Pakistan cricket was rocked yesterday when it saw its head coach Misbahul Haq and bowling coach Waqar Younis relinquish their positions, with the T20 World Cup a little over a month away. The feeble fable told for the cameras was that Misbah walked away as he wasn’t in the ‘right frame of mind’ and did not want to be a part …

LAHORE: With Pakistan suffering an “unprecedented dry” year, both the dams have started depleting fast before getting filled properly, as national inflows drop exceptionally and water planners now fear this dry cycle will continue and extraordinarily impact the Rabi crops. Although the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) was able to fill Tarbela Lake on Sept 1 after some jugglery with …

ISLAMABAD: The government has asked all six oil refining facilities in the country to provide full details of Deemed Duty (DD) collected on petroleum products since its inception two decades ago along with third party audits of its utilisation. In a letter, the Petroleum Division has asked managing directors of six major refineries — Pak Arab Refinery Ltd, National Refinery …

ISLAMABAD: As the telecom industry’s market size has grown to $16.9 billion after attracting $1.2bn in foreign direct investments in the last three years, the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom is aiming to roll out 5G in 2023. The ministry has said that the target has also been welcomed by foreign investors too. In a recent presentation on the …

ISLAMABAD: Amid surging trade deficit, Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin on Monday asked the commerce ministry to conduct sensitivity analysis and build scenarios for effective forecasting both in imports as well export for each month of the year. The first two months (July and August) of FY22 saw a ballooning trade deficit of 119.94 per cent to $7.491 billion against $3.406bn …

KARACHI: Fauji Foods will raise Rs7.8 billion by issuing rights shares at the price of Rs10 apiece, a stock filing said on Monday. The 10th largest listed food company in terms of total sales is going to increase its paid-up capital by issuing 780.8 million shares to its stockholders in the proportion of 97.2 rights shares for every 100 ordinary …

THE HAGUE: The traumatised families of 298 people killed in the shooting down of flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014 demanded justice from Russia on Monday as they testified in the Dutch trial of four suspects. People who lost children, parents and siblings in the crash of the Malaysia Airlines plane said they could not truly say goodbye to their …

WASHINGTON: Divers at the site of an ongoing oil spill that appeared in the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Ida have identified the apparent source as one-foot diameter pipeline displaced from a trench on the ocean floor and broken open. Talos Energy, the Houston-based company currently paying for the cleanup, said in a statement issued on Sunday evening that the …

BERLIN: Germany has protested to Russia over attempts to steal data from lawmakers in what it suspects may have been preparation to spread disinformation before the upcoming German election, the Foreign Ministry in Berlin said on Monday. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Andrea Sasse said that a hacker outfit called Ghostwriter has been combining conventional cyberattacks with disinformation and influence operations, and …

TASHKENT: Uzbekistan will allow girls to wear headscarves in schools in a bid to ensure devout Muslim families send their daughters to school, the Central Asian country’s education ministry said. Islam is the dominant religion in Uzbekistan, but the authoritarian government is staunchly secular and has retained tight control over the faith in the three decades of independence from the …