Infinity Social Updates

Palestinians in northern Gaza reported one of the worst nights of Israeli bombardment in weeks after the military issued mass evacuation orders on Monday, while Israeli officials were due in Washington for a new ceasefire push by the Trump administration. A day after US President Donald Trump urged an end to the 20-month-old conflict, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected at the White House for talks on a Gaza ceasefire, Iran, and possible wider regional diplomatic deals. But on the ground in the Palestinian enclave, there was no sign of fighting letting up. “Explosions never stopped; they bombed schools and homes. It felt like earthquakes,” said Salah, 60, a father of five children, from Gaza City. “In the news, we hear a ceasefire is near, on the ground, we see death, and we hear explosions.” Israeli tanks pushed into the eastern areas of the Zeitoun suburb in Gaza City and shelled several areas in the north, while aircraft bombed at least four schools a...

After years on the front lines of danger, a four-legged hero has taken his final bow. Deep, an 11-year-old British Labrador and one of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police’s “most trusted” explosives sniffer dogs, retired last week after nearly a decade of sniffing out threats, saving lives, and earning the respect of his human colleagues. Trained in explosives detection, Deep was part of the KP Police’s elite K9 Unit, formed in 2014 to strengthen counter-terrorism efforts and support criminal investigations. Over the years, he worked alongside officers during high-stakes operations, security sweeps, and major public events, where his instincts often proved life-saving. During his nearly 10 years of service, Deep showed that he was more than just a service dog: he became a symbol of loyalty and bravery. To honour Deep’s outstanding contributions, the KP Police Special Branch K9 Unit held a modest but heartfelt retirement ceremony last Tuesday. The event was attended by unit officials and K9 h...

Diplomatic talks between Washington and Tehran cannot resume unless the US rules out further strikes on Iran, its deputy foreign minister told the BBC late Sunday. Majid Takht-Ravanchi told the British broadcaster that the US had signalled it wants to return to the negotiating table, a week after it struck three Iranian nuclear facilities. “We have not agreed to any date, we have not agreed to the modality,” said Takht-Ravanchi. “Right now we are seeking an answer to this question. Are we going to see a repetition of an act of aggression while we are engaging in dialogue?” The US needed to be “quite clear on this very important question”, he said. The two countries were in talks over Tehran’s nuclear programme when Israel hit Iranian nuclear sites and military infrastructure earlier this month, with the US joining by bombing three nuclear sites — Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan — on June 21. The deputy minister revealed to the BBC that the US had signalled it did “not want to e...

An Indian aviation minister on Sunday said investigators were probing “all angles” behind the Air India crash earlier this month when asked by the media about possible sabotage. All but one of the 242 people on board the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner were killed when it crashed in the western city of Ahmedabad on June 12. Authorities have identified 19 others who died on the ground, but a police source told AFP after the crash that the toll was 38. India’s minister of state for civil aviation, Murlidhar Mohol, said the investigation was looking at “all angles” when asked specifically about possible “sabotage”, in an interview with Indian news channel NDTV. “It has never happened before that both engines have shut off together,” Mohol said earlier in the interview, in reference to theories by some experts of possible dual-engine failure . The minister added that until the investigation report is published, it would be premature to comment on the cause. The team appointed to investiga...

President Asif Ali Zardari on Sunday declared Justice Sarfaraz Dogar the “senior-most judge” of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), according to a fresh seniority list released by the Ministry of Law and Justice. The development followed the Supreme Court’s verdict on June 19, declaring the transfer of IHC judges constitutional and referring the matter of seniority determination to the president. Earlier this year, the law ministry’s transfer of three judges to the IHC had disrupted the seniority list. On Friday, however, five judges of the IHC challenged the SC’s decision to uphold the transfer of three judges — Justice Sardar Dogar from the Lahore High Court (LHC), Justice Khadim Hussain Soomro from the Sindh High Court (SHC), and Justice Muham­mad Asif from the Balochistan High Court (BHC). According to the latest seniority list, Justice Dogar was designated as the most senior judge of the IHC, while the two other judges, Justice Soomro and Justice Asif, were ranked 9th and 11th, ...

