Gilgit-Baltistan does not need another season of political theatre. After 22 years without elected local bodies, the August 2 schedule should have turned politics towards streets, drains, schools, clinics, markets, tourism and jobs: the daily grammar of governance. Instead, with the Assembly election fast approaching, allegations and counter-allegations are crowding out the only question that […]
Motorway Rape Case
The Lahore High Court’s dismissal of the appeals in the 2020 Motorway gang-rape case brings legal closure one step closer in a case that shook Pakistan’s conscience. The two convicts, sentenced by an anti-terrorism court in 2021, have failed to overturn their sentences. This is welcome, necessary, but sadly, still not enough. After every high-profile […]
TODAY’S CARTOON
Trade Tide
Pakistan’s effort to boost investment and create jobs through Special Economic Zones (SEZs) has not fully met its early targets, but it is far from a failure. Speaking at the Pakistan-China Industrialisation Dialogue, Investment Minister Qaiser Ahmed Sheikh acknowledged the gaps while also highlighting the progress made under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Out of nine planned […]
Super El Niño
Asia is already under pressure due to ongoing tensions in the Middle East, and now it faces another serious challenge: the possible arrival of a strong El Niño. This natural climate event changes weather patterns across the world, often bringing extreme heat, droughts, or heavy rainfall. According to the World Meteorological Organization, El Niño conditions […]
Curriculum Changes
Punjab’s decision to move grades one to five away from rote memorisation and towards concept-based learning is, on paper, the rare education headline that deserves neither cynicism nor applause. The problem it names is real, old and visible every day: a child who can recite the definition of evaporation but cannot explain why wet clothes […]
Crypto Hour
The Virtual Assets Act 2026 has legalised the sector, created the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, and opened a formal path for banks to serve licensed virtual asset service providers under State Bank conditions. Far above a small administrative shift, it has marked the end of a long official pretence that crypto activity could be […]
School Shootings
The coffins in Kahramanmaras would haunt Turkey for years. Eight children and a teacher were buried after a 14-year-old walked into a middle school with pistols taken from his father and turned classrooms into a killing ground. A country (like many others around the world) that has long treated school shootings as an American sickness […]
HIV Crisis
The most consequential detail in the harrowing BBC documentary on Tehsil Headquarters Hospital Taunsa is not merely that unsafe injections were documented inside a paediatric ward, but that this surfaced months after Punjab authorities had already acknowledged at least 106 HIV-positive children in March 2025, suspended the hospital’s medical superintendent, initiated screening through the AIDS […]
Eid in Turbulent Times
Eid-ul-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan and a return to ordinary life – shaped, at least in principle, by gratitude, charity and human fellowship. Too much, however, has happened in too few years for the occasion to be approached as though the country were merely preparing for another holiday. The pandemic years took one kind […]