RjNews

LONDON: A recent Court of Appeal judgement considering the case of a Pakistani man linked to Muttahida Qaumi Movement-London (MQM-L) said asylum seekers don’t need “direct evidence” that they are being surveilled. The case centered on the application of an individual, who claimed he faced risk in Pakistan due to his involvement with the UK-based faction of Muttahida Qaumi Movement. The man has simply been identified by his initials, WAS. The Upper Tribunal earlier acknowledged that if his activities came to the attention of the Pakistani authorities, he would be at risk upon return but argued that there was insufficient evidence to determine the extent of monitoring of MQM-L’s activities. This made the applicant’s claim of potential identification speculative, and his appeal was consequently dismissed. Court rules applicants do not have to give direct evidence to show they are being watched Asylum applications go through a screening process at the Home Office, and, if rejected, ...

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is grappling with a distressing surge in suicide attacks, witnessing a significant rise in fatalities and injuries compared to the previous year. The country has already experienced 18 suicide attacks in the first seven months of 2023, resulting in the loss of more than 200 lives and leaving over 450 others injured. This alarming figure has surpassed the total number of suicide attacks recorded in the entirety of 2022, which stood at 15. These are the findings of the report, compiled by a think tank the Pak­is­tan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), released on Monday. According to the report, the most severely affected region has been the tribal districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province (erstwhile Fata), accounting for half of the total suicide attacks in 2023. The nine attacks in the area claimed around 60 lives, while over 150 others sustained injuries. Over 200 lives lost in 18 attacks since January 2023 However, the recent attack dur...

KHARAN: This photo, provided by local authorities, shows an entire street of houses levelled by recent rains, flash floods. QUETTA: At least 11 people were killed and over 400 houses collapsed in different districts of Balochistan due to downpour and flash floods over the last one week. The province remained cut off with other areas of the country as heavy rains and flash floods triggered landslides and damaged bridges, blocking highways. Officials of the Provi­ncial Disaster Manage­ment Autho­rity (PDMA), Balochistan, said on Monday that Panjgur, Kharan and Washuk districts were badly affected areas as most houses in these areas were destr­oyed by heavy rains which continued falling in these areas for four days, cutting off a large number of villages’ links with district headquarters and rendering hundreds of families homeless. Officials said that dams in Panjgur, Washuk, Khar­an, Qila Saifullah, Pishin, Lasbela, Hub, Dera Bugti, Kohlu, Bark­han, Sibi and Bolan were filled up b...

NEW DELHI: India’s Supreme Court came down hard on the Manipur police on Monday and demanded to see a complete break-up of the approximately 6,000 cases of murder, rape, arson, crimes against women, burning of villages, homes and places of worship the state government claimed to have registered during the ethnic clashes. A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chan­drachud, was hearing petitions by the two women who were paraded naked and raped. The bench observed it was surprised to find both the centre and the state groping for facts about crimes which are “public knowledge, reported widely in the national media”. The court set up hearings on Tuesday, and said it was shocked to know that the Manipur police took 14 whole days to register even a ‘Zero FIR’ (an FIR that can be filed in any police station) on the sexual assault and gang-rape of two women in Thoubal district on May 4, The Hindu said. While the video of the horrific visuals of the sexual violence...

BANYUMAS: Eight people trapped in an illegal gold mine on the Indonesian island of Java are feared dead, a local rescue official said on Sunday, as search efforts entered a fifth day with little progress. Unlicensed mines — many with disregard for basic safety measures — are common across the mineral-rich Southeast Asian archipelago and accidents are frequent. The workers were digging inside a hole with a depth of 200 feet in Pancurendang village in Central Java on Tuesday evening when water suddenly flooded the illegal mine. Rescuers had deployed water pumps around the clock and worked to dam a nearby river in a frantic bid to get the water out of the mining shaft but it remained flooded on Sunday. “This is already the fifth day. We expect the bad news that the victims have died,” local search and rescue agency head Adah Sudarsa told reporters on Sunday. Sudarsa said the rescue effort would continue until Tuesday in the hope of retrieving the miners’ bodies, which are yet to be fo...

