Category: National

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  • Sindh to develop 10 tourist spots

    Sindh to develop 10 tourist spots

    The Sindh Government has decided to develop 10 potential tourist sites in the province through a public-private partnership.

    According to reports, the provincial government will conduct feasibility at 10 such sites across the province to develop them into tourist spots. These areas include Gorakh Hill Station in Dadu district, Ranikot Fort in Jamshoro district, Keenjhar Lake in Thatta, Nagarparkar in Tharparkar, Achhrro Thar in Sanghar, Mohenjo Daro in Larkana, Sehwan, Bhit Shah, Drigh and Langh Lakes in Kambar-Shahdadkot, Lab-e-Mehran / Sadhbelo in Sukkur and coastal belt of the province.

    The decision was announced after a meeting of the provincial Tourism and Culture Department, which was chaired by Sindh Chief Secretary (CS) Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah.

    Expressing that the province had great tourism potential, the Chief Secretary said: “Sindh government wants to develop facilities for tourists so that tourism can flourish not only at the already existing sites but at several other sites which have so far been neglected.”

    Such sites would be surveyed with the help of private sector, he added.

    Shah also instructed the Works and Services Department to repair the roads going towards Ranikot and Nagarparkar to make the route for tourists easier.

    Sindh Culture and Tourism Secretary Akbar Laghari in his briefing shared that the feasibility study of Lab-e-Mehran and Gorakh Hills had already been done. He added that they also plan to build a theme park at Mohenjo Daro and aim to construct low-cost hotels in the area.

    Meanwhile, Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday inaugurated two national parks in Gilgit-Baltistan to protect endangered wildlife and promote eco-tourism in the area.

  • Matchmaker tricks villager into marrying 70-year-old widow

    A villager named Shahid was tricked into marrying a 70-year old woman by a matchmaker.

    As per details, the groom did not get to see her bride until after the wedding. He claimed that the woman he got married to was not the one who the matchmaker had shown them, adding that his family had paid the matchmaker’s fee of Rs 20,000 and had also paid an additional Rs 60,000 to the bride’s family for dowry.

    According to the bride Nusrat Bibi, she was dragged into the whole situation when the bride-to-be ran away. Nusrat actually worked as a domestic helper at the home of the girl the matchmaker had promised Shahid as wife.

    The groom and his family have registered an FIR against the family of the bride and the matchmaker in order to recover their money. The matchmaker has fled the scene.

  • Ex-PM Jamali passes away

    Ex-PM Jamali passes away

    Former prime minister (PM) Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali passed away at the age of 76 on Wednesday.

    The former premier was battling for life on Sunday after being placed on a ventilator following a heart attack and severe breathing problems.

    The senior politician was under treatment at the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology (AFIC) in Rawalpindi for the respiratory complications.

    MNA Mir Khan Muhammad Jamali said that the former PM had suffered a heart attack on Friday.

    He said that Mir Zafarullah Jamali was immediately shifted to a local hospital in Chak Shahzad and later moved to the AFIC in Rawalpindi, where he breathed his last on Monday.

    PM JAMALI:

    Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali served as the 15th PM of Pakistan from 2002 until his resignation in 2004.

    Originally a supporter of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Jamali emerged from the politics of Balochistan under military governor Rahimuddin Khan during the 1970s.

    He was also affiliated with the now ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

  • Lawyers take to Lahore streets with guns to celebrate victory in bar polls

    Lawyers take to Lahore streets with guns to celebrate victory in bar polls

    Multiple videos of the Lahore-based lawyers have emerged, wherein they can be seen doing aerial firing on the streets of the city to celebrate the victory of their candidate in the Punjab Bar Council elections.

    In the un-dated videos that are being circulated in Whatsapp groups and social media, the lawyers can be seen firing indiscriminately while the police officials looked on.

    They had all sorts of guns — and ammunition, enough to take down an army. AK47s, M-16, G-3s — all prohibited bore weapons — can be seen in the video along with different models of handguns.

    https://twitter.com/TassawarBajwa_/status/1333655495123611650

    Aerial firing is banned in Pakistan, and people involved in this practice can be booked under multiple sections of the Pakistan Penal Code, including the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997.

