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MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang shut down concerns on Tuesday of a constitutional crisis amid Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano’s repeated insistence of still being Senate president, saying the executive branch only recognized Senate President Pro Tempore Sherwin Gatchalian as leader of the chamber. According to Palace press officer Claire Castro, Malacañang sees no constitutional crisis as it acknowledges

The Hindu National

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Firewood returns to school kitchens in Kottayam as LPG availability concerns linger

With classes now functioning in full swing, insistence by some school headmasters to use firewood hearth has become a major challenge for cooking workers, says School Pachaka Thozhilali Union

Ex-Perlis reps confirmed SD plot to oust MB, says PAS

PAS information chief rebuffs Bersatu's insistence that no such plot existed, warns that 'trust, once broken, is hard to rebuild'.

The Straits Times World

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Iran targets Israel in missile barrage in first since Mid-East war ceasefire

Iran’s insistence that the conflicts are linked has complicated negotiations for Washington.

The Straits Times World

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Iran threatens retaliation against US, Israel after strikes on Beirut

Iran’s insistence that the conflicts are linked has complicated negotiations for Washington.

Naqvi takes CDF’s message to Tehran amid stalemate

• IRNA says ‘important message’ meant for Iran’s supreme leader • Interior minister receives instructions from PM before departure ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Saturday stepped up efforts to break the impasse in the US-Iran dialogue, with Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi arriving in Tehran carrying a message from Chief of Defence Forces Field Marshal Asim Munir for Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. Mr Naqvi was received by his Iranian counterpart Eskandar Momeni. Pakistan’s newly appointed ambassador to Iran, Imran Ahmad Siddiqui, was also present. The visit comes at a delicate moment in the diplomatic process that Pakistan has been facilitating for months, as indirect negotiations between Washington and Tehran have drifted into what diplomats describe as a fragile stalemate despite both sides continuing to publicly endorse diplomacy over renewed confrontation. Iran’s official news agency IRNA, quoting an informed source, reported that Mr Naqvi was carrying an “important message” from Field Marshal Munir for Mojtaba Khamenei. The source said the interior minister had held extensive consultations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other senior officials before leaving for Tehran. The source further claimed that PM Shehbaz had given special instructions to Mr Naqvi regarding the future course of the Iran-US talks. The Prime Minister’s Office, meanwhile, said in a statement that PM Shehbaz had met the interior minister in Lahore and discussed his visit to Tehran. According to the official statement, Mr Naqvi briefed the prime minister on his recent engagements on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation conference in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The two also held consultations on the Tehran visit, while the prime minister provided guidance for the discussions. Mr Naqvi had also met Mr Momeni in Bishkek. Diplomatic sources said Mr Naqvi’s mission was part of Pakistan’s efforts to prevent the collapse of a ceasefire arrangement that Islamabad helped broker earlier this year and to create space for the resumption of meaningful negotiations between Washington and Tehran. The ceasefire, reached in April after weeks of intense fighting involving Iran, the United States and Israel, remains formally in place but has been repeatedly tested by military incidents in and around the Gulf region. Recent exchanges involving US strikes on Iranian military assets and Iranian retaliatory actions have further complicated efforts to move negotiations beyond crisis management towards a more comprehensive political understanding. At the centre of the deadlock are disagreements over Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, its enrichment programme, the future of sanctions, reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and regional security issues. While US President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that negotiations remain active and that progress is being made towards a deal, Iranian officials have struck a far more cautious tone. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi recently said there had been no tangible progress in the talks and that Tehran was still reviewing proposals conveyed through intermediaries. Diplomatic sources familiar with the process said both sides remained far apart on key questions, particularly Washington’s demand for substantial restrictions on Iranian enrichment activities and Tehran’s insistence that its right to peaceful enrichment remains non-negotiable. Complicating matters further is the Lebanon question, which Iranian officials increasingly view as linked to the broader diplomatic track. Tehran has repeatedly argued that any durable arrangement must address developments across all theatres of confrontation, including Lebanon, while Washington has sought to treat the Lebanon-Israel track separately from the nuclear and sanctions negotiations. Against this backdrop, Mr Naqvi’s discussions in Tehran are expected to focus not only on the state of the US-Iran talks but also on regional issues that continue to affect prospects for a settlement. Besides talks with Interior Minister Momeni, the Pakistani minister is expected to meet Foreign Minister Araghchi and President Masoud Pezeshkian. Meetings with parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Bagher Zolghadr are also expected, according to Iranian sources. The significance attached to the visit has fuelled speculation that Islamabad may be attempting to inject fresh momentum into a process that appeared to be losing traction after weeks of military incidents and diplomatic setbacks. Pakistan’s mediation role has drawn increasing international attention in recent months, with both Washington and Tehran publicly acknowledging Islamabad’s efforts and several European governments expressing support for the initiative. Lebanese army chief’s visit Meanwhile, in a related development that attracted attention in diplomatic circles, Lebanese Army Commander General Rodolphe Haykal left for Pakistan on Saturday on an official visit. The Lebanese Armed Forces announced that the visit was being undertaken at the invitation of General Haykal’s Pakistani counterpart, but did not disclose details of its agenda or duration. Officially, the trip is being described as part of ongoing military-to-military cooperation and discussions on training and institutional support. However, the timing of the visit has generated speculation because it coincides with Pakistan’s efforts to overcome obstacles in the US-Iran negotiations and follows renewed tensions in southern Lebanon. Lebanon has increasingly emerged as one of the factors complicating the broader diplomatic process. President Joseph Aoun has recently called for strengthening state authority and reducing the role of non-state armed groups, while Iranian officials have strongly rejected suggestions that Tehran uses Lebanon as leverage in its dealings with Washington. Iran has also linked progress in its discussions with the United States to developments on what it describes as other fronts of the conflict, including Lebanon. Western diplomats say the Lebanese armed forces are expected to play an important role in any future security arrangements in southern Lebanon and have therefore become an important part of regional stabilisation efforts. Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2026

