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The Indus River System Authority (Irsa) on Wednesday said that the country is facing a 30 per cent water shortage at the start of the sowing season for cash crops such as rice and cotton. Irsa said the gap is based on lower than normal winter snowfall in the northern areas, affecting catchment areas of the Indus and Jhelum Rivers …

A day after all eight Islamabad High Court (IHC) judges received letters laced with a suspicious toxic chemical, police said four Lahore High Court (LHC) judges had also received letters but refrained from commenting on the nature of the missives. On Tuesday, letters were delivered to the IHC judges in white envelopes sealed with cello-tape. The names of the judges and the …

ISLAMABAD: As development spending continued to falter in the first eight months of the current fiscal year, successive governments kept doling out funds for the discretionary schemes of parliamentarians, according to official data. In the past eight months, parliamentarians consumed Rs38 billion out of the allocated Rs90bn in the budget for their schemes, as per the latest data on development …

ISLAMABAD: The opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has rejected the seven-member larger bench headed by the chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) to probe the six judges’ letter documenting the intelligence agencies’ interference in judicial affairs, demanding the matter be heard by the full court instead of “like-minded judges” and that the proceedings should be televised. Speaking at a press conference along with former …

ISLAMABAD: The Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) — the new home for PTI lawmakers-elect — on Monday filed a petition in the Supreme Court, challenging the Peshawar High Court (PHC) order that deprived the party of seats reserved for women and minorities. Meanwhile, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly speaker has also approached the PHC against its division bench’s directive for him to …

GILGIT: Khunjerab Pass, which remained shut for four months starting Nov 30, was reopened for travel and trade between Pakistan and China on Monday. The border-crossing is now expected to keep functioning throughout the year. On Oct 20, then-caretaker prime minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar held a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing where the two sides agreed to make the …

LAHORE: PML-N supreme leader Nawaz Sharif continues to chair administrative meetings alongside his daughter, Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz, despite criticism. On Monday, Mr Sharif co-chaired a meeting to review issues faced by the province’s agriculture sector. Since the Feb 8 general elections, the PML-N sup­reme leader has generally kept a low profile. How­ever, in the few public app­e­arances since, he …

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly on Monday witnessed a noisy protest by the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) members demanding a general debate on the issue of the letter written by six judges of Islamabad High Court (IHC) regarding their alleged surveillance by the country’s intelligence agencies and interference in the judicial matters as the treasury benches and speaker termed it a sub judice …

Elections on 19 vacant Senate seats are currently under way in the National Assembly and provincial legislatures of Punjab and Sindh. However, they were postponed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by the electoral watchdog over the dispute in swearing-in opposition members elected to reserved seats. Polling in the NA and the provincial assemblies in Sindh and Punjab started at 9am and is …

National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq on Tuesday declared senior PTI leader Omar Ayub Khan as the leader of the opposition in the lower house of Parliament. According to a press release issued by the Assembly Secretariat, the development came as members of the opposition — including PTI’s Gohar Khan, Amir Dogar and Ayub himself — met Sadiq. The statement said …