Author: newsdesk

  • Pakistani origin doctor wipes away $650,000 debt of 200 cancer patients in US

    Pakistani origin doctor wipes away $650,000 debt of 200 cancer patients in US

    A doctor of Pakistani origin in the United States of America Dr Omar Atiq waived of $650,000 in debt for nearly 200 of his patients with cancer. Dr Atiq, an oncologist who founded a cancer treatment centre in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, sent out a holiday greeting to patients before Christmas, announcing that their outstanding payments would be cleared.

    “I hope this note finds you well. The Arkansas Cancer Clinic was proud to serve you as a patient. Although various health insurers pay most of the bills for [the] majority of patients, even the deductibles and co-pays can be burdensome,” the card read.

    “The clinic has decided to forego all balances owed to the clinic by its patients. Happy Holidays.”

    As per details, Dr Atiq’s clinic provided cancer treatments including chemotherapy, radiation therapy and diagnostics. It was closed in late February due to staff shortage.

    The outstanding amount was nearly $650,000 (Rs 104,645,320). However, the clinic worked with a billing company to cancel the debt.

    “We thought there was not a better time to do this than during a pandemic that has decimated homes, people’s lives and businesses and all sorts of stuff,” said Dr Atiq. “We just thought we could do it, and we wanted to, so we went ahead and did it.”

    “Being sick is hard, having cancer is harder, and having cancer in this pandemic is devastating. I am just a regular physician—a regular person that they have in the neighbourhood—just so happens to be me standing here. The ones struggling couldn’t pay, so we thought we could just write off the debt.”

    “It is really fate,” he said, referring to the decision to move. “We have been very grateful. This has been home for a long time. We are grateful for the opportunity for what has happened to our lives here.”

    Atiq said he was happy to give his patients a bit of relief.

    “I love them, I care for them and I am glad I was able to do a little bit at this point for them,” he added.

    The Arkansas Medical Society President said his clinic, in part, amassed the outstanding debt because “we have never refused to see a patient.”

    “Not for lack of health insurance or funds nor for any other reason,” he said. “I’ve always considered it a high honor and privilege to be someone’s physician—more important than anything else.”

  • Did a Saudi billionaire really marry her Pakistani driver?

    Did a Saudi billionaire really marry her Pakistani driver?

    Social media is abuzz with the ‘news’ of a marriage between an alleged Saudi billionaire, Sahoo bint Abdullah Al-Mahboob, and her driver who hails from Pakistan.

    The video of the wedding wherein the couple could be seen exchanging rings has garnered thousands of views on social media. Some news websites also featured the story, without checking the veracity of the claims, using this video that’s undated.

    However, a quick Google search shows that Sahoo bint Abdullah Al-Mahboob, who apparently owns hotels in Mecca and Madina as per the rumours, is not a real person. The viral post also claimed that her net worth was $8bn and that she also owned properties in France and other countries.

    Her name doesn’t show up anywhere except the news sites and the Youtube videos that were circulating the news of the marriage. Also, there were no reports of the wedding in the Saudi press about a purported marriage between a driver and a billionaire.

  • Shah Rukh Khan promises fans a surprise for 2021

    Shah Rukh Khan promises fans a surprise for 2021

    Shah Rukh Khan, known for his wit and humour, recently released a short video in which he wished his fans a ‘Happy New Year’ and promised that he has a big surprise lined up for them in 2021.

    The hilarious video begins with the King of Bollywood in a night suit fighting mosquitoes. Khan adds that had to record the video all by himself as he had no staff available to record it.

    “Hi everybody,” said the actor as he started his video. “It is that time of the year again where the old year is on its way out and the New Year is waiting at the entrance. Actually, it has entered because I am late in conveying my wishes to all of you.”

    Reflecting on the past year, the actor said: “I am sure 2020 has been the worst of years for everybody. In these awful times, for most it is difficult to find a ray of hope and positivity. But I have a way of looking at bad days, difficult times, and awful years. I believe when one is at the lowest, at the most bottom-est of their life, the good thing is there is only one way to move – upwards, higher to better places. So, 2020 whatever it has been is in the past now. 2021 is going to be bigger, better, brighter and more beautiful.”

    Elaborating on the lessons 2020 taught him, SRK emphasized on how important it is to have your loved ones by your side.

    “Real fun is with real people. Your family, your friends, your loved ones. All the friends and enemies you make virtually, taking sides or fighting against you online, is good fun, time pass, but it’s not for keeps,” said the actor.

