Infinity Social Updates

The Saudi Ministry of Haj and Umrah has launched a multiple-entry Umrah visa with one-year validity from the date of issuance, through which pilgrims will be able to enter the kingdom multiple times, with a cumulative stay of up to 90 days each year, state-run Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Monday. As per the conditions of the visa, each visit would require the purchase of a service package from an approved provider on the Nusuk platform — a digital platform that lists several Umrah packages for various economic tiers. The report added that the packages’ durations should not exceed the “remaining days available on the visa”. “Entry is also contingent on issuing an Umrah permit via the Nusuk application prior to arrival,” the report added. It further detailed that the visa would be deactivated after each departure and reactivated upon meeting regulatory requirements for the next visit. However, the report said, the visa cannot be availed during the Haj season, from the fi...

One claim that resurfaces periodically in public debate over Balochistan’s accession to Pakistan is that the Instrument of Accession of the Khanate of Kalat is evidence of Balochistan’s accession as a whole. This conflates a single princely state with the entire province, and it is worth examining why that conflation matters. The central claim advanced is that Khan Ahmed Yar Khan’s signature on March 27, 1948 proves Balochistan existed as a fully sovereign, independent state from Partition in August 1947 until that date — a span of nearly seven months. This narrative forms a foundational pillar of separatist ideology and, for that reason alone, demands careful scholarly and constitutional scrutiny. The mosaic structure Few historical accounts have suffered greater distortion than the assertion that Balochistan constituted a single, indivisible political entity that acceded to Pakistan as a unified province in 1948. Propagated by adversarial foreign elements and terrorist outfits su...

Larry the cat, the UK’s most famous feline, on Monday welcomed his seventh housemate at 10 Downing Street since he began patrolling the corridors of power more than 15 years ago. “Politicians come and go; cats are permanent,” Larry’s X account @Number10cat posted, as the country’s chief mouser waited for incoming leader Andy Burnham to replace Keir Starmer. In instructions to his new employers, he wrote: “Larry likes his breakfast at 9, brunch at 1030 and lunch at noon with plenty of snacks in between. The rest of the job is a doddle.” Here are some things to know about the troubled office’s only purr-manent resident. Humble roots Recruited to deal with a rodent problem, Larry arrived at the prime minister’s official residence on February 15, 2011, when David Cameron was leader. He was adopted from a London animal shelter when he was believed to be about four years old. Since then, the white and tabby cat, officially introduced o...

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday said that the modernisation of Pakistan Railways’ infrastructure will be instrumental in establishing the country as a regional trade and logistics hub. He made the remarks while presiding over a review meeting on the progress of the Pakistan Railways Transformation Plan. During the meeting, he directed the swift upgradation of Pakistan Railways to make it a more effective and revenue-generating mode of transport. He also remarked that the railway was the most cost-effective and efficient mode of transport for both passengers and freight. He added that a modern and efficient railway system would play a pivotal role in strengthening Pakistan’s economy, promoting trade and enhancing regional connectivity. PM Shehbaz directed that all railway development projects be completed within the stipulated timelines while maintaining the highest quality standards. He instructed the relevant auth...

• Only 370 of 783 commercial and residential projects found in compliance with fire safety rules • 416 buildings do not have emergency exits • Survey raises concerns over emergency preparedness in commercial and residential buildings KARACHI: A comprehensive fire safety audit of buildings across the city has revealed widespread non-compliance with basic safety standards, raising concerns over emergency preparedness in the city’s commercial and residential structures. The audit, conducted across seven districts, assessed 783 buildings on four key parameters — adherence to approved layout, availability of emergency exits, presence of portable fire extinguishers, and overall risk categorisation. The exercise was ordered by the provincial government following the devastating fire at Gul Plaza on M.A. Jinnah Road that had killed scores of people in January. The chief secretary had constituted sub-divisional fire safety audit committees headed by assistant commissioners to conduct the su...

