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On her first foray into tree planting, Laiba Atika forgot a key item — a shovel, which her mom later fetched. But the 17-year-old is clear about why she is leading volunteers in the northern Pakistani city of Mardan to plant dozens of pine trees in a scrubby park. “It’s our duty as citizens,” she says in formal English, “to implement actions that can make planet a better place to live in.” “It’s our duty as citizens,” says Atika in formal English, “to implement actions that can make planet a…

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ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that his government is committed to the global efforts for biodiversity conservation and protection and has, therefore, undertaken many initiatives to protect green areas in the country. According to a press statement issued here on Monday by the Ministry of Climate Change, the prime minister said: “In fact today the global biodiversity is faced with myriad challenges caused due to unsustainable human activities, including habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation, habitat degradation, overexploitation of species for human use, introduction of exotic species and increased spread…

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ISLAMABAD: Amid increasing gas deficit, the government is reviving an underground gas storage project shelved almost a decade ago to plan higher imports in summers and bridge higher demand-supply gap in winters. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has agreed to undertake a technical study through its $575,000 financing with the support of a consortium of European oil and gas equipment companies. Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Petroleum Nadeem Babar on Monday presided over a meeting with a delegation of ADB and the companies concerned for the development of underground…

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ISLAMABAD: The Board of Directors of the Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) announced the financial results for the year ended 30th June, 2020. The company’s net sales revenue clocked at Rs244.856 billion, with profit after tax at Rs100.081 billion. This translated into earnings per share of Rs23.27. The Board of Directors announced final cash dividend of Rs2.50 per share i.e. 25 percent. This is in addition to interim dividends already paid at Rs4.25 per share i.e. 42.5 percent. The cash dividend will be paid to the shareholders, whose…

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The troubles faced by the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—the flagship of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—are perhaps the most conclusive demonstration that the BRI model that has been in place for the last few years is no longer sustainable. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, CPEC had stalled. Not only are the figures commonly cited for the total package of projects under this framework since its launch in 2015—which run as high as $62 billion—no longer accurate, investments of that magnitude are not under consideration either. The projects that…

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