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By Aslam Shah KARACHI: The Karachi Water and Sewerage Services Improvement Project (KWSSIP), backed by the World Bank, is under fresh scrutiny amid allegations of financial irregularities, mismanagement, and a refusal by the current Project Director to investigate former senior officials. Sources allege that Project Director Ayesha Hamid has declined to authorize inquiries into former Project Director Usman Moazzam and associates, including Shakeel Qureshi and Muhammad Asif Khan. The transfers of these influential officers have sparked unrest within KWSSIP and the Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation (KWSC). Critics claim that nearly 50% of the Rs 672 billion allocated for reform…

By Rai Tajammal Bhatti FAISALABAD: Jhang Police have successfully solved a blind murder case, arresting the accused through professional investigation, timely action, and modern investigative methods. According to SP Investigation Rehman Qadir, the victim, Waqas alias Vicky, was stabbed to death on October 18 in the Kotwali police station area. Police immediately reached the scene, shifted the body for postmortem, registered a case, and launched a formal investigation. The accused, identified as Nadir Khan Pathan, admitted entering the victim’s house to steal a mobile phone. When confronted by Waqas, he stabbed him repeatedly, causing fatal injuries. SP Rehman Qadir praised…

By Wadood Mehsud SOUTH WAZIRISTAN UPPER: Tribal elders in South Waziristan Upper have accused local government officials of overseeing unlawful salary deductions from municipal staff. They demanded the immediate transfer of the assistant director and a transparent inquiry into the alleged irregularities. Speaking at a press conference at the Mehsud Press Club, Malik Nawab Sher, Malik Rahmatullah, Malik Karamat Ali, and Malik Gulistan said large-scale financial misconduct had undermined basic civic services in the district. They said the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had appointed 114 sanitation workers across 57 village councils, along with 55 village council secretaries and 55 Class-IV employees,…

By Wadood Mehsud TANK: Residents of Mohalla Khan Colony staged a protest against the district administration, accusing officials of ignoring long-standing infrastructure and drainage problems. They also announced a boycott of the ongoing polio vaccination campaign. Demonstrators gathered outside the Mehsud Press Club, chanting slogans against the deputy commissioner and the executive engineer of public health. They called for immediate action to end years of official inaction. Muhammad Nawaz Mehsud said community elders had met the deputy commissioner several times through jirgas to raise concerns, but repeated assurances had not been followed by practical measures. Requests for further meetings, he…

By Abdul Qadir Mahesar HYDERABAD: Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) at the US Embassy in Islamabad Natalie A Baker said cricket’s expanding global footprint — including its scheduled appearance at the 2028 Olympic Games in the United States — reflected how sport could serve as a bridge between nations, cultures and communities. Speaking at an event in Hyderabad, the envoy said the inclusion of cricket in the 2028 Summer Olympics marked the beginning of a new chapter for a game long associated with England, Australia, and South Asia but now steadily gaining ground in North America. She said the moment…

Elections in Bangladesh have seldom resembled the quiet, procedural exercises in democracy that political theorists might idealize. More often, they have unfolded as high-stakes confrontations, bitterly fought and freighted with history. Power has tended to swing not as part of a gradual democratic rhythm but as the outcome of contests that leave institutions strained and society divided. Against that backdrop, the emphatic return of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to power after two decades marks a moment of unusual consequence — not only for Dhaka but for a region where political tremors are rarely contained within national borders. The scale of…

By S.M. Inam The latest figures from Pakistan’s federal finance ministry make for sobering reading. Fifteen state-owned enterprises accumulated combined losses of Rs833bn in a single year, with the National Highway Authority topping the list. The scale of the deficit is not an accounting curiosity. It is a fiscal alarm bell, echoing through a budget already stretched by debt servicing, defence outlays and the social costs of inflation. These losses do not disappear into spreadsheets. They are absorbed by the national exchequer and, in the end, by taxpayers navigating stagnant wages and rising prices. Pakistan has wrestled with the inefficiencies…

By Muhammad Mohsin Iqbal The word sportsmanship was once spoken with reverence, not as a slogan but as a lived tradition, especially on the playing fields of South Asia. In earlier decades, when tempers between neighboring states often ran high, sport still retained a rare dignity. Pakistan and India, despite wars, diplomatic breakdowns and enduring political hostility, continued to meet in hockey, cricket and other games under tense circumstances, yet the tension seldom poisoned the spirit of play. Teams travelled to each other’s countries, crowds watched with passion but restraint, and the field itself remained a neutral ground where humanity…

By Atiq Raja Artificial intelligence has slipped quietly from the realm of speculation into the infrastructure of daily life. What was once confined to research laboratories and academic journals now shapes financial markets, diagnoses disease, curates information and calibrates military strategy. From predictive analytics to generative systems capable of producing text, images and code, the technology is advancing at a velocity that feels almost disorienting. Yet as machine capability expands, a more searching question presses in: is our ethical framework evolving with equal urgency? The dilemma is not technological but moral. Innovation tends to move in exponential curves; ethical reflection…