WASHINGTON: Mohsin Dawar, who heads the National Democratic Movement, has warned that militancy will spin out of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and engulf the entire Pakistan. In a conversation with Pakistani journalists and scholars near Washington, the Pashtun member of the National Assembly also opposed banning former prime minister Imran Khan and his supporters from the next elections as doing so was “against democratic norms”. The briefing was held hours before a deadly blast in a JUI convention in Bajaur but the participants in this discussion seemed aware of this looming threat as they noted that some militant groups, particularly those associated with ISIS, were now targeting religious figures. “This will have very dangerous consequences,” said Mr Dawar while commenting on the discussion. “It will be difficult to control it if it’s not stopped now.” He warned that the militancy “can even prevent people from participating in the upcoming elections” if not curbed. “This is a raging fire....

SUKKUR: As many as 44 people have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the July 21 invasion of Narch village, falling within the limits of the Sangi police station of Pannu Aqil, police said on Friday. The police and area residents said that around 170 people riding scores of motorcycles and many of them waving firearms had stormed their way into the village and opened fire killing two youths and kidnapping two women along with a young girl on the night of July 21. They claimed that the invaders belonged to the Mahar clan and lived in Raza Goth, situated within the gang-infested riverine area of Pannu Aqil. They targeted a particular house but several others also came under the attack during their indiscriminate firing, the villagers claimed. The village is dominated by Kalhoro tribesmen. The police said that a strong contingent of police equipped with sophisticated weapons had been raiding various places in and around Raza Goth since July 22 to apprehend the remaining sus...

RAWALPINDI: Getting from Rawat to Kutchery Chowk has become a difficult task; it takes hours and commuters brave the difficult task of crossing the rough, pocked and bumpy road. Additionally, repair work on the Soan River Bridge, which was damaged on June 27, is still going on, making public transportation miserable. The road had recently been renamed as Potohar Avenue by the National Highway Authority (NHA). It connects many populated housing societies and its pathetic condition makes it difficult for the residents to commute especially since the bridge has been closed for repair work. Residents of the housing societies, who travel between Rawat and Kutchery on daily basis, seem helpless in getting authorities concerned realise and remove sewage accumulated on its uneven portion near Fauji Foundation Hospital, Al Shifa Eye Trust Hospital and the NLC establishments. During rains, the newly-constructed bridge over Soan River close to Lahore High Court Rawalpindi bench building (tow...

PTI leader Asad Qaiser on Saturday called for an end to what he called was ongoing “propaganda” against his party, and urged for “powerful quarters” to ensure free and fair elections in the country. In a video statement, Qaiser, who unlike many of his peers did not leave the PTI in the aftermath of the May 9 violence, said: “The one-sided propaganda under way against the party and Imran Khan at this time, what do those in power and the PDM (Pakistan Democratic Movement) group think? Do they think they can eliminate the PTI through such propaganda? “It is their misunderstanding. The more negative propaganda they are doing, the more the PTI is becoming popular,” he said as he criticised the incumbent government’s performance and questioned whether it had managed to tackle inflation and improved governance during its tenure. “Show us one sector in which we can say the PDM has shown [good] performance. These 14 months were the worst disaster that is why I want to say to the powerful sec...

WASHINGTON: Former US president Donald Trump said on Friday he would not end his run for the White House if he were convicted and sentenced in any of the criminal investigations mounting against him. The 77-year-old Republican frontrunner was asked about his reaction to the federal and state charges he faces as he bids for a second term in 2024, a day after federal prosecutors added three felony counts to the indictment against him over his handling of classified documents. Asked by radio host John Fredericks if being sentenced would stop his campaign, he quickly responded: “Not at all. There’s nothing in the Constitution to say that it could. And even the radical left crazies are saying not at all, that wouldn’t stop (me) — and it wouldn’t stop me either. These people are sick. What they are doing is absolutely horrible.” Trump said previous presidents including Barack Obama and George W. Bush “took documents”, suggesting falsely that his predecessors had engaged in conduct similar...

Leaders of a coup in Niger declared General Abdourahamane Tiani as the new head of state on Friday days after saying they had ousted President Mohamed Bazoum in the seventh military takeover in West and Central Africa in less than three years. The upheaval has raised concerns about the security of a region where Niger has been a key ally of Western powers seeking to contain insurgencies by groups linked to Al Qaeda and the militant Islamic State. Tiani was the head of the presidential guard whose soldiers shut Bazoum inside his palace on Wednesday, leaving confusion over who was in control. The general appeared on state television on Friday with a banner on the screen that described himself as the president of a newly formed military body, the National Council for Safeguarding the Homeland (CNSP). “The President of the CNSP is the head of state,” an officer said, reading out a statement. The constitution has been suspended, all government institutions dissolved and the CNSP will e...