Weaponising climate

IN November 1970, the Bhola cyclone killed up to half a million people in East Pakistan. Yahya Khan’s government introduced a 10 per cent surcharge to fund emergency relief. Bangladesh became independent 13 months later. The affected territory was gone. The levy remained. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government absorbed the revenue into general federal accounts in 1972. No accounting was published. In 1985, Gen Zia introduced the Iqra surcharge, framed as an education fund. The revenue balanced federal operating accounts. No alternative education instrument replaced it when it was abolished under the IMF’s insistence. The template was set. Fifty years later, Pakistan has not deviated from this template. What began as a cyclone surcharge is now a Rs1.55 trillion instrument misclassified as non-tax revenue. The architecture is identical but the scale has changed. Pakistan has pursued this through two parallel tracks. The first collected resources in the name of disaster relief, later rebranded as climate resilience as floods became more frequent. The second imposed non-tax revenue through petroleum pricing. The petroleum development levy (PDL), a general development surcharge dating to 1961, was structurally insulated in 2010 to bypass provincial NFC sharing. It grew steadily, crossing Rs100 billion annually by the mid-2010s and exceeding Rs200bn by FY2018-19. Although never formally framed as a climate instrument, it has acquired a distinct environmental gloss, culminating in the climate support levy of 2026. The flooding track: The 1973 floods wiped out three million houses and erased a year of economic growth. Bhutto created the Federal Flood Commission. Three consecutive 10-year national flood protection plans followed, running from 1978 to 2008 across four governments, each funded through the PSDP with no ring-fencing. Pakistan suffered catastrophic floods throughout. Three decades of federal plans, without a rupee ring-fenced. No relief fund has ever been legally ring-fenced. Since 1992, when Nawaz Sharif’s government first activated the prime minister’s relief fund model, Pakistan has deployed the same instrument at least five times across floods and earthquakes. The design is deliberate: by classifying flood revenue as voluntary donations rather than taxation, governments simultaneously escape parliamentary scrutiny, judicial challenge and NFC distribution requirements. Benazir Bhutto deployed the identical model after the 1994 floods. So did every government after 2010. The 2010 floods affected 20m people and caused $43bn in damages. The government announced a flood relief surcharge projecting Rs40bn, collected it, and absorbed it into the federal consolidated fund while simultaneously negotiating IMF targets. After the 2022 floods, the government quietly renamed its existing super tax: Section 4B, whose stated purpose was rehabilitation of temporarily displaced persons, became Section 4C, a super tax on high-earning persons. The humanitarian justification was dropped without explanation. The revenue mechanism stayed the same. Three findings hold across every instrument. No relief fund has ever been legally ring-fenced: every prime minister, president and chief minister relief fund is credited to the account of the federation, making it general government money. International pledges substitute for domestic accountability rather than supplementing it. And every fund since 2005 has carried a public commitment to publish an independent audit. None has been published. Justice Saqib Nisar’s 2018 dam fund collected Rs11.5bn from the public in the name of water security, earned Rs2.2bn in mark-up over six years, and was quietly transferred to the public account of the federation in 2024 without a single rupee spent on the stated objective. If money raised under the highest judicial authority