    Wishing his fans “happiness, joy and peace”, Shah Rukh joked that he sounded like a “cheap greeting card” while saying this.

    He also requested everyone to be “romantic, emphatic, pragmatic, democratic, fantastic” in 2021 and not be “mathematic as it’s very boring and also very difficult to rhyme with the other words.”

    Khan also gave his fans some advice on partying.

    “Go party hard, but not too hard in moderation. Don’t get too drunk, don’t take off your clothes and run on the street, because chances are you’ll get arrested and even worse you will wake up in the morning and realize you have lost your phone and that really sucks,” said the superstar.

    The Fan actor concluded his video with a promise.

    “See you on the big screen in 2021,” confirming reports that his upcoming film Pathan is in the works.

    Pathan, which marks SRK’s return to the big screen after a long break, will see him play a special agent. Deepika Padukone and John Abraham are also part of the film while Salman Khan and Hrithik Roshan are expected to have cameos.

    SRK was also recently spotted outside Yash Raj Studios in Mumbai sporting a new look for the film.

    Pathan is expected to release on Diwali 2021.

  • Five Islamabad policemen arrested for killing youth in cold blood

    Five officials of Islamabad Police have been arrested after they gunned down a 21-year-old youth, Usama Satti, in cold blood near Srinagar Highway, G-10 sector in the federal capital.

    Unconfirmed reports say that the policemen who belonged to the Anti-Terrorist Squad fired 22 shots at the vehicle on Friday night, killing Satti on the spot. According to reports, shots were fired from the front and hit him mostly on the face and upper body. No weapons etc discovered from the boy’s car, they added.

    A source in the capital police said that the ATS officials and the youth had an argument on New Year’s Eve when the police officials stopped his vehicle for checking. The source claims that the police officials stopped the guy even though they were off-duty at the time. This altercation between the cops and the youth may have resulted in this killing, the source claimed.

    A departmental inquiry has already been initiated against the arrested police officials, with Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed vowing to deliver justice in the case.

    The IGP has also taken notice of the incident and formed an investigation team to probe the “suspicious shootout”.

    In 2017, a policeman had shot dead a youth in I-10 sector after he had failed to stop at a checkpoint. The policeman who had opened fire had claimed that the deceased failed to stop at the checkpoint despite his signal.

  • Memes comparing white vs brown things are lit

    Memes comparing white vs brown things are lit

    Memes are some of the best things to see on your social media feeds. Several meme trends are successful in tickling our funny bones and this time memers are comparing white vs brown things that are not only funny but also relatable.

    Check out some of the funniest ones below:

    https://twitter.com/m_j_bajwa/status/1345031151589744641?s=20

  • Nothing wrong with U-turns if they don’t ‘compromise ideology’: PM

    Nothing wrong with U-turns if they don’t ‘compromise ideology’: PM

    Prime Minister Imran Khan has defended his U-turns once again, saying that going back on one’s words is fine as long as it doesn’t compromise “ideology”.

    This is not the first time Imran has tried to defend the actions that saw him walk away from his promises. In 2018, he had said: “A leader who does not take ‘U-turns’ [in the best interests of the nation] is not a ‘real leader’.”

    APP, the state-run news agency, reported the PM as saying that the idea of making “compromises to reach the ultimate goal was never bad until one compromised the ideology”. “I will never make a compromise on an NRO. The U-turn is when you give up your goal,” he remarked.

    In an interview with Dunya News on Friday, the PM also talked about his statement wherein he had said that he was not prepared to run the country. “My statement that I was not prepared was completely misunderstood,” he said, adding: “I have never made any excuses that I was not prepared.”

    According to the premier, only a “fool would not know about the problems of the country”. The PM said the two years have passed with great “difficulty” but now things are looking better. “Good times are soon to come.” “People will decide about my performance after five years [and] God willing, Pakistan will soon have great times.”

    Speaking about economy, Imran said expenditure is on the rise as opposed to the income. “Reducing expenditure at home can become a pain,” he said, adding that half of tax revenue is spent on debt servicing.

    The current government has paid back $20 billion worth of loans over the past two years and the current account deficit has also been in positive for the past five months, he added.

    The remittances and exports have increased as well, the PM said, referring to a boost in the textile industry.

  • Pakistan’s Emma Alam wins global memory competition

    Pakistan’s Emma Alam wins global memory competition

    Emma Alam from Pakistan has won the 29th World Memory Championship which saw 300 contestants participate from across the globe.

    The three-day competition included competitors from China, Canada, UK, South Korea, Vietnam, India, Malaysia, Algeria, the United States, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Libya, Qatar, and Iraq.

