PESHAWAR: Three people were killed and five others were injured in a remote-controlled roadside blast in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province on Friday, police said.
The improvised explosive device (IED) targeted an auto-rickshaw in KP’s Mardan district, according to police and rescue officials.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has claimed dozens of attacks in the region.
“The IED targeted a Tez Raftar rickshaw near Jalala Bridge in Takht Bhai tehsil of Mardan district,” District Police Officer Zahoor Afridi told Arab News. “Three persons died and five others were injured due to the blast.”
Bilal Faizi, a spokesperson for the Rescue 1122 service, said the injured persons were rushed to Tehsil Headquarters Hospital Takht Bhai and Mardan Medical Complex. “One person succumbed to injuries during treatment,” he added.
Pakistan has witnessed a renewed surge in militant violence in its two western provinces, KP and Balochistan, since the TTP called off its fragile truce with the government in November 2022.
Earlier this month, a policeman and a paramilitary soldier were killed after militants attacked a check-post in KP’s Khyber district. In June, seven Pakistani soldiers, including an army captain, were killed in a roadside blast in the Lakki Marwat district of the province.
Islamabad has blamed the surge in violence on militants operating out of neighboring Afghanistan. Kabul denies the allegation and says rising violence in Pakistan is a domestic issue of Islamabad.
KARACHI: Looking for used clothes and shoes, bags and toys for your children or knock-offs from coveted fashion brands?
Head to Light House, a famous street off MA Jinnah Road in Pakistan’s commercial hub of Karachi where all these items are available for cheap only if you’re willing to trudge through rows of stalls and shops and piles upon piles of goods on sale.
“When I think of Light House, I think of it as the place where I can get imported items I need within a normal price range,” Muhammad Jehangir, a 25-year-old customer visiting the market from Peshawar, told Arab News.
“If you want to buy anything, Light House in Karachi is the best place. You can find everything here,” he added, as he showed off his purchase: a pair of shoes for around $100 that would have cost him up to five times more if purchased new:
“The cheapest shoes are available here as well as shoes imported from other countries.”
Imported second-hand shoes are on display at a shop in Light House market, a famous street off MA Jinnah Road in Pakistan’s commercial hub of Karachi, on July 6, 2024 (AN Photo)
While a global crackdown on counterfeit goods has pushed fakes into back rooms, in Asia sales are more blatant with markets from Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok and Beijing filled with fake brands including Prada, Burberry and Louis Vuitton. In Karachi, Light House is the hub of the illicit trade.
But the street was not always a center for second-hand merchandise and fashion fakes. Before the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, it was a famed cinema hub of Karachi.
“So, this area is famous because of Light House cinema. Light House Cinema dates back to before the partition, it was named Light House in 1946,” said Iqbal A. Rehman Mandvia, who has authored a book, ‘Is Dasht Me Ik Shehr tha,’ on Karachi.
“Before that, it was called Globe Cinema. It became Light House in 1946 and remained here until 1980, after which it became a business center.”
Now the area was known as a landa bazaar, or a market for second-hand clothes, Mandvia said.
Across the road from the cinema stood the now defunct Café Lasani, known for decades for its famous chicken tikka.
“It was a golden era,” Mandvia said, remembering famous films he had watched at Light House.
“I watched the movie ‘Josh’ here, followed by ‘Umrao Jaan Ada’ … Light House was an air-conditioned cinema that screened good films and the area was nice too.”
An old undated photo shows the lighthouse cinema in Karachi, Pakistan. (Iqbal A. Rehman Mandvia)
Muhammad Sabir, whose grandfather bought several shops in the area in 1948, recalled that the main attraction was once the movie theater.
“Noor Jehan’s film ‘Koel’ was playing, and people broke down the doors of the cinema in their quest to get tickets,” he said as he showed an imported pair of jeans to a customer at his shop.
Sabir, now 76, had just been born when his grandfather bought the shops and initially ran grocery stores, tailoring shops and laundry services there before switching over to selling used goods.
“We also changed our business and moved into the field of second-hand clothing,” he added.
And now that’s why customers throng the market.
“When we hear about Light House, we think of it as a place where we can find unique and affordable items at cheap prices that come from abroad,” Sonia, a regular customer who only gave her first name, told Arab News, showing off three toys she had purchased for her children for Rs100 ($0.36) a piece.
“They are very different and good. You can find everything here, like very good toys and branded shoes that have been used once or twice, but you can also find new ones.”
KARACHI: Firefighters were busy dousing flames at the Pakistan Stock Exchange building in Karachi on Monday after a fire erupted on the fourth floor, a rescue service confirmed.
