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MARDAN: The Anti-Terrorism Court Mardan on Wednesday announced death sentence to a blasphemy accused, who was arrested five years ago from Guli Bagh area here. The culprit identified as Irfan was taken into custody on February 2, 2017 when he allegedly committed blasphemy. The Hoti police station had registered an FIR against the accused under 295-C. The ATC also imposed Rs400,000 penalty on him and awarded five years imprisonment to him in two other cases. Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2023 from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/2cNJDbw

• Dozens of dogs poisoned by DMC-East • Official says LG law makes local councils responsible for seizure, treatment of stray animals, but makes no mention of culling dogs • Experts urge govt to find scientific way to control canine population, say dogs vaccinated against rabies are less aggressive KARACHI: Despite having a fully fledged rabies control programme in the province under which the government is supposed to control canine population in a scientific and humane manner, district municipal authorities continue with the cruel, obsolete practice of poisoning free-roaming dogs in the metropolis, it emerged on Wednesday. Sources said the most recent anti-stray dog campaign was carried out by the District Municipal Corporation (DMC) East where dozens of dogs were poisoned to death on Tuesday night. The drive saw culling of stray dogs in several areas including Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Juma goth and Khudadad Colony. Sharing her concerns, Dr Naseem Salahuddin, head of...

BENGALURU: Indonesia and Malaysia will delay trade talks with the European Union (EU) while they seek fairer treatment for small palm oil producers, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister Fadillah Yusof said the EU’s recently adopted law banning the import of products that come from land cleared of forests was “punitive and unfair treatment towards us and to smallholders in particular”, the report added. Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto said the policy favoured “large corporations or multinationals” which could afford the level of bureaucracy that the regulation will demand, the FT reported. Indonesia and Malaysia earlier this month sent top officials to the EU to voice concern over the deforestation law, which they believe could be detrimental to small farming businesses. Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2023 from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/LW0NdZj

WASHINGTON: Incar­cerated Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui had the first reunion in 20 years with her sister Fowzia at a prison hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, on Tuesday. The two sisters met again on Wednesday and will have a third meeting on Thursday (today) at Carswell, the prison medical facility in Fort Worth. Dr Siddiqui, a US citizen of Pakistan origin, has not been in contact with any of her family members for more than a decade. “My heart is racing, my mind in turmoil, I may actually see my little sister 1st time in 20 years,” Fowzia Siddiqui said in a tweet posted before the meeting. “I have no words to describe my feelings. I wish I could hug her; hold her hand and bring her home.” “It was a private meeting, no official was present,” Aftab Chaudhary, Pakistan’s Consul Gene­ral in Houston, Texas, told Dawn . “The government did help her in getting a visa and we are here to provide whatever assistance she and others accompanying her may need.” After the meetin...

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar announced on Wednesday that the price of petrol was being reduced by Rs8 and high-speed diesel (HSD) by Rs5 per litre for the next fortnight. The new prices of petrol and HSD are Rs262 and Rs253 per litre, respectively. View this post on Instagram The price of light diesel oil (LDO) was also slashed by Rs5 per litre to Rs147.68 while the price for kerosene oil remained unchanged at Rs164.07. In a video address, he said that there was no substantial change in the international prices of petroleum products in the last 15 days and neither had the rupee appreciated against the dollar. “But the government tried to create as much room as possible to provide relief to the people,” the finance minister said. The cuts come on the heels of a previous round of price reductions in the prices of petrol, HSD and LDO on May 15 by Rs12, Rs30 and Rs12, respectively. While announcing these cuts in prices, Dar had a...

Kosovo’s top Olympic body said on Wednesday it had asked the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to open disciplinary proceedings against Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic over his public statements on clashes in the country. On Monday, after confrontations began between ethnic Albanians and Serbs, Djokovic scrawled the message “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia. Stop the violence” on a camera following his victory in the opening round of Roland Garros. A Kosovo Olympic Committee (KOC) spokesman told AFP on Wednesday that Djokovic was “stirring up” political tensions. Djokovic “breached the fundamental principles of the Olympic Charter regarding political neutrality and involved yet another political statement in sports”, the KOC wrote in a letter sent to the IOC on Tuesday. KOC head Ismet Krasniqi asked the IOC to initiate disciplinary proceedings against Djokovic, an Olympic bronze medallist in 2008, said the letter posted on its Facebook page. Such “behaviour cannot be tolerate...

