Category: Lifestyle

The lifestyle of millennials is underreported in our mainstream media. The Current’s lifestyle news covers social events and issues that are unique.

  • ‘A park is supposed to open to all’: Twitter is angry at ban on entry of non-residents in DHA park

    ‘A park is supposed to open to all’: Twitter is angry at ban on entry of non-residents in DHA park

    Defence Housing Authority (DHA) Karachi has shared a notification of entry procedure for Nisar Shaheed Park located in phase IV of the society. The notification read that residents can not visit the park individually, they need to be accompanied by family.

    “Residents of DHA who wish to visit the park for a walk must be appropriately dressed in a sports kit or, at the very least, joggers paired with Shalwar Kameez, or pant shirt,” it added.

    The last point of the notice, which is being widely criticised on social media, bars non-residents of DHA from entering the park

    https://twitter.com/dhakarachiofc/status/1672217328472260609?s=46&t=X5V4RcFfiB3leRX0grZ3Eg

    Social media users are outrage because parks are meant to be a public place. Have a look at the tweets:

    Have a look at the tweets:

  • ‘Epic’: Twitter lauds acapella group for singing song written by Muslim for Modi’s arrival at White House

    ‘Epic’: Twitter lauds acapella group for singing song written by Muslim for Modi’s arrival at White House

    Two days ago, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived at the US White House, a video went viral of the all-Indian acapella group Penn Masala sang ‘Jashn-e-Bahara’ in celebration of his arrival. Many Twitter users interpreted this as a clever diss to the controversial politician over his Islamophobic government, and also as a direct response to Biden who revealed that he will not talk to the Indian Prime Minister about human right violations during his visit.

    ‘Jashn-e-Bahara’ is an Urdu song written by the Muslim artists A.R Rehman and Javed Akhtar, and was sung by Javed Ali. The song was featured in the film ‘Jodhaa Akbar’, a movie about the marriage between the Mughal Emperor Akbar and his Hindu wife Jodha.

    Twitter users lauded this discreet but clever way to troll a secular and facist politcian, who has been criticised by American politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who announced that they were boycotting Modi’s address to Congress, citing the politician’s abysmal human right’s record, as well as his erosion of religious freedom in India.

    Some also felt that the song was an indirect target towards the Indian government’s move to remove chapters from school textbooks on Mughal rulers.

    https://twitter.com/onlynina/status/1671905008017629185?s=20

    One user wrote: “The irony of an urdu song from a film glorifying mughal emperor Akbar.”

  • Faisalabad man murders female colleague in London

    Faisalabad man murders female colleague in London

    Muhammad Arslan has been jailed in the U.K for suffocating one of his female colleagues with a face mask and then hiding her body in a suitcase, Geo News reports.

    Arslan, 27, claimed to have forced a face mask into the mouth of 21-year-old Hina Bashir in order to “quieten” her after he confronted her over alleged nude photographs that had been sent out. The prosecution rejected his explanation as “elaborate and concocted”, asserting he had killed Hina out of anger and jealousy.

    Both Arslan and Hina had grown up together in the same village in Faisalabad. Arslan would try to approach Hina romantically, but she rejected his advances. Within months of her moving to the UK in November 2021, Arslan followed her.

    On the eve of July 11 last year, Hina and two of her friends visited Arslan’s shared flat in Ilford, east London, in order to collect some belongings she had left there while she was moving. Hina went up alone, and that was the last time her friends saw her alive, Geo reports.

    Arslan admitted manslaughter on the first day of his trial but denied murder and concealing Hina’s body. However, a jury at the Old Bailey found him guilty on all charges.

    Judge Richard Marks KC sentenced him to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years for the murder and five years running concurrently for his heinous crime.

    The judge told Arslan: “I am satisfied…that your unrequited feelings for Hina boiled over and resulted in you taking hold of a facemask and forcing it into the back of her mouth which led to her collapse and ultimately to her death from asphyxiation.”

    He added that Arslan’s prime motivation was to save himself after killing Hina, hence the “campaign of lies” to conceal his crime, before disposing of her body in a “shocking and callous manner”. Arslan had hid her body in a suitcase overnight, before traveling to an industrial estate to hide the suitcase in undergrowth on the side of a lane, evidence reveals.

    The Judge declared it was apparent that Arslan had been “obsessed” with Hina, feelings clearly not reciprocated. He went on to say that he was extremely skeptical of the claim that he had been sent naked photos of Hina prior to the attack, as “no such photos were ever recovered”.

