Author: Saima Altaf

Israel and Lebanon are heading back to the negotiating table, this time in Rome, with a narrow but consequential goal: turning a fragile framework into an operating security arrangement. What was confirmed The State Department confirmed the next round of US-mediated talks will run August 4 to 6 in Rome, after Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani first announced the session. A State Department official told AFP the technical groups will work on expanding the pilot-zone process, resolving border disputes, and building toward a comprehensive peace and security agreement — incremental steps rather than a single breakthrough. How the framework got…

Public patience with the Iran war is thinner than the White House would like, and the numbers explain why Republicans are nervous heading into November. The core finding A new Reuters/Ipsos poll found only about a third of Americans support US military action against Iran, with 69% of respondents — including four in ten Republicans — saying Trump has not clearly laid out what the campaign is meant to achieve. White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales rejected the idea that shifting sentiment should steer policy, framing the administration’s approach as decisive rather than poll-driven. A weaker start than past wars Approval…

Naheed Noor didn’t ask for a microphone. She got one anyway, and used it to say what many have been thinking quietly about one of Pakistan’s most publicly dissected marriages. What she said Naheed Noor, mother of YouTuber Zaid Ali, urged Dr Nabiha Ali Khan to stop narrating her separation from Haris Khokhar online. Her point was practical rather than moralizing: families traditionally mediate reconciliation privately, and that process breaks down once every detail is public. Reaction split along familiar lines — some called her advice grounded in “khandani” wisdom, others suggested Nabiha’s openness serves attention as much as catharsis.…

Nadia Khan let a photo do the talking. After days of online speculation that her marriage had ended, the veteran host posted a picture with her husband, Faisal Rao, effectively closing the story without saying a word about it directly. How the rumor started Khan has spent recent months focused on her shows Kya Drama Hai and Rise & Shine, stepping back from the family vlogging that once gave fans a window into her home life. That silence created a vacuum. YouTuber Mehreen Sibtain and others filled it with claims that Khan and Rao, a retired Pakistan Air Force officer…

Pakistan’s entertainment industry has its own quiet nepotism problem — one that mostly goes unnoticed because the talent got there first. Where the conversation started The scrutiny traces back to India. Actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death in 2020 triggered a reckoning over Bollywood’s family-run studios and easy debuts for star kids, with critics accusing power players like Karan Johar of gatekeeping the industry against outsiders. Pakistani audiences, who followed Bollywood closely for decades, absorbed that framework and began applying it closer to home. A different pattern next door What emerged in Pakistan looks different from Bollywood’s version. Rather than obvious…

Brent crude slid toward $87.80 a barrel Tuesday, and WTI dropped below $82, as a pause in US military action against Iran opened the first real window for de-escalation since fighting began. Markets read the lull as tentative good news, but not resolution. A fragile calm, not a settlement President Trump described “good talks” with Tehran on Monday, while warning that strikes would resume if negotiations collapse. Iran issued matching warnings about retaliation. Traders priced in relief, not certainty — both benchmarks touched one-week lows before paring losses, a pattern typical of markets unwilling to fully unwind a war premium…

Pakistan’s central bank chose caution over cuts. The State Bank of Pakistan held its policy rate at 11.5% on Monday, a second straight pause, as renewed Iran-Israel hostilities threaten to undo months of hard-won disinflation. A pause built on fragile gains The Monetary Policy Committee said the macroeconomic outlook has improved since its last meeting but warned that risks have intensified since fighting resumed in the Middle East. Headline inflation eased to 11.1% in June from 11.7% in May, helped by falling global energy prices and a favorable electricity tariff adjustment. Core inflation slipped to 8.4%, though the committee called…

Islamabad averted a third fuel-sector standoff in as many weeks on Monday, forming a high-level committee to settle a freight-rate dispute with oil tanker contractors just days after talks defused a threatened wheel-jam strike. What triggered the standoff The Oil Tanker Contractors Association had given the government a 72-hour ultimatum, warning that unchanged freight rates — frozen for three years even as motorway and highway toll taxes rose by roughly 180 percent — had made operations unsustainable. Contractors also demanded a shrunken quota for the White Oil Pipeline, an end to unauthorized commercial loading, and a freight formula tied to…

Mahira Khan walked into a London charity event dressed for the cameras. She walked out facing a familiar question for celebrities who mix advocacy with endorsements: can you do both without one undercutting the other? What happened Khan appeared as the celebrity guest at a Gaza relief fundraiser organized by Luxe Events UK, taking part in a Q&A and mingling with attendees in a Saniya Maskatiya outfit. Clips from the event went viral, and reaction split fast. Some praised her warmth with the British-Pakistani community; others accused her of turning a humanitarian event into self-promotion, pointing to her dancing and…

PARIS / LAHORE: For years, Mehmood Bhatti presented himself as a self-made success story — an immigrant who rose from obscurity to the heights of Paris fashion through claims of talent, grit, and business brilliance. That narrative has now collapsed under the weight of a criminal conviction. According to reporting by Le Monde journalists Laura Motet and Clément Guillou, Bhatti appeared before the Paris Court of Appeals and pleaded guilty to tax fraud and aggravated money laundering linked to activities between 2009 and 2014. He was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence, fined €150,000, banned from managing companies for 10…