The US Supreme Court’s ruling tied to birthright citizenship prompted confusion and phone calls to lawyers as people who could be affected tried to process a convoluted legal decision with major humanitarian implications. The court’s conservative majority on Friday granted President Donald Trump his request to curb federal judges’ power but did not decide the legality of his bid to restrict birthright citizenship. That outcome has raised more questions than answers about a right long understood to be guaranteed under the US Constitution: that anyone born in the United States is considered a citizen at birth, regardless of their parents’ citizenship or legal status. Lorena, a 24-year-old Colombian asylum seeker who lives in Houston and is due to give birth in September, pored over media reports on Friday morning. She was looking for details about how her baby might be affected, but said she was left confused and worried. “There are not many specifics,” said Lorena, who like others ...

France will ban smoking on beaches and in parks, public gardens and bus shelters from Sunday, the government said. The decree, published in the official government gazette on Saturday, will also ban smoking outside libraries, swimming pools and schools, and is aimed at protecting children from passive smoking. The decree did not mention electronic cigarettes. Violators of the ban will face a fine of €135 (Rs44,849). “Tobacco must disappear from places where there are children,” Health and Family Minister Catherine Vautrin had said in May, underscoring “the right of children to breathe pure air”. Cafe terraces are excluded from the ban. Some 75,000 people are estimated to die from tobacco-related complications each year in France. According to a recent opinion survey, six out of 10 French people (62 per cent) favour a smoking ban in public places. from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/Yhb2C4m

Sri Lanka’s top court on Friday halted a government move to acquire land in northern regions still reeling from the consequences of a decades-long civil war, 16 years after it ended. Sri Lanka’s north bore the brunt of the conflict in the 37-year-long Tamil separatist war, which was brought to a bloody conclusion in May 2009. Many among the Tamil minority lost their land title deeds during the years of displacement, and the area was also hit by the 2004 Asian tsunami. The Supreme Court order concerning nearly 6,000 acres of land came a day after UN human rights chief Volker Turk ended a three-day visit, during which he urged the authorities to return private lands still occupied by troops. The UN estimates that at least 100,000 people died in the war, with 40,000 of them from the Tamil minority killed by troops in the final months of the conflict. Turk also asked Sri Lanka to investigate allegations of war crimes and punish the perpetrators. Successive Sri Lankan governments hav...

Anti-Muslim online posts targeting New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani have surged since his Democratic primary upset this week, including death threats and comments comparing his candidacy to the September 11, 2001 attacks, advocates said on Friday. There were at least 127 violent hate-related reports mentioning Mamdani or his campaign in the day after polls closed, said CAIR Action, an arm of the Council on American Islamic Relations advocacy group, which logs such incidents. That marks a five-fold increase over a daily average of such reports tracked earlier this month, CAIR Action said in a statement. Overall, it noted about 6,200 online posts that mentioned some form of Islamophobic slur or hostility in that day long time-frame. Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist and a 33-year-old state lawmaker, declared victory in Tuesday’s primary after former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo conceded defeat. Born in Uganda to Indian parents, Mamdani would be the cit...

A poliovirus case has been confirmed in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa’s Tank district, marking the seventh case from KP this year and bringing the total countrywide tally to 13, the Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said in a press release on Friday. Pakistan is one of the last two countries in the world, alongside Afghanistan, where polio remains endemic. Despite global efforts to eradicate the virus, challenges such as security issues, vaccine hesitancy, and misinformation have slowed progress. This year, Pakistan has undertaken three nationwide Polio campaigns so far — in February, April, and May. Polio eradication efforts in Pakistan routinely face security issues. According to the press release, the case was detected in an 18-month-old child from the Union Council Amakhel in KP’s Tank district. “With this latest detection, the total number of polio cases in Pakistan in 2025 has reached 13, including seven from Khyber Pakhtunkhw...

The Ministry of Interior on Thursday announced that it planned to take strict action against elements spreading religious hate on social media as part of a security plan ahead of the month of Muharram. The government has ramped up security efforts in the past few weeks as the first month of the Islamic calendar inches closer. KP and the Punjab government have planned to impose Section 144 across the province from Muharram 1 to 10, barring public gatherings, protests, or other actions that might disrupt peace. The central Ruet-e-Hilal committee is set to meet today for the sighting of the moon for Muharram. According to a statement from the ministry today, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi chaired a meeting aimed at reviewing the security plan for the month. “It was decided that action will be taken against elements inciting religious hatred on social media in light of Muharram,” it said. “In this regard, PEMRA (Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority) has been instructed to m...