    In an interview with Geo, the victim’s father, Bashir Khan, stated, “even animals would treat my daughter better.”

  • Bullying by teacher in Karachi continued even after death of a classmate

    Bullying by teacher in Karachi continued even after death of a classmate

    A prominent private school in Karachi is allegedly protecting and, in turn, aiding bullying by a Grade 11 English teacher despite complaints by students and a student’s parents. The teacher went so far as to bully a student, Amal*  in front of the school principal but the principal remained silent. 

    “This is why no one likes you or wants to talk to you.”

    “You aren’t allowed to cry and play victim.”

    “You’re pathetic.”

    The series of bullying events took place at different occasions and almost always in front of eyewitnesses, which included other students and the principal. 

    Amal states that during a school trip this year to Turkey, the teacher verbally attacked Amal on the bus. Another student was trying to find her missing phone and had forgotten she had given her phone to Amal. When the phone was returned to the owner, the teacher turned to Amal and said, “This is why no one likes you or wants to talk to you. You aren’t allowed to cry and play victim like you always do because this is all your fault. You better not start crying.” The comments were made in front of the student’s classmates and the principal of the school was also present in the bus. The principal did nothing.  

    This was not the first time that Amal had been bullied by the same teacher. 

    The teacher targeted Amal by telling Amal’s friends to ‘stay away from her’ and not interact with her. If students did not comply with the teacher’s demand, she approached them and said: “What did I tell you about staying away from her [Amal]?” She also did this while Amal was standing with her friends.

    Conversation between Amal and her classmate who passed away, who was told to stay away from her by the teacher involved. She scolded him in the lobby for speaking to Amal.

    Bullying by teachers is a common occurrence in Pakistan and in the world. According to recent studies, about 15 per cent of children are likely to be targeted by teachers, and 93 per cent of high school and college students identified at least one teacher as a bully in their school. The reason why the teacher tends to get away with it is because most schools are not willing to take action — and lose — teachers and rather look the other way. 

    Three months later after the school trip, Amal’s friend and classmate died in an accident. in a It was a difficult time for the school and the student’s friends and classmates. Shockingly, the teacher’s bullying did not stop then either. The teacher reportedly told other students that Amal was an ‘attention seeker’ by crying at the classmate’s funeral. Many students were shocked by how the teacher was speaking about the death of her student, and relating it to another student. 

    Studies show that teachers who bully students usually were bullied when they were in school. But the problem with school teachers in Pakistan runs deeper. 

    Our teachers, even those who work at private schools, are not trained or equipped to teach. “They do not have degrees in education or know how to deal with students and this is a serious problem. You’re dealing with the lives of students, their childhood, the way they will grow and treat others. It’s a serious role, the role of a teacher and Pakistani schools don’t take it seriously,”  an educationist told The Current.

    *The student’s name has been changed to maintain confidentiality.

  • Simpsons fans suspect show predicted Titanic sub misadventure 

    Simpsons fans suspect show predicted Titanic sub misadventure 

    It is truly an interesting coincidence that the famous animated television serial The Simpsons has managed to predict a variety of current events. Whether it was Trump running for president or Lady Gaga’s 2017 superbowl performance, the FOX comedy series has gained cult classic notoriety for its cutting satire seemingly accurately predicting world events. 

    Fans of the show have jumped on the bandwagon again in light of the missing Titan submersible. The episode “Simpson Tide” aired in 1998, scenes of which bore a striking resemblance to the events of the missing OceanGate sub. 

    In the episode, ‘Homer’s Paternity Coot’, Homer and his alleged dad Fairbanks stumble upon the wreckage of a massie sunken ship packed with treasure. However, Homer gets lost and trapped in a coral reef. He tries to free himself as an “oxygen low” light shines.

    When asked for a comment, the Simpsons writer Mark Reiss told the New York Post, “That’s my show. Even I forgot about that.” He went on to explain, “We did that episode because the movie ‘Crimson Tide’ had just come out. We didn’t predict the future, we just did it off that movie and 20 years later, something like that happened.”

    Reiss has himself descended 13,000 feet to view the Titanic wreckage. According to the Post, Reiss signed a waiver warning multiple times of possible death, knew the risks, and apparently even took extra paper with him to write his last jokes in case something went wrong. 

    “Death is always lurking, it’s always in the back of your mind,” Reiss said, reflecting on the voyage.

  • US Navy heard sound of sub imploding shortly after it went missing 

    US Navy heard sound of sub imploding shortly after it went missing 

    In a Wall Street Journal exclusive, it has been revealed that the U.S. Navy heard sounds of the OceanGate Titan implosion hours after it began its voyage on Sunday. 

