Pakistan on Sunday suspended mobile and internet services “in areas with security concerns” as supporters of imprisoned former premier Imran Khan geared up for a protest in the capital.

The government and Interior Ministry posted the announcement on social media platform X, which is banned in Pakistan. They did not specify the areas, nor did they say how long the suspension would be in place.

Also read: 37 killed in sectarian violence in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in last 24 hours

“Internet and mobile services will continue to operate as usual in the rest of the country,” the posts said. A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry was not immediately available for comment.

Khan has been in prison for more than a year and has over 150 criminal cases against him. But he remains popular and his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or PTI, says the cases are politically motivated.

Also read: Pakistan tightens security in Islamabad ahead of Imran Khan rally

His supporters rely heavily on social media to demand his release and use messaging platforms like WhatsApp to share information, including details of events.

Pakistan has already sealed off the capital Islamabad with shipping containers and shut down major roads and highways connecting the city with PTI strongholds in the provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The government is imposing social media platform bans and targeting VPN services, according to monitoring service Netblocks. On Sunday, Internet-access advocacy group, Netblocks said live metrics showed WhatsApp backends are restricted in Pakistan, affecting media sharing on the app.

Also read: Pakistan issues special coin to mark Guru Nanak’s birth anniv

Last month, authorities suspended the cellphone services in Islamabad and Rawalpindi to thwart a pro-Khan rally. The shutdown disrupted communications and affected everyday services such as banking, ride-hailing and food delivery.

Toronto: The trial of the four Indian nationals accused in the killing of pro-Khalistan figure Hardeep Singh Nijjar, has been moved from the Surrey provincial court to the British Columbia Supreme Court as the prosecution has sought their direct indictment.

Also Read: Nothing to link PM, EAM, NSA to Nijjar plot: Canada

On Monday, the prosecution, called the Crown in Canada, moved for the stay of proceedings in the provincial court and is “now proceeding by way of a direct indictment”, a spokesperson for the BC Prosecution Service, Ministry of Attorney General, told the Hindustan Times.

In emailed responses to queries from HT, Communications Counsel Damienne Darby said, “A direct indictment means the accused will not have a preliminary inquiry but will instead proceed directly to trial (after what is anticipated to be a fairly lengthy period of pretrial applications given the complexity of the case). November 18 was the first appearance on the Supreme Court matter. The accused appeared by video, except Amandeep Singh, who appeared by counsel designation.”

Their next appearance will be on February 11, 2025, for a case management conference and scheduling of the pretrial applications and the trial dates will occur sometime in the new year. “There will be a number of pretrial applications before the trial commences, but we are unable to provide an estimate at this time for the length of the pretrial phase,” Darby added.

Also Read: India slams Canadian media report over killing of Hardeep Nijjar

On application by the Crown, which wasn’t opposed by counsel for the accused, the court imposed an interim publication ban regarding pretrial conferences and case management conferences and a restriction against members of the public attending court remotely.

The four accused, Karan Brar, Kamalpreet Singh, Karanpreet Singh and Amandeep Singh, are in holding facilities.

Amandeep Singh made his first court appearance on May 15, while the others appeared before a judge on May 7. May 21 was the first time all four appeared together in a court. All four are facing charges related to first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

The hearings for the accused at the provincial court, the latest on October 2, were adjourned five times, as the prosecution sought additional time for disclosure, or providing of the case material to the lawyers for the accused.

The killing of Nijjar on June 18, 2023 in Surrey, caused India-Canada relations to crater after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s statement in the House of Commons three months later that there were “credible allegations” of a potential link between Indian agents and the murder. India reacted by saying those charges were “absurd” and “motivated”.

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Vought to help set budget priorities, roll back regulations

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Vought was OMB chief during Trump's 2017-2021 term

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Vought has played a major role in Project 2025

By Gram Slattery and Tim Reid

Nov 22 - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Russ Vought, a key architect of "Project 2025," the controversial conservative plan to overhaul the government, to be director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, a powerful agency that helps decide the president's policy priorities and how to pay for them.

Vought, who was OMB chief during Trump's 2017-2021 term, would play a major role in setting budget priorities and implementing Trump's campaign promise to roll back government regulations.

Since Trump left office, Vought has been deeply involved in Project 2025, a series of detailed policy proposals for Trump's second term drawn up by hundreds of high-profile conservatives.

Among other measures, Project 2025 calls for a broad expansion in presidential power by boosting the number of political appointees and increasing the president's authority over the Justice Department. The project also proposes enforcing laws that make it illegal to mail abortion pills over state lines, criminalizing pornography and eliminating the Department of Education.

The project's authors, Vought included, have also advocated for the reclassification of parts of the federal workforce that would give Trump the authority to fire tens of thousands of government employees.

During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly denied he had any links to Project 2025, even though many of its authors were former officials from his first administration. With Vought's selection, the president-elect has now tapped several former aides with Project 2025 links for key administration roles.

DAY ONE PROPOSALS

During the election campaign, Trump's Democratic opponents made a concerted effort to raise public awareness of Project 2025 among voters, warning it was a blueprint for a hard-right political shift they said would occur under Trump.

Their effort succeeded in making Americans widely aware of the project's existence, and opinion polls showed voters broadly disapproved of the effort.

The Trump campaign expressed increasing annoyance with the project, repeatedly emphasizing that its proposals were separate from the campaign's official policy platform.

Vought wrote a chapter for Project 2025 centered on the management of the president's executive office. While many of the suggestions he laid out are highly technical, they are for the most part aimed at expanding the president's authorities and lessening the power of career civil servants.

"After months of lies to the American people, Donald Trump is taking off the mask: He's plotting a Project 2025 Cabinet to enact his dangerous vision starting on day one," said Alex Floyd, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee.

Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025, and that all his cabinet nominees and appointments were "whole-heartedly committed to President Trump's agenda, not the agenda of outside groups."

Vought has helped craft several executive orders that could be implemented on Day One of Trump's term, according to two people involved in the project. They include an order instituting Schedule F, which would re-categorize thousands of civil servants to enable Trump to fire them should he want to, said those people, who requested anonymity to discuss the project's internal deliberations.

Trump's other nominees with Project 2025 ties include Brendan Carr, who wrote the project's chapter on the Federal Communications Commission. Carr is now set to lead that agency.

Carr has criticized the FCC's decision not to finalize nearly $900 million in broadband subsidies for Elon Musk's SpaceX satellite internet unit Starlink, as well as the Commerce Department's $42 billion broadband infrastructure program and President Joe Biden's spectrum policy.

Other Project 2025 contributors who have been named by Trump as officials in his new administration are Tom Homan, Trump's "border czar," John Ratcliffe, his incoming CIA director and Pete Hoekstra, Trump's choice for ambassador to Canada.

Stephen Miller, one of Trump's incoming deputy chiefs of staff, founded a conservative legal and advocacy group known as America First Legal, which contributed to the project.

At OMB, Vought will work with X owner Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to carry out Trump's campaign pledge to slash government spending and regulations.

Musk and Ramaswamy have been tapped by Trump to co-lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency, an entity Trump has indicated will operate outside the confines of government.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.