A man in Faisalabad rejected a marriage proposal for his daughter after the other side praised Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan, an undated Urdu newspaper clipping claimed.
According to the report, the man, namely Hameed of Mamu Kanjan town in Tandlianwala, lost his temper when his potential son-in-law’s family praised the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and PM Imran.
Done of inflation, Hameed lost his cool when Kamalia’s Ramzan and his wife praised the Imran-led PTI as the two families met to discuss the kids’ engagement, the report said.
“He [Hameed] kicked the guests out of his house and refused to forge relations with them,” read the clipping.
A massive loyalty shift has been reported among the supporters of the now ruling PTI as the opposition continues to support people against the government’s economic policies.
Pakistan’s inflation rate, which was until recently at a record high, was 10.58% for 2019, a 5.5% increase from 2018.
The premier claimed on Sunday that inflation had currently declined from the level of 2018 when the PTI came to power.
“The government’s efforts are coming to fruition as both the consumer price index and core inflation had touched lower than the time of government’s formation,” he tweeted.
More good news on the economic front. Our efforts to reduce inflation are now showing results. Consumer price index & core inflation are both now lower than when our government was formed. I have told my economic team to stay vigilant & ensure that inflation stays under control.
“More good news on the economic front. Consumer price index and core inflation are both now lower than when our government was formed,” he said.
Planning Minister Asad Umar also said on Twitter that inflation during January was down to 5.7% while core inflation was at 5.4%.
Inflation continues to decline. Jan inflation (CPI) is down to 5.7%. Core inflation is at 5.4%. Last month (jul 2018) prior to PTI govt formation, CPI was 5.8% & core was 7.6%. The rate of inflation is LOWER today then when the PTI govt was formed. #PMIKECONPOLICYSUCCESS
“In July 2018, prior to the PTI government’s formation, CPI [consumer price index] was 5.8% and core inflation was 7.6%,” the minister said in his tweet.
However, the Economic Survey 2019-20 released by the government as part of the current fiscal year’s budget documents and the current official data of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) depict a contrary picture about food inflation as the prices of essential items have gone up to between 50% and over 80% in the retail market as compared to prices in 2017-18.
Anushka Sharma has shared the first glimpse and revealed the name of her newborn daughter.
Sharing a family picture, Anushka said: “We have lived together with love, presence and gratitude as a way of life but this little one, Vamika has taken it to a whole new level!”
“Tears, laughter, worry, bliss – emotions that have been experienced in a span of minutes sometimes!” said the actor further, adding: “Sleep is elusive but our hearts are SO full.”
“Thanking you all for your wishes, prayers and good energy,” she added.
The picture of the couple along with the newborn went viral on social media garnering more than 2.6 million likes within an hour of being shared by Anushka.
Anushka and Virat Kohli welcomed their bundle of joy on January 11, 2020. At the time of the birth, the power couple had requested the paparazzi to respect their privacy and not click pictures of their newborn. They had also sent gifts to the media with their request.
Meanwhile, before her daughter’s birth, Anushka while speaking to Vogue Magazine had said that she wants to raise her child away from media attention as she does not want to “raise brats”.
“We’ve thought about it a lot. We definitely do not want to raise a child in the public eye—we don’t plan on engaging our child in social media,” the actor had said. “I think it’s a decision your child should be able to take. No kid should be made to be more special than the other. It’s hard enough for adults to deal with it. It’s going to be difficult, but we intend to follow through.”
The stadium was inaugurated by the chief minister of Balochistan in November last year. “The government is planning to extend the newly-built stadium in Gwadar by establishing a cricket ground meeting international standards,” Jam Kamal had said on the occasion.
Fakhr-e-Alam, an actor and TV host, also uploaded a video of the stadium on his Twitter handle, calling it as the “most beautiful cricket ground” he had ever seen.
In a short video clip, Alam asked leagues to come out and play cricket in the Gwadar cricket ground. “To all #cricket playing friends everywhere in the world….come visit us…come play cricket with us here in Gawadar cricket ground….it’s the most beautiful cricket ground I have ever seen……,” he tweeted.
To all #cricket playing friends everywhere in the world….come visit us…come play cricket with us here in Gawadar cricket ground….it’s the most beautiful cricket ground Inhave ever seen…… pic.twitter.com/XP6HSFOOCs
The stadium is located in Gwadar that holds prime importance for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project. However, due to the security reasons, the provincial government had decided to fence the city that was criticised by all quarters and subsequently halted.
The Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has announced that it will offer legendary comic actor Charlie Chaplin’s Pakistani doppelgänger Usman Khan a job to encourage talent in the province.
According to details, KP Minister for Labour and Culture Shaukat Yousafzai invited Khan to his home and offered him a job.
Talking to the media, Yousafzai said the provincial government will offer Khan a suitable job and ensured that they will support him at every level. The minister added that he had forwarded Khan’s videos to the chief minister.
Khan thanked the minister and the provincial government for the appreciation and job offer.
Earlier, videos of ‘Peshawar’s Charlie Chaplin‘ went viral on social media due to his comic expressions and style. His objective was to bring smiles to people’s faces amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The stand-up comedian wears Chaplin’s trademark oversized shoes and baggy pants, and holds a cane and black bowler hat as he performs across the city.
In a first, Prime Minister Imran Khan has decided to answer the questions of the public via telephone on Monday.
According to a Twitter post by the Prime Minister’s Office: “Talk directly to Prime Minister Imran Khan on telephone. […] Your questions, the prime minister’s answers.”
People Members of the public can dial this number, 051-9210809, to speak to the prime minister, starting 4pm.
This will be the first time that the PM will available to the public to answer its questions. Earlier, he had launched the Pakistan Citizen Portal.
“It is an integrated citizens grievance redressal system connecting all government organisations both at federal and provincial levels. The App will serve as a complementary channel between citizen and government.”
After coming to power, the PM had also promised to answer questions of parliamentarians during Prime Minister’s Question Hour. “Twice every month I will answer to the people during the question-answer session in the assembly,” he said at the time. But the promise never materialised.
“Just two kids from a small town in Pakistan, who escaped their conservative families” is how Sidra Qasim describes herself and her husband, Waqas Ali, the power couple behind Atoms – a New York-based footwear brand known for its quarter sizes and comfortable sneakers.
However, their road to success was not an easy one. In an interview with Brandon Stanton of Humans of New York, Sidra opened up about their journey and how they set up their footwear brand.
“It’s the same story taught to every Pakistani girl. We are raised from a young age to believe that our purpose in life is to find and keep a husband,” said Sidra in the first of her 11-part interview. But even as a child, Sidra had bigger dreams, and she held on to them even as her family pressurized her to get married right out of school.
Sidra, who belongs to the small town of Okara, first met Waqas at her aunt’s house. He was one of her aunt’s students.
“We’d discuss life, and society, and human emotions. It became the only chance I had to exchange my ideas with anyone. And Waqas took my opinions seriously,” she shared.
After school, Sidra enrolled in a college and became one of the only 15 female students there. It was after she successfully produced a play to help with flood relief efforts that Waqas asked her to join him in Lahore – where he had moved to study further – and become his business partner.
“It finally felt as though my talents were being recognised, and the next day I asked for my parent’s permission. But they refused,” said Sidra.
The refusal came as a blow to Sidra, who describes lying listlessly on the couch for weeks – to the point where it scared her father. Eventually, they agreed to let her move to Lahore, where she began working with Waqas on a company called ‘Social Media Art’ which aimed to help brands establish a social media presence.
As their company struggled, Waqas and Sidra grew closer.
“We never discussed the status of our relationship, but both of us could feel a closeness. We were bonded by our journey. Both of us were defying our parents,” she said. “But after a year of rejection, we had begun to lose hope.”
A ray of hope came from unlikely quarters when Sidra and Waqas met with a group of craftsmen in the local village council of Okara.
“They were making leather shoes on the floor of a two-room workshop,” she added.
Sidra returned to the workshop again and again for a week and, in the end, the craftsmen agreed to collaborate with them.
While Waqas worked on the website, Sidra ensured that the shoes they produced met the “highest quality standards”.
“We called our collection ‘Hometown Shoes.’ And after we launched our website, the first order came in right away,” said Sidra, adding that though they made a loss on the order due to the high shipping cost to France, the couple did not give up hope.
“After a year we were selling about 50 shoes per month. We were happy to have any business at all, but it wasn’t nearly enough to survive,” said Sidra. They started a highly successful Kickstarter campaign and raised $1,07,000 in 2014 by selling over 600 pairs of shoes.