Efforts are underway to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the Air India plane crash this month that killed 260 people, and identify contributing factors, India’s civil aviation ministry said on Thursday. The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed moments after takeoff from India’s Ahmedabad city on June 12, killing 241 of the 242 people on board and the rest on ground in the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade. The black boxes of the plane — the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) — were recovered in the days that followed, one from the rooftop of a building at the crash site on June 13, and the other from the debris on June 16. They were transported to national capital Delhi on Tuesday, where a team led by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau began extracting their data, the ministry said in a statement. “The Crash Protection Module (CPM) from the front black box was safely retrieved, and […] the memory module was succe...

Life-saving childhood vaccination coverage has stalled in recent decades, leaving millions of children at risk for deadly diseases with Pakistan having the highest number of children with zero doses in South Asia after India, according to a new study by British medical journal Lancet . The Lancet is a 200-year-old peer-reviewed weekly medical journal from the United Kingdom. Since its launch, the journal has expanded into a family of more than 20 speciality journals and has set up several global Lancet Commissions on various important issues in medicine and healthcare. In a press release issued a day ago, the journal said that since its inception in 1974, the World Health Organisation’s Essential Programme on Immunisation (EPI) achieved “unprecedented progress”, averting the deaths of an estimated 154 million children worldwide through routine childhood vaccination. However, it said that as per a major new analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study Vaccine Coverage Collabora...

United States President Donald Trump struck a conciliatory tone towards Nato allies on Wednesday, framing an expected deal on increased defence spending as a “great victory for everyone” at their summit. Everything has been carefully choreographed at the gathering in The Hague to keep the volatile US president on board: from chopping back the official part of the meeting to putting him up overnight in the royal palace. The strategy seemed to be working — for now — with Trump seeming keen to share the plaudits for a deal set to see the 32 countries commit to spending 5 per cent of output on defence by 2035. “It’s a great victory for everybody, I think, and we will be equalised very shortly, and that’s the way it has to be,” said Trump, as European allies seek to catch up with US spending on defence. “I’ve been asking them to go up to 5pc for a number of years, and they’re going up to 5pc … I think that’s going to be very big news,” he said. Hosting the meeting, Nato Secretary Gene...

Top-ranked Pakistani duo Nasir Iqbal and Noor Zaman stormed into the men’s final of the 2nd Asian Doubles Squash Championship after being hosts Malaysia 2-1 in the semi-finals on Wednesday. The Malaysian duo of Duncan Lee and Syafiq Kamal took the first set 11-10 at the Jalan Stadium in Sarawak. But Zaman and Iqbal made a strong comeback to win the next two sets 11-9 in a thrilling 69-minute game. The duo will face India in the finals tomorrow. In Tuesday’s quarter-final, Pakistan defeated Korea 2-1 in a quick 37-minute game. Earlier this month, Zaman and Iqbal were in Malaysia for the 23rd Asian Individual Squash Championships, where Iqbal outclassed Lai Cheuk Nam of Hong Kong to advance to the quarter-finals while Zaman lost to Joachim Chuah of Malaysia 3-2 in their pre-quarterfinal. Zaman was crowned men’s champion at the U23 World Squash Championships in April after a stellar comeback against Egypt’s Karim El Torkey. from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/0ZUvj...

Amnesty International on Tuesday criticised Pakistani authorities for “failing to protect the lives and property of civilians” in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa amid a surge in suspected quadcopter and drone attacks. The statement came in response to reports of multiple such attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan over the past year. In March , at least 11 people were killed in Mardan in what locals insisted was a drone strike, while in May, a suspected quadcopter munitions drop claimed the lives of four children and injured five others in North Waziristan District’s Mir Ali tehsil. The military clarified that security forces were “ falsely implicated ” in the incident and that it was carried out by the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Last Friday , a child was killed and five others were injured after a suspected drone hit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s ​South Waziristan District, prompting condemnations from KP politicians. “Pakistani authorities have failed to take action to protect th...

Iraq will investigate suicide drone attacks on radar systems at two military bases, Sabah al-Numan, the military spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister, said on Tuesday, adding that Iraqi forces intercepted several other attempted incursions. “Several small suicide drones targeted multiple Iraqi military sites and bases,” according to the spokesman. No casualties were reported. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, and the government has not yet identified any perpetrators. Numan described the attacks as “cowardly and treacherous”. “The assault severely damaged radar systems at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, and Imam Ali Base in Dhi Qar Province” in southern Iraq, he added. Iraqi forces also thwarted other attacks against “four additional sites across various locations”, Numan said, adding that the drones were downed “before they could reach their intended targets”. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani ordered the formation of “a high-level” committee to investiga...

