Masood, Abdullah centuries lift Pakistan to 328-4 in first England Test

Update Masood, Abdullah centuries lift Pakistan to 328-4 in first England Test
Pakistan's Shan Masood celebrates after scoring 150 runs in the First Test between England and Pakistan at the Multan Cricket Stadium in Multan, Pakistan, on October 7, 2024. (REUTERS)
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Updated 07 October 2024
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Masood, Abdullah centuries lift Pakistan to 328-4 in first England Test

Masood, Abdullah centuries lift Pakistan to 328-4 in first England Test
  • Masood’s brilliant 151 was his first hundred for four years, while Shafique also returned to form with 102
  • England briefly fought back as they removed both Masood, Shafique in space of just two runs in third session

Multan: Skipper Shan Masood and opener Abdullah Shafique both cracked centuries as Pakistan scored an impressive 328-4 on the opening day of the first Test against England in Multan on Monday.
Masood’s brilliant 151 was his first hundred for four years, while Shafique also returned to form with 102 as the pair put on a solid 253-run stand for the second wicket after Pakistan won the toss and batted.
England, led by Ollie Pope in the absence of the injured Ben Stokes, briefly fought back when they removed both Masood and Shafique in the space of just two runs in the third session.
The visitors took the second new ball at 308-3 and dismissed Babar Azam, trapped leg-before by fast bowler Chris Woakes for 30. Saud Shakeel was unbeaten on 35 at the close of play with nightwatchman Naseem Shah yet to score.
England’s attack toiled hard in the Multan heat, with fast bowler Gus Atkinson the most successful with 2-70. Woakes and spinner Jack Leach both took a wicket each.
Masood had been under pressure to make runs, with his last hundred coming against the same opponents at Manchester in 2020 — 14 Tests and 27 innings ago.
He pushed Woakes for a single to complete his fifth Test hundred off just 102 balls with two sixes and 13 fours in a dominant display of batting.
Shafique was equally assured as the pair made England’s three-pronged pace attack and two spinners toil on a batting-friendly pitch.
England took a wicket in the fourth over when Atkinson forced opener Saim Ayub to glove a shorter ball down the leg side to wicketkeeper Jamie Smith with the total on eight.
The visitors thought they had a second when pace bowler Brydon Carse, on debut, trapped Masood in front on 16 and umpire Kumar Dharmasena gave him out.
However, a review showed the ball had pitched outside the leg stump.
Masood went on the attack against Shoaib Bashir, hitting the off-spinner for four boundaries before two more off Atkinson took him to his 11th Test fifty.
Shafique survived being run out on 34 when Pope missed the stumps with his diving throw with the batsman well short of his ground. He smashed two fours and a six off Bashir to reach his sixth Test half-century.
Both teams have picked three fast bowlers and two spinners, hoping that the pitch will offer new-ball help to the seamers before taking spin later in the match.
The remaining Tests are in Multan (October 15-19) and Rawalpindi (October 24-28).


Punjab invites China’s Jinko Solar to set up manufacturing plant in Pakistan

Punjab invites China’s Jinko Solar to set up manufacturing plant in Pakistan
Updated 13 December 2024
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Punjab invites China’s Jinko Solar to set up manufacturing plant in Pakistan

Punjab invites China’s Jinko Solar to set up manufacturing plant in Pakistan
  • Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif meets Chinese solar company officials in Shanghai during factory visit
  • Experts say Pakistan has ideal climatic conditions for solar power generation with over nine hours of daily sunlight

ISLAMABAD: Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif has invited China’s Jinko Solar Company to set up a manufacturing plant in Pakistan’s most populous province, according to televised comments by the provincial chief executive released on Friday.

Pakistan’s energy sector has long struggled with financial strain due to circular debt, power theft and transmission losses, leading to blackouts and high electricity costs. 

Experts say Pakistan has ideal climatic conditions for solar power generation, with over nine hours of daily sunlight in most parts of the country. According to the World Bank, utilizing just 0.071 percent of the country’s area for solar power generation would meet Pakistan’s entire electricity demand.