No loss of life or injury has so far been reported in the incident, Rescue 1122 Sindh said in a statement. As per local media reports, people inside the stock exchange were evacuated from the premises after the fire erupted.
“Rescue 1122’s fire and rescue team were dispatched to the venue with two fire brigade trucks as soon as they received information [about the fire],” the rescue service said.
Video footage shared widely showed flames and smoke billowing from the fourth floor of the Pakistan Stock Exchange building. According to local media reports, trading at the Pakistan Stock Exchange was suspended after the fire broke out.
The country’s largest bourse is located on I. I. Chundrigar Road, also known as Pakistan’s Wall Street, the city’s main commercial street in a high-security zone close to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the Central Police Office.
Many offices of private banks, commercial enterprises, and the head office of Karachi Port Trust (KPT) are in close vicinity.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will visit the southwestern city of Quetta today, Monday, to meet the provincial leadership there and announce a relief package for farmers, his office confirmed.
Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, which shares porous borders with Afghanistan and Iran, has been wracked by an insurgency launched by ethnic Baloch militants since decades. These Baloch nationalists have long accused the Pakistani government of monopolizing profits from Balochistan’s abundant natural resources, saying it has led to political marginalization and economic exploitation. The state denies these allegations.
The province, Pakistan’s largest in terms of size yet its most backward by almost all economic indicators, was battered by flash floods when torrential rains wreaked havoc in March this year. Torrential floods inundated roads in Kharan and Kech districts and inflicted misery on farmers, who had to suffer economic hardship when a large number of their crops were washed away.
“PM Shehbaz Sharif will visit Quetta today where he will meet the provincial government and also will make a relief package announcement for Balochistan farmers,” the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) told Arab News.
The PMO said it would share further details regarding the prime minister’s visit to the provincial capital when he departs for the trip.
On Sunday, Sharif undertook a day-long trip to Pakistan’s commercial and industrial hub Karachi, where he met members of the business community and inspected port operations. Sharif directed authorities to improve transportation of goods at the Karachi port, noting that Pakistan held a key geographical position in the region and provided the most convenient sea trade route for the Central Asian states.
The prime minister’s visit to the militancy-hit province also takes place as the government seeks to drum up support for a new military operation it announced last month titled “Operation Azm-e-Istehkam” or Resolve for Stability.
The government announced the operation last month after a meeting of the Central Apex Committee on the National Action Plan (NAP) attended by senior military leaders and top government officials from all provinces, including the PTI-backed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur.
Pakistan’s opposition parties criticized the government’s move, accusing it of not taking lawmakers into confidence over the matter. PM Sharif subsequently clarified the operation would not be launched before it is debated in parliament, adding that Azm-e-Istehkam would only mobilize military operations that have already been launched against militants and aim to eliminate them from the country for good.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s national airline has launched special flights to Iraq’s Najaf city to provide a seamless travel experience to pilgrims during the Islamic month of Muharram, state broadcaster Radio Pakistan reported on Sunday.
Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala hold tremendous significance for Shia Muslims around the world, many of whom travel to these cities during the first two months of Islamic lunar calendar to recall the sacrifices made by Imam Hussain, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
“Pakistan International Airlines has launched special flights for Najaf to facilitate pilgrims during Muharram,” Radio Pakistan said in a report. “The flights operation called ‘Operation Ashura’ is designed to provide a seamless travel experience for pilgrims during this significant period of religious observance.”
The state broadcaster said return flights from Najaf will begin on July 20.
Pakistan’s central moon-sighting committee met on Saturday in the southwestern city of Quetta to spot the Muharram crescent. The Ruet-e-Hilal Committee (RHC) announced that Pakistan would observe the first of Muharram on July 8 while Ashura, which marks the martyrdom of Hussian, would be observed on July 17.
Ashura, which falls on Muharram 10 every year, sees hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims take part in religious gatherings and processions in Pakistan to mourn Hussain’s passing. These processions and gatherings take place amid tight security, as militant groups in Pakistan have often targeted them in the past and killed of hundreds of people.
Pakistan’s largest Punjab province has proposed a ban on all social media platforms from Muharram 6-11 to ensure proper security measures, provincial information minister Azma Bukhari said on Friday.
The measure was aimed at protecting Shia Muslims from sectarian violence and control the spread of hate speech and misinformation, the provincial government wrote in a letter to Pakistan’s interior ministry last week.
Thousands in Pakistan treated for heat stroke last month as June breaks global record
Last month was hottest June on record, exacerbating fears 2024 could be warmest year on record
Most of the heat is from long-term warming from greenhouse gases, say scientists and meteorologists
Updated 08 July 2024
AP
Earth’s more than year-long streak of record-shattering hot months kept on simmering through June, according to the European climate service Copernicus.
