3+ mon, 2+ week ago (293+ words) (AFP): Powerful torrents driven by intense rain smashed into a Himalayan mountain village in Indian-administered Kashmir and killed at least 34 people on Thursday, a top local government official told AFP. It is the second major deadly flooding disaster in India this month. "The news is grim," Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said in a statement, reporting a "cloudburst" of intense rain that had hit the Kishtwar district. Crowds gathered at a Kishtwar hospital while people carried some of the injured on stretchers. "We have found 34 dead bodies and rescued 35 injured people," said Pankaj Kumar Sharma, district commissioner of Kishtwar. "There are chances of more dead bodies being found," he told AFP. Sushil Kumar, a resident of nearby Atholi village, told AFP: "I saw at least 15 dead bodies brought to the local hospital." Rescue teams are likely to face difficulty reaching…...

3+ week, 2+ day ago (197+ words) In a sharply worded statement, Russian officials claimed that The Frontier Post " despite being labeled as a Pakistani publication " operates as an "Americanized" outlet whose Washington-based editorial team "invariably gives preference to ardent Russophobes and critics of Russian foreign policy." The statement criticized the newspaper's international coverage, alleging that it consistently portrays Russia in a negative light while ignoring key developments such as the Moscow Format of Consultations on Afghanistan, held on October 7, 2025. Moscow said the absence of coverage of that regional diplomatic event "further highlights the Russophobic nature of the Westernized editorial office." Moscow countered these claims with statistics, noting that Russia's GDP grew by 4.1% in 2024, with manufacturing expanding by 8.5%, unemployment dropping to 2.5%, and inflation remaining below 7%. Russian officials also pointed to the testing of advanced weapons such as the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile and Poseidon underwater drone as…...

3+ week, 2+ day ago (963+ words) Editorial Note The recent statement issued by the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Pakistan, accusing The Frontier Post of being "Russophobic" and "Americanized," is both surprising and revealing. It reflects not only an outdated understanding of how journalism functions in the modern world but also an intolerance toward independent reporting that does not serve [] The recent statement issued by the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Pakistan, accusing The Frontier Post of being "Russophobic" and "Americanized," is both surprising and revealing. It reflects not only an outdated understanding of how journalism functions in the modern world but also an intolerance toward independent reporting that does not serve the interests of powerful governments'whether in Moscow, Washington, or elsewhere. For the record, The Frontier Post is a Pakistani newspaper that has proudly operated from Washington D.C. for nearly a decade, giving our…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago (300+ words) The reaction was rapid and brutal. Users across Pakistan, Afghanistan, Europe, the Middle East, and even inside Russia mocked the embassy for its sloppy, amateurish attack. The glaring disconnect between reality and the embassy's claims raises serious questions:Did Moscow launch this attack simply because of poor research?Or did the tweet carry a deeper agenda?Did The Frontier Post or Jalil Afridi touch on an issue sensitive to Russia or to one of Russia's close associates in the United States? Many observers are now openly discussing these possibilities. To boast about these numbers while attacking a Pakistani newspaper only highlights the embassy's tone-deafness. The embassy even accused The Frontier Post of ignoring the Moscow Format consultations on Afghanistan " despite the paper's consistent, fact-based coverage of Afghanistan and regional diplomacy. Once again, the Russian statement relied on assumptions, not facts....

10+ mon, 1+ day ago (220+ words) Monitoring Desk WASHINGTON: Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. launched a financial-services and fintech brand dubbed Truth.Fi, with a focus on crypto and customized exchange-traded funds. The new offering will develop separately managed accounts, ETFs and Bitcoin in partnership with Charles Schwab Corp., which will "broadly advise" on investments and strategy, Trump Media said in [] WASHINGTON: Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. launched a financial-services and fintech brand dubbed Truth.Fi, with a focus on crypto and customized exchange-traded funds. The new offering will develop separately managed accounts, ETFs and Bitcoin in partnership with Charles Schwab Corp., which will "broadly advise" on investments and strategy, Trump Media said in a statement Wednesday. Trump Media said it will also invest as much as $250 million that will be kept in custody by Schwab. That amount is about a third of Trump…...