Currently, only 5.4 percent of Pakistan’s installed power generation capacity of 39,772 megawatts comes from renewables like wind, solar and biomass, while fossil fuels still make up 63 percent of the fuel mix, followed by hydropower at 25 percent, according to the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority.

“I think it’s high time that you set up a manufacturing unit in Pakistan,” CM Sharif said in televised comments during a factory visit to Jinko Solar Company in Shanghai.

“Pakistan has abundant solar resources. It’s a country that has sun all the time.”

She said Pakistan, with a population of around 240 million people, was a huge market where the demand for solar power was increasing, with the potential to make it Jinko Solar’s fourth biggest market.

“The cost of the energy power in Pakistan’s electricity is coming down and there is no dearth of workforce in Pakistan which should not be a problem,” Sharif added. “Then we have the infrastructure that is required to set up a factory, we’ve got tax-free zones where we have all the facilities available.”

Sharif said the Punjab government was incentivizing the use of solar power and launching two projects where free solar panels would be given out to users of 200 or fewer units.

“We are also providing long-term loans with easy instalments without interest for a huge, huge population that consumes electricity between 200 to 500 units,” she said. “And this is an upcoming project, we haven’t yet started it but we’re working on it, it’s been finalized and we will be launching it in a week.”

According to a World Economic Forum report last month, Pakistan was now the sixth-largest solar market in the world.


Pakistan reports four new polio cases, raising 2024 tally to 63

Pakistan reports four new polio cases, raising 2024 tally to 63
Updated 13 December 2024
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Pakistan reports four new polio cases, raising 2024 tally to 63

Pakistan reports four new polio cases, raising 2024 tally to 63
  • New cases detected in DI Khan, Tank, Jacobabad and Sukkur
  • Pakistan, Afghanistan are last polio-endemic countries globally

PESHAWAR: Pakistan’s polio eradication program said on Friday four new cases of the crippling virus had been detected in the country, bringing the nationwide tally for 2024 to 63.

Pakistan, along with neighboring Afghanistan, remains the last polio-endemic country in the world. 

The next national polio vaccination campaign is planned from Dec 16-22 to reach more than 44 million children under five in 143 districts. Pakistan’s chief health officer said last month an estimated 500,000 children had missed polio drops during a recent countrywide inoculation drive due to vaccine refusals.

“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of four wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan, bringing the number of total cases in the country this year to 63,” the polio program said.

The lab said one polio case each in female children had been detected in DI Khan, Tank and Jacobabad, and one male child had contracted the virus in Sukkur.

This is the ninth polio case from DI Khan, third from Tank, third from Jacobabad, and the first from Sukkur this year.

The polio program said 26 cases had been confirmed this year in Balochistan province, 18 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 17 in Sindh, and one each in Punjab and the federal capital, Islamabad.

Poliovirus, which can cause crippling paralysis particularly in young children, is incurable and remains a threat to human health as long as it has not been eradicated. Immunization campaigns have succeeded in most countries and have come close in Pakistan, but persistent problems remain.

In the early 1990s, Pakistan reported around 20,000 cases annually but in 2018 the number dropped to eight cases. Six cases were reported in 2023 and only one in 2021. 

Pakistan’s polio program began in 1994 but efforts to eradicate the virus have since been undermined by vaccine misinformation and opposition from some religious hard-liners who say immunization is a foreign ploy to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western spies. Militant groups also frequently attack and kill members of polio vaccine teams. 

In July 2019, a vaccination drive in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was thwarted after mass panic was created by rumors that children were fainting or vomiting after being immunized.

Public health studies in Pakistan have shown that maternal illiteracy and low parental knowledge about vaccines, together with poverty and rural residency, are also factors that commonly influence whether parents vaccinate their children against polio.


