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By S.M. Inam The release of another one-billion-dollar tranche under Pakistan’s $7bn extended fund facility with the International Monetary Fund might have been expected to offer some breathing space to a battered economy. Instead, it has arrived with a familiar sting: a new round of conditions that all but guarantee further pain for households already stretched to their limits. Under 11 additional requirements attached to the next disbursement, Islamabad has been pressed to raise electricity and gas prices, cut subsidies and increase fuel levies. The result, economists warn, is likely to be another surge in inflation that will steadily hollow…

By Asghar Ali Mubarak The United Nations report on the latest India-Pakistan crisis lands like an uncomfortable mirror held up to South Asia’s most enduring fault line. Stripped of nationalist slogans and battlefield bravado, it lays out a stark legal and moral assessment: Pakistan was not proven to be involved in the Pahalgam attack, while India’s military action of 7 May crossed a clear red line under international law. For a region accustomed to competing narratives, the significance of this finding lies not merely in who is blamed, but in what it says about power, restraint and the fragility of…

By Atiq Raja History and legend often blur into one another at moments when moral darkness meets an unexpected light. In the Buddhist tradition, few stories capture that collision more powerfully than the account of Angulimala, a man whose name once inspired terror and whose transformation endures as one of the most unsettling and hopeful parables of human change. It is a story not about excusing violence, but about confronting it with an idea radical enough to stop it: compassion. Angulimala, whose name is sometimes distorted in local retellings, was said to have murdered 999 people, wearing their severed fingers…

By Moin Ullah Shah KARACHI: Karachi police say they have arrested two suspects within hours of an armed robbery at a mobile phone shop in the city’s Badar Commercial area, following what they described as a timely and intelligence-led operation. According to District South police, the incident took place on 20 December when three armed men entered a mobile phone shop in Badar Commercial and stole mobile phones at gunpoint before fleeing the scene. The senior superintendent of police for District South, Mehzor Ali, said officers launched an immediate response after receiving information about the robbery. Police said intelligence-based inputs…

By Shahzad Bukhari TANDO ALLAHYAR: Claims of an education emergency in Sindh are being contradicted on the ground, with students at a government primary school forced to study sitting on bare earth in harsh winter conditions. At the Government Boys Primary School in Ghulam Rasool Arain village, in Sindh’s Tando Allahyar district, the absence of basic facilities has left children with no option but to attend classes seated on the cold floor. Students told local media that they study in the same conditions regardless of whether it is summer or winter. They said teachers, including a female teacher, also sit…

By Uzma Ehtasham The image is an uncomfortable one for Washington: American weapons, bought with US taxpayers’ money and intended to secure a fragile republic, now forming the backbone of the Taliban’s security forces. A new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction lays out this reality in forensic detail, and in doing so casts a long, unforgiving shadow over two decades of US engagement in Afghanistan. What was meant to build stability has instead strengthened the coercive power of a regime the United States spent 20 years fighting. Sigar’s latest assessment, a 137-page audit of America’s longest…

By Syed Shamim Akhtar The United Nations General Assembly has once again underscored a principle that, on paper, seems unassailable: the Palestinian people have an inalienable right to self-determination. With 164 member states voting in favor, eight against, and nine abstentions, the resolution reflects near-universal consensus on the legality and legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations for statehood. Yet the overwhelming support is largely symbolic, a reflection of international sentiment rather than a mechanism for immediate change, arriving amid a deepening humanitarian and political crisis in the occupied territories. From Gaza, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan framed the vote as both a…

By Atiq Raja In a culture that prizes immediacy—instant messages, same-day results, and overnight success—patience often seems old-fashioned, even inconvenient. Yet, time and again, history and personal experience reveal a different truth: patience is not a weakness but a quiet, formidable power. It is a force that allows people to navigate complexity, endure hardship, and cultivate meaningful success. Those who understand and practice patience do more than wait for life to unfold—they shape it with clarity, resilience, and foresight. Patience is not simply a pause; it is the ability to remain composed, attentive, and hopeful amid delay, difficulty, or discomfort.…