ISLAMABAD: Continuing its streak of hasty legislation, the National Assembly on Thursday passed 28 private member’s bills — 24 of them seeking establishment of private universities in different parts of the country — without quorum as Speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf allowed lawmakers to move motions for the passage of the bills, even on behalf of those members who were absent from proceedings. Apart from 28 private member’s bills, the lower house also witnessed passage of a government bill and introduction of four other proposed legislations through a supplementary agenda on private member’s day. Of the 24 bills for the new universities, 16 had been introduced by the members in the same sitting, and the speaker put them for a vote after the house through motions allowed him to do so without referring them to committees concerned. However, Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs Saad Waseem said all these universities would be established after completion of the ...

KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) will likely raise its key interest rate again on Monday to tackle persistently high inflation, giving in to pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), analysts said. Pakistan must continue its monetary tightening cycle, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a staff report earlier in July, a week after the lender approved a new bailout arrangement with the South Asian nation which helped it avert a debt default. Nine out of 16 analysts predicted the State Bank of Pakistan will raise the key rate by 100 basis points (bps) to 23 per cent at its policy meeting next week, while one saw a smaller 50bps increase and six expected no change. The central bank has raised its key policy rate by 12.25 percentage points since April 2022, mainly to curb soaring inflation. SBP held rates steady in June saying inflation had peaked at 38pc in the preceding month. But before the end of the month, it raised rates by 100bps at an emergency me...

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday told African leaders he would gift them tens of thousands of tonnes of grain within months despite Western sanctions, which he said made it harder for Moscow to export its grain and fertilisers. Speaking at a two-day summit in St Petersburg devoted to Russian-African ties, Mr Putin said Russia was expecting a record grain harvest and was ready to replace Ukrainian grain exports to Africa on both a commercial and aid basis to honour what he said was Moscow’s critical role in global food security. “We will be ready to provide Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Central African Republic and Eritrea with 25-50,000 tonnes of free grain each in the next 3-4 months,” Mr Putin told the summit, whose participants applauded. “We will also provide free delivery of these products to consumers.” Calls Western sanctions hurdle to supply of free fertiliser to poor nations; AU chair Assoumani urges Russia-Ukraine ‘peaceful co-existence’ La...

ISLAMABAD: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has decided to form a high-powered committee, comprising three vice chancellors and officers from security agencies, to investigate the Islamia University Bahawalpur (IUB) scandal. HEC Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmed told the National Assembly Standing Committee on Federal Education on Wednesday that the education sector was suffering because of the scandal at the varsity. He said that even international media was raising this issue and added a high-powered committee was being notified to investigate the matter while a special audit and performance audit of the IUB would be conducted in the near future. “Today, we will notify this high-powered committee, which will stay in the university for some days to complete the probe,” he said and added that there were 253 universities (both public and private) in the country and because of this issue, students were upset. “This is unacceptable,” he said and added that universities had policies relat...

Pakistan on Wednesday condemned the “provocative remarks” made by Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh “boasting readiness to cross the Line of Control (LoC)” and counselled India to “exercise utmost caution”. Earlier today, The Times of India reported that while addressing a Kargil War Memorial in Ladakh, Singh said: “India is a peace-loving nation which believes in its centuries-old values and is committed towards international laws, but to safeguard our interests, we will not hesitate in crossing the LoC.” He further said that India would go to any “extreme” to maintain its honour and dignity, “if that includes crossing the LoC, we are ready to do that. If we are provoked and if the need arises, we will cross the LoC.” Condemning Singh’s remarks in a press release issued later in the day, Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said India’s “belligerent rhetoric is a threat to the regional peace and stability and contributes to destabilising the strategic environm...

KARACHI: Bank advances to the private sector plunged by almost 87 per cent to Rs211 billion in FY23 against Rs1,612bn in the preceding fiscal year, reflecting the repercussion of record high interest rates and economic slowdown. The State Bank’s latest data issued on Tuesday revealed that the private sector did not borrow to invest in expansion as most of the borrowing was meant for short-term working capital. The entire fiscal year was marred with political and economic instability as a result the PMLN-led coalition government had to sharply trim its growth projection to a mere 0.29pc from the budgetary target of over 6pc for FY23. The conventional banks provided Rs171bn to the private sector in FY23 compared to Rs971bn in FY22. Advances by Islamic banks to the private sector also dipped to Rs126bn against Rs239bn in the preceding fiscal year. The Islamic branches of the conventional banks recorded a net debt repayment of Rs86bn against a borrowing of Rs401bn in 2021-22. Financia...

