Hindko language weekly newspaper launched

PESHAWAR: A Peshawar-based literary and cultural organisation has launched Hindko language weekly newspaper from the provincial metropolis.

The Gandhara Hindko Board has taken the initiative with the pledge to highlight the local issues while strictly adhering to journalistic ethics.

Muhammad Ziauddin, a noted Hindko writer and poet, who is also general secretary of the board, told the media the weekly “Hindkowan” used to be published on experimental basis for quite some time but has been launched now formally after receiving the declaration.

The literatus, who is the founding editor of the daily, said the history of Hindko journalism was almost 60 years old. “It was way back in 1960s when a leading Urdu-language daily from Peshawar, “Anjaam” started publishing a full-page of the newspaper in Hindko language every week,” he elaborated.

Ziauddin said that Daily ‘Anjaam’ served well the Hindko language by giving a platform to the poets, writers and columnists to express themselves in their mother language. Unfortunately, he pointed out, the publication of the Hindko language page was discontinued later that created a vacuum which needed to be filled out.

He said Gandhara Hindko Board had been working since its launch in 1993 for the preservation and promotion of Hindko, which is sixth main language of the country and second of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

IED defused in North Waziristan

MIRANSHAH: The security forces defused an improvised explosive device (IED) in a school here on Sunday, official sources said.

They said they found a 200-kilogram of explosive device at a school in Miranshah and defused the IED. The forces vacated the nearby houses before defusing the IED.