Pakistan Taliban emerging as Al-Qaeda arm with ‘regional, global terrorist agenda’ — envoy

Pakistan Taliban emerging as Al-Qaeda arm with ‘regional, global terrorist agenda’ — envoy
Updated 13 December 2024
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Pakistan Taliban emerging as Al-Qaeda arm with ‘regional, global terrorist agenda’ — envoy

Pakistan Taliban emerging as Al-Qaeda arm with ‘regional, global terrorist agenda’ — envoy
  • Acting envoy to UN says Afghan government fighting Daesh but not addressing other groups such as Al Qaeda, TTP 
  • Says TTP also collaborating with suicide squad of separatist Baloch Liberation Army in Pakistan’s Balochistan province

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s acting UN envoy Usman Jadoon said this week the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group, which Islamabad accuses of operating from safe havens in neighboring Afghanistan, was poised to become Al-Qaeda’s regional and global arm, with a far-reaching “terrorist agenda” that threatened international security.

Islamabad says the TTP uses Afghanistan as a base to launch attacks, accusing the ruling Taliban administration of providing safe havens to the group along their shared border. Pakistan also says Afghans have been found to be involved in multiple recent attacks, amid a militancy spike. The Taliban deny militants are using Afghan soil to launch attacks or that Afghans are involved in militancy in Pakistan. They say Pakistan’s security challenges are a domestic issue. 

The TTP is separate from the Afghan Taliban movement but pledges loyalty to the group that now rules Afghanistan after the US-led international forces withdrew in 2021.

“Given its long association with Al Qaeda, the TTP could emerge as Al Qaeda’s arm with a regional and global terrorist agenda,” Jadoon said on Thursday while addressing a UN Security Council meeting. 

“Terrorism within and from Afghanistan poses the single most serious threat to the country, to the region and the world … While the Afghan interim government is fighting Daesh, the threat from various other terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, TTP and others is yet to be addressed.”

Jadoon said the TTP was fast emerging as an “umbrella organization” for other terror groups in the area with the “clear objective of destabilizing Afghanistan’s neighbors.”

“We have evidence of its collaboration with other terrorist groups like the Majeed brigade which is utilizing terrorism to disrupt Pakistan’s economic cooperation with China, especially the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor,” the diplomat added, referring to the suicide squad of the separatist Baloch Liberation Army which has been fighting a decades long insurgency in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province. 

Jadoon said with 6,000 fighters, TTP was the largest listed militant group operating close to Pakistan’s borders.

“In countering the TTP cross-border operations, our security and border officials have confiscated some of the modern weapons acquired by the Afghan interim government from stocks left behind by foreign forces,” he said, adding that the TTP also received external support and financing from Pakistan’s adversary India. 

Last month, the Pakistan army said it had killed three militants trying to infiltrate its frontier with Afghanistan, calling on Kabul to ensure “effective border management” on its side. 

A deportation drive launched last year against Afghans living in Pakistan and border restrictions have also led to a spike in tensions between Pakistan and the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan. 


Pakistan top court allows army to announce military trial verdicts of pro-Khan protesters

Pakistan top court allows army to announce military trial verdicts of pro-Khan protesters
Updated 13 December 2024
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Pakistan top court allows army to announce military trial verdicts of pro-Khan protesters

Pakistan top court allows army to announce military trial verdicts of pro-Khan protesters
  • On Oct. 23 last year, three-member Supreme Court panel had declared military trials of civilians unconstitutional, suspending all proceedings
  • On Dec 13, six-member bench provisionally approved military court trials of over 100 supporters of ex-premier Imran Khan 

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Friday conditionally allowed military courts to announce the reserved verdicts of 85 civilians tried over their alleged involvement in last year’s May 9 riots, a major blow to the party of jailed ex-premier Imran Khan that the violence has been linked to. 

The ruling comes a little over a year after a three-member bench of the top court said last October military trials of civilians were unconstitutional and ordered the trials of some 103 people moved to civilian criminal courts, a relief for dozens accused of ransacking military installations during protests after the brief arrest of Khan on May 9, 2023. However, on December 13, 2023, a six-member bench conditionally suspended its own Oct. 23 ruling, pending a final judgment as it heard a set of intra-court appeals (ICAs).

