Samar Elkhadour, a Palestinian woman who had been trying to get her daughter Jana out of Gaza, for the past several years. She finally got the call from Global Affairs Department of Canada allowing her daughter with special needs to immigrate to Canada, two weeks after her death. The news was featured in CBC Montreal News.
Jana was born with severe cerebral palsy and was living with Samar’s in-laws in Gaza. Samar was living in Canada and was trying to get her daughter to join her as she dealt with Jana’s immigration process. Jana died on January 8 – four days after her 13th birthday – in Gaza, due to malnutrition and lack of medicine and two weeks later, Samar got the green light from the Canadian government to bring her but it was too late.
Samar talked to host Debra Arbec in a show and spoke her heart out. She shared how she had hoped to give her daughter the comfort she deserved had she been allowed to move in with her family. She along with her husband and other children left Gaza back in 2017 as a refugee but the immigration bureaucracy in Canada did not help them at all. Back then, her daughter was relatively safe because the escalation was not spiking. However, after October 7, she decided to move her to a church because she thought she’d be safe there under international law. “What happened after that, the Church was surrounded by tanks and snipers and there were restrictions on the entry of food,” Samar related with teary eyes, “Jana could only have soft food and since it is a war, this is a privilege”. Her health deteriorated and because she was not given proper medication she passed away.
When the interviewer asked about the time she got to know about the green light to bring her daughter to Canada, Samar replied, “I laughed, because it’s ridiculous. It was a child’s life at stake.”
The two then went on to discuss the immigration process in Canada and Samar highlighted the double standards of the process especially with Palestinians. She stressed the immediate need of a ceasefire.
Hindutva extremism has penetrated into every aspect of Indian life, including zoos.
Extremist organisation, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), has filed a case against keeping a lion named Akbar and another named Sita in the same cage in West Bengal.
The lions brought to the West Bengal Safari Park were named by the management.
The Hindu organisation says that the authorities have hurt their religious sentiments by the two animals being housed together because they have names coming from different religions.
The VHP has filed a petition against the forest department in the Kolkata High Court, which will be heard on February 20.
Another foreign hunter has hunted down a markhor in Pakistan with a license that preservation experts say helps in increasing the population of the endangered animal.
During the third trophy hunt, an American citizen, Robert Myles Hall, hunted a Kashmiri Markhor at the Gahirat-Golen community game for a trophy permit of $125,000.
The animal was reportedly about eight years old while the horns of the giant four-legged wild goat was around 38 inches.
According to Geo news, officials have claimed that the population of Kashmir Markhor has increased during the recent years, owing to community-based conservation.
Three hunting trophy licences are issued every year for Markhor hunting. 80 per cent of the total price is divided among local communities and 20 per cent is granted to the national exchequer.
Markhor is kept under the protection of local as well as international law like the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).
In October last year, 2023, Deron James Millman won a bid of $232,000 — the highest in history.
The Meteorological Department has predicted heavy rain and strong winds in Karachi today. In Lahore, strong winds have caused the temperature to drop.
According to the Meteorological Department, it may drizzle at some places in Karachi, Sajawal, and Thatta today. Strong winds will continue to blow in Karachi till this evening with cloudy skies.
There is a possibility of rain and snowfall in the mountains today in the Pothohar region, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, North Balochistan, Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan, reports Geo News. Various areas of the country including Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Kohat, Malakand, Muzaffarabad, Diamar, Chilas, and Chaman received rain while snowfall was recorded in the mountains.
Rescue teams have been put on high alert in Rawalpindi, Attock, Jhelum, Chakwal, Talagang, and Murree due to strong winds and rain.
Commissioner Rawalpindi said that they are monitoring the situation caused by wind and rain in Murree, the Deputy Commissioner has given specific instructions to Murree for necessary arrangements.
On the other hand, in Azad Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, heavy snowfall occurred in Neelum Jhelum Valley, which affected the movement of traffic due to slippage on connecting roads, the weather became colder due to snowfall in Swat, Upper and Lower Dir, Karam district.
Abbottabad and Mansehra are experiencing rain in the plains and light snow in the upper reaches, with up to 2 inches of snow in Shogran and 4 inches in Naran.
Additionally, the western system of rainfall entered North Balochistan after which heavy rain and hailstorms occurred in Pak-Afghan border areas including Chaman, Qila Abdullah, Muslim Bagh, Toba Kakadi, Toba Achakzai, and Sheila Bagh.
Social media site X, formerly Twitter, is down across Pakistan, causing problems for millions of users of the micro blogging app.
