This study sought to learn how women participated in the recovery process after the Kashmir earthquake of October 2005 in Union Council Langarpura, Azad Kashmir state of Pakistan. Focus‐group discussions, semi‐structured interviews, and participant observations were conducted with a total of 48 participants. The results revealed that women played various important roles in the reproductive, productive, and community spheres, encompassing, inter alia, normal household responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, and caring for cattle, and non‐traditional tasks such as rebuilding the home. In addition, they participated in income‐generating activities such as carrying construction materials and water for daily wages, dairy farming, and working in fields and in the education and health sectors. Community endeavours, meanwhile, consisted of search and rescue, caring for the injured, collective cooking and food sharing, and supervising the reconstruction of public structures, including schools, roads, and water supply facilities, and establishing a sewing centre to provide vocational training to local women.

The study, through the lens of school principals’ views, investigates the challenges and opportunities to formulate an information and communications technology (ICT) policy in order to integrate it in teaching and learning practices at the schools of mountainous rural areas of Gilgit-Baltistan (GB). This quantitative research approach focuses on three different educational systems (Regional, National, and International), as a source of data collection, which operate in GB, Pakistan. To collect the required data, questionnaires with principals and policy document reviews were used. Applying SPSS, the data were analyzed. The results show that both groups (male and female) strongly agree to formulate a policy on ICT in order to integrate it in teaching and learning to improve at the school level. The results also show that the school heads face a number of challenges (e.g., lack of infrastructure, finance, Internet, technical staff, time, awareness, and training facilities, etc.) in the formulation of ICT policy and its integration in teaching and learning. The results revealed that the majority of the schools have an absence of ICT policy instead of having competent principals in those schools. Therefore, the research recommends that the school level ICT policy should be developed and integrated in teaching and learning practices to create an environment of powerful learning at schools, in order to fulfill the needs and demands of the 21st century education.

In recent years, noise pollution in urban zones has reached critical levels, primarily driven by increased road traffic and poor urban planning. This research is crucial as it quantifies noise pollution in different urban settings of Peshawar, Pakistan, providing valuable insights into the severity of the issue. By using noise descriptors such as Leq-24h, L1, L10, L50, L90, L99, Lmax, Lmin, LNP, and NC. A comparison with the Pak-NEQS 2010 standards revealed that during the daytime, 100% of silence zones, 91% of commercial areas, and 90% of residential areas exceeded the permissible noise limits. Similarly, nighttime measurements showed that 83% of silence zones, 87% of commercial areas, and 90% of residential areas were also above the acceptable limits. Strong correlations between Leq and other noise descriptors were observed, and land use characteristics significantly impacted noise levels during the day. This data highlights the urgent need for regulatory measures to mitigate the growing issue of noise pollution in urban environments.