• Hasty changes opposed by both sides of the aisle; speaker gives legislators another day to go through proposed draft • Law minister says caretakers being empowered to ensure continuity of policies ISLAMABAD: Strong opposition from both friends and foes forced the government to defer for one day its plan to give “unbridled powers” to the caretaker set-up, as part of electoral reforms. Under the plan, the text cleared by the Parliamen­tary Committee on Electoral Reforms was to be passed through a shortcut, with the last-minute addition of a controversial clause to enlarge the scope of the caretakers, which would have allowed them to decide on “urgent matters”. An election amendment bill already passed by the National Assembly , which could not be passed by the Senate within 90 days, was placed on the agenda of the joint sitting on Tuesday. The government wanted the long list of electoral reforms to be passed through an amendment in the same bill and even parliamentarians were unaw...

ISLAMABAD / D.I. KHAN: Guar­an­teeing that the caretaker set-up, as well as the next government, will adhere to the country’s agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday assured international donors that funds given for flood victims will be spent judiciously. Addressing the 3rd meeting of the International Partners Support Group (IPSG), formed in the wake of the Resilient Pakistan Conference held in Geneva, earlier this year, PM Shehbaz said that Pakistan would fully follow the IMF agreement and not only the caretaker set-up but even the next government would implement the recent agreement made with the lender. Weeks before the term of the current assemblies is set to end, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif seems to be in full campaign mode. Earlier in the day, he inaugurated eight different mega projects, including gas, electricity and infrastructure schemes, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Inaugurates eight uplift projects in D.I. Khan, pr...

ISLAMABAD: The capital police have booked the wife of a civil judge involved in alleged torture on a 13-year-old maid with criminal intimidation and wrongful confinement, without mentioning physical torture on her in the FIR. Police officers told Dawn that in a similar case of torture on a maid in 2016, the police had registered a case under section 342, 506 and 337 of the PPC. The officers said the latest case was registered under section 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) and 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement) despite the fact that the complainant had categorically stated that the judge’s wife tortured his daughter daily and she had a number of injuries on her body. Besides the complaint of Manga Khan, father of the maid, the police have also a medico-legal certificate which mentioned 15 injuries on the body of the girl, including marks of strangulation, but the suspect was not charged with the sections relevant to strangulation, torture and injuring. According to...

LAHORE: Pilgrimage-related activities resumed at the Gurdawara Darbar Sahib on Tuesday after Indian authorities reopened their side of the Kartarpur corridor. The Indian government had closed the corridor on July 20 after floodwaters entered fields of crops near the corridor. According to a senior official of the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB), Indian authorities opened the gate of their side of the corridor on Saturday morning following a flag meeting with Pakistan Rangers at the zero-line. “As many as 106 pilgrims were scheduled to visit the corridor from India on Tuesday (July 25), but only 53 of them made it across to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib,” ETPB administrator Rana Tariq told Dawn on Tuesday. He said 89 Indian pilgrims are scheduled to visit Kartarpur on July 26 (Wednesday), while the number would increase in the days to tome. He said the Indian and Pakistani side gates were opened at 8:15am and 8:45am, respectively, on Tuesday, while Sikh pilgrims entered Pakistan throu...

WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has slightly upgraded its outlook for world growth this year on the back of resilient service sector activity in the first quarter and a strong labour market, the lender said on Tuesday. But despite the mildly better economic forecast, growth is expected to slow to three per cent in 2023 and then stay there, held down by weak growth among the world’s advanced economies, the IMF announced in its latest report. “The global economy continues to gradually recover from the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But it is not yet out of the woods,” IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said during a press conference. The growth forecast for this year was raised by 0.2 percentage points from the IMF’s last estimate in April, putting the world economy on track for 3pc growth in both 2023 and 2024. This is down from growth of 6.3pc in 2021, and 3.5pc last year, the IMF announced in its update to the World Economic Outlook (WEO). ...