10+ mon, 3+ week ago (872+ words) (Reuters) : Social media company Meta Platforms (META.O) on Tuesday scrapped its U.S. fact-checking program and reduced curbs on discussions around contentious topics such as immigration and gender identity, bowing to criticism from conservatives as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office for a second time. The move is Meta's biggest overhaul of its approach to managing political content on its services in recent memory and comes as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been signaling a desire to mend fences with the incoming administration. The changes will affect Facebook, Instagram and Threads, three of the world's biggest social media platforms with more than 3 billion users globally. Last week, Meta elevated Republican policy executive Joel Kaplan as global affairs head and on Monday announced it had elected Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close friend of Trump, to its board. "We've…...

6+ mon, 3+ week ago (518+ words) NEW YORK (AFP): Coverage of the wars in Gaza and Sudan, and the attempted assassination of U.S. President Donald Trump, dominated the Pulitzer Prizes announced Monday at Columbia University in New York. Considered one of the most prestigious awards in U.S. journalism, the Pulitzers also recognize literature, drama and music. The core issues of the [] NEW YORK (AFP): Coverage of the wars in Gaza and Sudan, and the attempted assassination of U.S. President Donald Trump, dominated the Pulitzer Prizes announced Monday at Columbia University in New York. Considered one of the most prestigious awards in U.S. journalism, the Pulitzers also recognize literature, drama and music. The core issues of the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign took center stage at the awards, which recognized coverage of Trump and his bloodied ear after a July 13 assassination attempt, as well as the loss of abortion rights for women in the…...

2+ mon, 2+ day ago (649+ words) WASHINGTON (AFP): Vacationing in India, engineer Amrutha Tamanam rushed to return to the United States after Donald Trump abruptly announced a $100,000 fee for the visa she holds. As she scrambled to get back to the country she's called home for a decade, racially motivated far-right trolls launched coordinated efforts to disrupt flight bookings from India, calling their campaign "clog the toilet." The White House would later clarify that the new H-1B fee was a one-time payment not applicable to current holders. But leading US companies had already advised their employees abroad to swiftly return to avoid the fee or risk being stranded overseas. Tamanam, an Austin-based software engineer, began searching for a flight from the city of Vijayawada, as users on the far-right message board 4chan moved to overwhelm reservation systems, in a bid to block Indian visa holders from booking tickets....

1+ mon, 1+ week ago (263+ words) Over thirty of America's leading media outlets have vacated their offices inside the Pentagon in protest against a new "Media Access Agreement" that limits journalists' freedom to question, report, and move within the Defense Department. The once-bustling Pentagon press center now stands nearly empty " a haunting image of how far the U.S. government has drifted from the open-press traditions it long championed. Even more troubling, the State Department has gone nearly three months without an official spokesperson, leaving the nation without a clear diplomatic voice. At a time of international crises, this silence suggests not transparency but neglect " and raises the question: who speaks for America now? Observers note that the U.S. situation increasingly resembles that of countries Washington often criticizes " Pakistan, Turkey, India, and Egypt " where journalists face restrictions justified under "national security." The irony is painful. When the Pentagon's corridors,…...

2+ mon, 1+ week ago (785+ words) PARIS: On an early September morning, a pig's head, covered in blood, was discovered at the doorstep of the Javel mosque in the heart of Paris. On it, a name had been scrawled in blue ink: Macron. A couple of kilometres (about a mile) from the Eiffel Tower, the mosque is a place of worship for a diverse community of Muslims with Lebanese, Algerian, Iranian and other roots, which has long coexisted with neighbours in a leafy district of the French capital. "It's the first time something like this has ever happened to us," Najat Benali, the mosque's rector, told Al Jazeera English. That Tuesday, September 9, worshippers heading in for the dawn prayer discovered the act of desecration. Muslims are forbidden from eating pork and consider pigs to be unclean. The worshippers called Benali, who rushed to the site. "They…...