in the country can still end up in the general budget, no argument remains that any executive fund can be trusted to do otherwise. The petroleum track: Climate change has been weaponised as a justification to tax citizens. Gen Musharraf used clean-fuel rhetoric to justify development surcharges during the CNG transition without a single rupee being traced to a cleaner fuel outcome. In 2009, the Supreme Court under chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry ruled that revenue collected without a verifiable service to the payer is a tax, not a surcharge, and that imposing it by executive notification violates Article 77. The response was the Petroleum Products (Development Levy) Amendment Act, 2009, that satisfied the court’s procedural requirement while eliminating any ring-fencing obligation. The consequences are calculable. At Rs1.55tr, the PDL represents 10-11 per cent of total federal revenue. Under the seventh NFC Award, provinces are entitled to 57.5pc of all taxes. If correctly classified, Punjab would receive Rs461bn annually, Sindh Rs219bn, KP Rs13bn and Balochistan Rs81bn. They receive zero. It is a tax called a levy because of the NFC Award. The classification is deliberate. PML-N elevated PDL margins in 2016 on the justification that the premium would fund cleaner fuel production. The revenue went instead to IPP capacity charge payments and circular debt service, which reached Rs1.14tr by FY2017-18. The revenue collected in the name of cleaner fuel financed the liabilities of a fossil-fuel-dependent power grid. The PTI then scaled the PDL to Rs424bn, the highest in Pakistan’s history, while branding it a carbon instrument aligned with its Ten Billion Tree Tsunami project. In March 2022, it froze the levy at zero for political reasons. The IMF suspended a $1bn tranche within weeks. A climate-labelled levy had become a macroeconomic emergency. Across 23 programmes since 1958, the IMF has required Pakistan to enhance the PDL without requiring it to distribute the revenue constitutionally. The way forward: Can the PDL be ring-fenced or audited? Ring-fencing 15pc of PDL collections into a sovereign climate fund (SCF) would deploy Rs232bn annually, shared with provinces under the NFC Award and structured as a statutory trust. Following global benchmarks, it can leverage private investment at a ratio of one to four, unlocking approximately Rs900bn in total climate finance conditioned on climate resilience outcomes aligned with Pakistan’s commitments. The IMF objection is predictable but answerable. The SCF does not reduce total PDL collections. Tabled in the next programme negotiation as a structural benchmark rather than a provincial concession, the IMF’s incentives align with the reform rather than against it. The question is not whether Pakistan can create such a fund. It is whether any government is willing to surrender a revenue stream that it has prized too much to ring-fence. The writer is a climate expert. Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2026

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Trump's $1.8 Billion 'Weaponization' Payout Put On Hold After Backlash

The Republican rebellion was an extraordinary act of defiance given Trump's insistence on loyalty

Philippine Daily Inquirer

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WATCH: Tension flares between Cayetano, Remulla during Jinggoy arrest

MANILA, Philippines — Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano on Monday clashed with Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla as well as police officers over his insistence that Estrada not be arrested inside the Senate building. This is despite the fact that Sen. Jinggoy Estrada has already expressed his intent to voluntarily surrender amid an arrest warrant issued

Turning up late and making Helen Mirren wait: has Tom Hardy been fired from MobLand?