According to real-time internet and social media outage and monitoring service Downdetector.pk, X is down in Pakistan since 9 PM Saturday night, with users complaining that they are having trouble viewing tweets and new posts.
But users can acces itvby using VPN.
Cyber security watchdog, NetBlocks has also confirmed the shutdown of X in Pakistan. In the last few days, internet services including social media sites have been blocked several times across Pakistan.
Lilian was 20 when her newborn baby died of medical complications at a hospital in El Salvador, where abortion is a crime and even the suspicion of one can land a woman in jail.
Lilian was arrested and sentenced to 30 years in prison for “aggravated homicide” after her infant daughter passed away at a public hospital in Santa Ana in the country’s west in November 2015.
“I gave birth naturally, but I had a tear in my uterus,” recounted Lilian, now 28, who declined to give her full name to protect her family.
She was sedated for a procedure to fix the tear, and when she awoke, “I knew my baby was dead.”
Her nightmare did not end there.
“I was first accused of abandonment and neglect, but the prosecution called it ‘aggravated homicide’ and I was convicted in May 2016,” she told AFP.
A report found Lilian’s baby had died of neonatal sepsis, yet she spent eight years behind bars for ‘aggravated homicide’
Last year, a medical report concluded that her baby had died of neonatal sepsis, a finding that resulted in Lilian’s early prison release in November with the aid of women’s rights NGOs.
By then, she had already served eight years behind bars.
“If she (the baby) had been treated in time, she would not have died. I wouldn’t have wasted so many years of my life in prison,” said Lilian, whose other daughter was just two when it happened and was raised by her grandparents.
“I only saw her twice, I did not see her grow up.”
Lilian is the last of 73 Salvadorans to be released from prison in the last decade under a campaign by rights groups to free women serving sentences of up to 50 years for abortions, miscarriages, or birthing complications.
In Latin America, elective abortion is legal in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Cuba and Uruguay
Almost all are from poor backgrounds in rural areas where health services are precarious, said Arturo Castellanos, a social worker with the Citizens’ Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion.
Alba Lorena Rodriguez, now 36, became pregnant at 21 after an acquaintance raped her.
Five months pregnant, she went into premature labor at home.
“I had to give birth to him myself, I fainted, I dropped” the baby, she told AFP.
A neighbor called the police, and Rodriguez, who has two other daughters, was arrested at the infant’s funeral.
“I felt the world come crashing down on me, because I knew I wasn’t going to see the girls, and they were punishing me for something I hadn’t done,” she said.
“The one who raped me was on the outside with his family and I (was)… imprisoned. The law is unfair,” said Rodriguez, who said she had no defense lawyer and no chance for anything like a fair trial.
Rodriguez served 10 years of a 30-year sentence before she, too, was released.
Both women chose to talk to AFP in the capital San Salvador, far from their own villages where the punishment has not stopped.
When the jailed women leave prison, “the community discriminates against them and stigmatizes them,” Castellanos said.
Alba Lorena Rodriguez, now 36, became pregnant after she was raped by an acquaintance at the age of 21
In Latin America, elective abortion is legal in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Cuba and Uruguay.
It is banned outright, without exceptions for health risks or other circumstances, in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Nowhere are the penalties as severe as in El Salvador, however.
Under the law there, abortion is punishable by two to eight years in prison. But the charge is often changed to “aggravated homicide,” which carries a penalty of 30 to 50 years.
Since 1998, when abortion was criminalized in El Salvador, 199 women have been sentenced.
Since Lilian’s release last year, none remain imprisoned, but seven women are awaiting trial, according to the Citizens’ Group.
“No one can give me back my lost time. I’m rebuilding the bond with my daughter,” said Lilian, who would like to see the law changed so that other women do not have to go through what she has.
But President Nayib Bukele, newly elected to a second five-year term with near-total control of parliament, has said there will be no change to abortion laws in the deeply Christian country.
“The struggle continues,” said Lilian.
Since abortion was criminalized in El Salvador in 1998, a total of 199 women have been sentenced
It has been three days since the forest fire in Zargat mountain in Balochistan’s Musa Khel district started spreading but local authorities have failed to control it.
On Thursday, fire ignited in the forests of the mountains. The fire is reportedly so intense that its flames can be seen 18 kilometers away from the city of Musa Khel, affecting olive groves and wildlife.
The caretaker chief minister of Balochistan had given instructions for emergency measures to extinguish the fire on Thursday, but the residents of the area say that the fire could not be controlled till now.