    Alam and Syeda Kisa Zehra from the Pakistani team  also broke multiple World Records in this year’s championship.

    World Memory Championships was founded in 1991 by an English author Tony Buzan and English journalist and author Raymond Keene to shine a global spotlight on the power of human memory.

    The late Tony Buzan was among world’s top five speakers, as per Forbes Magazine. He was the one who promoted the idea of mental literacy. Raymond Keene is Grandmaster of Chess and an appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire by her majesty Queen Elizabeth.

    The participants with the best, fastest and sharpest memory skills competed to show their intellectual power and set new heights of the potential of human memory.

    Global President of The World Memory Sports Council Raymond Keene, in an official statement, said: “The field consisted of an impressive 300 competitors from 16 countries and from this extensive field the winner, the world champion from the 29th World Memory Championship, emerged from the Pakistan team, so excellently and expertly trained by Sania Alam.”

    He congratulated the winner and said that “one of the great sporting achievers for Pakistan, a unique heroine in the pandemic-stricken 2020 and supreme grand world memory champion for 2020.’’

    Meanwhile, Alam said that she was excited to have won.

    “I had aimed to give my best in WMC 2020, backed by a lot of daily practice for the past two years with my coach and the institute,” said the winner. “I plan on competing again next year with even better performance. I congratulate all those amazing competitors who competed from across the globe.”

    Alam has also competed in many memory championships before including the 3rd Asia Pacific Memory Championship in Malaysia and the 28th World Memory Championship in China and has won several medals and trophies. She is currently completing her studies through homeschooling.

    Another member of Team Pakistan, Abeerah Ather,  achieved 7th position in the 2020 global rankings.

    Emma Alam and Team Pakistan were skilled under the Institute of Human Memory Development International (IHMD).

  • Model Farwa Ali Kazmi opens up about her miscarriage

    Model Farwa Ali Kazmi opens up about her miscarriage

    Model Farwa Ali Kazmi, who tested positive for COVID-19 in October, has revealed that she had a miscarriage earlier this year.

    Sharing a picture of her ultrasound on social media, Kazmi opened up about the painful experience and said she felt that people need to talk more about it.

    “While everyone looks back at this year and shares good memories, I am sharing my story that doesn’t have a happy ending,” wrote the model. “I went through something called a ‘missed miscarriage’.”

    “People seldom talk about miscarriage because a lot of guilt, shame and pain is attached to it,” she said. “I feel we need to speak more about the uncomfortable and difficult topics because not talking about it makes it feel worse. Losing a child is monumental and should be mourned for as long as one wants. It’s not the mother’s fault nor in her control.”

    The model further wrote: “I was scrolling through my notes today and came across a love letter that I had written for my baby that was never born and I couldn’t even look at it. It brought back all the painful memories from the day I ended up in labour room.”

    Kazmi added that she “does not want to go into details of it but it’s unimaginable pain and loss for someone who hasn’t gone through it.”

    “What it feels like, to think at one moment that you’ll be bringing a baby home in seven months and the next second you know that you won’t because your embryo doesn’t have a heartbeat. It’s doesn’t end here. The process of terminating a pregnancy is like the worst nightmare,” she said. “It’s like so much pain without any gain. I’m still dealing with complications after the miscarriage.”

    Thanking her friends and family for their support during this difficult time, Farwa said that she prayed for 2021 to be kinder, happier and prosperous for all.

    In the past year, several known personalities such as Chrissy Teigen and the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle have opened up about their own experiences of miscarriage.

  • Newsletter- 1st January 2021, Friday

    Newsletter- 1st January 2021, Friday









    *|MC:SUBJECT|*

    The Current Insider
    Friday, 1st January 2021

    We need to celebrate today. The beginning of the year always signals one thing — hope. Hope that there will be something better ahead.  Islamabad and Karachi are celebrating today with heaps of sunshine, and Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta are cold and cloudy today. I would like the students on this list to celebrate because the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has introduced a new degree attestation portal in a bid to make the process easier for students and Fahad shows you how to use it, with some hacks to help speed up the process. To be grateful for what we have, we sometimes come across stories of heartbreak. I felt awful for former religious scholar Aamir Liaquat’s first wife, Bushra Iqbal, who says that Aamir divorced her over the phone because of his second wife. The Karachi police have revealed that they received almost 800, 000 bogus calls in 2020 and what was 2020 in Pakistan like for politics and sports? And lets not forget the blunders our celebrities made this year. Although it makes my head hurt, watching what they’ve done, you can’t stop watching it either. A Current exclusive Senator Faisal Javed Khan says that cricketer Muhammad Asif is falsely accusing him of interference in PCB affairs. Why is this Faisal story a cause to celebrate? Because as I write this, having founded The Current almost two years ago, I am grateful. I have cause to celebrate with a team that goes out of its way to get stories, come up with creative ideas and loves to hang out with each other. That is, as any working professional knows, an ideal workplace and I have it. I am grateful that despite being a new platform, we are growing really fast. Our most watched interview this year hit more than 600,000 views on YouTube alone. We worked with the Facebook Journalism Project and managed to work from home (which if you have done, you know is very difficult). We won a huge Google award, the first by a Pakistani digital journalism startup, giving us countless reasons to celebrate. For me, I think my work, hot chocolate and a good book might suffice. Here is one of my favourite bookgram’s list of the best books of 2020 or check out the list of the best upcoming artists in Pakistan.
    This year we have big plans. Plans that have been supported and funded by Google, plans that are outrageous and we are determined to execute them. But we can’t do them without your support. We will need your help and we look forward to listening to your feedback and asking you what you think. We would love to meet up, be it online or in person and hope we can soon. Until then I hope you have an amazing year and most of all, thank you for being a part of us. Here’s to getting many more reasons to celebrate this year, together.

    Current Baba’s Prediction 

    Hoping for a better year after a great New Year’s Eve? Now it’s time to wake up and get back to work but don’t worry you have a weekend ahead. Don’t forget to wear a mask, 2020 ended but corona didn’t.

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  • PCB Awards 2020: Babar Azam, Fawad Alam win accolades

    The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Friday announced the winners of its awards for the year 2020. From Most Valuable Player of the Year award to Spirit of the Cricket award, PCB revealed the complete winners’ list on social media. The winners have been decided by an independent jury.

    PCB also live streamed the award announcement on its official YouTube channel. The event was hosted by Zainab Abbas.

    Here is complete list of winners

    Most Valuable Cricketer of the Year – Babar Azam

    Period of consideration: (five Tests, three ODIs and 12 T20Is from 1 Jan 2020 to 31 Dec 2020)

    Test Cricketer of the Year – Mohammad Rizwan

    Period of consideration: (five Tests between 1 Jan 2020 and 31 Dec 2020)

    White-ball Cricketer of the Year – Babar Azam

    Period of consideration: (three ODIs and 12 T20Is from 1 Jan 2020 to 31 Dec 2020)

    Individual Performance of the Year – Fawad Alam

    Period of consideration: (20 international matches played between 1 Jan 2020 to 31 Dec 2020)

    Women’s Cricketer of the Year: Aliya Riaz

    Period of consideration: (1 Jan 2020 to 31 Dec 2020)

    Domestic Cricketer of the Year – Kamran Ghulam

    (Events under consideration HBL PSL 2020, National T20 Cup 2020 and first-class Quaid-e-Azam Trophy 2020)

    Men’s Emerging International Cricketer of the Year – Naseem Shah

    (International debut after September 1, 2019)

    ‘Pakistan team visiting Bangladesh dressing room after their 2-0 win in the T20I series’ – Spirit of Cricket

    Period under consideration: (1 Jan 2020 to 31 Dec 2020)

    Men’s Emerging Cricketer of the Year – Rohail Nazir

    (Players born on or after August 1, 1999 who are yet to make international debut for Pakistan. Period under consideration September 1, 2019 to December 31, 2020)

    Women’s Emerging Cricketer of the Year – Fatima Sana

    (Players born on or after August 1, 1999. Period under consideration 1 Sep 2019 to 31 Dec 2020)

    Umpire of the Year – Asif Yaqoob

    Period under consideration: (1 Jan 2020 to 31 Dec 2020)

    Corporate Achievement of the Year – HBL PSL V

    (Period under consideration: January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020)

    According to a press release, the PCB Awards 2020 are recognition and appreciation of the players and match officials for their achievements, as well as their contributions and sacrifices, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

    “All cricket in Pakistan was planned, executed and played under strict COVID-19 protocols. This meant Pakistan’s leading cricketers, player support personnel and match officials spent a large chunk of the year under tight restrictions, away from their families and friends,” added the statement.

    Winners will be presented specially designed trophies during the home series against South Africa, scheduled to take place later this month.

    Meanwhile, Shahid Afridi congratulated the winners and advised them “to build on this so that the country and the fans are proud of you in 2021 and beyond”.