After that, Sidra and Waqas got married in a small ceremony – and immediately began to work on their application for the Y-combinator accelerator program in San Francisco. “The admissions process was more selective than Harvard, and they’d helped launch companies like Airbnb and Dropbox,” Sidra added.
Although she describes their interview as a “disaster”, they did get through and moved to the US.
Their time at Y-combinator was one of making mistakes and learning from them. “We were the only company in our group who didn’t raise money. And to make matters even worse, it had been a formal event,” said Sidra, describing Demo Day which is sort of a final exam for participants of the program. “Many of our classmates had dressed up. But none of them were wearing the shoes we had sold them.”
Doing more market research helped them understand that most people wanted shoes they could wear every day, and so Sidra and Waqas shifted their focus from formal footwear to casual.
“We researched the highest quality materials, and we put all of our findings into a document called ‘Ideal, Everyday Shoe.’ Then we gave all our notes to a talented designer. Together we built a prototype, and we called them ‘Atoms,’ because we’d gone to the atomic level in search of quality.”
It took them several months to manufacture their first collection after extensive customer feedback and market research. “By the time we were ready to launch, 45,000 people had signed up for our mailing list. On the first day of sales, our website crashed,” Sidra continued.
Their company expanded to 25 employees, but they also had to go through a round of layoffs. At the beginning of the pandemic, to stay afloat in the face of dwindling funds and investors unwilling to put in more money, Atoms expanded to making masks.
“One year later we’ve sold 500,000 of them and donated 500,000 more. Our shoe business has continued to grow, and once again investors are calling on the phone,” Sidra told Humans Of New York.
She concluded the interview by talking about the change that her business has helped brought about. She has been able to help her family back in Pakistan financially. “But more importantly I’ve provided an example,” says Sidra.
One of her younger sisters is now working as a fitness coach, the other is selling sanitary pads. But the biggest transformation, she said, has been in her mother – a school headmistress who now tells her students to be financially independent and learn technology.
“She’s telling them all the things that I needed to hear as a little girl. The road was so lonely for me, and maybe I still carry some unconscious resentment,” said Sidra.
“But my mother has apologised for not supporting me more. And consciously I have forgiven her.”
Sidra and Waqas started Atoms armed with ambition, curiosity, and a passion for making shoes. Despite coming from modest, traditionally conservative upbringings, that drive took them from Okara, Pakistan, to the closest big city—Lahore, to Silicon Valley, and then to Brooklyn, where Atoms is currently based.
Prime Minister Imran Khan was interrupted twice while he was addressing a ceremony in Sahiwal on Friday.
During a cheque-distribution ceremony under the Ehsaas programme in Sahiwal, a lawyer interrupted the premier and asked for permission to make a request.
He subsequently asked the PM for the formation of a high court bench in Sahiwal so that they don’t have to go to Multan or Lahore for cases in the high court.
His request was followed by another lawyer asking the PM for permission to ask “three-four questions”. However, the PM shot down his request, saying he would have allowed him to speak had he decided to ask just one question. The lawyer could be heard saying just “two questions” but to no avail.
The PM went on to say that he doesn’t have time for “three-four questions”. The PM said that his government was planning to industrialise Pakistan so that youth can find jobs.
Imran said Sahiwal would be provided best facilities in the fields of health, education, road infrastructure and social welfare, adding that Punjab had immense potential for development in agriculture and livestock sectors.
“The Ehsaas programme is meant to provide a safety net to the lower-income households,” the premier said. He maintained that his PTI-led government under the welfare programme is aiming to provide universal health care.
Bilquis Eidi has been selected as the Person of the Decade by an international web based organisation ‘Impact Hallmarks’.
As per details, the finalists were shortlisted out of over 1.6 million notables with diverse backgrounds and from over 190 countries. According to the organisation’swebsite, the finalists were then presented to the global audience to pick out the person of their choice by voting.
In a statement, the organisation said: “As per the domino effect verdict, concerning the IH international opinion poll outcomes, Stephen Soldz, an upright ethicist and moralist from the US, Ms Bilquis Edhi, an unparalleled noted humanitarian from Pakistan and Prof Yanghee Lee, the fabled unsurpassed human rights rapporteur of the UN, have evidently stretched and segmented the top of the decade’s impact hallmarks and the opinion poll’s top ‘tri-archy’ as well.”
