LAHORE: Airlift, a Lahore-based online shopping delivery service, has raised $85 million in Series B financing, the largest single private funding round in Pakistan’s history. The financing is about twice the size of the largest private company IPO in the country’s history and the highest in the MENA (Middle East & North Africa) region. Airlift Technologies Co-founder and CEO Usman …

KARACHI: For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic made its way to Pakistan in March 2020, the inflow of foreign investment in Treasury bills (T-bill) has surpassed the outflow in August despite a drastic cut in rates. Latest data shared by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) shows the inflow of foreign investment in T-bills in the month up …

Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin said on Friday that he believed the energy sector to be the government’s “Achilles heel”, and it would take at least five to seven years to resolve the issues the sector was facing. Addressing businessmen at the Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry, he said the government was trying to fix the problems the sector …

Pakistan’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Mansoor Ahmad Khan on Thursday met former Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, a senior official in the ousted government, to discuss the situation in the neighbouring country where the Taliban have announced the creation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Khan shared a picture of their meeting on Twitter, saying the two sides had “constructive discussions …

The Taliban have said they will not interfere with the Afghan men’s national cricket team, the country’s biggest sporting success of recent years, or stop the expansion of the flagship Twenty20 league, an Afghan cricket official said. The fate of much more modest women’s cricket programmes, however, remains unclear. Despite the turmoil caused by the stunning fall of the Kabul government on …

The man who claimed to have a bomb in a pickup truck near the United States Capitol has surrendered to law enforcement, ending an hours-long standoff on Thursday. The man, identified by law enforcement officials as Floyd Ray Roseberry, 49, of North Carolina, crawled out of the vehicle and was being taken into custody shortly before 2:30pm. He had pulled …

President Joe Biden said on Thursday that the Taliban have not changed but are going through an “existential crisis” about whether they want legitimacy on the global stage as they have taken over Afghanistan. In an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America, Biden said that he’s not sure the Taliban want to be recognised by the international community as being a …

About two dozen US diplomats in Afghanistan sent an internal cable last month warning US State Secretary Antony Blinken of the potential fall of Kabul to the Taliban as troops withdrew from the country, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The newspaper said the confidential cable sent through a so-called dissent channel was signed on July 13 and offered recommendations on ways …

China has played a constructive role in promoting peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan and is welcome to contribute to the rebuilding of the country, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told Chinese state media. The Taliban seized control over the weekend in an upheaval that sent thousands of civilians and Afghan military allies fleeing for safety. Many fear a return to the group’s strict …

Pakistan has evacuated around 1,100 people — including diplomats, staff of diplomatic missions and international agencies, and journalists — from Kabul, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations Ambassador Munir Akram said on Friday. In an interview with CNN’s Isa Soares, he said that the situation in Afghanistan was “challenging”. “But our embassy is operating. They are processing all applicants [seeking] visas …