Pakistan

Indian actor Saif Ali Khan loves having two boys around the house. The Bhoot Police star, who shares four-year-old Taimur and eight-months-old Jeh with wife Kareena Kapoor, confessed that he has noticed visible changes in his elder son after becoming a brother. “There is definitely a change in Taimur… he was the younger one and now he isn’t anymore. He …

WASHINGTON: The Biden administration has appointed Elizabeth Jones, a veteran diplomat, to lead efforts for relocation and resettlement in Afghanistan, the US State Department said on Tuesday. “As the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts, Ambassador Jones will assume oversight of the entire Afghanistan relocation effort, from our ongoing efforts to facilitate the departure of individuals from Afghanistan to their onward …

ISLAMABAD: The parliamentary committee on appointment of Election Commission of Pakistan members will meet here on Thursday to discuss appointment of the commission’s two members. The committee will consider nominations by the government and the opposition for appointment as ECP members from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The two ECP members from Punjab and KP — Altaf Ibrahim Qureshi and Irshad …

ISLAMABAD: The board of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), the government’s social safety net, has decided to adopt an international system of assessing performance of its employees in order to encourage them to improve work and get rewarded accordingly. Called as the ‘Bell Curve Concept’, the new Performance Management System (PMS) was approved at a meeting of the BISP board …

ISLAMABAD: Though the recent rains brought the temperature down to 22°C, there was no let-up in dengue cases as 214 patients surfaced in the twin cities on Tuesday. Islamabad reported over a 100 cases of dengue fever for the third time in the current season. According to District Health Officer (DHO) Islamabad Dr Zaeem Zia, 113 people contracted dengue fever …

KARACHI: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Tuesday informed the Sindh High Court that it had directed the Sindh government to provide requisite data for delimitation and amend the local government law within a month. The ECP said that it issued such directives through an order dated Oct 6 in a case filed before it regarding a delay in …

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has summoned senior vice president of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and Railways Minister Azam Khan Swati to appear before the ECP on October 21 and explain his caustic remarks against the commission. Informed sources told Dawn that the decision was taken at an ECP meeting held here, with Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikandar Sultan Raja in …

WASHINGTON: Pakistan played a key role in evacuating an interpreter from Afghanistan who had rescued Joe Biden and two other US senators from a snowstorm 13 years ago, diplomatic sources told on Tuesday. The Human First Coalition, a US-based NGO run by two Americans of Afghan origin, supervised the evacuation. “We are grateful to Prime Minister Imran Khan for his …

ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi in consultation with National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Chairman Javed Iqbal has appointed the bureau’s Director General (Operations) Zahir Shah as deputy chairman of the anti-graft watchdog, said a notification issued by the law ministry on Tuesday. Mr Shah has been serving with NAB for almost two decades and has held key positions in the organisation. …

Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry on Wednesday said the process of consultation between Prime Minister Imran Khan and Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa over the appointment of the new director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) “has been completed”, and that the process of a fresh appointment “is underway”. Chaudhry’s update on the matter came a day after …