The wife of an Indian hunger strike activist taken to hospital against his will accused the government on Sunday of “illegal detention” disguised as medical care. Police cited a court order and “deteriorating health condition” on Saturday when they picked up Sonam Wangchuk, who had refused to eat since June 28 in protest of alleged university exam fraud. The activist, 59, has demanded the education minister’s resignation after the leak of test materials that resulted in over two million students being forced to retake exams. Gitanjali J. Angmo, Wangchuk’s wife, said that she “lost faith” in the government hospital, which she said refused her desire to move her husband to a private facility. “With around 30 police personnel stationed on our floor and well over 100 across the hospital, our movement is severely restricted,” Angmo said. “It is not medical care. It is illegal detention,” she said, adding she asked the high court to allow her to move Wangchuk. The hospital, late on S...

ISLAMABAD: After criticism on a bill seeking to allow the issuance of blue passports to former parliamentarians’ children, Minister of State for Interior Tallal Chaudhry has assured that measures would be taken to ensure that the travel document is used for “only official duties” abroad and issued for a limited time in most cases. The bill, seeking the issuance of blue passports to dependent children under the age of 28 of ex-members of parliament, was approved by a Senate panel on July 10. If the Members of Parliament Salaries and Allowances (Amendment) Bill, 2026 becomes law, the legislation would place former members of parliament on par with retired Grade-22 government officers, whose dependent children already enjoy the same entitlement. An official press statement released by the Senate Secretariat earlier this month noted that Chaudhry had “also agreed on the passing of the bill”. However, he later claimed he had opposed the bill during the July 10 proceedings of the Senate...

Anthropic said on Saturday that it will reintroduce its most advanced AI model, Fable 5, in the paid Max and Team Premium plans from July 20. After its redeployment , Fable 5 had been included in the Pro, Max, Team and select Enterprise plans from July 1 to 7 for up to 50pc of weekly usage limits, after which it was available via usage credits . In a post on Saturday, Claude said, “Beginning July 20, Claude Fable 5 will be included in all Max and Team Premium plans, at 50 per cent of limits.” However, Pro and Team Standard users “will continue to have access to Fable via usage credits” — rather than as part of weekly usage limits — though they will receive a one-time $100 credit. Usage credits allow individuals subscribed to paid Claude plans (Pro, Max 5x, and Max 20x) to continue using Claude after reaching their included usage limits. “Demand for Fable has been challenging to predict, which is why we rolled it out to subscription plans in stages, extending access several times a...

KARACHI: Police on Saturday said they have arrested a man over the alleged rape of a foreign woman in the city’s Defence Housing Authority (DHA). South Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Syed Asad Raza told Dawn that the suspect has been arrested, a day after the Darakhshan police registered a first information report (FIR) on the woman’s complaint. DIG Raza said the woman was a medical assistant in cardiology in the United States. He added that she arrived in Pakistan on Nov 13, 2025 and was residing in Phase VI of DHA. Police Surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed told Dawn that Darakhshan police brought the 49-year-old woman for a medical examination on Friday after she reported the alleged sexual assault. “Her samples have been collected for serology and DNA,” the police surgeon said. The FIR was registered on Friday, hours after the alleged incident, under Section 376 (punishment for rape) of the Pakistan Penal Code. Police said further investigation into the matter was under way. Accordin...

QUETTA: A sit-in committee, which included family members of policemen martyred in a deadly terrorist attack in Ziarat , ended its protest on Saturday after reaching an agreement with the Balochistan government last night. On July 6, 27 policemen were martyred in a terrorist attack on a police post in Balochistan’s Ziarat district. Families of the martyred personnel had been holding the sit-in at Quetta’s Koila Phatak since July 9 , along with the martyrs’ bodies. “The sit-in has been called off; bodies of seven martyrs had been shifted to their native areas in the early hours of the day; and Koila Phatak has been opened for traffic after 10 days,” the committee announced after the agreement was reached late on Friday night. The provincial government accepted all demands of the bereaved families. Their main demand was establishing a judicial commission for investigating the Ziarat and Hanna Urak incidents that claimed the lives of 32 policemen and civilians. On July 5, armed men a...

Former Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham was one step away from becoming Britain’s next prime minister on Friday after being appointed leader of the governing Labour Party . Following are the policies he has spoken about since returning to parliament in June, which offer an insight into how he could govern Britain to try to overcome a cost-of-living crisis, revive anaemic economic growth and win back voters. Decentralisation of power Burnham has promised to “bring about the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen”. His focus is on Whitehall, a part of London dotted with government departments where public officials help elected ministers devise and implement policy, which he said had become overly powerful to the detriment of Britain’s regions. “It is time for Whitehall to accept that growth cannot be ordered from the top down. Instead, it can only be nurtured from the bottom up,” he said in a speech on June 29. While focusing initially on England, where 85 per cen...

