KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan’s (SBP) foreign exchange reserves increased by $75 million to $9.102 billion during the week ending July 26, announced the central bank on Thursday. The SBP did not mention the source of this inflow. However, the market people know the central bank regularly buys dollars from the interbank market to build its reserves. “Before this increase, the SBP’s forex holdings recorded a decline of $397m to $9.027bn in the preceding week from $9.423bn. The State Bank said the outflow was for the debt servicing. The country’s total liquid foreign reserves stood at $14.39bn, and its…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
KARACHI: Pakistani shares extended losses to the third straight day on Thursday amid falling trading volume, thanks to mounting political noise and uncertainty about the economic outlook. Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation said stocks closed under pressure on institutional profit-taking in blue-chis banking and oil scrips. He said falling banking spreads amid easing monetary policy, surging unresolved power sector circular debt, and uncertainty over the rollover of $15 billion dues of Chinese independent power producers contributed to the bearish close. Topline Securities Ltd, in its report, said the market’s downtrend was driven by declines in sectors such as exploration and production…
AMMAN: Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on Thursday that Israel had turned “rogue” state with its “assassination” of the Hamas political leader and needed to be stopped. He said the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s lead negotiator in efforts for a truce and hostage release deal for Gaza, was a clear sign that Israel had decided to undermine the US-backed talks. “Yesterday, Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh. He was the one who was negotiating the exchange deal. So how on earth is a country that wants to conclude a deal killing the main interlocutor in those negotiations?” Safadi told a news…
WASHINGTON: The man accused of masterminding the Sept 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and two of his accomplices, held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, have agreed to plead guilty, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. The Pentagon did not elaborate on the plea deals. A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the plea deals almost certainly involved guilty pleas in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table. The official said the terms of the agreement had not been publicly disclosed, but acknowledged a plea for a life sentence was possible. Mohammed is the…
ISLAMABAD: As tensions in the Middle East reached a boiling point following a couple of high-profile assassinations attributed to Israel, the Foreign Office on Thursday condemned Israeli “adventurism” and demanded accountability for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh. “Israel’s latest actions in the region represent a dangerous expansion of hostilities that undermines efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. Israel must be held accountable for its transgressions and actions,” Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said at the weekly media briefing. The spokesperson called on the United States and other Western supporters of Israel to exert pressure…
ANKARA: Turkiye has blocked cooperation between Nato and Israel since October because of the crisis in Gaza and said the alliance should not engage with Israel as a partner until there is an end to the conflict, sources familiar with the process said. Israel carries the status of Nato partner and has fostered close relations with the military alliance and some of its members, notably its biggest ally the United States. Prior to Israel’s offensive in Gaza, Nato member Turkiye had been working to mend its long-strained ties with Israel. Since then, Ankara has been fiercely critical of Israel’s operation in Gaza, which…
DHAKA: Bangladesh police freed six student leaders on Thursday whose campaign against civil service job quotas sparked deadly nationwide unrest, as the government looked to calm tensions and forestall fresh demonstrations. Students Against Discrimination staged nationwide rallies last month that ended in a police crackdown and the deaths of at least 206 people, according to an AFP count of police and hospital data. The group’s leadership were among thousands picked up in the police dragnet that followed some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year tenure. “All six quota movement coordinators have been returned to their families this afternoon,” deputy commissioner Junaed Alam…
Turkiye has blocked access to the social media platform Instagram, the country’s infotech regulator said on Friday, without stating a reason or duration for the ban, which also left the platform’s mobile app inaccessible. The move follows comments on Wednesday by Turkish communications official Fahrettin Altun, criticising the platform for what he called its decision to block condolence posts on the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, a key official of the Palestinian group Hamas. “This is censorship, pure and simple,” Altun, the communications director of the Turkish presidency, said on X, adding that Instagram had not cited any policy violations for its action.…
MOSCOW: Jailed US Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and ex-US Marine Paul Whelan were among two dozen detainees from the United States, Russia and a number of their allies freed on Thursday in the biggest prisoner exchange since the Cold War. The White House said the US had negotiated the complex trade with Russia and other countries. It said eight prisoners held in the West were being sent back to Russia. Germany confirmed that they included Vadim Krasikov, convicted of murdering an exiled dissident in Berlin. Turkiye, which coordinated the exchange, said 10 prisoners, including two minors, had been moved to Russia, 13…
NEW DELHI: Emergency workers rescued nearly 1,000 people who were stranded in different parts of the Himalayas following torrential rainfall in northern India, which caused widespread damage and left at least 12 people dead, officials said on Thursday. The capital Delhi received intense rainfall late on Wednesday, totalling 147 millimetres in eastern parts of the city and its suburbs, the India Meteorological Department said. At least seven people died in Delhi, according to local media. Three people died and parts of two bridges washed away after a cloudburst — a massive amount of rain in a brief period — in…