    Following the outrage on social media, Civil Lines police booked several unidentified lawyers on the charge of aerial firing. Police, however, said it will go ahead with the probe once the lawyers are identified.

    On Nov 30, The News reported that Kamran Bashir Mughal, Sadiq Irfan Tarar, Adeeb Aslam Bhindar, Muhammad Ahmed Qayyum and Hafiz Abdul Naeem and 11 others had won the Punjab Bar Council (PbBC) elections held on 16 seats in Lahore.

    A low turnout was seen in the election for 75-member house of Punjab Bar Council (PbBC), the provincial regulatory body of the legal fraternity, on Saturday for a five-year term of 2020-25 apparently due to Covid-19 pandemic, it reported.

  • KYA BOLA? (Dec 2): ‘Darakht Kahan Gye?’, ‘Hakoomti Writ Khatam’, ‘Awam Ki Hifazat Ky Lye Jalsa’

    KYA BOLA? (Dec 2): ‘Darakht Kahan Gye?’, ‘Hakoomti Writ Khatam’, ‘Awam Ki Hifazat Ky Lye Jalsa’

    Following are some snippets that stood out from Urdu newspapers on Dec 2, 2020, which The Current takes no responsibility for.

    Darakht Kahan Gye?

    Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmad has taken notice of the PTI government’s billion tree project. Daily Jang quoted the CJP as saying: “Billion tree project ki tehqeeqaat karain gy…Kaya sary darakht Bani Gala mai laga diay.”

    Hakoomati Writ Khatam

    JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman has been quoted by Dunya News as saying: “Hakoomti writ khatam… PDM kisi kisam ky muzakaraat nahi kary gi. Agla lahema-e-amal 8 December of PDM ijlaas mai teh ho ga.”

    Awam Ki Hifazat Ky Lye Jalsa

    PTI leader Andleeb Abbas said that government allowed PDM to organise jalsa in Multan. “Hum ny logon ki jaan-o-maal ki hifazat karni ha, chahy wo corona sy ho ya takhreebkaari sy. Aur jo in ki dando wali takhreebkaari thi hum ny us sy awam ko bachaya aur un ki hifazat ky lye jalsa hony diya.”

  • Newlyweds in Multan walk 6km due to PDM jalsa roadblocks

    Newlyweds in Multan walk 6km due to PDM jalsa roadblocks

    A newlywed couple on Monday had to walk six kilometres due to road blocks due to the Pakistan Democratic Movement’s (PDM) jalsa in Multan.

    According to reports, the couple were at Lodhran’s Dunyapur tehsil when they encountered several barriers with police and other security personnel, asking them to stop their vehicle. The groom with his ‘barat’ had to park their cars on the side of a road from where they went to their destination on foot. 

    Shipping containers and heavy vehicles were parked at different spots around Multan as a security measure, while mobile phone services were also suspended inconveniencing locals.

  • AirSial to start flights by mid-December

    AirSial to start flights by mid-December

    After a months-long delay due to the coronavirus pandemic, AirSial is finally here. The private airline owned by the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry will start its operations from next month, and its first Airbus A320-200 plane has already arrived in Sialkot this Sunday.

    AirSial was among six new airlines that had applied to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) for regular public transport (RPT) licences in 2018. However, following the issuance of the permit, it had faced an uncertain future after its launch scheduled for May 2020 was indefinitely postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic among other reasons.

    But, the arrival of its fleet from the US means the private airline is all-set to launch its flights operations. Meanwhile,

    reports also claim that PM Imran Khan will inaugurate the private airline on Dec 9, but the operations would be started much later. It will operate flights between Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Sialkot and Peshawar before expanding operations to the other cities.

    Initially, the airline’s operations will rely on three Airbus A320-200s, which have been leased from AerCap, the world’s largest independent aircraft leasing company, based in Dublin, Ireland.

    According to an AirSial official quoted by Dawn, two more aircraft would arrive soon in Sialkot, one of them on Dec 3, to join the new airline’s fleet.

    Reacting to the development, cricketer Shoaib Malik, who hails from Sialkot, said it was a “proud moment for everyone in Sialkot, who has been a part of the process”.

