ISLAMABAD: Higher output in textiles, auto, cement, sugar, iron and steel, fertiliser and the petroleum sectors led to the overall increase in the Large Scale Manufacturing (LSM) by 14.85 per cent during 2020-21 (FY21) against the previous fiscal year. The LSM data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday has been compiled using figures from the provincial …

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa cabinet on Friday approved Rs525 million funds for the transportation of the 1.494 million cubic feet illegal timber from Arandu area of Lower Chitral district to Chakdara depot for sale. It met with Chief Minister Mahmood Khan in the chair and was attended by ministers, acting chief secretary and administrative secretaries. The trees illegally cut down …

SINOP: Emergency workers battled to relieve flood-hit areas of Turkey’s Black Sea region on Friday, as the death toll rose to 27 in the second natural disaster to strike the country this month. The floods, among the worst Turkey has experienced, brought chaos to northern provinces just as authorities were declaring wildfires that raged through southern coastal regions for two …

MANILA: The Philippines will extend a ban on travellers from India, Pakistan and eight other countries to the end of August because of concerns posed by the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus, the presidential spokesperson said on Friday. Authorities in the Philippines are scrambling to contain a jump in coronavirus cases to a four-month high, with infections staying …

WASHINGTON: Earth sizzled last month and July became the hottest month in 142 years of recordkeeping, meteorologists said on Friday. As extreme heat waves struck parts of the United States and Europe, the globe averaged 16.73 degrees Celsius last month, beating out the previous record set in July 2016 and tied again in 2019 and 2020. the National Oceanic and …

WASHINGTON: The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has welcomed the celebration of religious minorities day in Pakistan, hoping that the government would uphold the vision of inclusiveness and religious freedom advocated by its founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. In a message on Pakistan’s National Minority Day, USCRIF also posted one of Mr Jinnah’s quotes on its official Twitter …

The Afghan Taliban tightened their territorial stranglehold around Kabul on Saturday, as refugees from the insurgents’ relentless offensive flooded the capital and US Marines returned to oversee emergency evacuations from Afghanistan. With the country’s second- and third-largest cities having fallen into Taliban hands, Kabul has effectively become the besieged, last stand for government forces who have offered little or no resistance elsewhere. …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has said it considers the Unites States a friend and wants broad-based relations to achieve the shared objective of peace and prosperity in the region and beyond. “We believe that both countries have a history of close cooperative relations, which have served our shared interests,” Foreign Office spokesman Zahid Hafeez Chaudhry said at a weekly press briefing here …

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court has observed that the jail authorities are bound to protect the rights of every prisoner with the same dedication and devotion which they show in case of a ‘VIP’. Justice Sohail Nasir made these remarks on a petition filed by an under-trial prisoner questioning a delay of two weeks in his shifting from the Jhelum …

LOWER DIR: A teacher of a government girls’ middle school was shot dead allegedly by her former husband near her school in Adam Dherai village in the jurisdiction of Chakdara police station here on Friday. Lodging an FIR with the police, Adnan Adil of Talash, the husband of the teacher and a dental technician by profession, claimed that his wife …