Bilquis Bano Edhi is a professional nurse, who heads the Bilquis Edhi Foundation. She has spent more than six decades of her life serving humanity in need. Her charity has saved over 42,000 unwanted babies so far by placing ‘jhoolas’ [cradles] at the Edhi Homes and centres across the country.
Called the Mother of Pakistan, Bilquis Edhi has already been given various national and foreign awards including Hilal-e-Imtiaz, the Lenin Peace Prize, Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice (2015), and the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, she received along with her husband Abdul Sattar Edhi in 1986.
Besides the three topmost ‘Persons of the Decade’, the verdict announcement called seven other persons “true patrons of change, the flag-bearers of righteousness and the domino effect architects of the Top-10 of the impact hierarchy of the decade,” which includes Prof. Aurangzeb Hafi from Pakistan.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Marriyum Aurangzeb is facing criticism from the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) spokesperson for goading PML-N leader Afzal Khokhar into targeting PM Imran Khan’s sister, Aleema Khan, during his speech on the floor of the National Assembly.
PM’s focal person on digital media, Dr Arslan Khalid shared a video on his Twitter wherein Marriyum, who was also overheard in the Khokhar’s mic, can be seen asking Khokhar to mention Aleema Khan over her alleged corrupt practices.
اسمبلی کے فلور پر مریم اورنگزیب نے افضل کھوکر کو لقمہ دیا کہ وزیراعظم کی سیاست سے دور بہنوں پر جملے کسیں ۔یہ ہے ن لیگ کی گھٹیا اور غلیظ سیاست پر مجال اب تک کسی ایک بھی صحافی نے اسکی مذمت کہ ہو۔ مریم بی بی آپ خاتون کہلانے کے لائق نہیں جو مردوں سے غیر سیاسی خواتین پر اٹیک کروا رہیں pic.twitter.com/ytFpTvcgGi
“I did not use government funds to gift sewing machines to my sisters,” he said referring to Imran Khan. His remarks were cheered on by the PML-N lawmakers. However, the PTI said that it was unfair of Marriyum to target the sisters of PM Imran who aren’t even a part of politics.
Khokhar also tabled a privilege motion. During the session, while talking about the operation to demolish his Lahore residence, the Khokhar Palace, the PML-N leader told the House that the administration had stormed his place late at night and destroyed furniture among other things.
“This type of attitude of Punjab authorities will not be tolerated,” he said.
The same session saw PML-N’s Ahsan Iqbal getting a dressing down by the NA speaker. “Please mind your tone. You have been a minister, and you call yourself ‘professor’… is this the way to talk?” Asad Qaiser chided Iqbal who kept talking back at the speaker.
CORRUPTION ALLEGATIONS AGAINST ALEEMA:
In 2019, Aleema was accused of concealing her offshore assets in the United Arab Emirates and New Jersey.
Aleema Khan maintained that her foreign assets had nothing to do with the charity funding. Aleema said she had made her fortune through inherited property and sewing machines.
“My textile export business has represented international buyers and assisted Pakistani textile mills in business development, procuring orders which have averaged over Rs2 billion worth of exports yearly from Pakistan and contributed to the economy,” The News had reported at the time.
Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar had taken suo motu notice of Aleema’s property in Dubai on November 28. Subsequently, Aleema was asked to pay Rs29.4 million in taxes and fines — a move dubbed as NRO by the opposition.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has adopted amendments that would allow Gulf state to grant citizenship to investors and other professionals, including scientists, doctors, engineers, artists, authors and their families, the government said on Saturday.
“The UAE cabinet, local Emiri courts and executive councils will nominate those eligible for the citizenship under clear criteria set for each category,” Dubai’s ruler and UAE Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum tweeted.
We adopted law amendments that allow granting the UAE citizenship to investors, specialized talents & professionals including scientists, doctors, engineers, artists, authors and their families. The new directives aim to attract talents that contribute to our development journey.
“The law allows receivers of the UAE passport to keep their existing citizenship,” Sheikh Mohammed added.
It was unclear if new passport holders would benefit from the public welfare system. The UAE spends billions of dollars each year on free education, healthcare, housing loans and grants for its estimated 1.4 million citizens.
Foreigners in the UAE usually have renewable visas valid for only a few years tied to employment. The government in recent has made its visa policy more flexible, offering longer residencies for certain types of investors, students and professionals.
Last year, the government extended its “golden” visa system — that grants 10-year residency in the Gulf state — to certain professionals, specialised degree-holders and others.
