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• Despite end of calendar year, total tally will become clear well into January as collected samples are tested • Officials blame data forgery, use of vaccination drive as ‘bargaining chip’, security situation for resurgence PAKISTAN and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where the poliovirus is still endemic. A glimmer of hope to get out of this ignominious list emerged in 2021, when the country reported only one case of the crippling disease. The hope persisted through 2022 and 2023, with 20 and six cases, respectively. This sense of optimism even lasted through the first half of 2024, with only nine cases reported till July ; before the sombering reality check — the virus not only returned, but has been resurgent. The tally from months since August has been seven, eight, 19, 13 and 12. Now, even though the calendar year has ended with the country reporting 68 cases , the count for 2024 will rise further, as samples collected this year continue being tested at ...

Welcome (back) to Dawn.com on the first day of 2025. As we continue to report the news in its most original form, and find new and interesting ways to do so, here’s a snapshot of what you — our audience — read the most in 2024. See the 10 stories with the highest number of views on Dawn.com below, with some surprises and some obvious entries. 10. Met Office forecasts heavy monsoon showers across the country from Aug 2 to 6 Published July 31 In late July, the Pakistan Meteorological Department issued a forecast for heavy rainfall for the start of August and since monsoon rains tend to set alarm bells ringing, this article drew readers from all over the country. Roads inundated as heavy rain lashes Lahore on July 12, 2024. — DawnNewsTV The Met Office’s predictions became a dreadful reality as the subsequent rains wreaked havoc in most parts of the country. Cities like Karachi and Lahore were flooded with rainwater for weeks which brought the metropolises to a standstill. ...

KARACHI: Amid the growing need for financing to meet external debt repayment obligations, the government has arranged a $300 million loan from United Bank Ltd (UBL). According to a press release issued on Monday, UBL had arranged and financed a $300m short-term loan for the government of Pakistan through its UAE and Bahrain branches. While the government is trying to arrange more financing for its debt servicing during the current fiscal year, it struggles to roll over the debt from China and other countries. UBL has one of the largest international presences among Pakistani banks, with international assets exceeding $2.4 billion. The bank said the deal shows the ability of UBL to offer clients seamless and reliable solutions, both in Pakistan and abroad. UBL enjoys a strong track record of successfully executing complex and high-value transactions. Despite higher remittances and exports, the country needs at least $14bn to pay the external debt during 2024-25. The target rese...

A suspect who allegedly filmed women customers in the changing rooms of a garment retailer in Khanewal with his mobile phone was sent on judicial remand on Monday, police said. Khanewal City Station House Officer (SHO) Muhammad Saeed told Dawn.com that the suspect, who worked for clothing brand Limelight, was presented before a judge today after videos were found on his phone. “The judge put him in judicial custody,” SHO Saeed said, adding that the suspect was arrested on Sunday. A first information report (FIR) was submitted on the SHO’s complaint at the City Khanewal Police Station on Saturday under Section 21-1D (offences against modesty of a natural person and minor) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 and Sections 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) and 509 (insulting modesty or causing sexual harassment) of the Pakistan Penal Code. According to the FIR, the suspect was an employee of the store who would allegedly film wome...

A United States federal appeals court on Monday upheld a jury verdict ordering President-elect Donald Trump to pay $5 million for sexually abusing and defaming writer E Jean Carroll. A New York jury found after a nine-day civil trial last year that the former president had sexually abused Carroll at a Manhattan department store in 1996. Trump was ordered to pay $2m for sexual abuse and another $3m for defaming Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine. Trump denied the allegations and appealed the verdict on the grounds that two other women who said Trump had sexually assaulted them too should not have been allowed to testify. The three-judge panel of the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. “We conclude that Mr Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” they said. “Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required...

Pakistan’s equity market ripped higher in 2024, carrying the KSE-100 index to its record peak as the economic fundamentals stabilised and the State Bank started cutting interest rates. The benchmark index climbed to 116,169 points on Dec 17 (before settling down to 110,246 points on Friday) from 64,661 points on Jan 1. This compares with the previous peak of around 52,000 points achieved in 2017. The stocks have gained much more rapidly after the announcement of the budget on June 12, when the index stood at 72,797 points, in the hope of anticipated approval of the new International Monetary Fund (IMF) funding programme of $7 billion. But Pakistan’s stock market wasn’t the only one rising during the outgoing year. Argentina’s stock market has surged 22-fold since July 2022 and Turkiye has also seen more than a four-fold increase in its equities compared to Pakistan’s two-fold rise, according to data collated by Ahmed Jamal Pirzada, a leading economist and Bristol professor. “...