The actor’s alleged clashes with colleagues have sparked rumours about his future on the hit show – which others dispute. But these aren’t the first accusations of him being a tricky colleague If you’re at all familiar with the Paramount+ series MobLand, these past few days will have come as an absolute revelation. At long last, just when everyone thought it wouldn’t ever be possible, something exciting has happened. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen onscreen. Instead, rumours are swirling that Tom Hardy has been fired. Almost a week ago, Puck reported that Hardy had departed the MobLand set after clashing with cast and crew. As things currently stand, that has been walked back a little – partly because Paramount has yet to greenlight a third series at all – but the takeaway remains the same: Tom Hardy sounds like an absolute nightmare to work with. According to the Hollywood Reporter, his MobLand behaviour has involved a greater insistence on creative control – delivering script notes to producer Jez Butterworth and creator Ronan Bennett – while generally arriving late and locking himself in his trailer for hours on end. “He kept the cast waiting, [which is] a power play,” a source told the outlet. “Keeping Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren and others waiting is career suicide, I would wager.” This appears to be a wager that the source has lost, given that Mirren posted a photo of Hardy’s face on Instagram last night, captioned “Love you now and always”. Continue reading...

The lender that governs

THE IMF’s Executive Board has approved the third review of Pakistan’s 37-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF), adding 11 new conditions and raising total structural conditionality to 75. In addition, there are 30 standing commitments, bringing total compliance requirements to 105. These span fiscal, governance, monetary, foreign exchange, financial, energy, state-owned enterprises, trade, investment, deregulation, social protection, and anti-corruption measures — many extending well beyond the IMF’s core mandate and institutional competence. The sheer breadth of this conditionality now touches almost every sphere of economic activity and governance, steadily eroding Pakistan’s policy autonomy and economic sovereignty. Parliament is required to approve the FY27 budget in line with the IMF’s stringent and intrusive policy advice and targets, effectively reducing the legislature to a rubber stamp. Pakistan is to phase out fiscal incentives for Special Economic and Technology Zones, publish an action plan to mitigate corruption vulnerabilities in government departments, amend the NAB ordinance to enhance the appointment process for NAB chairman, publish asset declarations of civil servants, amend the Companies Act to improve corporate governance structures, adopt a national policy for sugar market liberalisation, and lift restrictions on commercial import of used cars. Equally worrisome is the IMF’s approach to energy taxation amid persistently high inflation. Governments facing high energy costs ordinarily reduce or suspend fuel taxes to shield citizens from cost-of-living pressures. In Pakistan, the opposite has occurred: petrol prices are now carrying roughly Rs145 per litre in taxes and levies — nearly one-third of what consumers pay at the pump. These levies have intensified inflation, raised transport and production costs, and deepened the burden on already-stretched households. The consequent pressure on the State Bank to raise interest rates further suppresses economic activity while ignoring the structural roots of inflation. Meanwhile, the IMF’s insistence on full cost recovery through electricity and gas tariff adjustments has failed to resolve the circular debt problem — a crisis rooted in inefficiency, theft, transmission losses, and the ruinous terms of IPP contracts. The effectiveness and legitimacy of IMF conditionality therefore deserve careful scrutiny. The effectiveness and legitimacy of IMF conditionality deserve careful scrutiny. The Fund was not designed to micromanage economies. The IMF’s own doctrine of parsimony holds that conditions should be few, focused, and directly tied to a country’s balance-of-payments needs, strictly limited to what is necessary to restore macroeconomic stability. Its 2018 Review of Programme Design and Conditionality and the 2024 Operational Guidance Notecontinue to stress the need for focused, tailored and parsimonious conditionality. Following the 2008 global financial crisis, the IMF itself acknowledged the need for streamlined conditionality focused on its core areas of expertise. Its 2011 review revealed a marked reduction in structural conditionality across 45 