Category: news

PPP Dominance in Sindh: A Stronghold That Refuses to Crack

Kainat Rajput
PPP flag waving over a rally crowd in rural Sindh, symbolizing the party's political dominance in the province

Summary The Pakistan Peoples Party‘s grip on Sindh shows no real sign of loosening. Despite years of criticism over governance and corruption, PPP dominance in Sindh remains almost total in the province’s rural and semi-urban belts. The opposition, led loosely by the Grand Democratic Alliance, has never managed to turn scattered discontent into a real electoral threat. Background Sindh has voted PPP into power in election after election since the days of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The party built its base among Sindhi-speaking voters outside Karachi and Hyderabad, and that base…

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Pakistan Administrative Restructuring: Why New Provinces Are Back on the Table

Kainat Rajput
Map showing Pakistan's provinces amid debate over administrative restructuring and new provincial units

Pakistan’s four-province map was built for a much smaller country. With the population now above 260 million, senior federal ministers are openly discussing whether the existing administrative structure can still deliver basic governance, and the debate over creating new provinces has picked up real pace in recent weeks. Background Pakistan’s current provincial setup, Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, dates back decades and has barely changed even as the population has multiplied several times over. Sources say powerful quarters are believed to favor restructuring the existing administrative setup through additional…

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Why Balochistan’s Militant Violence Is Escalating in 2026

Kainat Rajput
Map and security checkpoint symbolizing counterterrorism operations in Balochistan

Balochistan’s Security Operations Are Intensifying. Here’s Why Eleven terrorists killed in Panjgur and Chagai. Twelve in Kalat two weeks earlier. Eleven more in Kharan and Washuk days after that. The pace of Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations in Balochistan has picked up sharply this September, and the numbers tell only part of the story. The Immediate Trigger Saturday’s operations in Panjgur’s Gwargo area and Chagai’s Aminabad and Siah Chang localities were carried out under Operation Radd-ul-Fitna 3. Five militants were killed in Panjgur, six in Chagai, and forces recovered weapons, ammunition and…

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LHC Extends Suspension of PMDC Directive for Afghan Medical Students’ Return

Kainat Rajput
Afghan medical students standing outside a Lahore medical college during the PMDC directive court case

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Friday extended the suspension of a Pakistan Medical and Dental Council directive that had ordered Afghan medical students to return to Afghanistan, after lawyers for the council and one of the named universities asked for more time to file their written replies. The order came from Justice Khalid Ishaq, who has been hearing the case since Afghan students first moved the court earlier this month. With this extension, the LHC suspension of PMDC directive now covers more than a hundred Afghan students enrolled in…

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Explained: How Close Is AI to Building Itself Without Humans?

Kainat Rajput
Recursive self-improvement in AI systems developing themselves explained

A New Kind of Milestone in AI Development For years, “AI building AI” sounded like a distant, almost theoretical concern raised mostly in research papers and speculative fiction. Anthropic’s latest disclosure pulls that idea a lot closer to the present, backed by internal numbers rather than speculation. The company says Claude, its flagship chatbot, now leads more than a quarter of its own research and development work. That’s a sharp jump from earlier this year, when the same figure sat at zero. Background: How We Got Here Anthropic didn’t start…

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Pims Hospital Fire: What the Inquiry Found After the Sole Infant Survivor’s Death

Kainat Rajput
Hospital corridor with medical staff, representing a neonatal intensive care unit setting

The death of the last surviving infant from the Pims hospital fire has turned fresh attention onto a government inquiry report that lays out how the blaze started and why it proved so deadly. The newborn, the only baby pulled alive from the nursery fire, died this week after weeks of treatment. Her death raised the overall toll from the August 26 disaster to fifteen infants. Background: The Night of the Fire The fire tore through the neonatal nursery at Pims’ Mother and Child Hospital in Islamabad in the early…

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Kohat Mosque Blast: At Least 7 Dead, Over 30 Injured in Police Lines Explosion

Kainat Rajput
Rescue workers searching through rubble after the Kohat mosque blast in Police Lines

Summary At least seven people were killed and more than 30 injured when an explosion ripped through a mosque inside the Police Lines in Kohat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The Kohat mosque blast struck during Friday prayers, bringing down part of a wall and trapping some worshippers under the debris. Rescue teams and police reached the site within minutes. Television footage showed volunteers and security personnel digging through broken concrete by hand, pulling out the injured as ambulances lined up outside the compound. Background Kohat’s Police Lines complex sits along the Kohat-Hangu…

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Journalists, Lawyers Condemn Rearrest of Imaan Mazari and Hadi Ali Chattha

Kainat Rajput
Journalists and lawyers gather in solidarity following the rearrest of Imaan Mazari and Hadi Ali Chattha

The renewed detention of lawyers Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir and Hadi Ali Chattha has triggered a fresh wave of condemnation from Pakistan’s legal and media community. The couple was arrested again on Thursday night, mere hours after the Supreme Court had suspended the sentences imposed on them in a case tied to their social media activity, and reaction from journalists and rights advocates followed almost immediately. Background Mazari-Hazir and Chattha have been fighting a PECA-related prosecution since August 2025, when a case was registered accusing Mazari-Hazir of posting content critical of…

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Explainer: India’s Economic Measures to Counter the US Russia Sanctions Bill

Kainat Rajput
India economic measures against Russia sanctions — cargo ship carrying oil barrels with Indian and Russian trade route map

Summary Washington’s newest sanctions bill against Russia puts India in an uncomfortable spot: keep buying discounted Russian crude and risk steep US tariffs, or scale back purchases and pay more for oil elsewhere. New Delhi’s answer, at least publicly, is neither. It’s planning to keep diversifying where its oil comes from while leaning on diplomacy to soften whatever comes next from Washington. Background For most of the last decade, India barely touched Russian oil — it made up a tiny sliver of total imports. That changed fast after 2022, when…

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PIMS Reforms Pakistan: What the Inquiry Report Found and What Comes Next

Kainat Rajput
Firefighters and hospital staff outside PIMS Mother and Child Health ward after the nursery fire

More than three weeks after a fire killed 14 newborns at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, Pakistan now has a full picture of what went wrong. A 43-page inquiry report has laid out the causes, the failures and a long list of PIMS reforms the government has been ordered to carry out, starting with a strict three-month deadline for the most urgent fixes. This piece walks through what the PIMS inquiry actually found, why the government is treating this as a wider health-sector problem rather than a one-hospital issue,…

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