The Karachi Commissioner issued a notification to impose Section 144 for a 48-hour period starting on December 31, it emerged on Sunday. New Year’s Eve in Karachi sees citizens performing aerial gunfire and using fireworks which have caused injury in the past. On December 31, 2023, then-Commissioner Muhammad Saleem Rajput imposed Section 144 “to safeguard the people of the city during New Year’s celebrations”. According to a notification, the commissioner while exercising powers delegated by the provincial home department imposed the ban from December 31 to January 1, 2024. Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code is a legal provision that empowers district administrations to prohibit an assembly of four or more people in an area for a limited period. According to the notification dated December 24 — a copy of which is available with Dawn.com , Commissioner Syed Hassan Naqvi has imposed the ban based on information that “a large number of youngsters from different areas of the...

IN a wide-ranging presser on Friday, the DG ISPR touched on a variety of subjects, including the reasons behind the upsurge in terrorism, the military’s issues with the PTI, as well as the critical situation in Kurram tribal district. He also observed that it was not a good idea for the PTI government at the time to initiate a dialogue with the banned TTP in 2021. Lt-Gen Ahmed Chaudhry said that the “illegal spectrum” in the country had political backing. While the politicians are guilty of many sins, other institutions are not without blame either, as they have not done enough to stop illegality, and in some instances have even backed unconstitutional moves. So to pillory the politicians alone — which the establishment has been doing since the Ayub era — is hardly fair. Where the factors that are fuelling militancy are concerned, the general was not wrong when he said that terrorism will cease when there is “justice … education, health” and good governance. Indeed, in the ex-Fata ...

More than 112,000 Syrians forcibly disappeared under the Baath regime remain unaccounted for, with evidence suggesting many were killed in detention, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) reported. The scale of torture and extrajudicial executions in Syrian prisons has been increasingly revealed following the collapse of the 61-year Baath Party regime on December 8. The SNHR’s database includes records of approximately 136,000 individuals who were detained or forcibly disappeared during the Baath regime. The organisation has documented the release of about 24,200 prisoners from detention facilities across Syria since President Bashar Al-Assad’s ouster. SNHR Chairman Fadel Abdul Ghany told Anadolu that the group is currently verifying details of those freed from prisons in Aleppo on November 28, Hama on December 5, Homs on December 7, and Damascus on December 8. “After excluding recent releases, 112,414 individuals detained by the regime remain unaccounted for and were most l...

• President expected to introduce ordinance next week after cabinet signs off on changes to stalled seminary registration law • Cabinet green-lights carbon markets policy to pave way for voluntary markets, cooperative approaches ISLAMABAD: The government signed off on two key steps during Friday’s meeting of the federal cabinet, paving the way for the adoption of a madressah registration law that would satisfy the JUI-Fazl, as well as green-lighting a policy that would allow the country to trade carbon credits on the international market. JUI-F’s Senator Kamran Murtaza , who was involved in the preparation of the legal framework under which the latest version of the Societies Registration (Amendment) law will be adopted, told Dawn on Friday that President Asif Zardari would issue an ordinance following the cabinet nod. The steps okayed included amendments to the law previously passed by parliament, which would give religious seminaries the option to register themselves, either w...

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Friday dissolved Germany’s lower house of parliament to pave the way for snap elections on February 23 following the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-way coalition. “Especially in difficult times, like now, stability requires a government capable of acting, and reliable majorities in parliament,” which was why early elections were the right way forward for Germany, Steinmeier said in Berlin. After the elections, problem-solving must become the core business of politics again, added Steinmeier in a speech. The president, whose post has been largely ceremonial in the post-war era, also called for the election campaign to be conducted fairly and transparently. “External influence is a danger to democracy, whether it is covert, as was evidently the case recently in the Romanian elections, or open and blatant, as is currently being practiced particularly intensively on (social media) platform X,” he said. Scholz, a Social Democrat who wil...

IT is to be expected that the leader of a country, whether elected, or belonging to the military, or installed in office with the help of non-democratic and authoritarian forces, would say something like ‘civil disobedience is anti-national’ and that this suggests ‘enmity with the country’. One expects this from those who feel threatened by the power of the people, especially when such presumed power is ephemeral. In fact, protest and criticism of those in power (whether in government or behind the scenes), and even civil disobedience, if it comes to that, are patriotic acts. The right of citizens to protest and to articulate their causes when ignored through other means, whether through parliament or through the justice system, is part of the legitimate and democratic framework of praxis. Under authoritarian regimes or under direct military rule, which we have experienced for some decades, such protests have far graver consequences than they do under civilian or elected regimes, eve...

ISLAMABAD: Amid a flurry of activity on the diplomatic front, the year-end press briefing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday left several questions unanswered, as the Foreign Office spokesperson parried queries regarding recent air strikes on Afghanistan, as well as pro-Imran Khan statements from an official of the incoming Donald Trump administration. Responding to a volley of questions about voices from the US, including President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming aide, Richard Grenell , demanding Imran Khan’s release, FO spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said she would not like to comment on “anyone making statements in their individual capacity”. “We would like to have positive, constructive relations with the United States on the basis of mutual respect, mutual interest and non-interference in each other’s domestic affairs… We will continue to engage with officials and public personalities in the United States and discuss with them, issues of mutual interest and mutual...