    A top secret acoustic detection system, used by the American Navy to detect enemy submarines, first registered the sound of an implosion near the recently discovered debris site on Sunday, US defence officials told WSJ.

    “The U.S. Navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” a senior U.S. Navy official told the Journal, as reported by The Insider. 

    “While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”

    On the topic of withholding this information from the public, a senior advisor with the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the Washington Post:

     “What you’re looking at is just lines on a graph [referring to the registered sounds]. And if you try to convince people you weren’t doing a search because the lines on a graph indicated an implosion, that wouldn’t be acceptable to many.”

    In a previous interview with The Insider, professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney, Stefan Williams, said that in the case of an implosion, the five passengers’ death would have been instantaneous. 

    An anticipated tragedy 

    Turns out the U.S. Navy was not the only one with knowledge of the detected sounds. In an interview with CNN, Hollywood director James Cameron revealed that his contacts in the deep sea exploration community had revealed the Titan had likely imploded. 

    Cameron is a big deep sea enthusiast, having travelled to the wreckage of the Titanic himself in 1995, prior to creating his iconic movie about the vessel’s tragic maiden voyage. 

    When Cameron learned from his colleagues in what he calls the “deep submergence community” that both communications and tracking of the craft had been lost simultaneously, he began to suspect an implosion, “a shockwave of events so powerful that it actually took out” the tracking and comms.

    He went on to say, “I took that as a factor…I couldn’t think of any other scenario in which a sub would be lost where it lost comms and navigation at the same time, and stayed out of touch and did not surface.” 

    History repeating itself?

    In an interview with ABC News, Cameron went on to comment on how ‘struck’ he was by the similarities between the missing Titan submersible and the Titanic shipwreck.

    Namely that both catastrophes took place because of the failure to heed prior warnings. The original Titanic sank when the captain rammed the ocean liner into an iceberg (at full speed), in spite of being warned about the ice.

    Similarly, Cameron criticised OceanGate for failing to heed warnings about the submersible’s experimental approach – the tourism company had been warned in 2018 by a group of industry professionals about its vessel not meeting voluntary industry standards and the possibility of “minor to catastrophic” outcomes.

    In 2018, a whistleblower was fired from the company for raising concerns about the safety of its Titan submersible.

  • Suleman Dawood was ‘terrified’ before Titan trip, his aunt says

    Suleman Dawood was ‘terrified’ before Titan trip, his aunt says

    The late 19 year old Suleman Dawood, son of the late Shahzada Dawood, Vice-Chairman of Engro Corporation, was reportedly ‘terrified’ before his trip aboard the OceanGate submersible, according to his aunt Azmeh Dawood.

    In an interview with NBC news, Azmeh – Shahzada’s older sister – shared that the young Suleman had informed a relative prior to his voyage to see the Titanic wreckage that he “wasn’t very up for it” and “felt terrified”. 

    However, the trip tragically fell over Father’s Day weekend and young Suleman, eager to please Shahzada, ended up accompanying him. According to Azmeh, Shahzada was very passionate about the lore of the Titanic.

    She recalls her younger brother was “absolutely obsessed” with the Titanic from a young age, recounting the time when Shahzada met her husband and asked if they could sit down and watch a four-hour documentary about the Titanic. 

    Thus, she was hardly surprised when she learned that her brother had purchased tickets for the OceanGate mission.  

    The Dawood family released a statement on Twitter, announcing the death of their loved ones and extending their condolences to the families of the other departed passengers.

    A catastrophic implosion

    On the fourth day of the frantic search to find the OceanGate submersible before its oxygen supply ran, search parties discovered debris 1600 feet from the bow of the Titanic that were said to be part of the OceanGate craft. 

    The U.S. Coast Guard said the debris found on the seafloor was “consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.” All aboard have been presumed dead.

    A summary of events 

    The OceanGate submersible disappeared Sunday during a mission to survey the wreckage of the Titanic. 

    The Coast Guard said on Thursday that a “debris field” had been found in the search area. Today, it was confirmed that the debris found was “consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.”

    A sound consistent with an implosion was heard Sunday, shortly after the submersible lost communications, according to a senior U.S. Navy official, reported by NBC. The sound was not definitive, the official said.

    James Cameron, director of the blockbuster film ‘Titanic’ and a prolific deep sea explorer, in an interview with CNN shared that he knew the vessel had likely imploded by Monday. He learned through his sources of a sound detected in the vicinity of the Titanic on Sunday. 

