Pakistan

LAHORE: The country’s persistent water crisis has taken a turn for the worse, as the cumulative river supplies dipped to 97,000 cubic feet per second (cusecs) on Saturday, taking the national shortage to a whopping 51 per cent against the 29pc calculated previously. To put Saturday’s cumulative supplies in context, the figure was 121,000 cusecs on the same day (April …

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia will discuss the possibility of “augmenting” the kingdom’s $3 billion deposit in Pakistan’s central bank by extending its term “or through other options,” a joint statement said on Sunday. Last year, Saudi Arabia deposited $3 billion in the State Bank of Pakistan to help support its foreign reserves. With a yawning current account deficit and foreign reserves falling …

PTI chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan on Sunday defended Farah Khan, a close aide of his wife Bushra Bibi as “absolutely innocent” as he described the corruption inquiry against her as a “political vendetta” against him. His remarks come days after the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) initiated an inquiry against her for allegedly possessing “illegal assets beyond known sources of …

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has asked the government to publish official results of the seventh population and housing census by year end. It made the request in a letter to the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs secretary. Identical letters have also been written to the planning ministry’s secretary and support services member of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. …

ISLAMABAD: The Power Division on Friday sought immediate payment of around Rs329 billion to operationalise about 7,900 megawatts of generation plants, currently out of system mainly due to fuel shortage and resulting in at least eight hours of outages across the country. Federal Minister for Power Khurram Dastgir Khan, while speaking at his maiden news conference with Minister of State …

KARACHI: The Supreme Court has directed Karachi police to record the statement of a petitioner and lodge an FIR against the management of Bahria Town. Petitioner Faique Ali Jagirani had approached the apex court in 2019 for registration of a case against real estate tycoon Malik Riaz of Bahria Town and others after a sessions court and high court had …

ISLAMABAD: The judiciary had to step in during the political crisis earlier this month to protect supremacy of the Constitution, the chief justice of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) said on Friday with reference to insinuations by certain quarters about the opening of the court on the night of April 9 amid developments which led to the ouster of then …

Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates discussed Pakistan’s commitment to polio eradication, and the Covid-19 situation in the country in a telephone call, the military’s media affairs wing said on Friday. In a statement, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said Gates appreciated the army for supporting the country’s polio …

Former prime minister Imran Khan on Saturday wrote letters to President Dr Arif Alvi and Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial seeking from them a public inquiry and the formation of a judicial commission respectively to probe the “threat letter” which the PTI chairman claims is evidence of a “conspiracy” to topple his government. Before his government was …

ISLAMABAD: Speaker Raja Pervaiz Ashraf has written letters to all the parliamentary leaders of parties in the National Assembly asking them for nominations for the parliamentary committee on electoral reforms. The speaker has asked them to forward their nominations within seven days, says a handout issued by the NA Secretariat on Friday. Despite the fact that 123 members of the …