Overview

• Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani ordered an in-camera briefing in the Umar Abdullah disappearance case, directing government lawyers to name the officers who will brief the court before October 6.
• The court noted the family received a Rs5 million payment while pressing authorities to state, with records, whether the missing citizen is alive or deceased and where he is held, if at all.
• A 5.5-magnitude earthquake at 195 km depth with an epicenter in the Hindu Kush was felt in the northeast, with no reports of fatalities.
• A hand-grenade blast near a police mobile in Noshki injured three policemen, who were hospitalized as investigators opened a case.
• Punjab’s smog steering committee led by Senior Minister Maryam Aurangzeb cleared a plan to expand air-quality monitors to 41, deploy mobile monitoring, provide machinery to curb crop-residue burning, and bar smoke-spewing vehicles, while the federal communications minister announced Sukkur–Hyderabad and Hyderabad–Karachi motorways would be inaugurated this year with completion targeted in two years.