post-crisis arrangements, which averaged around 10 conditions per programme per year between 2008 and 2010, compared to 17-19 during the 1995-2007 period. Pakistan’s current EFF, with 75 conditions in just 1.5 years represents a striking reversal of that parsimony principle. The IMF’s own Independent Evaluation Office (IEO), in its 2021 report, also found excessive structural conditionalities in Pakistan’s arrangements, citing the 2013-2016 EFF, which carried 82 conditions, and concluding that the large majority had low depth and weak growth orientation. The empirical record is damning. A 2022 study by Prof Firat Demir in the Journal of Comparative Economics analysing IMF conditionality across more than 130 countries from 1980 to 2014 found that IMF programmes have delivered disappointing growth and development outcomes, with little or no impact on export sophistication, economic complexity, or diversification. Pakistan’s own record confirms this. Pakistan has consistently underperformed its South Asian neighbours, and its successive programmes have excessively focused on front-loaded adjustment while neglecting the structural foundations of sustained growth: weak exports, inequitable taxation, lavish government expenditure, poor human capital, and failing public services. Meanwhile, balance-of-payments crises have remained a recurring feature in countries like Pakistan, Egypt, and Argentina, despite completion of repeated IMF programmes. Part of the problem lies within Pakistan itself. In theory, borrowing countries have the primary responsibility for designing their economic programmes, set out in a letter of intent and a memorandum of economic and financial policies. In practice, these are drafted by IMF staff and presented to country authorities for signature. The proliferation of low-quality, low-depth invasive conditions in the current EFF reflects not only the IMF’s lack of evenhandedness but also the weakness of Pakistan’s negotiating team in blindly accepting IMF advice, effectively outsourcing economic management to the IMF. The Fund has also drifted far beyond its original mandate as a lender of last resort. It has ventured deep into domestic governance, climate policy, private sector development, and digitisation, on the pretext of these being macro-critical, without the institutional expertise those areas require. Its substantial financial support to Ukraine is equally revealing: a $15.6 billion programme launched in 2023 was followed by a new $8.1bn EFF approved in February 2026, part of a broader $136.5bn international support package. Officially, these programmes target macro-financial stability, corruption, and structural reforms. In reality, IMF support has become a linchpin of Ukraine’s war financing, just as recent IMF lending to Egypt has been framed as stabilising a strategically vital economy in the wake of the Gaza conflict. These programmes illustrate how the Fund has become an instrument of geopolitical stabilisation. The IEO has flagged that such perceptions of unequal treatment are actively undermining the IMF’s credibility. The IMF’s policy advice must be more pragmatic and country-specific. Fewer, more selective conditions would foster genuine ownership among country authorities and make reforms successful. Programme design must also ensure fair burden-sharing and a systematic assessment of social and distributional consequences of adjustment. Pakistan, for its part, must end its dependency on borrowed money and external prescription. Other nations have achieved this through strong policy frameworks and sound fundamentals; there is no reason Pakistan cannot do the same. What is required above all is visionary, competent and sincere leadership in public institutions. Without it, Pakistan’s economic management will remain captive to the IMF and self-seeking donors who have consistently failed the nation for decades. The writer is a former senior adviser of the IMF. He is the author of The Shady Economics of International Aid. drsaeed1201@gmail.com Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2026

The Hill

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Navy chief undercuts Trump and Hegseth on Taiwan, Iran

Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao’s insistence this week that the Pentagon had paused a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan over a munitions review has undercut the Trump administration’s narrative on both Iran and Taipei. Cao on Thursday told Senate appropriators that while the U.S. has “plenty” of missiles and interceptors, the Trump administration is holding off...

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Dawn (Pakistan)

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