LAHORE: Acting desperately, the Punjab government, being accused of inaction and inefficiency, on Friday changed almost the entire top bureaucracy in Punjab, including 31 secretaries (home and additional chief secretary among them), eight out of nine commissioners and 31 deputy commissioners. Principal secretaries to the governor and the chief minister were also changed. Political and administrative circles have been accusing …

The National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) Karachi chapter has requested its chairman to start a fresh inquiry against Fazaia Housing Scheme (FHS) Karachi on the allegation of “cheating public at large”, a press release issued by the accountability watchdog said on Friday. It added that the probe against FHS and others has been requested to address the grievances of a “huge …

KARACHI: In line with the police department, the Sindh government has begun applying 10-day paternity leave to its male employees as allowed through the Gazette of Pakistan 2019, it emerged on Friday. Officials in the provincial government said the finance ministry had written to the authorities in the Sindh Secretariat and other related departments to allow for the 10-day paternity …

KARACHI: Secretary of the Sindh health department on Friday informed the Sindh High Court (SHC) that the appointment of over 940 medical officers would be made within a week in public hospitals of the province after the Sindh Public Service Commission (SPSC) said it had already sent recommendations to the health authorities. The secretary in the progress report maintained that …

MANSEHRA: The local police on Friday arrested three people, including a woman, in a gang rape case on the court’s orders. However, a suspect fled from the court premises. Additional sessions judge Asghar Ali Shah ordered the arrest of all suspects, including Mohammad Aurangzeb, Mohammad Sabir, Mehreen Bibi and Ashiq Hussain, after the rape victim complained that she was being …

ISLAMABAD: The Sup­r­eme Court has held that pre-arrest bail, being a judicial power and rooted in equity, is an extraordinary remedy and, therefore, should be exercised cautiously only to protect innocent people from the horrors of abuse of process of law. Authored by Justice Qazi Mohammad Amin Ahmed, a three-page judgement on a set of appeals against a Nov 5 …

ISLAMABAD: The Parliamentary Committee on Appointment of Judges on Friday amended its rules to invite candidates for judicial posts in the provincial and Islamabad high courts. Earlier, the parliamentary committee, in the wake of a judicial order during the period of former chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, had virtually become a rubber stamp. The apex court while examining the scope …

An antiterrorism court (ATC) in Lahore on Saturday announced that it would indict on December 7 Hafiz Saeed, the chief of the proscribed Jamaatud Dawa (JuD), and other JuD leaders who were booked in July for offences pertaining to terror financing. Saeed, along with deputy emir Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki, Hafiz Abdul Salam bin Mohammad, Professor Zafar Iqbal, Mohammad Ashraf, Mohammad Yahya …

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday announced the government’s decision to take concrete measures to curb air pollution in the country. Addressing a press conference in Lahore, he expressed regret that over the past 10 years, a 70 per cent decline had been witnessed in the number of trees in Lahore. “A 70 per cent drop in tree cover has …

After months of sleeping in an abandoned building, Nicole Ogilvie and her girlfriend, Tammarra Culpepper, were kicked out with only a downtown bridge for shelter. For a short time, they had a mattress of their own. It kept them off the increasingly cold and wet pavement near the Deep Ellum neighborhood where they rested their heads each night. But just …