Foreign Office (FO) Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch on Monday confirmed that 16 Pakistani survivors seemed to be in “good physical condition” after a wooden sailing boat carrying migrants crashed against rocks on the southern Italian coast over the weekend. The vessel had set sail from Turkiye several days ago with migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and several other countries, and crashed in …

KARACHI: DHL, a global logistics company, announced on Monday to suspend some of its operations partially in Pakistan due to restrictions on outbound remittances by the government. DHL Pakistan has informed its customers that it is suspending ‘Import Express Product’ and restricting outbound shipments to a maximum weight of 70kg per shipment for all customers billed in Pakistan from March …

ISLAMABAD: Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan on Monday told the parliament that the government would recover Rs9.90 to Rs14.24 per unit outstanding fuel costs from consumers of less than 300 units in an 8-month staggered schedule. Mr Dastgir said an additional surcharge of Rs3.82 per unit would also be imposed on those using above 300 units to fund power sector …

KYIV: China said on Monday it sought dialogue and a peaceful solution for Ukraine despite US warnings that Beijing might be considering weapons supplies for its ally Russia’s invasion. Air-raid sirens blared in the capital Kyiv and other cities overnight and a Russian missile killed one person in the western town of Khmelnitskyi, Mayor Oleksandr Symshyshyn said on the Telegram …

DAMASCUS: Landmines planted by jihadists killed 10 civilians in central Syria on Monday, state media reported, in the latest in a wave of deadly incidents involving truffle hunters. “Nine citizens were killed and two others injured” when a landmine left by the militant Islamic State group blew up, the official SANA news agency said. It said the victims had been …

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Tuesday said it has called a meeting of its Monetary Policy Committee on March 2 — two weeks earlier than scheduled — when it is expected to raise the main policy rate. “The forthcoming meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee has been preponed and now it will be held on Thursday, March 02, 2023,” the …

UNITED NATIONS: More than 70 countries were in debt stress amid a global cost of living crisis, the president of the UN General Assembly Csaba Krösi warned on Monday, days after a UN agency called for a 30 per cent debt-cut for stressed countries. Addressing the 52nd session of the Human Rights Council, Mr Krösi noted that the countries facing …

WASHINGTON: Billionaire Elon Musk has called US media “racist” after multiple American newspapers announced they would stop publishing a popular comic strip whose creator called Black people a hate group. Musk, who owns electric car company Tesla and social network Twitter, tweeted on Sunday in response to an article about a rant by Scott Adams, creator of the long-running “Dilbert” …

NEW DELHI: Members of a leading political party held protests across India on Monday, after one of their main leaders, a top minister in Delhi’s city government, was arrested by a federal agency over allegations of corruption. Several hundred party workers gathered amid a heavy police presence in Delhi around the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) headquarters, with more than a …

COLOMBO: The World Bank has offered a lifeline to three private banks in bankrupt Sri Lanka on Monday, lending them $400 million to finance imports of essential food and medicines with an IMF bailout stalled. The World Bank’s private sector funding arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is lending the trio the funds with Sri Lanka’s economic crisis still rumbling …