LAHORE: President Fazal Elahi Chaudhry today [Sept 25] said that population planning is vital to make life on earth worth living, and to eliminate ... squalor. Inaugurating the International Conference on Population Planning for National Welfare and Development here … the President said that in spite of the efforts made … “we had not achieved the desirable results and the rate of population increase … has remained uncurbed”. He said ... the rate of population growth had moved upward to a frightening … 3.9 per cent. — News agencies

[Meanwhile, as reported by news agencies from Santiago,] the body of Nobel Prize and Lenin Peace Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who died [on Sept 23], is now lying amid the ruins of his house outside Santiago. Sources said that soldiers arrived at his house at dawn... . … The poet lay amid broken glass, torn-up photographs and shattered pre-Columbian pottery. His wife ... Mathilde, had covered his coffin with flowers and only his head was visible... .

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2023