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Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has arrived in Shanghai on a two-day official visit to China, where he will participate in the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2026. Upon his arrival, Ishaq Dar was received by Shanghai’s vice mayor. He is scheduled to attend the opening ceremony of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference on July 17. — Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan (@ForeignOfficePk) July 16, 2026 During the visit, Pakistan will sign the agreement establishing the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) as a founding member.The deputy prime minister is also expected to hold bilateral meetings with…

The federal government said on Wednesday it was stepping up security around a Chinese-run copper and gold mine in Balochistan after terror attacks disrupted supply routes, and the mine’s operator denied a report that the project could be forced to shut down. Saindak Metals Limited’s managing director, Raziq Sanjrani, called the closure report, first published by the Financial Times, factually incorrect. The mine has run without interruption for 25 years and “there is no possibility of its shutdown”, he said in a statement. He said the company had asked Pakistan’s authorities for help moving furnace oil to the site after some…

Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif on Thursday reaffirmed her government’s commitment to empowering young people, saying the provincial administration would continue to support students until they achieve their goals. Speaking at the inauguration of 10 campuses of the Nawaz Sharif School of Eminence in Arifwala, the chief minister said the government had launched the Honhaar Scholarship Programme to ensure that financial hardship does not prevent talented students from pursuing higher education. She said Punjab’s young people possess immense talent and that the government is committed to providing them with the resources and opportunities needed to succeed. Maryam Nawaz added…

Pakistan’s Foreign Office has said that tensions between Iran and the United States are not in the interest of anyone and urged both sides to exercise restraint. Speaking during a weekly briefing, Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Hussain Andrabi said Pakistan was concerned over the renewed tensions between Iran and the US and was closely monitoring the regional situation. He said Pakistan believes in the continued implementation of the memorandum of understanding and supports dialogue for resolving issues. He added that Pakistan supports uninterrupted trade and oil transportation through the Strait of Hormuz. The Foreign Office spokesperson reiterated Pakistan’s call…

Generative AI chatbots capable of writing emails and computer code, translating, organising a trip or coming up with gift ideas are now readily available, prompting some to ask whether human brainpower could suffer for lack of use. A simple natural-language prompt is usually enough to draw a useable response from a service like ChatGPT or Claude, with the effects making themselves felt in schools and universities, workplaces from offices to courtrooms and our personal lives. Recent scientific studies suggest there could be harmful consequences to farming out cognitive tasks to AI. They highlight memory, decision-making and critical thinking as particularly…

Elon Musk’s artificial-intelligence startup xAI has sued a South Carolina man arrested earlier this year on charges of sexually exploiting ​minors, alleging he misused the company’s AI system Grok to ‌create child sexual abuse material. xAI alleged in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas on Tuesday, that Terry Harwood violated the company’s terms of service. The case ​is one of the first brought by an AI company ​against one of its users for allegedly using an AI ⁠system to generate explicit material. Contact information for Harwood, who was arrested in February, ​was not immediately available. Spokespeople for xAI…

Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek is planning a new fundraising round at a valuation of approximately 500 billion yuan ($74 billion) as it explores a potential initial public offering (IPO) on mainland China’s STAR Market, according to people familiar with the matter. The Hangzhou-based company aims to raise as much as 50 billion yuan in the new funding round, which follows a 7.4 billion-dollar capital raise completed in June at a post-money valuation of around 450 billion yuan, sources said. DeepSeek has also begun early discussions on listing on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style STAR Market and has reportedly set an internal target…

The US State Department said on Wednesday it has approved the sale of an estimated $1.96 billion in weapons to bolster Saudi Arabia’s air defences, as the war ramps up in the Middle East. “This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a Major non-NATO Ally that is a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf Region,” the State Department said in a release. Among the weapons the Gulf kingdom seeks are up to 20,000 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon Systems and their warheads, which…

US Vice President JD Vance said some members of the Israeli government had tried to influence US public opinion to oppose a deal by the US to end the war with Iran, ​in a podcast episode with host Joe Rogan posted on Wednesday. The comments echoed earlier criticism ‌of Israeli government policy by Vance, whom many view as a potential future presidential candidate, in a widening public rift between the two countries. Vance defended a deal reached last month to end the war with Iran, which critics in the ​US and Israel have slammed for failing to curb Iran’s missile…

Iran said on Thursday that the Strait of Hormuz was an inviolable “red line”, warning that if  ​US President Donald Trump carried out his threat to attack Iran’s infrastructure, it would strike all infrastructure across the Gulf region. The US ‌launched a fifth night of attacks on Wednesday and reimposed a naval blockade of Iran’s ports, which Washington says is aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz, closed by Iran last Saturday after a fragile truce collapsed. After the first strikes on Wednesday night, Tehran’s top negotiator Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf issued a statement saying: “We are in an essential and…