In May earlier this year, Islamabad and Beijing commemorated the 75th anniversary of their diplomatic ties, with the bilateral discourse predictably gravitating toward familiar flourishes. Bonds “higher than the Himalayas and stronger than steel” once again resurfaced in official handouts and state-level speeches. Yet, beneath the ceremonial surface of this milestone, a more consequential structural transformation is being engineered. Over the course of this 75-year arc, the relationship has gradually evolved from a traditional diplomatic alignment into a highly structured economic partnership. What was once framed in exclusively strategic terms has increasingly been recast as a matrix of economic and technological cooperation. This ongoing evolution has allowed both capitals to systematically convert a long-standing political bond into a more functional, project-driven engine. The bilateral partnership is now attempting to pivot from an early-stage, state-led infrastructure programm...

LAHORE: A judicial magistrate at the Cantonment Courts granted police 14-day judicial remand of four suspects, including one related to a senior political figure , in a case of alleged kidnapping and rape of two foreign women. One of those two women is a national of the Netherlands and the other of Venezuela, and a case of their alleged abduction and sexual assault was registered on July 2. Subsequently, police had arrested four of the suspects and were initially granted their five-day physical remand on July 3. The suspects’ remand was extended twice in the following days, last on July 13 . They were produced before Judicial Magistrate Azhar Mahmood on Friday, following the expiry of their physical remand. The investigating officer (IO) submitted a progress report before the court and requested that the suspects now be sent on judicial remand. The magistrate accepted the request and sent the four suspects on judicial remand for 14 days. During the hearing, the state prosecu...

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday mandatory annual testosterone screening for troops 30 years old or above, an initiative he said was aimed at combating testosterone deficiency that can undermine health. Hegseth said the screening could lead to troops being offered testosterone replacement therapy aimed at “ensuring you have the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best”. “Because it’s well-established science that as we age, testosterone levels often naturally drop,” he said in a video message. The screening would become part of annual testing for troops aged 30 and above, and troops could voluntarily decide whether to accept any recommended hormone replacement treatment if they were diagnosed with low testosterone levels. Troops below the age of 30 could request to be tested. The move comes as the US Department of Health and Human Services has moved to ease some restrictions on testosterone re...

PESHAWAR: A house fire in the Tehkal Payan area of Peshawar killed a couple and their four children on Thursday, Rescue 1122 said. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Rescue 1122 spokesperson Bilal Ahmed Faizi told Dawn that the rescue service received the report of the fire at around 2:30am. After reaching the site of the incident, it took the rescue team 45 minutes to bring the fire under control. The team recovered the bodies of six people from a room during its search operation. These included a husband, wife and their four children — three girls aged 11, nine, and three years, and a four-year-old boy. The man was a local worker of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Fazl (JUI-F), according to a statement issued by the party about the incident. According to Faizi, the fire apparently started in a storage area, where furniture and mattresses were kept and spread to other parts of the residential house. However, he said that the blaze was so intense that the family was likely unable to leave the single room t...

Pakistan’s recent diplomatic efforts for achieving sustainable peace in the deserve to be assessed not by whether they produced an immediate US-Iran agreement, but by what they strategically accomplished. First, it helped create diplomatic space at a critical moment, reducing the risk of a disastrous regional escalation. Second, it contributed to bringing Washington and Tehran into direct high-level engagement after nearly five decades of estrangement, demonstrating that dialogue remained possible even amid military confrontation. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the process helped identify the real sticking point around which any future negotiations must ultimately be built. Whenever tensions between the United States and Iran dominate international headlines, the debate almost invariably revolves around Iran’s nuclear programme. Yet, this focus often obscures the deeper strategic issue that has repeatedly frustrated diplomatic efforts. The nuclear file is important, but it is n...