A New York judge ordered Donald Trump to pay $355 million over fraud allegations and banned him from running companies in the state for three years Friday in a major blow to his business empire and financial standing.
Trump — almost certain to be the Republican presidential nominee this November — was found liable for unlawfully inflating his wealth and manipulating the value of properties to obtain favorable bank loans or insurance terms.
Trump lashed out on social media calling the ruling a “Total SHAM,” the judge in the case “crooked” and the prosecutor who brought it “totally corrupt.” His legal team said he would “of course” appeal.
As the case was civil, not criminal, there was no threat of imprisonment. But Trump said ahead of the ruling that a ban on conducting business in New York state would be akin to a “corporate death penalty.”
Trump, facing 91 criminal counts in other cases, has seized on his legal woes to fire up supporters and denounce his likely opponent, President Joe Biden, claiming that court cases are “just a way of hurting me in the election.”
However, Judge Arthur Engoron said the financially shattering penalties are justified by Trump’s behavior.
“Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” Engoron said of Trump and his two sons, who were also defendants, in his scathing ruling.
“They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money… Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways,” he added, referring to the perpetrator of a massive Ponzi scheme.
Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. were also found liable in the case and ordered to pay more than $4 million each, prompting Don Jr. to claim on social media that “political beliefs” had determined the outcome.
Engoron also extended the mandate of retired judge Barbara Jones as an independent monitor of Trump’s business affairs, as well as ordering the appointment of an independent director of compliance to the Trump Organization, with candidates to be nominated by Jones.
“Conditions that Judge Engoron imposed, such as having Judge Jones monitor the Trump companies, may be onerous. I do expect an appeal,” said Richmond University law professor Carl Tobias.
It was as a property developer and businessman in New York that Trump built his public profile which he used as a springboard into the entertainment industry and ultimately the presidency.
The judge’s order was a victory for New York state Attorney General Letitia James. She had sought $370 million from Trump to remedy the advantage he is alleged to have wrongfully obtained, as well as having him barred from conducting business in the state.
Caretaker Chief Minister Justice (retd) Maqbool Baqar has directed the Board of Intermediate Education Karachi (BIEK) to give the students of Pre-Engineering, Pre-Medical, and General Science Part-I up to 15 percent additional marks in their exams, reports Geo News.
The Sindh caretaker CM approved recommendations of a fact-finding committee formed to investigate Intermediate Part-I students’ getting unusually low marks this year.
The committee submitted its report to the chief minister, following which BIEK’s IT in-charge was removed from his post.
The CM said it had been decided on the committee’s recommendation that the students of pre-engineering, pre-medical, and general science would be given 15 percent extra marks.
The committee advised forming paper patterns and a scheme for giving marks before the beginning of the educational year. It also said that the paper pattern and marking scheme would be implemented for three years. The Sindh CM ordered the relevant departments to increase the number of paper inspection centres to 10 in the city. He added that the MCQs papers should be checked with an optical marks recognition system so that there is no mistake.
CM Baqar ordered that employees including head examiners, examiners, and invigilators should be trained, adding that the rules and regulations of BIEK should be strictly implemented.
“The controller of examinations, all deputy controllers, and the IT manager are responsible for conducting the examinations in 2023,” he said. He also mentioned that notices should be issued against the board officers who do not follow the rules and regulations.
Background
On January 23, the BIEK released the results for Part I (first year) of the examination, revealing a concerning decline in the students’ performance. The statistics indicated that 80% of candidates failed in Arts (Regular), 72% failed in Arts (Private) and 63% failed in Commerce (Private) groups. Earlier in the results released, only 36.51% of candidates were successful in Pre-Medical, 34.79% in Pre-Engineering, and 38.69% in computer science groups.
Most students who passed their matriculation exams with lower marks faced potential challenges in securing admissions to professional universities and colleges, given that admissions are typically based on Inter Part-I marks.
The Federal Ministry of Health has imposed a ban on eating sweet items in its subordinate institutions, reports Samaa News.
According to the spokesman of the Ministry of Health, many diseases are caused by sweet drinks so the Federal Ministry of Health has banned the use of sweet items in its subsidiaries. Eating and drinking sweets are no longer allowed in all institutions affiliated with the Ministry of Health.
An advisory has been issued by the Caretaker Health Minister Dr. Nadeem Jan that sugary drinks cause communicable and non-communicable diseases and that is why confectionery of all sorts will not be served in official meetings or functions.
