LONDON: In a significant development, the teenager charged with the Southport murders has been identified as Axel Rudakubana following an exceptional court ruling. The revelation comes against a backdrop of increasing social unrest, reportedly fueled by a network of anonymous TikTok accounts aimed at instigating violence across the UK. Axel Rudakubana, who is on the brink of turning 18, has been charged in connection with the brutal stabbings that left three young girls dead in Southport. His identity was disclosed after Judge Andrew Menary KC rejected a request to keep it concealed. In a swift 20-minute hearing, Judge Menary stated that, despite the…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
RAWALPINDI / TOBA TEK SINGH /SAHIWAL: Thirty-one activists of the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), including the administrator of a madressah and a district emir of the party, were booked under sections of Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) and Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) in three cities of Punjab for inciting violence and planning protests against Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa. In Rawalpindi, a case was registered by the Airport Police Station against 28 people on the report of the Sub-Inspector Ijaz Hussain Ghuman. In the FIR, the officer said he was on night patrol on the High Court Road when he received information that some people…
ISLAMABAD: A three-judge committee set up under the Supreme Court (Practice and Procedure) Act, 2023, on Thursday decided to constitute a Shariat Appellate Bench to take up appeals instituted to challenge different decisions of the Federal Shariat Court (FSC). Headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa and consisting of Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Munib Akhtar, the committee decided the five-judge Shariat Appellate Bench will be headed by the CJP himself. Justice Naeem Akhtar Afghan and Justice Shahid Bilal Hassan will be members of the appellate bench. Dr Muhammad Khalid Masood and Dr Qibla Ayaz…
ISLAMABAD: A court in Islamabad on Thursday granted post-arrest bail to PTI Secretary Information Raoof Hassan and eight others in a case registered against them under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca). Duty Magistrate Mohammad Abbas Shah accepted the bail petitions of the PTI activists against Rs50,000 surety bonds each. During the course of the hearing, Mohammad Ali Bukhari, counsel for the petitioners, argued that the case was based on a statement of Ahmed Waqas Janjua, the party’s international media coordinator. He said the statement of an under-custody suspect had no legal value. According to him, three women nominated in the…
QUETTA: The sowing of paddy on over 200,000 acres has been delayed in Nasirabad and Jhal Magsi districts for the last two months as the water share of Balochistan in Khirthar canal has not been released from Sukkur Barrage by the Sindh government. Officials of the Balochistan Irrigation Department told Dawn that due of shortage of water in the canal, vast area of Nasirabad is facing serious shortage of drinking water. They said that irrigation department officials of the Sindh government have been informed of the situation, but they are not releasing Balochistan’s share of water in the Khirthar canal. Provincial President of Zamindar Association Haji…
ISLAMABAD: The Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), a regional ICT policy group, has said the government’s plans for data localisation will do more harm than good. The coalition presented its report ‘Data Localisation in Pakistan’ at a round table on data protection & digital economy held at the Ministry of IT and Telecommunication on Thursday. The ministry’s statement issued after the meeting, attended by representatives of AIC, Google and Meta, made no mention of the report or its contents but said that a discussion was held on data localisation with the participants giving recommendations for data hosting and data sensitivity. Minister…
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is abolishing the current policy of allowing truck drivers to cross the Pak-Afghan border on the basis of temporary documents, making passport mandatory for entry to Pakistan. This was disclosed by Foreign Secretary Syrus Sajjad Qazi during a meeting of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs held here with Hina Rabbani Khar in the chair. He said many terrorist organisations, including the militant ISIS group, East Turkestan Movement and the banned TTP, continue to operate from Afghanistan. He said the presence of the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Afghanistan is a constant threat to Pakistan and added that…
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is working on a plan to regulate the use of VPNs in Pakistan by whitelisting some proxy networks and blocking others, the authority’s head told a parliamentary committee on Thursday. While attending a meeting of the Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat, PTA Chairman retired Maj General Hafeezur Rehman said after the policy is implemented, only whitelisted VPNs would function in Pakistan and the others will be blocked. The use of VPNs by local internet users witnessed a significant increase in 2024. Most have been using them to access X, formerly Twitter, which has been…
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday said that he had written a letter to the Chinese government requesting debt reprofiling for Pakistan in an apparent bid to secure the International Monetary Fund’s approval for a $7 billion economic bailout by next month. Earlier this week, a Dawn report confirmed that Pakistan had sought the reprofiling of more than $27 billion in debt and liabilities with friendly nations — China, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — to secure a 37-month International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout package and ease energy sector foreign exchange outflows and consumer tariffs. This is on top of Islamabad’s request to Beijing…
KARACHI: There is little hope that high electricity prices will come down in the country as the government has made electricity and petroleum products “sources of revenue generation” while the independent power producers (IPPs) are enjoying “freehand without any check and balance” over their performance, outputs and agreements signed with the government. This was shared by experts at a media briefing — Pakistan Energy Crisis and IPPs: How Overbilling Impacts Quality of Life and Pathways to Solution — held at the Applied Economics Research Centre (AERC), University of Karachi, here on Thursday. The experts also said that the issue of…