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Wednesday met with the secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Nurlan Yermekbayev, and reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to advancing its objectives, the Foreign Office (FO) said. In a post on X, the FO said that Dar received Yermekbayev, with the two holding a “productive exchange” on the SCO priorities and ways to further strengthen cooperation among member states in key areas, including economy, transport, and connectivity. “They also exchanged views on regional and international developments. The secretary general commended Pakistan’s constructive contributions to promoting regional peace, stability, and cooperation,” the FO said. “The secretary general shared his perspective and proposals for further enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of the SCO, and briefed DPM Dar on preparations for the forthcoming SCO Council of Foreign Ministers Meeting i...

Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) and Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir has met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, according to a post on the Turkish Presidency’s X account. The presidency’s post on Tuesday, which also had a picture of the two, said Erdogan received Munir at the Ankara airport. Reuters reported that the meeting was held behind closed doors at the Ankara airport. The report said that Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz, Chief of Turkish General Staff General Selcuk Bayraktaroglu and National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) Director Ibrahim Kalin also attended the meeting. Separately, an X post by the Turkish embassy in Pakistan said CDF Munir was accorded a guard of honour by a tri-services contingent of the Turkish armed forces following his arrival in Ankara. General Bayraktaroglu welcomed him during his official visit, the post said. “Rooted in brotherhood, mutual trust and a shared strateg...

Teacher Raja Dey fears attendance might drop now that government-run schools have stopped serving eggs for lunch in his eastern Indian state, a dietary change that has stirred a political storm. The humble egg, a popular food in West Bengal, was taken off the menu after the state’s recently elected Hindu nationalist government said a religious charity will provide free, vegetarian cooked meals in state-run schools. The new arrangement has rekindled a long-running debate over food, faith and nutrition in the world’s most populous country, with critics accusing the government of trying to turn schoolchildren vegetarian. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, which swept to power in West Bengal for the first time in regional elections held in May, often promotes vegetarianism as a part of its nationalist agenda, although most Indian Hindus eat meat and fish. Eggs, which Hindus generally consider non-vegetarian, are even more widely consumed. Former West Bengal chief minister Mamata...

DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Two cops were martyred and as many injured on Monday in what police suspect was an improvised explosive device (IED) attack in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Tank district. Sources in police told Dawn it appeared that an IED was used to target an armoured personnel carrier (APC) of the police in the incident that took place on Tank-Jandola Road. They said initial reports suggested that the IED was planted along the roadside and was detonated while the APC was on routine patrol in the limits of Shaheed Mureed Akbar Police Station. Consequently, Assistant Sub-Inspector Fareedullah and Constable Akhtar Zaman were martyred while Constables Abdul Malik and Qudratullah sustained injuries, the sources said. They added that the injured were taken to the district headquarters hospital. The sources said security forces and police had cordoned off the site of the incident. Police had also launched a search operation, and evidence from the scene was also being collected, the sources s...

LAHORE: A sessions court on Monday extended the interim pre-arrest bail of PML-N MPA Saqib Chadhar and his wife, both of whom have been facing legal proceedings for allegedly harassing television actress Momina Iqbal, till July 28. Chadhar appeared before the court accompanied by his lawyers, while his wife was absent from the proceedings. During the hearing, the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) investigating officer sought more time to complete the investigation. Subsequently, Additional District and Sessions Judge Nusrat Ali Siddiqi extended the couple’s bail until July 28, directing the IO to submit a progress report at the next hearing. The NCCIA had registered the case against Chadhar and his wife early last month on a complaint filed by Iqbal. The case was registered under Sections 3 (unauthorised access to information system or data), 4 (unauthorised copying or transmission of data), 21 (offences against modesty of a natural person and minor) and 24 (cyber ...

Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) on Sunday decided to establish a “grand” Kashmir peace jirga to facilitate dialogue between the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) government and the banned Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) in an effort to restore stability and normalcy in the region. The decision was taken at a meeting of the party’s central Majlis-i-Shura chaired by JI Emir Hafiz Naeemur Rehman at Mansoorah, Lahore. According to a press release, the jirga will engage both the government and the JAAC, with the restoration of peace and the resolution of issues in AJK identified as its top priorities. To oversee the initiative, Rehman constituted a committee headed by JI Deputy Emir Liaqat Baloch. The committee included JI AJK Emir Dr Muhammad Mushtaq Khan and the party’s former regional chiefs Abdul Rashid Turabi and Dr Khalid Mahmood. The JI chief also indicated that the committee would be expanded to include former civil bureaucrats, retired judges, ex-military officials and members of civil soc...