Pakistan is reeling from one of its deadliest monsoon disasters in recent years, as raging floods and relentless rains have claimed more than 300 lives.

The National Disaster Management Authority confirmed the death toll on Saturday, warning that the numbers may rise as scores remain missing. Entire communities have been swept away in the mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where most of the casualties occurred.

Many victims were trapped in collapsing houses or swept off by sudden flash floods. At least 21 others have been injured, while families continue to search desperately for missing loved ones.

“This is devastation beyond words,” officials said, as the country’s meteorological department issued fresh warnings of more heavy rains in the north-west, urging residents to take precautionary measures.

The monsoon season, which usually runs from June to September, brings life-sustaining rains—but this year it has turned deadly. Experts warn that climate change is fueling more frequent and more intense downpours, leaving vulnerable communities in constant peril.

Across the border, parts of India and Nepal are also counting their losses from widespread flooding and landslides.

Pakistan’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, said civilian and military rescue teams are battling against the odds to reach stranded families and deliver urgent relief.

United States President Donald Trump may meet Russian President Vladimir Putin as early as next week in a bid to pressure Moscow to end the ongoing war in Ukraine, a senior White House official confirmed on Wednesday.

If confirmed, the meeting would mark the first direct engagement between a sitting U.S. president and the Russian leader since former President Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021—eight months before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II.

The move comes amid escalating diplomatic efforts by Washington to broker a resolution to the conflict, now in its fourth year.

According to The New York Times, Trump disclosed to European leaders during a conference call on Wednesday that he intends to first meet with Putin and subsequently hold a trilateral summit involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

“There’s a good chance that there will be a meeting very soon,” Trump told reporters.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Moscow had expressed interest in a face-to-face meeting and that President Trump is open to separate engagements with both Putin and Zelenskiy.

Meanwhile, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff held a closed-door session with Putin in Moscow on Wednesday. In a post on Truth Social, Trump described the meeting as having achieved “great progress,” though he stopped short of calling it a breakthrough. A Kremlin aide characterised the talks as “useful and constructive.”

The diplomatic momentum comes just 48 hours before the expiration of a deadline set by Trump for Russia to commit to a peace agreement or face new economic sanctions.

Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with what he describes as Moscow’s “lack of serious commitment” to peace talks and has warned of hefty tariffs on nations continuing to purchase Russian exports, including oil.

“We did it with India. We’re probably doing it with a couple of others. One of them could be China,” Trump said on Wednesday, referring to the recent imposition of 25% duties on Indian oil imports.

The last time Putin and Zelenskiy met was in December 2019. Since then, both leaders have traded barbs and refused direct contact, signalling deep personal and political animosity.

As anticipation builds around a possible Trump-Putin-Zelenskiy summit, the international community watches closely, hopeful that this high-level diplomacy may unlock new paths toward ending the protracted war.

President Donald Trump took his contentious bid to end birthright citizenship in the United States to the Supreme Court on Thursday.

Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, which he signed on his first day in office, was blocked by federal district courts in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state.

Birthright citizenship is enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which decrees that anyone born on American soil is a citizen, and Trump’s order seeks to end it for children whose parents are in the country illegally.

In an emergency application with the Supreme Court, the Justice Department sought to narrow the scope of the nationwide lower court injunctions to the individual plaintiffs in the three cases.

The department’s acting solicitor general Sarah Harris described it as a “modest” request and she notably did not seek a ruling from the Supreme Court at this time as to whether eliminating birthright citizenship is constitutional or not.

“Those universal injunctions prohibit a Day 1 Executive Order from being enforced anywhere in the country,” Harris wrote.

“While the parties litigate weighty merits questions, the Court should ‘restrict the scope’ of multiple preliminary injunctions that ‘purport to cover every person in the country,’ limiting those injunctions to parties actually within the courts’ power,” she said.

Trump has been facing legal pushback in courts across the country as he attempts to stem illegal immigration, slash the government budget and reduce the federal workforce.

In his latest setback, a district judge in California on Thursday ordered six federal agencies to rehire thousands of probationary workers who had been fired.

‘Epidemic proportions’

Harris, in her brief with the Supreme Court, also took issue with the number of injunctions on Trump administration moves being issued by district court judges.

“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions,” she said, and are preventing “the Executive Branch from performing its constitutional functions.”

Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship was due to come into effect by February 19.

The 14th Amendment says, in part: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Trump’s order was premised on the idea that anyone in the United States illegally, or on a visa, was not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the country, and therefore excluded from this category.

Judge John Coughenour, who heard the birthright case in Washington state, described the president’s executive order as “blatantly unconstitutional.”

“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades, I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is,” said Coughenour, who was appointed by a Republican president, Ronald Reagan.

The conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which includes three justices nominated by Trump, is primed to play a significant role as the president tests the limits of his executive power and the judiciary pushes back.

AFP