Hundreds of alleged Khan supporters were arrested after they stormed military and government installations, and even torched a top commander’s house, following the former premier’s brief arrest by paramilitary soldiers in a land bribe case. Though Khan was released just days after the violence of May 9, he was arrested again that August following an accountability court’s ruling in another corruption case and has been in jail since, facing a slew of legal charges he says are trumped up to keep him away from politics. 

The military initiated army court trials of at least 103 people accused of involvement in the violence and there have been widespread reports it also plans to prosecute Khan under the Pakistan Army Act on charges of treason and attempting to incite a mutiny in the military.

Announcing Friday’s verdict, Justice Aminuddin Khan, the head of the constitutional bench said:

“Suspects who can be accorded concessions in their sentences, should be given so and released … Suspects who cannot be released should be moved to jails once their sentence has been pronounced.”

In March, a six-member SC bench had also conditionally allowed military courts to pronounce reserved verdicts in the May 9 cases. It had also modified its Dec. 13 injunction, ordering that military courts could commence trials but they would not convict or acquit any suspects as long as the government-instituted intra-court appeals were pending.

Local and global rights groups have expressed concerns over the military trials, saying such courts do not have the same standards of evidence and due process as civilian courts.

Pakistan’s Army Act of 1952 established military courts primarily to try members of the military or enemies of the state, and they operate under a separate legal system.

The decision to use military courts was taken by the government of Khan’s rival, Shehbaz Sharif, and backed by the army.


Punjab says will work with Huawei to transform Lahore into Pakistan’s first smart city

Punjab says will work with Huawei to transform Lahore into Pakistan’s first smart city
Updated 13 December 2024
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Punjab says will work with Huawei to transform Lahore into Pakistan’s first smart city

Punjab says will work with Huawei to transform Lahore into Pakistan’s first smart city
  • Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif is on a week-long visit to China from Dec. 8-15
  • Smart city is an urban area where technology and data collection are used to improve quality of life

ISLAMABAD: Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif has discussed various proposals with officials at Chinese information technology giant Huawei to turn the provincial capital into Pakistan’s first smart city, Radio Pakistan reported on Friday.

Sharif is on a week-long visit to China from Dec. 8-15 and on Thursday visited Huawei Technologies in the Longgang district of Shanghai. Longtime ally China has invested heavily in Pakistan through the $65 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that encompasses infrastructure, energy and other projects and is part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative.

“During the visit, it was decided, in collaboration with Huawei, to transform Lahore into Pakistan’s first state-of-the-art smart city,” Radio Pakistan reported on Sharif’s visit to the headquarters of the Chinese company.

“Chief Minister discussed various proposals and recommendations with Huawei’s President of Government Affairs Mr. Wang Chengdong, or turning Lahore into a modern digital city, including e-commerce, ecosystem production, and the digitization of the health and education sectors.”

Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif (right) attends a briefing at Huawei Technologies in the Longgang district of Shanghai, China, on December 13, 2024. (PML-N)

According to the report, Huawei officials also assured full cooperation in setting up an assembly and manufacturing plant in Punjab.

A smart city is an urban area where technology and data collection help improve quality of life as well as the sustainability and efficiency of city operations. Smart city technologies used by local governments include information and communication technologies (ICT) and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Areas of city operations where ICT, IoT and other smart technologies increasingly play an important role include transportation, energy and infrastructure.

Technologies to collect data, including real-time data, are central to smart city initiatives and the benefits they promise. Data-driven insights help local governments improve urban planning and the deployment of city services, ranging from waste management to public transportation, leading to better quality of life for residents.

More efficient city services can also help cut carbon emissions, contributing to global efforts to address climate change while also improving local air quality. In addition, smart city solutions can be an engine for economic growth, as better infrastructure and technological innovation can encourage job creation and business opportunities.