ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Tuesday the Afghan Taliban would be invited to the third ministerial meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbours. Mr Qureshi, at a meeting of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said: “Afghanistan’s interim government will also be invited to the next meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbours.” Pakistan had worked out a new mechanism for consultations among Afghanistan’s …

PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz on Wednesday called the explosive affidavit by former chief judge of Gilgit-Baltistan Rana Mohammad Shamim “the third major testimony from within the judiciary” that she claimed proved her and her father Nawaz Sharif’s innocence. She was speaking outside the Islamabad High Court (IHC) which conducted a hearing on Maryam’s appeal seeking annulment of her conviction …

Amid fervent protest by the opposition, the government on Wednesday managed to bulldoze amendments to the Elections Act, 2017, in the joint session of parliament, thereby allowing the use of electronic voting machines and granting voting rights to overseas Pakistanis. This prompted the opposition to tear copies of the agenda and walk out of the session in protest. Lawmakers also …

Hackers from Pakistan used Facebook to target people in Afghanistan with connections to the previous government during the Taliban’s takeover of the country, the company’s threat investigators said in an interview with Reuters. Facebook said the group, known in the security industry as SideCopy, shared links to websites hosting malware which could surveil people’s devices. Targets included people connected to the government, …

False Covid-19 death reports, a vast gender gap, Nazi “fan fiction”: These are some of the perils an international crowd of volunteers battles across Wikipedia’s tens of millions of online entries. The world’s largest internet encyclopedia is often the first result to pop up when users ask the internet a question — and thus a massively influential source of free …

Pakistan will host the Men’s Champions Trophy in 2025, the International Cricket Council (ICC) announced on Tuesday. It will be the first major global cricket tournament to be played in Pakistan since 1996 when it hosted the Men’s Cricket World Cup alongside India and Sri Lanka. The final was played in Lahore with Sri Lanka claiming the title. Reacting to …

ISLAMABAD: Insisting that the rupee was currently undervalued, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Tuesday hinted at taking additional measures to curb demand in the market and inflation. Testifying before the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue, SBP’s Deputy Governor Dr Inayat Hussain said the rupee exchange rate had depreciated by 10.3 per cent between July 1 …

KARACHI: Share prices of the independent power producers (IPPs) soared on Tuesday after the government approved the disbursement of Rs135 billion as part of the tariff renegotiation process aimed at reducing the circular debt. The approval for the final tranche of payments consisting of 60 per cent of the total outstanding dues follows the disbursement of the first instalment amounting to Rs90bn …

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate the Track and Trace System (TTS) of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Nov 23 under which movement of sugar bags will be monitored in order to check tax evasion in the sugar industry. Last month, FBR extended the TTS to the cigarette sector to check tax evasion there. So, sugar industry …

KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has called an early meeting of its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to address the “recent unforeseen developments” that have changed the outlook for inflation and balance of payments. In a brief press release issued on Tuesday, the central bank said the MPC meeting would now be held on Friday (Nov 19) instead of …