cases of poliovirus in 2024. The widespread detection of cases and indication of the virus’ presence in several cities depict the immunity gap among children. The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the three wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases. A lab official told Dawn that new cases were reported from Dera Ismail Khan, Zhob and Jaffarabad. The victims were female children aged 8 and 20 months and a five-month-old male child. All three districts have already reported a case of poliovirus...

COMMERCIAL banks have been busy lending large amounts of money at below-the-market rates these last few weeks. They aren’t doing so because they suddenly find themselves flushed with excess liquidity. Nor has the economy turned a page, spurring demand for credit for investments in productivity. There is a method to this madness. The banks are on a lending spree to increase their advance-to-deposit ratio (ADR) — a measure of the proportion of a bank’s total deposits that are given as loans or advances — above 50 per cent to avoid a punitive FBR tax of up to 16pc on the lenders with an ADR under 50pc. The banks are lending to both large public and private entities at discounted rates, which are then investing this money in government debt, earning a spread of 2-4pc. This allows the lenders to avoid the ADR tax but only after forgoing a significant portion of their revenues to the borrowers. The entire lending is for the short term, and the money will return to banks after Dec 31, the t...

Three terrorists were killed in two separate engagements with security forces in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Khyber and South Waziristan districts, the military’s media wing said on Saturday. A statement from the Inter Services Public Relations issued today said that an intelligence-based operation was conducted in Khyber’s general area of Bara. “During the conduct of operation, own troops effectively engaged” the location of the terrorists and eliminated two, Haqyar Afridi alias Khyberay and Gulla Jan. The ISPR said that in another incident, the movement of a terrorist group that was trying to infiltrate through the Pakistan-Afghanistan border was detected by security forces in South Waziristan. “Own troops effectively engaged and thwarted their attempt to infiltrate,” the ISPR said, adding that one terrorist was killed while three were injured. It said the two engagements took place on Thursday and Friday. “Pakistan has consistently been asking Interim Afghan Government to ensur...

• Developing countries’ demand for $1.3 trillion reduced to paltry sum of $250 billion; fresh text expected today • Pakistan pitches regional diplomacy for glaciers’ sake A NEW draft of the climate finance goals failed to elicit an agreement between the developing and developed world, as Pakistan joined other countries to trash the suggestion to offer an annual $250 billion by 2035. “The demand of $1.3 trillion has been reduced to $250 billion only, which is unacceptable,” Arif Goheer told Dawn in response to a question about the new collective quantified goal. He, however, said the adaptation of the ‘Baku Adaptation Roadmap (BAR)’ was welcomed by Islamabad. Before the release of the draft agreement in which the developed world finally agreed to put forth the quantum of finance, a press conference by the South Asia civil society criticised the attitude of the Global North, saying no deal was better than a bad deal. View this post on Instagram ...