The venue inscribed on the birthday invitation was an orphanage in Islamabad. Walking down the entrance, I saw a stage fully decorated with the honouree’s beautiful calligraphy and painting collection. The birthday girl’s father, a man weighed down by loss yet resilient to the core, embraced me and thanked me for coming. Unfortunately, the birthday girl would not be joining us today. Noor Mukadam was murdered a year and a half ago at age 27, and we were all present to celebrate her memory. Shaukat Mukadam, her father, told me that his daughter would come here every year to celebrate her birthday with the orphans. “She would have been here if she were alive,” he murmured with a smile, his eyes glistening with unshed tears, glancing around the venue as if he felt her presence lingering among us. Remembering the victim of a horrific murder that jolted the city was a small crowd of mere 10 to 15 people present in a two million-strong city. In our midst at Noor’s birthday, the family of ...

LAHORE: Caretaker Chief Minister Mohsin Naqvi says the government will present provincial budget for four months. Talking to a delegation of the All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS), led by its President Nazafreen Saigol Lakhani, here on Tuesday, he said a good news would come soon regarding improvement in the economic situation. He lambasted the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) for showing old videos about ill-treatment of women prisoners in jails. “A nefarious propaganda is being churned out. A total of 11 women involved in attacks on military installations are in jail on judicial remand,” he said and added the arrested women were kept in jail as per its manual. He said some 500 women were wanted in the May 9 incidents but the government showed restraint. “Clear instructions have been given to not arrest anyone innocent. A dangerous plan was hatched to burn valuable aircrafts in the attack on the Mianwali Air Base. Attackers of Mianwali Air Base brought weapons concealed in troll...

• PMA says chlorination of potable water by KWSB found to be inadequate • People advised to drink boiled water, avoid washing face or bathe with polluted water KARACHI: A day after the Sindh health department confirmed three deaths from Naegleria fowleri in a short span of one week in the metropolis, health experts associated with the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) on Tuesday called upon the government to ensure supply of properly chlorinated water to citizens. The experts are alarmed over the fact that none of the three victims of Naegleria fowleri, better known as brain-eating amoeba, had a history of swimming and it appeared that the infection occurred due to the use of contaminated, or non-chlorinated, tap water. “The association is concerned over the fact that N. fowleri has been reported from Karachi’s municipal water supply, which is managed by Karachi Water & Sewerage Board (KWSB). We fear that unreported deaths will be higher than reported ones. Unfortunately, safe...

KARACHI: Bank lending to the private sector has shrunk to just Rs28 billion this fiscal year after plummeting 98 per cent compared to last year, central bank data showed on Tuesday. The State Bank reported that from July 1 to May 19, the private sector borrowed a record low Rs27.9bn from banks compared to Rs1.414 trillion a year ago. The economy has been facing a constant problem of a record-high interest rate of 21pc and headline inflation at 36.4pc. Average inflation is estimated to reach 30pc this fiscal year, which ends in June. “There is no chance to run a business with such a high interest rate and an unprecedented 36pc inflation,” Aamir Aziz, who manufactures and exports finished textile products, told Dawn . He said textile exports had already started falling and feared that things would worsen in the coming months since millers had exhausted their cotton stocks. “The country has produced five million cotton bales while the need is about 15 million bales. The country has no...

PARIS: Global leaders should be working to red­u­­ce “the risk of extinction” from artificial intelligen­ce technology, a group of ind­ustry chiefs and experts warned on Tuesday, urging policymakers to equate its threat on a par with risks posed by pandemics and nuclear war. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” more than 350 signatories wrote in a letter published by the nonprofit Centre for AI Safety (CAIS). The one-line statement was signed by dozens of specialists, including Sam Altman whose firm OpenAI created the ChatGPT bot. As well as Altman, they included the CEOs of AI firms DeepMind and Anthropic, and executives from Microsoft and Google. Also among them were Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio — two of the three so-called “godfathers of AI” who received the 2018 Turing Award for their work on deep learning — and professors from institutions ranging from Harvard to Chin...

IMPORTERS have urged the government to allow them to import wheat from Ukraine. They claim that at the current price, the imported grain will cost less than locally-produced wheat.—Reuters/file KARACHI: The prices of wheat and pulses have failed to subside even after massive imports in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year as consumers were still paying hefty prices for the commodities. The government spent over $1 billion to import 2.68 million tonnes of wheat during July-April FY23 compared to $795 million for procuring 2.20m tonnes in the corresponding period last year. The average per tonne (APT) price of grain stood at $393 this fiscal year compared to $360 in the corresponding period last year. Similarly, a whopping $818m was spent to import 1.14m tonnes of pulses compared to $520m on the 783,634 tonnes in the same period last year. The APT price this year was $715 against $664 last year. Traders plead with govt to allow private wheat import The latest Sensiti...

ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial on Monday remarked that the Supreme Court did not want to strike down the Justice Qazi Faez Isa-led commission, formed by the government to probe audio leaks, but the move to stay proceedings was merely aimed at protecting the independence of the judiciary. Proposing that the judiciary and executive interact with each other in a transparent manner, Justice Bandial observed that the government should consult the chief justice of Pakistan before inducting judges into judicial commissions in line with convention. CJP Bandial made these remarks during the hearing of a review petition against the apex court’s decision to hold elections in Punjab on May 14. He referred to the May 26 order which stayed proceedings of the commission and said the AGP had read out the order before the commission in which some important aspects were discussed and made it clear that the court did not want to “strike down the commission but to protect and defend the inde...

KYIV: Russia fired a barrage of missiles at Kyiv on Monday sending panicked residents running for shelter in an unusual daytime attack on the Ukrainian capital following overnight strikes. A series of explosions rang out in Kyiv on Monday as Russia targeted the city for the second time in 24 hours. The latest barrages hit the pro-Western country as the Ukrainian capital was still recovering from an overnight on Saturday drone attack, the biggest since Russia’s invasion began in February last year. AFP journalists heard at least 10 explosions from around 11:10am (local time) in Kyiv, starting just a few minutes after an air raid warning sounded. Heavy barrage sparks panic as people run for shelter in a metro station Authorities later said Ukrainian air defences had downed all the Russian missiles launched against the Kyiv region. One injured man was hospitalised, they said. “A total of 11 missiles were fired: ‘Iskander-M’ and ‘Iskander-K’ from a northerly direction,” Ukr­aine’s ...

STOCKHOLM: A harness-wearing Beluga whale that turned up in Norway in 2019, sparking speculation it was a spy trained by the Russian navy, has appeared off Sweden’s coast, an organisation following him said on Monday. First discovered in Norway’s far northern region of Finnmark, the whale spent more than three years slowly moving down the top half of the Norwegian coastline, before suddenly speeding up in recent months to cover the second half and on to Sweden. On Sunday, he was observed in Hunn­ebostrand, off Sweden’s southwestern coast. “We don’t know why he has sped up so fast right now,” especially since he is moving “very quickly away from his natural environment”, Sebastian Str­and, a marine biologist with the OneWhale organisation, said. “It could be hormones driving him to find a mate. Or it could be loneliness as Belugas are a very social species — it could be that he’s searching for other Beluga whales.” Believed to be 13-14 years old, Strand said the whale is “at an age...

LAHORE: The caretaker Punjab government has placed before the Lahore High Court documents showing that a ministerial committee that met last year to modify the terms and conditions for corporate farming under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), had not recorded its formal minutes. The provincial government submitted the record in the case challenging its decision to hand over 45,267 acres on lease to the Pakistan Army for corporate farming, as the decision taken in this meeting formed the basis for the handing over of the land. Justice Abid Hussain Chattha, who is hearing a public interest petition, had stayed the handing over of the land. Asked about the names of the provincial ministers who attended the Oct 14, 2022 meeting — held before the dissolution of the provincial assembly by Chaudhry Parvez Elahi — a law officer said Mohsin Leghari and Raja Basharat were in attendance, though the latter did not put his signatures on the attendance sheet. Two ministers attended O...

• WFP, FAO report notes $77.5bn to be repaid over next three years • Political instability, lack of IMF deal to hit ability to import food ISLAMABAD: Acute food insecurity in Pakistan is likely to further exacerbate in coming months if the economic and political crisis further worsens, compounding the effects of the 2022 floods, warns a new United Nations report published on Monday. The report titled, Hunger Hotspots: FAO-WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity, jointly published by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Progra­mme (WFP) covers the June to November 2023 period. It notes that amid the current global economic slowdown, mounting public debt has exacerbated the ongoing financial crisis in Pakistan. It points out that authorities will have to repay $77.5 billion external debt between April 2023 and June 2026, a substantial amount considering the country’s GDP of $350bn in 2021. Growing political instability and lagging reforms prevent th...

Lahore: A joint investigation team (JIT) probing the attack on Lahore Corps Commander House (Jinnah House) on May 9 has summoned PTI Chairman Imran Khan on Tuesday (today). Mr Khan has been asked to appear before the JIT at 4pm at the Qilla Gujjar police headquarters. He has been called for questioning in a case registered with the Sarwar Road police station against the attack. Mr Khan has been nominated in the case for allegedly abetting the attackers who ransacked and set fire to the Jinnah House when he was in prison. “Imran Khan is required to attend the office of the DIG Investigation to join the investigation proceedings entrusted to the JTI formed by the Punjab government,” reads the summon notice issued by Lahore DIG (investigation) Kamran Adil, who is heading the JIT. Lahore police chief Bilal Siddique Kamyana confirmed that the PTI chief has been summoned for questioning. An official source said that the former prime minister will be questioned to determine the scale of...

