LAHORE: An enormous growth of 81 per cent has been recorded in the arrival of cotton at ginning factories, the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA) said on Monday. According to the PCGA data, over 6.25 million bales arrived at the factories by Nov 1 against more than 3.45m on the same date last year — a difference of 2.8m bales …

GLASGOW: Focus at the COP26 summit turned on Wednesday to how the world will pay for its ambitions to quit fossil fuels and help vulnerable nations survive climate change, as campaigners expressed scepticism over promises of billions from financiers and governments. After a world leaders’ summit yielded a landmark deal slashing methane emissions, negotiators are now tasked with keeping alive …

DUBAI: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday they thwarted an attempt by the United States to detain a tanker carrying the Islamic Republic’s oil in the Sea of Oman. US officials said that the Iranian report was not true and there had been no American attempt to seize a tanker. The American officials said that in reality Iranian forces had …

KABUL: The United Nations children’s agency said it was planning to set up a system to directly fund Afghan teachers, after the international community placed a freeze on funding to the Taliban-led administration. “Unicef is setting up a system that will allow direct payments to teachers without the funds being channelled through the de facto authorities,” Jeannette Vogelaar, Unicef Afghanistan’s …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has reaffirmed its commitment to effective implementation of the GSP Plus-related international conventions. The assurance was given by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi to EU Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with the Countries of South Asia, led by Nicola Procaccini, which called on him here on Wednesday. The foreign minister said the EU’s GSP+ facility to Pakistan had been …

WASHINGTON: Pakistan may soon send a new envoy to Washington as the country’s current ambassador, Asad Majeed Khan, will soon complete his tenure, media reports and diplomatic sources say. The reports say that Islamabad has already started the selection process and the 27th president of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Sardar Masood Khan, tops the list of candidates. It is interesting …

Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid on Thursday said that the chief of the proscribed Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), Saad Rizvi, had insisted on the closure of the French embassy in his talks with the interior minister. Addressing a ceremony in Lahore, the interior minister said: “[Contrary to what] one person — who is very respectable and is a major religious figure from …

WASHINGTON: China is expanding its nuclear arsenal much more quickly than anticipated, narrowing the gap with the United States, the Pentagon said in a report published on Wednesday. China could have 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027, and could top 1,000 by 2030 — an arsenal two-and-a-half times the size of what the Pentagon predicted only a year ago, according …

WASHINGTON: US law enforcement and security agencies believe domestic extremists, notably white supremacists, pose a violent threat in the United States similar to that of the militant Islamic State group, top US security officials told Congress on Wednesday. Concern about racially motivated domestic extremists had prompted the FBI to elevate the threat to a level equal with that posed by …

United States authorities on Wednesday put the Israeli maker of the Pegasus spyware which was at the centre of a scandal over surveillance of journalists and officials on a blacklist of restricted companies. The company, NSO, was engulfed in controversy over reports that tens of thousands of human rights activists, journalists, politicians and business executives worldwide were listed as potential targets of …