ST PETERSBURG: President Vladimir Putin cautioned the West on Wednesday that Russia could use all available means, including nuclear weapons, to defend itself if its sovereignty or territorial integrity were threatened. Putin said that the West had repeatedly accused Russia of nuclear sabre-rattling, but said this was wrong, and pointed out that it was the United States which had used nuclear weapons against Japan in World War Two. Putin was speaking to senior editors of foreign news agencies on the sidelines of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum. He said that Russia’s nuclear doctrine permits nuclear weapons to be used in…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan is poised to secure a record eighth term as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in Thursday’s election. All UN member nations are currently engaged in the process of filling five non-permanent seats on the 15-member Security Council. Among the contenders are Denmark, Greece, Pakistan, Panama, and Somalia, with each regional group presenting a single candidate in this uncontested race, known as a “clean slate”. Pakistan, representing the Asia-Pacific group alongside India, stands as a strong contender for one of the available seats. The elections are exclusive to the 10 non-permanent positions, as the UNSC’s…
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was preparing on Thursday to be sworn in for a third term after an unexpectedly close election that forced his party into a coalition government. Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had ruled for the past decade with an outright majority, had been expecting another landslide win. But results of the six-week election released on Tuesday ran counter to exit polls, seeing the BJP lose its majority and sending it into quick-fire talks to lock in a 15-member coalition that would allow it to govern. That grouping — the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition — announced late on…
UFO sightings should not be dismissed out of hand because they could in fact be surveillance drones or weapons, say Japanese lawmakers who launched a group on Thursday to probe the matter. The non-partisan group, which counts former defence ministers among its 80-plus members, will urge Japan to ramp up its abilities to detect and analyse unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), more commonly known as UFOs. Although the phenomenon is often associated with little green men in the popular imagination, it has become a hot political topic in the United States. Washington said last year it was examining 510 UFO reports — more than triple…
ISLAMABAD: Emphasising the need for business-to-business cooperation between Pakistan and China, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday assured Chinese investors and their investment-oriented projects of all-out facilitation and foolproof security in Pakistan. Addressing the Pakistan-China Business Forum in Shenzhen on the second day of his China visit, the PM highlighted bilateral trade and investment potential, especially in key sectors including transfer of Chinese technology, industry and partnership in IT, agriculture, mining, steel, textiles and renewable energy. He repeatedly lauded the Chinese model of development and economic transformation and vowed to replicate the same in Pakistan. “I will go back to…
ISLAMABAD: Justice Athar Minallah — the sole dissenting voice on a five-member bench that had declined a request to live-stream proceedings in the NAB amendments case — observed on Wednesday that the decision amounted to a violation of principles laid down in a case that was brought before it by the incumbent chief justice himself. “There is no substantive reason, nor [do] exceptional circumstances exist for denying the public their right to have access to the court proceedings through livestreaming,” Justice Minallah observed in a 13-page note, issued on Wednesday. Wednesday’s note came in response to a May 30 Supreme Court order where four…
ISLAMABAD: A gang of robbers looted Rs1.8 million from an expatriate in capital, police said on Wednesday. The expatriate had returned from Saudi Arabia to participate in his sister’s marriage, they added. Police have registered a case against the robbers at Lohi Bher police station under section 392 of PPC in response to the complaint lodged by the expatriate, they added. The incident took place after Sadam Hussain, a native of Bagh, Azad Kashmir, arrived in Islamabad from Saudi Arabia and came to his cousin’s residence in Soan Garden. Later, he along with his cousin went to Sadar Rawalpindi to…
ISLAMABAD: Poliovirus has reached two new districts, Dukki and Killa Saifullah, taking the tally for current year to 44 districts. An embarrassing situation continues for the country as only a day ago it reported that the virus had been found in samples taken from Bahawalpur and Dera Ismail Khan districts. Besides, four environmental samples for polio have been reported due to which the number of samples, for the current year, has climbed to 172 as compared to 126 samples from 28 districts in 2023. The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health confirmed the detection of Type-1…
ISLAMABAD: The Sheerani group of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Pakistan on Wednesday formally announced its decision to join a grand opposition alliance, led by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). Earlier, a delegation of the JUI-Sheerani, led by Maulana Shuja-ul-Mulk, called on Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Omar Ayub Khan and former speaker Asad Qaiser, and formally announced their intention to join the PTI-led alliance, known as the Tehreek-i-Tahaffuz-i-Ayeen-i-Pakistan (TTAP), or movement for the protection of the constitution. “We always hold Maulana Sheerani’s political stance in high regard,” said Omar Ayub. “We must work together for restoration and protection of Constitution in the…
KARACHI: Telling his party members and legislators to stay away from the “politics of hatred in Islamabad”, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on Wednesday asked them to focus on improving their performance and serving the people, for which they had been elected, and warned them that from now on he would personally review their performance after every six months. He said he had shared his ‘ambitious’ five-year plan with the Sindh government and its implementation was his top priority. The PPP chairman sounded least bothered about the national politics and asked his ministers and legislators to avoid engaging into these matters.…