Waqar Baloch, based in the bordering town of Jaheen in Balochistan’s Panjur, was all set for his wedding next week. But for a groom, his anxiety was of a different kind— half of his family was in Iran, where Israel is waging a war. The ongoing standoff between Tehran and Tel Aviv has sent ripples across the Middle East, with both sides refusing to drop their guns. But while the global attention is fixated on the Mashriq , the conflict — which is feared to spiral into a third world war — has disrupted daily life in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest and most underdeveloped province. The province, which shares a 909-kilometre border with Iran, has been reeling from food shortages, a surge in fuel prices, the risk of unemployment, and heightened security concerns ever since the Iran-Israel war broke out. Families like Waqar’s are bearing the brunt of these tensions. “One of my paternal uncles is a resident of Iran, and many of our family members live across the border,” he told Dawn.com ...

The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has issued a show cause notice to K-Electric (KE) after the power distribution company failed to submit a satisfactory reply over discriminatory policies over loadshedding in Karachi. Nepra had earlier taken serious notice of alleged excessive and persistent loadshedding during summers, and directed KE to end consumers’ miseries. In a letter to the KE chief executive officer, the regulatory body stated that it had received a large number of complaints regarding persistent and excessive loadshedding across various areas of Karachi. In a notice issued on June 23, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com , the power regulatory said the power distribution companies are obligated to supply electricity on a “non-discriminatory” basis to all consumers, and shall have schedules to shed up to 30pc of its load on instructions of the NTDC. When instructed, power distribution companies (Discos) can announce loadshedding in the order n...

The Karachi Police ordered an investigation on Monday of alleged threats being made to boxer Aliya Soomro. Earlier this year, Soomro became the first Pakistani woman to win a world boxing title. She knocked out her opponent from Thailand in just 45 seconds in Bangkok to claim victory in the WBA Asia 105-pound category. A day ago, Soomro issued a video statement on her Instagram account, saying that she and her family were being harassed by an alleged facilitator of the Lyari gang war who was impersonating a media worker. “Don’t drag me into political and ethnic disputes and conflict between boxing institutions. Why is the entire machinery being used against me? My family and I are facing life threats,” she said. Soomro alleged that certain elements were “spreading unfounded information” against her, expressing fear that she could be physically harmed. She appealed to the Sindh police chief and other officials for protection and legal assistance. View this p...

Asia is currently warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, fueling more extreme weather and wreaking a heavy toll on the region’s economies, ecosystems and societies, according to a report published by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on the ‘State of the Climate in Asia 2024’ published on Monday. The State of the Climate reports, which provide policy-relevant information for national and regional decision-making, have previously reported in 2024 that the impact of heatwaves in Asia was becoming more severe, with melting glaciers threatening the region’s future water security. The new report says that 2024 was the warmest or second-warmest year on record depending on the dataset, with widespread and prolonged heatwaves. The warming trend between 1991–2024 was almost double that of the 1961–1990 period. Asia is the continent with the largest land mass extending to the Arctic, and is warming more than twice as fast as the global average because the temperature ...

Former England fast bowler David “Syd” Lawrence has died at the age of 61 after a year-long battle with motor neurone disease (MND), his family said on Sunday. Lawrence, the first British-born Black cricketer to represent England, was diagnosed last year with MND, a degenerative condition that causes muscle wastage and affects the brain and nerves. “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Dave Lawrence MBE (King’s Birthday Honours) following his brave battle with Motor Neurone Disease,” Lawrence’s family said. “Syd was an inspirational figure on and off the cricket field… A proud Gloucestershire man, Syd took on every challenge with everything he could and his final contest with MND was no different. “His willingness to encourage and think of others right up to the end was typical of the man he was. As President of Gloucestershire County Cricket Club, Syd took on the role with incredible pride and passion and loved every minute of it.” Lawrence, who earned five te...

The US entered Israel’s war with Iran late on Saturday when president Donald Trump authorised strikes against Iran targeting three nuclear facilities, which he called a “spectacular military success”. The US president had stepped up his rhetoric against Tehran since Israel first struck Iran on June 13, repeating his insistence that it could never have a nuclear weapon. Tehran has consistently denied the claim, saying its uranium enrichment programme is for civilian purposes. Israel had launched wide-scale air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, military sites and private residences, killing top commanders , scientists and hundreds others. Both countries have traded wave after wave of devastating strikes since then. Critics, analysts and key US lawmakers have debated the legality of Trump’s decision to strike Iran without prior approval from Congress. US President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation alongside US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State...