KARACHI: The government borrowings from banks for budgetary support were negative during the first half of the current fiscal year ending Dec 31, indicating higher liquidity in the national exchequer. The State Bank’s latest data for the July 1 to Dec 13 period showed a net debt retirement of Rs2.03 trillion against a net borrowing of Rs2.875tr in the same period last year. Experts believe this is historical as the governments in the past had been borrowing heavily for budgetary support, and this debt retirement could be the result of Rs2.7tr inflows from the State Bank in profit. They also noted that this debt retirement was significant given that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) missed the projected collection target during the first five months of 2024-25. Oozing with liquidity, state retires Rs2.03tr debt in July-December The government borrowed Rs7.479tr in FY24 against Rs3.748tr in FY23, reflecting a doubling of borrowing for budgetary support compared to the preceding y...

PTI Information Secretary Sheikh Waqas Akram on Wednesday criticised Information Minister Attaullah Tarar for advocating for the trial of civilians in military courts, stating that the trials “tarnished Pakistan’s democratic and constitutional image around the world”. Twenty-five PTI activists were sentenced to rigorous imprisonment ranging from two to 10 years by a military court for their involvement in the May 9, 2023 riots, the military’s media wing said on December 21. The United Kingdom on Monday said the trial of civilians in military courts “ lacks transparency ”, while the European Union expressed concern , stating that “these verdicts are seen as inconsistent with the obligations that Pakistan has undertaken under the Inter­national Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”. During a press conference today, the information minister argued that the military will prosecute those who attack military installations, even if they are civilians. Responding to foreign criticism, T...

THOUGH the KP government has hammered out a seemingly comprehensive ‘ roadmap ’ to bring peace to Kurram district, the barbaric murder and decapitation of two men on Monday on their way to Parachinar underscores the fact that implementing these measures will require the state’s full commitment. Influenced by decades-old tribal and sectarian rivalries, with the state mostly playing the role of bystander, and complicated by geopolitical factors, the Kurram conundrum will require more than mere statements to resolve. From the looks of it, the KP cabinet’s roadmap seems quite detailed. For example, it envisions a special force to protect the region’s thoroughfares, a deweaponisation drive , as well as measures to punish hatemongers spreading incendiary content online. If implemented in full, these steps could bring peace and healing to Kurram. But it is a very big ‘if’. The latest round of bloodletting was sparked after a convoy was attacked last month; over 130 lives have been lo...

PESHAWAR: Pakistani fighter jets bombed four locations, said to be camps of the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in Afghanistan’s eastern Pak­tika province, killing and wounding several suspec­ted terrorists, security officials said on Tuesday night. Sources said that TTP camps in the Murgha and Laman areas of Bernal district were targeted, including one that was used by Sher Zaman alias Mukhlis Yar, Commander Abu Hamza, Commander Akhtar Muhammad and the head of TTP’s media arm, Umar Media. In a post on X by the Afghan defence ministry, the Afghan Taliban regime confirmed reports of the strike carried out by Pakis­tani forces, but claimed that the dead and injured included a number of children and other civilians. More information was not available until the time of going to print. The strikes came the same day that a Pakistani delegation, led by Special Representative Ambassador Muhammad Sadiq, met interim Interior Minister Sirajudddin Haqqani and Foreign Minister Amir Mut...

The Foreign Office (FO) on Tuesday — in a response to critical statements over the recent sentencing of 25 civilians by military courts — said that the country’s legal system was consistent with “international human rights law, including provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)”. This week, the European Union , the United Kingdom , and the United States raised concerns over the sentencing , which came after a military court last week sentenced 25 PTI activists to imprisonment ranging from two to 10 years for their involvement in the May 9, 2023 riots , which broke out following the arrest of PTI founder Imran Khan. The EU spokesperson recalled that under the EU’s Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+), beneficiary countries, including Pakistan, have voluntarily agreed to implement effectively 27 international core conventions, including the ICCPR, in order to continue benefitting from GSP+ status. Meanwhile, the PTI — whose activists were...

IN The Beatles’ scheme the pop quartet assigned to themselves, Ringo Starr kept the rhythm on the drums. But it was John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and less routinely George Harrison, whose melodies he provided foot-tapping rhythm to. That was precisely the job of India’s tabla players of yore before Zakir Hussain lifted the art of the percussionist into a globally applauded orbit. The tabla’s links with Bhakti bhajans , Sikh shabads , and Sufi qawwalis were well-established in the 19th century. Glimpse, for example, the Sufi poet of the Naqshbandi silsila , Khwaja Mir Dard, from the period. He likened the beat cycle of Roopak taal to the mystical proclamation: “Be in the world, not of it.” Many would see in it a bit of Albert Camus’ Outsider . “ Khalq mein hain par juda sab khalq se rahte hain ham/Taal ki ginti se baahar jis tarah Roopak mein sam .” To know the essence of a complex tabla beat and frame it in a mystical verse tells us of how thoroughly informed Sufis, poets, and as...