LAHORE: The Lahore General Hospital management shifted 15-year-old girl [victim of domestic violence] to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) following her deteriorating health condition. It has also formed a 12-member medical board of senior medics from various specialties for treatment of Rizwana. The duty doctors said the condition of Rizwana got serious due to malnutrition and the complications of her wounds in her brain and on the face. Resident of Sargodha, the girl was shifted to the LGH on Monday in the domestic violence matter when her employers - a civil judge in Islamabad and his wife - were accused of torturing her. LGH chief executive Prof Dr Muhammad Al-Fareed Zafar told Dawn that the girl was shifted to the ICU keeping in view her condition. LGH management forms 12-member board to treat the teen He said according to the medical examination so far, Rizwana was bearing some four to six month old wounds/bruises on her head and face. During medical examination, the doctor...

Bronny James, the eldest son of NBA superstar LeBron James, is in stable condition after suffering a cardiac arrest during practice with his college basketball team, the James family said on Tuesday. Bronny James, 18, collapsed on court while training with his University of Southern California team-mates on Monday in Los Angeles. “Yesterday while practicing Bronny James suffered a cardiac arrest,” a spokesperson for the James family said in a statement to AFP . “Medical staff was able to treat Bronny and take him to the hospital. He is now in stable condition and no longer in ICU. “We ask for respect and privacy for the James family and we will update media when there is more information. “LeBron and Savannah wish to publicly send their deepest thanks and appreciation to the USC medical and athletic staff for their incredible work and dedication to the safety of their athletes.” The TMZ.com celebrity news website reported that James was unconscious before being rushed to hospita...

ISLAMABAD: PTI chief Imran Khan is due to appear today (Tuesday) before an Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) team looking into the cipher issue, a day after his aides Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Asad Umar were questioned in connection with the same case. In remarks telecast over social media on Monday night, the PTI chairman said he had no idea what the agency wanted to quiz him about. He admitted that a cipher was a most secret document, as its leak could compromise the secrecy of the entire network of diplomatic communications. Mr Khan also claimed that the cipher “had never left the foreign office”, therefore there was no question of it being lost. Last week, former principal secretary Azam Khan had recorded a ‘confessional statement’ , accusing former prime minister Imran Khan of using the coded document to subvert the no-confidence motion. Following these revelations, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah accused Mr Khan of undermining national security and also blamed Mr Qureshi fo...

Iraq condemned yet another desecration of the Holy Quran in front of its embassy in Denmark on Monday and said Danish staff at the embassy in Baghdad had left the country after protests there, while Copenhagen said it had “not withdrawn from Iraq”. Demonstrations have raged across Iran and Iraq after Denmark and Sweden allowed the Holy Quran’s burning under rules protecting free speech. Protesters in Iraq set the Swedish embassy in Baghdad alight on Thursday. Two anti-Islam protesters set fire to a copy of the holy book in front of the Iraqi embassy in the Danish capital on Monday. Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he condemned the burning. “These provocative and shameful acts do not represent the views of the Danish government. Appeal to all to deescalate — violence must never be the response,” Rasmussen said in a tweet. Iraq’s foreign ministry called on authorities of European Union countries to “quickly reconsider so-called freedom of expression and th...

Pakistan is a paper-based economy. The majority of our records in the financial, health, education or agriculture industry, are paper-based. A patient still carries his medical records in a file when visiting his doctor; a prospective employee still has a paper copy of his university degree. We love paper and are reluctant to change. In my last board meeting at a top business school, I strongly suggested that we do away with the hard copies for the board meeting but was not supported by my fellow board members. We are also a nation of manual processes. It’s no wonder it takes banks up to two months to decide on a credit card or personal loan for a new-to-the-industry customer. Similarly, it takes banks a couple of months to open a checking account for a private limited company. We have so far managed to improve the front end (customer app) materially. However, the back end is manual without a hint of customer personas being built on the different services a bank customer uses. And t...

• Blinken claims 50pc occupied land recaptured by Ukraine • Minsk, Moscow hold strategic dialogue KYIV: The Ukrainian port city of Odesa came under renewed Russian missile attack early on Sunday, just hours before President Vladimir Putin declared that Kyiv’s counteroffensive had “failed” as he began two-day talks with his Belarus counterpart and ally Alexander Lukashenko. The longtime leaders met for the first time since Lukashenko helped end a mutiny by Russian Wagner mercenaries in Russia last month, in the biggest threat to Putin’s more than two-decade rule. “There is no counteroffensive,” Lukashenko said, before being interrupted by Putin: “There is one, but it has failed.” On the other hand, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in an interview to CNN on Sunday claimed that Ukraine took back about 50pc of the territory that Russia had initially seized, although Kyiv’s counteroffensive would extend several months. “These are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive....