Tiktokers are copying US President Donald Trump’s dance moves that he did at one of his YMCA rallies, making it a trend on the Chinese-owned mobile app.
The song on which users can be seen shaking a leg to is a mix of Viva La Vida by Coldplay and Swing by Savage, and is being referred to as ‘Viva La Swing‘.
Here is a video of the US president dance steps at a rally.
US president’s daughter Ivanka Trump also retweeted a video of a TikTok user, with the caption “love it”.
Prime Minister Imran Khan has warned that the second wave of coronavirus infections was imminent, especially in cities that face higher air pollution levels.
In an award ceremony pertaining to clean green index programme, the prime minister said that he feared there might be a resurgence of COVID-19 infections in cities where the rate of pollution increases in October and November.
“I fear that in October and November […] cities like Faisalabad, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Gujranwala where there is more pollution […] there might be a second spike in coronavirus cases. The cases are rising gradually and we hope that they don’t increase quickly; we are monitoring it,” he added. According to the PM, the infections could increase during winter as ‘pollution becomes stagnant in the atmosphere’.
This is not the first time that the premier has warned of a resurgence of the deadly virus. At the start of this month, he had urged people to follow precautionary measures to curb the spread of coronavirus.
Even though there have been multiple warnings by the government officials about the imminent spike in coronavirus infections, the federal and provincial governments have yet to take any serious measures to thwart a potential catastrophe. In March when the virus had started making inroads in Pakistan, the federal government through its reckless attitude enabled the outbreak.
The prime minister had said the coronavirus infection was just like normal ‘flu’ which could be cured with ‘hot water’. This attitude didn’t help the government or public living under the shadow of a pandemic.
This time again, the government is dilly-dallying on measures to prevent COVID-19 outbreak. Despite a gradual spike in cases since September, the government has allowed schools and businesses to operate, exposing millions to the virus.
SMOG AND CORONAVIRUS:
Experts say the pollutants could also aid the spread of coronavirus, said a BBC report. “In addition to air pollution decreasing immune defences, it is thought that particulate and nitrogen dioxide found in air pollution can act as vectors for the spread and survival of airborne particles such as Covid [virus],” Mary Prunicki, director of air pollution and health research at Stanford University, said.
Studies have shown that exposure to high levels of pollution worsens the condition of patients who have diabetes, hypertension, coronary disease and asthma. And it also weakens the immune system of healthy people.
“The lung is the gateway to the body and any damage to the organ can cause severe problems. And that makes people more susceptible to Covid-19,” Dr DJ Christopher, head of pulmonary medicine at the prestigious Christian Medical College in Tamil Nadu, said. Christopher said. “It’s akin to fighting a war with weakened front-line soldiers.”
In Lahore, the air quality index has crossed 200 –very unhealthy– since the past week. According to the IQAir website, “Air quality in Lahore usually worsens during the winter season from October to February.” It says that winter air pollution is ‘worse due to temperature inversion, which results in a layer of warm air that is prevented from rising trapping air pollutants’.
A young man in India attacked his father and slashed his neck with a knife when he was told not to play PUBG, a Chinese gaming app that has been banned by the Centre.
As per reports, the father was severely injured in the incident and later, the son, identified as Amir, also stabbed himself with the knife. Both father and son have been admitted to the Meerut Medical College.
The son attacked his father, Irfan, after he asked him not to spend long hours at gaming. Distressed with his father’s directions, Amir picked up a knife and slashed his father’s neck. Later, he cut his own neck. The youth is in critical condition.
The incident took place on Thursday in Jamnanagar in Kharkhoda town of the district but was not reported to the police instantly.
The family of the youth said he was addicted to drugs and was undergoing treatment, revealed Inspector Arvind Mohan Sharma.
The Administrative Court of Baden-Württemberg (VGH), Germany ruled on Friday that a Muslim man was rightly denied the German citizenship because of his refusal to shake the hand of a woman, as he viewed it as “danger of sexual temptation”.
According to details, a 40-year old Lebanese doctor, who came to Germany in 2002, applied for citizenship through naturalization in 2012. Though he aced the naturalization test, his citizenship was cancelled at the final stage of the process. During his citizenship ceremony, he refused to shake hands with the female bureaucrat, officiating his hearing. As a result, the woman withheld his certificate and rejected his application.
Defending his actions, the man appealed to the VGH, and stated that he had made a promise to his wife never to touch another woman. However, the court found that refusal to shake hands on gender-specific grounds is in breach of the sexual equality principles laid down in the German constitution. The judge further stated that the handshake symbolizes the conclusion of a contract and is deeply rooted in social, cultural, and legal life. Thus it was concluded that those who are able to demonstrate that they can live according to the values set out in the German constitution are entitled to the German citizenship
Although handshake is a questionable practice nowadays, thanks to COVID-19, the judge was convinced that the practice would survive the global pandemic.
This is, however, not the first time citizenship across European countries was denied on the bases of refusal to shake hands with people of the opposite sex for religious reasons. In 2018, a Muslim couple was denied Swiss citizenship because of a lack of respect for gender equality. According to details, the couple’s application was rejected after they refused to shake hands with people of the opposite sex during their interview.
A plethora of male celebrities from Wasim Akram to Humayun Saeed have shared pictures of themselves with one nail polished a different colour prompting fans and followers to question the reason behind this.
Shaniera Akram, who spearheaded the movement in Pakistan, has explained that ‘The Polished Man’ aims to raise awareness about child abuse. Posting photos of some of most prominent faces in Pakistan, Shaniera wrote: “Some of the toughest men Pakistan has ever produced are showing their softer side and coloring one nail to represent the millions of children who suffer every day at the hand of an adult. Our Pakistani heroes say ‘We WILL NOT tolerate child abuse in our country’.”
She further explained that though the ‘Polished Man’ campaign has been around for years, 2020 has witnessed the highest level of child abuse in Pakistan.
Shaniera also encouraged men to start participating in the campaign.
YGAP is a foundation that started in 2008 by a team of young and enthusiastic volunteers and has since matured into a high impact international organisation driven by its work. They support local entrepreneurs who have shown the drive, talent and conviction to create change in their own communities through social impact ventures. They have started raising money for child abuse as one billion children have experienced violence in the last year alone – that’s half the world’s children. They’ve raised $ 530,743 donations so far and are still counting.
WHY NAIL POLISH?
YGAP’s cofounder Elliot Costello came up with the idea for Polished Man after a visit to campaign beneficiary Hagar International in Cambodia. One evening, he met a young girl named Thea, who drew a heart on Elliot’s palm, and then painted all of his nails blue.
Later, Elliot learnt how Thea came to be in Hagar’s care – she was physically and sexually assaulted for two years by her orphanage’s director. Elliot made the decision then and there to paint one nail to remember Thea. When he later learned of the extent of child violence, the Polished Man movement was born.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has removed the ban on video-sharing application TikTok, after assurances from the platform’s management. According to details, TikTok has assured the regulatory body that they will block all accounts indulged in spreading ‘obscenity and immorality’.
PTA, in a tweet, confirmed that TikTok will moderate all accounts in accordance with local laws.
Earlier on October 9, PTA had blocked the social media application after receiving multiple complaints from “different segments of society against immoral/indecent content on the video-sharing application TikTok”.
This came after a final warning to TikTok was issued in July over explicit content posted on the platform. PTA said TikTok was given “considerable time to respond and comply with” instructions for the development of an effective mechanism for proactive moderation of “unlawful online content” but TikTok “failed to fully comply” with the regulator’s instructions.
TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps in Pakistan. According to some estimates, the app has been installed 43 million times in Pakistan, with 14.7 million of those coming in the year 2020 alone.
Meanwhile, TikTok had issued a statement on Saturday which called for the lifting of the ban on the app.
“If the Government of Pakistan decides to reopen access to our services in the future, we will certainly assess our allocation of resources to this market,” the Chinese social media giant had said in a statement.
Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan has mocked Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) stalwart Khawaja Asif, claiming that the latter called Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa on election night in 2018, crying while fearing defeat, and seeking his help to win from the NA-73 constituency of Sialkot.
“There’s a prominent rangbaaz [charlatan] from Sialkot who thinks highly of himself… makes tall claims… but it was revealed that on election night he called Gen Bajwa at 8 pm, weeping and seeking his help to win the election,” the premier said during an animated address to a Tiger Force convention in Islamabad.
Calling him “Rangbaaz Khawaja”, PM Imran quoted Asif as appealing to the army chief that he would be destroyed if Gen Bajwa didn’t help him win the election against Usman Dar of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
WATCH VIDEO:
In the 2018 general election, Asif had secured 116,957 votes while Dar had received 115,464 votes from the NA-73 constituency.
However, Dar had requested a re-count in the constituency following the result but Asif had retained his seat.
The vote recount was completed in NA-73 with Asif receiving 45 more votes than before. The vote count of PTI’s Muhammad Dar, who had requested the re-tally in the constituency, increased by 132 but he still remained behind the PML-N leader.
Dar, who is the current special adviser to the PM on youth affairs, had later also challenged Asif’s victory, but to no avail.
The social media cell of the Sindh Police has further aggravated the controversy surrounding the arrest of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Capt (r) Muhammad Safdar after it deleted a tweet that termed the arrest of the PML-N leader in accordance with the law.
The statement updated on Twitter read: “The arrest of Capt (r) Safdar was done according to the law and the investigation will be impartial and on merit.” However, the tweet was hastily removed for unknown reasons, but it had generated over 450 retweets before being taken down.
It was reposted to the Twitter handle later in the day.
Safdar was arrested from his hotel room in the early hours of Monday for raising slogans at the mausoleum of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and jumping over the grill surrounding the grave. This had resulted in a backlash on social media and the government quarters who demanded his arrest for violating the sanctity of the place. However, the way he was arrested by police gave rise to speculations.
Senior journalist and analyst Hamid Mir has claimed the Sindh government informed Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Muhammad Zubair that the provincial police chief had been “kidnapped by rangers at 4 am and forced to issue the orders for the arrest of Maryam Nawaz’s husband, Captain (r) Safdar”.
“Unfortunate incident. Sindh Govt informed PML-N leader Muhammad Zubair that IG [insector general] Sindh was kidnapped by Rangers at 4 in the morning he was brought in sector commander’s office where addnl IG was already present and were forced to issue the orders for the arrest of Cpt Rtd Safdar [sic],” Mir claimed in a tweet.
It was, however, rejected by another senior journalist, who said the IG was “fully onboard with the arrest”. Maintaining that internal rifts were marring the affairs of the joint opposition’s Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), Kamran Khan quoted sources as saying that all claims regarding the IG’s arrest were not true.
CASE AGAINST SAFDAR, MARYAM:
The FIR registered against the PML-N leaders Maryam Nawaz and Capt Safdar and about 200 other people said the PML-N leaders, along with 200 of their followers, reached the Quaid’s grave where Safdar jumped over the grill surrounding it and resorted to sloganeering.
A case has been registered under Section 6 (convening of meetings or processions in the mausoleum), Section 8 (entry into mausoleum with weapon) and Section 10 (penalty for contravention of provisions) of The Quaid-e-Azam’s Mazar (Protection and Maintenance) Ordinance, 1971.
It said the PML-N leader and his followers damaged the state property at the shrine besides threatening to kill the complainant upon intervention. “My complaint is that Safdar and his cohort violated the sanctity of the Quaid’s mausoleum and his grave. A case [should be] registered against him for raising political slogans inside the mausoleum complex, death threats against me and for damaging government property.”
Japanese researchers have discovered that COVID-19 stays on human skin for nine hours, stressing the need for frequent hand washing to fight the on-going pandemic.
The pathogen that causes the flu, by comparison, survives on human skin for about 1.8 hours, said the study, published this month in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal.
The study backs World Health Organisation guidance for regular and thorough hand washing to limit the spread of the virus.
“The nine-hour survival of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus strain that causes COVID-19) on human skin may increase the risk of contact transmission in comparison with IAV (influenza A virus), thus accelerating the pandemic,” the study underscored.
“The longer survival of SARS-CoV-2 on the skin increases contact-transmission risk; however, hand hygiene can reduce this risk,” the study said.
Both the contagious diseases, the COVID-19 and the flu virus are inactivated within 15 seconds by applying ethanol that is used in the hand sanitizers.
Economist and the former United States (US) Treasury secretary, Lawrence H Summers, while admiring Pakistan’s COVID-19 pandemic strategy, has said that Washington could have saved trillions had it handled the outbreak like Islamabad.
In a conversation with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday, he said, “America’s failure on COVID-19 is almost unimaginable. Heck, if the US had handled the pandemic as well as Pakistan, we would have saved in the neighbourhood of $10 trillion.”
“The costs of an expanded testing system are trivial compared to the costs of tens of thousands of early deaths. Expanding testing should be a matter of utmost urgency,” tweeted.
The US has recorded more than 8.35 million cases, 224,389 deaths, and over five million recoveries from the virus. US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump also tested positive for coronavirus on October 2.