There’s hope that the planet will soon see an end to the record-setting part of the heat streak, but not the climate chaos that has come with it, scientists said.
The global temperature in June was record warm for the 13th straight month and it marked the 12th straight month that the world was 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times, Copernicus said in an early Monday announcement.
“It’s a stark warning that we are getting closer to this very important limit set by the Paris Agreement,” Copernicus senior climate scientist Nicolas Julien said in an interview. “The global temperature continues to increase. It has at a rapid pace.”
That 1.5 degree temperature mark is important because that’s the warming limit nearly all the countries in the world agreed upon in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, though Julien and other meteorologists have said the threshold won’t be crossed until there’s long-term duration of the extended heat — as much as 20 or 30 years.
“This is more than a statistical oddity and it highlights a continuing shift in our climate,” Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement.
The globe for June 2024 averaged 62 degrees Fahrenheit (16.66 degrees Celsius), which is 1.2 degrees (0.67 Celsius) above the 30-year average for the month, according to Copernicus. It broke the record for hottest June, set a year earlier, by a quarter of a degree (0.14 degrees Celsius) and is the third-hottest of any month recorded in Copernicus records, which goes back to 1940, behind only last July and last August.
It’s not that records are being broken monthly but they are being “shattered by very substantial margins over the past 13 months,” Julien said.
“How bad is this?” asked Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler, who wasn’t part of the report. “For the rich and for right now, it’s an expensive inconvenience. For the poor it’s suffering. In the future the amount of wealth you have to have to merely be inconvenienced will increase until most people are suffering.”
Even without hitting the long-term 1.5-degree threshold, “we have seen the consequences of climate change, these extreme climate events,” Julien said — meaning worsening floods, storms, droughts and heat waves.
June’s heat hit extra hard in southeast Europe, Turkiye, eastern Canada, the western United States and Mexico, Brazil, northern Siberia, the Middle East, northern Africa and western Antarctica, according to Copernicus. Doctors had to treat thousands of heatstroke victims in Pakistan last month as temperatures hit 117 (47 degrees Celsius).
Jorge Moreno, a worker, drinks flavored water to cope with the heat wave during his workday at a construction site in Veracruz, Mexico on June 17, 2024. (AP/File)
June was also the 15th straight month that the world’s oceans, more than two-thirds of Earth’s surface, have broken heat records, according to Copernicus data.
Most of this heat is from long-term warming from greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, Julien and other meteorologists said. An overwhelming amount of the heat energy trapped by human-caused climate change goes directly into the ocean and those oceans take longer to warm and cool.
The natural cycle of El Ninos and La Ninas, which are warming and cooling of the central Pacific that change weather worldwide, also plays a role. El Ninos tend to spike global temperature records and the strong El Nino that formed last year ended in June.
Another factor is that the air over Atlantic shipping channels is cleaner because of marine shipping regulations that reduce traditional air pollution particles, such as sulfur, that cause a bit of cooling, scientists said. That slightly masks the much larger warming effect of greenhouse gases. That “masking effect got smaller and it would temporarily increase the rate of warming” that is already caused by greenhouse gases, said Tianle Yuan, a climate scientist for NASA and the University of Maryland Baltimore Campus who led a study on the effects of shipping regulations.
Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, of the tech company Stripes and the Berkeley Earth climate-monitoring group, said in a post on X that with all six months this year seeing record heat, “that there is an approximately 95 percent chance that 2024 beats 2023 to be the warmest year since global surface temperature records began in the mid-1800s.”
Copernicus hasn’t computed the odds of that yet, Julien said. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last month gave it a 50 percent chance.
Global daily average temperatures in late June and early July, while still hot, were not as warm as last year, Julien said.
“It is likely, I would say, that July 2024 will be colder than July 2023 and this streak will end,” Julien said. “It’s still not certain. Things can change.”
Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria, said the data show Earth is on track for 3 degrees Celsius of warming if emissions aren’t urgently curtailed. And he feared that an end to the streak of record hot months and the arrival of winter’s snows will mean “people will soon forget” about the danger.
“Our world is in crisis,” said University of Wisconsin climate scientist Andrea Dutton. “Perhaps you are feeling that crisis today — those who live in the path of Beryl are experiencing a hurricane that is fueled by an extremely warm ocean that has given rise to a new era of tropical storms that can intensify rapidly into deadly and costly major hurricanes. Even if you are not in crisis today, each temperature record we set means that it is more likely that climate change will bring crisis to your doorstep or to your loved ones.”
Copernicus uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world and then reanalyzes it with computer simulations. Several other countries’ science agencies — including NOAA and NASA — also come up with monthly climate calculations, but they take longer, go back further in time and don’t use computer simulations.
