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The federal government on Monday constituted a seven-member committee for the “deliberation of a policy” related to enforced disappearances in the country after the Islamabad High Court (IHC) instructed the heads of the government to explain how disappearances “became state policy”. According to a notification issued by the Ministry of Interior, the committee will be headed by Minister for Law …

In a surprising move, President Dr Arif Alvi on Monday approved the appointment of PML-N loyalist Balighur Rehman as the new Punjab governor, ending a weeks-long deadlock with the prime minister over the holder of the constitutional office. The move comes after the president twice denied his assent to the prime minister’s nominees for the post, saying that Omar Sarfraz …

LAHORE: Punjab has questioned the criteria adopted for measuring water flows in River Indus by a sub-committee of the National Assembly’s Stan­ding Committee on Water Resources during a recent field visit to Taunsa and Guddu barrages, claiming the river point selected in Sindh was irregular while its representative was excluded from monitoring the flows at the regular point. MNAs Khalid …

PTI Chairman Imran Khan has posted on Twitter a video montage of alleged police brutality on his Azadi marchers on May 25 and termed it “condemnable and unacceptable”. Imran Khan’s march for haqeeqi azadi — true freedom — was preceded by the authorities invoking of Section 144, a measure used to curb gatherings. Shipping containers were put in place on major thoroughfares to …

Former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Sunday accused the government of amending accountability laws to protect the “corrupt elite class”, claiming PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will be “direct beneficiaries of the changes”. Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, Qureshi alleged the amendments made by the government to the National Accountability Ordinance, 1999 were the …

Finance Minister Miftah Ismail on Sunday clarified that the government had not imposed a ban on sanitary pads or diapers — or their raw materials — and that the restrictions only applied to “some luxury or non-essential goods”. In a tweet this morning, he said that there is no ban on “any industrial raw material”. “The ban is only on …

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday said that the audio recording of the alleged telephone conversation between Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Asif Ali Zardari and property tycoon Malik Riaz had “exposed” PTI Chairman Imran Khan’s “hypocrisy and double standards”, asserting that his predecessor’s “lies stand exposed”. The leaked audio recording — in which the voices were believed by many …

ISLAMABAD: The coalition government defended on Friday the amendments to accountability laws, scrapping of electronic voting and explained the logic behind clipping the National Accountability Bureau’s powers of arrest. During a joint press conference, Federal Law Minister Azam Nazir Tarar, Senator Kamran Murtaza of the JUI-F and Faisal Karim Kundi of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) highlighted the salient features of …

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday testified in a special court hearing the Rs16 billion money laundering case against him that he refused to receive any salary or benefits when he was chief minister of Punjab, terming himself a “majnoo“. His son, incumbent Punjab Chief Minister Hamza Shehbaz was also in court during the hearing of the case filed against …

Pakistani mountaineers Sirbaz Khan of Gilgit-Baltistan and Shehroze Kashif from Lahore summited Mount Makalu in Nepal, an eight-thousander that is the world’s fifth-highest peak, on Saturday morning. According to Alpine Club of Pakistan Secretary Karrar Haidri, Kashif, 20. reached Makalu’s top, which is at a height of 8,485 metres, at 6:56am (PST). Following this feat, Kashif has become the world’s …