WASHINGTON: Outlining US foreign policy goals for 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has promised to look ‘intensely’ at options to put more liquidity into the Afghan economy. At a year-ender news conference on Thursday afternoon, the US foreign policy chief identified “Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine, Iran’s nuclear program, and China’s efforts to challenge the rules-based international order” as some of the major challenges of 2022. Responding to a question about Afghanistan, he pointed out that the US has participated in the release of about $280 million recently in the Afghan Trust Fund. “And we are looking intensely at ways…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
ISLAMABAD: The rise in militant attacks in Pakistan coincided with the Afghan Taliban’s military offensive that started in May 2021 and reached the highest point in August 2021 with the takeover of Kabul, said a study conducted by the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Study (PICSS). The highest number of attacks in a single month in 2021 was recorded in August when 45 attacks were carried out by militants, the institute said in its report. Despite a one-month ceasefire from November 10 to December 10, the overall number of militant attacks could not drop. The average number of militant…
RAWALPINDI: A police official was apprehended on Friday after he reportedly fired two rounds on a car at a police checkpoint in the New Town area, leaving one of the occupants critically injured who has been struggling for his life in the Holy Family Hospital. The injured Haider Ali, 26, was shifted to hospital with bullet injuries by Rescue 1122 staff instead of the police, who came close to the car, but left him bleeding in his car. Aitzazul Hassan, elder brother of the injured, told Dawn that his brother, who had been in Saudi Arabia in connection with job,…
LAHORE: Federal Information and Broadcasting Minister Fawad Chaudhry has claimed that Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif is left with only two options: go to London or jail. Speaking to the media on Friday, the minister called upon the courts to hear cases against Shehbaz Sharif on a day-to-day basis. He also asked the media to personally check and analyse money laundering evidence against Shehbaz. Mr Chaudhry said the “disappointed” opposition did not even attend the parliament session, claiming that the entire leadership was in touch with the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). He also took former…
QUETTA: The death toll in Thursday night’s bomb blast rose to six as two injured succumbed to injuries on Friday. “Another two workers [of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Ideological] lost their lives. They had received multiple injuries in the explosion,” said Maulana Abdul Sattar Chishti, provincial information secretary of the party. The deceased were identified as Sanaullah and Mohammed Ramzan. Maulana Chishti said that condition of some other injured persons was critical. The explosion took place on Thursday night at the gate of Science College in Quetta when workers and leaders of the JUI-I were returning from the college auditorium at the end…
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has been asked to determine whether a missing person should be presumed dead after seven years of his disappearance if there is no evidence to prove that the individual is alive. The controversy emerged after an appeal relating to an inheritance dispute was filed before the apex court. The focus of the dispute is an individual who has been missing since 1973. The petition was moved this week by Raja Muhammad Anwar, a resident of Bhara Kaho, Islamabad, through his counsel Barrister Munawar Iqbal Duggal and Raja Mohammad Farooq to challenge a March 27, 2017, judgement…
Eighteen people were injured and one killed from stray bullets in incidents of aerial firing across Karachi on Friday’s New Year’s eve, according to statements issued from various police stations. The injured were transferred to hospitals for medical treatment and investigations were underway, the police officials said. An 11-year-old boy, Ali Raza, succumbed to his injuries while being treated at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, according to a statement from the Ajmer Nagri police station. He was injured by a stray bullet in North Karachi’s Sector 5-B/3. Meanwhile, a statement from the Edhi Foundation put the number of injured at 15.…
Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry on Saturday marked the beginning of the new year by extending a proverbial hand of friendship to the opposition as he acknowledged the need to “reduce bitterness” in the country’s politics. Chaudhry, one of the more outspoken federal ministers, is often found trading barbs with members of the opposition parties. The political climate in the country has once become rough around the government’s tabling of the controversial ‘mini-budget’ and it’s expected to get worse with the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) — a multi-party opposition alliance — set to hold an “anti-inflation march” in Islamabad in March. The information minister, in…
ISLAMABAD: The Prime Minister’s Inspection Commission (PMIC) has completed about 80 per cent of fact-finding inquiry into the much-hyped Pandora Papers revelations regarding offshore companies, money laundering and tax evasion by bigwigs, and (in response to its queries) received replies from almost all public office-holders, bureaucrats and generals whose names have appeared in the papers. During the inquiry, it came to the PMIC’s notice that names of 700 Pakistanis, as claimed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalist (ICIJ), have appeared in Pandora Papers, but the PMIC has so far received 240 names from the consortium, and those individuals are being probed.…
PPP Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif blasted Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday for the overnight price increase in petroleum products. The government increased the prices of petrol and high speed diesel (HSD) by Rs4 per litre, according to a statement issued by the Finance Division late on Friday. The Rs4 increase in the price of petrol is part of a commitment made by the government under an agreement with the International Monetary Fund for a net fiscal adjustment of almost Rs550 billion during the remaining part of the current fiscal year. Following this development, the price of petrol was increased…
