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.

  • PFA seizes 1,600 kg outdated meat and expired edibles during a raid in Lahore

    PFA seizes 1,600 kg outdated meat and expired edibles during a raid in Lahore

    On Saturday, the Punjab Food Authority (PFA) foiled an attempt to move a massive stock of unhygienic and expired food from cold storage to some other facility.

    According to The News, PFA Director General Mudassar Riaz Malik and an enforcement team raided a cold storage at Bhobatian Chowk, Lahore based on vigilance-based evidence, and they seized a vehicle (a chiller truck) that was entirely loaded with 1,600 kg of outdated meat, 150 kg of expired butter, and 20 kg of cheese.

    He claimed that unhealthy food was being transported around just to avoid the PFA’s action, however the officials were able to foil the fraud mafia’s plans. Selling or providing expired stock along with new food is illegal and deceptive, according to the PFA DG.

    He asked everyone in the food industry to work with the PFA to comply with the law and fulfill the objectives of the reform.

  • Malala expected to visit flood relief areas next week

    Malala expected to visit flood relief areas next week

    Nobel laureate and social activist Malala Yousafzai is expected to visit flood affected areas of Pakistan in the second week of October. She is expected to reach the country on October 12 on a three day visit.

    According to sources of Geo News, the Sindh Home Department has issued directives to make strict security arrangements for Malala. A specialised police unit is making arrangements.

    As per media reports, she will first land in Karachi. She will then travel to Dadu under strict security.

    She is expected to offer flood relief funding from the Malala Fund.

    As many as 33 million people of the 220 million South Asian nation have been affected in some way by the floods that swept away houses, roads, railways and bridges and submerged around 4 million acres of farmland.

    Yousafzai recently announced the launch of her production company, Extracurricular.

  • Who won the Nobel Peace Prize 2022?

    Who won the Nobel Peace Prize 2022?

    This year’s Peace Prize is awarded to human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties.

    Ales Bialiatski:

    Ales Bialiatski was one of the initiators of the democracy movement that emerged in Belarus in the mid-1980s. He has devoted his life to promoting democracy and peaceful development in his home country. Among other things, he founded the organisation Viasna (Spring) in 1996 in response to the controversial constitutional amendments that gave the president dictatorial powers and that triggered widespread demonstrations. Viasna provided support for jailed demonstrators and their families. In the years that followed, Viasna evolved into a broad-based human rights organisation that documented and protested against the authorities’ use of torture against political prisoners.

    The Center for Civil Liberties:

    The Center for Civil Liberties was founded in Kyiv in 2007 for the purpose of advancing human rights and democracy in Ukraine. The center has taken a stand to strengthen Ukrainian civil society and pressure the authorities to make Ukraine a full-fledged democracy. To develop Ukraine into a state governed by rule of law, Center for Civil Liberties has actively advocated that Ukraine become affiliated with the International Criminal Court.

    After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Center for Civil Liberties has engaged in efforts to identify and document Russian war crimes against the Ukrainian civilian population. In collaboration with international partners, the center is playing a pioneering role with a view to holding the guilty parties accountable for their crimes.

    The Memorial:

    The human rights organisation Memorial was established in 1987 by human rights activists in the former Soviet Union who wanted to ensure that the victims of the communist regime’s oppression would never be forgotten. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov and human rights advocate Svetlana Gannushkina were among the founders. Memorial is based on the notion that confronting past crimes is essential in preventing new ones.
    Since its inception in 1901, about 109 individuals and 25 organisations have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

  • Ex-policeman killed children at a nursery in Thailand

    Ex-policeman killed children at a nursery in Thailand

    An ex-policeman identified as Panya Kamrab has killed at least 37 people, most of them children, in a gun and knife attack at a childcare centre in north-east Thailand.

    Trigger warning

    At least 22 children were among the dead in the mass killing. Some victims, aged as young as two, were attacked as they slept.

    Police say that the attacker then killed himself, his wife and his son after the horrific incident. According to Thai police, the attacker mostly stabbed his victims before fleeing the scene.

    “The shooter came in around lunchtime and shot four or five officials at the childcare centre first,” a local official told Reuters.

    “After inspecting the crime scene, we found that the perpetrator tried to break in and he mainly used a knife to commit the crime by killing a number of small children,” said Police Chief.

    “Then he got out and started killing anyone he met along the way with a gun or the knife until he got home. We surrounded the house and then found that he committed suicide in his home.”

    The country’s Prime Minister (PM) Prayut Chan-o-cha described the incident as “a shocking event”.

    The attacker was a police lieutenant colonel before he was dismissed last year for drug use.

  • Nobel Peace Prize 2022: Muslim Indian journalist listed as unofficial favourite

    Nobel Peace Prize 2022: Muslim Indian journalist listed as unofficial favourite

    Co-founders of Indian fact-checking website Alt News, Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair have been listed as an unofficial favourite for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, ahead of the announcement of the winner on October 7.

    TIME magazine, in a report, compiled a list of “some of the favourites to win, based on nominations that were made public via Norwegian lawmakers, predictions from bookmakers, and picks from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.”

    The list includes journalists Mr. Sinha and Mr. Zubair, who “have relentlessly been battling misinformation in India.” The Time report said that the duo has “methodologically debunked rumors and fake news circulating on social media and called out hate speech.

    Mohammed Zubair is a co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News. He is a critic of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, and regularly tracks and highlights anti-Muslim hate speech by Hindu right-wing activists and politicians.

    He was detained earlier this year because of a tweet from 2018 that included a screenshot from a well-known Hindi film, which authorities claim was insulting to Hindu religious beliefs.