  • The US population is older than it’s ever been before

    The US population is older than it’s ever been before

    According to data released by the Census Bureau, the United State’s population is older than it’s ever been before, with a median age of 38, New York Times reports.

    This is a steep rise considering the median age of 35 back in 2000 and 30 in 1980. Analysts are concerned that the U.=S ‘greying’, a term used to describe ageing populations, would pose challenges to the workforce, the economy and social programs.

    An earlier study conducted in 2020 revealed that 1 in 6 Americans (so 17% of the entire country) were 65 or older. Much of the greying of the US stems from the post-World War II baby boom – which was the period of 1946 – 1964. 

    Experts point to low birthrates as the main driver of the nation’s rising median age. “It’s simple arithmetic,” said president of demographic data firm Social Explorer, Andrew A. Beveridge, in conversation with the New York Times. “Fewer kids are being born.” 

    Since the beginning of the Great Recession (2007-09), birthrates had never been quite the same as previous generations. Birthrates also saw a steep decline in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

    This trend of ageing populations due to declining birthrates is one observed on an international scale. Countries such as Japan and Germany have been attempting to tackle this issue for years, by introducing policies allowing skilled youth to naturalise more easily. In Japan, nearly 30% of its population is over 65 years old.

    Experts believe that millennial women have been more likely to prioritise education and work in their 20s, leading them to marry far later and have fewer children. That would explain why newer generations in industrialised countries have been witnessing lower birthrates and ageing populations.

  • Pemra to take action against Netflix and other streaming platforms after Eid holidays

    Pemra to take action against Netflix and other streaming platforms after Eid holidays

    Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) is reportedly preparing to take action against over-the-top (OTT) platforms such as Netflix after the conclusion of Eid-ul-Azha, according to Khalid Arain, Chairman of the Cable Operators Association of Pakistan.

    Khalid disclosed that a productive dialogue had taken place between cable operators and senior officials from Pemra, during which the concerns of the cable operators were effectively communicated. He expressed the cable operators’ predicament, stating that they operate under broadcasting restrictions and are limited in the number of channels they can offer. In contrast, OTT platforms enjoy the freedom to stream popular channels.

    Khalid’s reference to OTT platforms pertains to online streaming services that deliver content via the internet. He further stressed the cable operators’ request for regulatory measures concerning operators that offer both internet and cable services.

    He said that the regulatory body has responded positively to the demands of cable operators. Pemra will establish a committee to address the issuance of licenses to cable operators and undertake a crackdown on OTT platforms following the conclusion of Eidul Azha.

    According to ProPakistani, the chairman also advocated for tax exemptions in the cable sector, drawing a parallel to the solar power industry and suggesting that taxes on cable operators should be alleviated. However, he did not provide a specific explanation or justification for this request.

    Additionally, he highlighted an inequity where the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) collects Local Loop license fees from cable operators in US dollars, while subscribers make payments to cable operators in the local currency. Arain deemed this situation unfair, citing the existing rupee-dollar exchange rate as a contributing factor.

  • ‘World’s hardest dish’; Chinese street food vendors selling stir-fried stones

    ‘World’s hardest dish’; Chinese street food vendors selling stir-fried stones

    Videos of customers sampling suodiu have appeared all over Chinese social media. Suodiu is a dish originating from the province Hubei, and it is made up of chilli oil, garlic, diced peppers, and – the main ingredient – river rocks. 

    Vendors pour chilli oil onto pebbles being grilled teppanyaki-style, sprinkle garlic sauce all over them, then stir-fry everything with a mix of garlic cloves and diced peppers. The way you’re meant to eat it is by sucking on the small rocks to relish the rich and spicy flavour before spitting out the rock.

    Hence the name suodiu, which means “suck and dispose”. The dish is believed to date back hundreds of years. It was passed down for generations by boatmen through their oral history.

    In a report by the Guardian when boatmen in the landlocked province of Hubei would run out of animals and vegetables while travelling along the Yangtze River, and would then turn to – you guessed it – the rocks beneath the river.

    Unsurprisingly, suodiu faded in popularity after Hubei developed economically, and motorised vessels appeared in the Yangtze, as it reduced the chances of boatmen being left stranded in the river. 

    The dish is also linked to the Tujia people, an ethnic minority who originate from the Wuling mountain range that straddles the borders of Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou.

    But what does it taste like?!

    According to one food blogger, these rocks acquire the taste of marine life over time and start tasting like fish. So when they’re cooked, they have a flavour similar to that of fish, oysters or clams. 

    Are you going to be trying suodiu on your next trip to China?