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Pakistan said on Tuesday it has blocked Tinder, Grindr and three other dating apps for not adhering to local laws, its latest move to curb online platforms deemed to be disseminating “immoral content”. Pakistan, the second largest Muslim-majority country in the world after Indonesia, is an Islamic nation where extra-marital relationships and homosexuality are illegal.
The U.S. Department of Transportation said it has revoked permission for Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to conduct charter flights to the United States, citing Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) concerns over Pakistani pilot certifications. Pakistan last month grounded almost a third of its pilots after discovering they may have falsified their qualifications. Pakistan’s grounding of pilots with dubious credentials followed the crash of a PIA jet in May that killed 97 people.
At least five people have died after shots were fired at the Pakistan Stock Exchange in Karachi, according to rescue officials on Monday. Policemen and security officials are among those confirmed dead. Abid Ali, director of the Pakistan Stock Exchange, said in a media briefing on Geo News that four attackers entered the compound and started firing but were killed by security forces.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has come under fire from opposition MPs after telling parliament that the US “martyred” Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was killed in 2011 when US special forces raided his hideout in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. “I will never forget how we Pakistanis were embarrassed when the Americans came into Abbottabad and killed Osama Bin Laden, martyred him,” Khan said.
A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane with around 100 people on board has crashed in a residential area in the country’s largest city of Karachi, an airline spokesman has said. Local reports said the state-run airline’s Airbus A320 was traveling from Pakistan’s capital Lahore. It is feared there may be more casualties as the plane came down on houses in the Model Colony area in the city.
A Pakistani court has commuted the death sentence of a British-born man convicted of the 2002 kidnapping and murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and acquitted three co-accused. At least four people were convicted in connection with Pearl’s murder, including Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh who was sentenced to death in 2002 for masterminding the killing. He has been in jail for 18 years awaiting the outcome of an appeal.
At least 10 people were killed and dozens injured when a suicide bomber detonated his device near a police vehicle in southwestern Pakistan. The attacker tried to enter a Sunni religious rally near a press club in the city of Quetta, and blew himself up as police tried to stop him. Two officers are among the dead, said the city’s police chief Abdul Razzaq Cheema. At least 30 are injured.
At least 71 people have been killed and dozens more injured in northeast Pakistan after a series of avalanches destroyed and buried houses on Tuesday. The avalanches were triggered by heavy snowfall in the Neelum Valley, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, according to local authorities.
Dozens of houses had been wrecked and buried by the snow, with most of those killed and injured in their homes when the avalanches hit.
Gunmen have stormed a five-star hotel in Pakistan’s port city of Gwadar, killing at least five people, officials said. The military said four hotel employees and a Pakistan Navy soldier were killed. According to the military, all guests at the hotel, which has 114 rooms, were safely evacuated. The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), an ethnic Baloch separatist group fighting for independence for Balochistan province, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that four fighters were involved.
General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former military leader, has been sentenced to death at a special court hearing in Islamabad. The three-member court sentenced him over a high treason charge that has been pending since 2013. Gen Musharraf seized power in a military coup in 1999 and served as the country’s president from 2001 to 2008. He is currently in Dubai after being allowed to leave the country for medical treatment in 2016.