Note: The fiscal year and calendar year have been equated for the purpose of this graph Source: TradeMaps, Pakistan Economic Survey Dal is a humble meal. Be it the big boss man opting for a light meal in his air-conditioned office or his guard sweating in boots with a gun on his back, dal is ubiquitous across the country. Repeated calls for imported substitution and increased localisation of mobiles and cars seem to overlook that almost every bite consumed by any Pakistani is made of imported goods. Whether pulses, palm oil, condiments, spices or wheat for roti, Pakistan highly depends on its imports. There have been times when some varieties of dal were priced higher than chicken. For example, at one point in 2016, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar famously advised the country to eat chicken instead of lentils — at that time, mash daal was selling at Rs260 per kg, whereas chicken was at Rs200 per kg. Since then, prices have roughly doubled, with chicken at Rs400 per kg last month and M...

Societies leaning towards capitalism have small governments that provide essential public goods to the people, formulate policy and leave the rest to the imagination and executing capabilities of the private sector. Governments in most developing countries, on the other hand, continue to be large. Investment in these countries is low, and the loss in the investment share of the GDP is either picked up by government spending or higher levels of consumption. Government revenues in many of these countries, India, Pakistan and, to some extent, Bangladesh, which has successfully implemented many fiscal consolidation measures, are low, and so are their fiscal capacities to undertake public welfare programmes. Governments are large with idle administrative capacities, often leading them to imagine and perform unnecessary regulatory functions. Many of the regulations stifle the private sector, thereby seriously limiting its growth potential. Any policy, plan or strategy that makes a case ...

THE world has seen sweeping geopolitical changes over the past 70 years. The international landscape has been fundamentally transformed by the dispersion of power more widely among states. This redistribution of global power is a dynamic process and continues apace, accelerated by economic and technological developments of the 21st century. The shift in economic power from the West to the rest is one of the defining features of the contemporary world. Multipolarity is an increasing reality. So too is the fact that in a diverse, complex and interconnected world even the most powerful countries cannot achieve outcomes on their own and need the help of allies. The institutional architecture of the international system, however, remains the product of a specific historical era. International institutions — the Bretton Woods twins, IMF and World Bank, and the United Nations — created in 1944-1945, reflect the realities of that time. The structure and composition of the UN’s premier organ, ...

ISLAMABAD: In the abs­ence of an approved policy, the federal government has allowed Sindh to earn $200-220 million (abo­ut Rs57-63 billion) of carbon credits over the next two decades for its efforts to expand mangrove forests under Pakis­tan’s commitments for unconditional contribution to a global drive for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In 2021, the Ministry of Climate Change submitted the nationally determ­ined contributions (NDC) to the United Nations Fra­mework Convention on Climate Change. The ministry pledged that 15pc of the carbon credits generated — i.e. reducing aro­u­nd 240 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent — in the country will be Pakis­tan’s unconditional contribution towards the NDCs. Major sectors included in this reduction are energy, industry, forests, agriculture and transport. NDCs are at the heart of the Paris Agreement and the achievement of its long-term goals. They embody efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of ...

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Sunday said negotiations can’t be held with PTI Chairman Imran Khan until “he apologises, takes corrective actions, owns the problem, and promises” the nation that anything even close to the May 9 riots will take place in the future. In recent days, Imran has made impassioned appeals to state institutions to immediately sit with his party, talk and find a solution to put the country on the path of progress. The PTI on Saturday also constituted a seven-member “negotiation committee” without any explanation of who the committee will negotiate with for talks on elections. Speaking on Geo’s Jirga , the PML-N leader was of the view that the May 9 riots “changed everything completely” bringing the election negotiations between the government and PTI back to square one. “Now in this situation how will you negotiate until he (Imran) doesn’t apologise to the nation, he has only condemned the Jinnah House [torching] along with others, but he hasn’t condemned a...

PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif on Sunday rued that “some people” had tried to “pull his legs” during his three government tenures when he aimed to ensure that Pakistan remained ahead in development and prosperity. Addressing a PML-N rally in Lahore to commemorate the silver jubilee of Youm-i-Takbeer, the date of Pakistan’s nuclear tests, Nawaz said that going ahead with the tests despite all international pressures and offers was the “real absolutely not”. “We do not carry aggressive designs against anyone but cannot permit anyone to look at us with a dirty eye. It has always been my wish for which I made efforts … that Pakistan remains ahead in development and prosperity as well … but what can I do unfortunately I have to say, that some people began pulling my legs. “This happened in 1993, again in 1999 and you saw it happened in 2017 as well. Who knows what fear these people have of me that they want to ruin a smiling and thriving country,” the former premier said. He contrasted t...