  • Fake posts from India fueled Hindu Muslims fighting in England after match

    At least 47 people were arrested in an operation to “deter further disorder” in Leicester, England, as the city dealt with unrest amid tensions involving mainly young men of Muslim and Hindu communities.

    It was reported that the unrest started after a Pakistan vs India cricket match after which news reports of kidnapping of a Muslim girl by Hindu groups emerged online.

    The unrest continued for weeks. Most of the fake tweets fueling the violence came from India, reports Reuters.

    “It is a powerful illustration of how hashtag dynamics on Twitter can use dubious inflammatory claims to … escalate tensions on the ground,” said a spokesperson at fact-checking site Logically, which analysed the posts’ veracity.

    Experts say most of the incendiary tweets, rumours and lies came from India, showing the power of unchecked social media to spread disinformation and stir unrest a full continent away.

    “I’ve seen quite a selection of the social media stuff which is very, very, very distorting now and some of it just completely lying about what had been happening between different communities,” Peter Soulsby, Leicester’s mayor, told BBC radio.

    Rob Nixon, who runs Leicestershire Police, concurred, telling the BBC that misinformation on social media had played a “huge role” in last month’s unrest.
    To counter some of these claims, police took to social media themselves, saying they had fully investigated reports of three men approaching a teenaged girl in an attempted kidnapping, and found no truth whatsoever to the online story.

    “We urge you to only share information on social media you know to be true,” they said.

    Many of the misleading posts alleging that Hindus and Hindu sites were being attacked came from India, analysis showed.
    Some 80% of tweets with geographic coordinates, or geo-tagged information, were connected to India, Logically said.

    “The ratio of tweets geo-tagged to the UK versus those geo-tagged to India was remarkably high for what, ostensibly, was a domestic incident,” a spokesperson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

    “The involvement of high-profile figures in India setting the discourse was a key element.”

    “The events in Leicester did not happen out of the blue,” said Keval Bharadia at the South Asia Solidarity Group, a British community non-profit.

  • 4,000 dengue cases reported in five months in Balochistan

    Up to 4,000 dengue cases of dengue have been reported in Balochistan over the past five months, Syed Ali Shah has reported for Express Tribune.

    Flood victims across the country have been in the grip of a variety of mosquito and waterborne diseases as Balochistan has reported over 4,000 dengue cases over the past five months.

    Lasbela, Kech, Gwadar, and Panjgur districts reported the majority of the cases.

    Around 250 dengue cases have been detected over the past several days from various locations in Balochistan, a health official said.
    To limit the spread of dengue and malaria, Abdul Aziz Uqaili, Chief Secretary of Balochistan, has ordered the authorities to spray repellent fog in the afflicted districts.

    Dengue, a viral illness spread by the Aedes Egypti mosquito, is a potentially fatal disease with common symptoms being high-grade fever, body aches and eye pain

  • King Charles III may be visiting Pakistan soon

    King Charles III may be visiting Pakistan soon

    King Charles III has expressed interest in visiting Pakistan soon.

    The new monarch hosted his first ever public reception to honour British-South Asian community at Palace of Holyrood House in Edinburgh, Scotland.

    Zeeshan Shah, the honorary ambassador-at-large on investment met with King Charles III during the event.

    Speaking with the King, Ambassador Shah spoke of his role and current initiatives being under taken to promote trade and investment between Pakistan and the UK.

    He further thanked the King for his ongoing support to Pakistan’s most under privileged through his charity the British Asian Trust, in particular the emergency relief support his trust has been providing for flood affectees in Pakistan.

    Members of the British royal family, including Queen Elizabeth II, have visited Pakistan in the past.

    Most recently the Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Catherine, visited Pakistan in October 2019.

  • Special courts established to hear rape cases

    Special courts established to hear rape cases

    On Monday, the Anti-Rape Special Committee was informed of the status of the anti-rape law’s implementation. It was noted that special courts had been established across the nation to hear rape cases and that special police units had been established for the purpose of investigation.

    The panel met in the Ministry of Law and Justice under the direction of Senator Ayesha Raza Farooq.

    Mehnaz Akbar Aziz, the Parliamentary Secretary for Law and Justice, Osama Malik, the chair of the anti-rape committee, as well as other members and representatives from the law ministry, were present at the meeting.

    The committee was formed in July thus year against rape was announced by the Law Ministry on Friday in an effort to combat the worrying increase in sexual violence cases across the nation. The special committee’s primary responsibility will be to aid sexual assault victims in getting legal representation, in addition to attempting to stop cases of rape against children.

  • China wants to import donkeys from Pakistan

    China has expressed interest in importing donkeys and dogs from Pakistan, information provided to the Senate Standing Committee on Commerce has said.

    Senator Zeeshan Khanzada presided over the Senate Standing Committee on Commerce meeting on Monday in Islamabad.

    China plans to import dogs and donkeys from Pakistan, according to senators Dinesh Kumar and Abdul Qadir. China, according to Kumar, is a significant export market.

    Senator Qadir told the committee that the Chinese ambassador said his country wants to export beef because of a spike in local demand and a decrease in supply.

    Senator Muhammad Afridi suggested that animals be imported from Afghanistan and then exported to different countries as they are available on cheap rates there, but there are no purchasers.

    However, in response to this recommendation, the relevant officials stated that temporarily banning the import of animals from Afghanistan owing to the spread of lumpy skin disease.

    However, in response to this recommendation, the relevant officials stated that the import of animals from the country is banned due to lumpy skin disease.