  • Govt to bring new law restricting children from evicting aging parents from their homes

    The Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan-led government is considering a proposal to promulgate an ordinance that would restrict children from evicting their aging parents from their homes.

    According to Dawn, Federal Law Minister Dr Farogh Naseem has discussed the proposal with the premier to promulgate the ordinance to prescribe the right of parents to evict their children and their spouses and protect the rights of parents living with their children, a Law Ministry statement said.

    He informed PM Imran that the ordinance should focus on three things:

    1. Firstly, It should restrain children from evicting their parents from their homes if the houses are owned by the children.
    2. Secondly, if the houses are owned by parents, they should have the right to evict children and their spouses through simple procedures i.e. within 10 days through intervention of the police or district management.
    3. Thirdly, if houses are constructed with funds provided by parents or grandparents, but they are registered in the names of children, some remedy is to be provided to parents till the time they are alive.

    The minister told the PM that if such an ordinance were promulgated, it would earn the premier, law minister, the entire cabinet and also the president prayers of all parents of Pakistan.

    “Within a matter of seconds, the PM approved the proposal and asked me to urgently draft the ordinance,” reports quoted Naseem as saying.

  • Citizens cannot ‘speak against state’, says high court

    Citizens cannot ‘speak against state’, says high court

    The Peshawar High Court has said that Pakistani citizens have no right to speak against the state, as they are bound to “respect and follow” the laws of the country.

    The acting chief justice of the PHC, Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan, made these remarks while hearing a plea of Prof Ismail– the father of activist Gulalai Ismail — against the cancellation of his bail, reported Voicepk.net.

    The acting CJ said that citizens cannot be granted the right by the court to criticise the state. During the hearing on November 23, the deputy attorney general told the court that Prof Ismail posted ‘anti-state tweets’ on his social media account.

    As per the prosecution, Prof Ismail had posted on Twitter: “When the TikTok star Hareem Shah can enter the Foreign Office, the country does not fulfill the definition of a state.”

    At this, the judge said such remarks were “unbecoming of a teacher”, adding these messages would have an adverse impact on his students as well. The judge said a citizen was bound to respect and follow the laws of the state. The judge addressed Prof Ismail and said that he should not misuse the relief if he’s granted bail.

    When the judge summoned Prof Ismail to the rostrum, the latter spoke in a harsher tone. This irked the judge, who said the petitioner called himself a teacher, but he did not even know how to talk. The lawyer tried to handle the situation and said his client was suffering from high blood pressure and that his family was facing harassment allegedly by the law enforcement agencies.

    Nevertheless, the court sought an apology from the petitioner and adjourned further hearings until Friday, November 27.

    Prof Ismail was granted conditional bail by the PHC in Oct 2019. A single-member bench of the high court, comprising Justice Qaiser Rasheed, had instructed Prof Ismail to “be careful” in the future while asking him to submit a surety of Rs100,000 as well as personal guarantees from two individuals, a report in Dawn said.

    Gulalai Ismail’s parents are facing charges of financing terrorism, allegedly for funneling money from their daughter toward terrorist activities. They deny the charges and are currently out on bail but have been ordered not to leave Pakistan.

    In October this year, an anti-terrorism court in Peshawar had indicted the parents of rights activist and Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) leader Gulalai Ismail ‘on charges of actively aiding’ two terrorist attacks carried out by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan in 2013 and 2015.

  • People are outraged at the woman who slapped a security guard at Dolmen Mall

    People are outraged at the woman who slapped a security guard at Dolmen Mall

    People on social media are triggered by a woman who slapped a security guard at Dolmen Mall. Reportedly, the guard did not open the barrier to let her in because of the revised mall timings.

    The video doing rounds on social media shows the girl not only shouted at the guard but also slapped him. She can be heard saying, “Tumhari itni himmat, auqaat main raho.”

    People are outraged at her and are criticising her actions on social media.

    https://twitter.com/sakhtLondii/status/1332012212756520962?s=20

    Earlier, Deputy Comissioner South Karachi had announced that the mall will be strengthening COVID-19 SOPs for the staff and the customers.