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  • Mubasher Lucman wants Pakistan to establish ties with Israel

    Mubasher Lucman wants Pakistan to establish ties with Israel

    A day after the reports of a secret meeting between Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, journalist and anchorperson Mubasher Lucman urged the Pakistani state to revisit its foreign policy and “establish diplomatic ties with Israel”.

    The anchorperson who appeared on an Israeli news channel to supposedly comment on the controversy surrounding the latest push of Arab countries to normalise ties with Israel said that it was time for Pakistan to be “friends with everyone”, including Tel Aviv.

    https://twitter.com/TeamMLucman/status/1328780163283226624

    According to Lucman, Pakistan needs to put itself first and stop fighting for the rights of other nations — Palestinians in this case. “I am one of those people who believe both countries should shake hands and establish diplomatic ties,” said Lucman, as he went on to call Israel a “vibrant country”.

    The journalist also undermine the struggle for self-determination of the Palestinian people, while trying to play down the atrocities committed by the Israeli troops against the Palestinian people. “People in Pakistan do not know much about Israel, except that it is a zionist state carrying out ‘whatever it is doing against Palestinians’”.

    “The Israeli nation is a great nation in their own way. They are fighters, they are survivors,” said Lucman, comparing it with Pakistan which is a “great country in its own right with many accolades”.

    Lucman also commented on a recent media reports that claimed Pakistan was being pressurised by the US and another Muslim country to recognise Tel Aviv. He said: “If Israel and Pakistan ever ever have to shake hands, it must not be due to a third party, it must be directly. We don’t need to be subservient to anyone, be it the US or Saudi Arabia.”

    He also said the “animosity between Pakistan and Israel” existed for over 70 years now, and both states needed to educate their masses if things have to “progress” from this stage to the next.

    Earlier this month, Prime Minister Imran Khan said Pakistan would not accept Israel unless Palestinians get their right to self-determination. He also told a journalist that US outgoing President Donald Trump and a Muslim country wanted Pakistan to accept Israel, which it cannot do.

    MBS-NETANYAHU MEETING:

    On Monday, Netanyahu allegedly met MBS in Saudi Arabia, which observers see a step towards recoginsation of Tel Aviv by Saudi Arabia. There has been widespread speculation, within Israel and the US, that Washington may push for other Arab states to follow suit before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in.

    However, the reports of the meeting were denied by the Saudi foreign minister. “I have seen press reports about a purported meeting between HRH the Crown Prince and Israeli officials during the recent visit by @SecPompeo. No such meeting occurred. The only officials present were American and Saudi,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud wrote on Twitter on Monday.

  • Meet the first-ever female PSP officer of Balochistan

    Meet the first-ever female PSP officer of Balochistan

    Women of “conservative” Balochistan have little space in the political, cultural, economic, or social fields. Conditions are even worse for Balochistan’s women in rural areas.

    Surviving all these hurdles, Pari Gul Tareen has been posted as Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Quetta Cantt. Tareen is the first woman in the history of the province to be appointed to this post.

    She hails from the Pishin area of ​​Balochistan and is the first woman in the province to join the Police Service of Pakistan (PSP) after passing the Central Superior Services (CSS) exam.

    CHANGING TIMES:

    Tareen is, however, not the only one to have made the country proud in these changing times.

    Nigar Johar had earlier this year been promoted by the Pakistan Army to become the first woman lieutenant general.

    According to the military’s media wing, Johar, who hails from the Panjpeer area of Swabi district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), also holds the accolade for becoming the first woman surgeon general of the Pakistan Army.

    Earlier, in 2017, Johar had become the third woman officer to reach the rank of major general.

    Swabi has produced a number of generals, but it was the first time that a woman had reached the said army rank.

  • PM approves national intelligence body for effective coordination among spy agencies

    PM approves national intelligence body for effective coordination among spy agencies

    Prime Minister Imran Khan has approved the formation of the National Intelligence Coordination Committee for effective coordination among the over two dozen intelligence organisations in the country.

    According to a report in Dawn.com, the committee will be headed by Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed. According to the report, though the terms of reference of the body have yet to be finalised, the proposal for the body was submitted to the premier after a thorough discussion between the intelligence agencies.

    The move is part of the long-awaited reform of the intelligence apparatus, which aims at clarifying the role of respective agencies, improving their coordination, and optimising their capabilities, said the report.

    In past, the civilian government made multiple attempts to reform intelligence agencies, but to no avail, specifically due to differences over the leadership of the new body.

    In 2008, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government placed the ISI and Intelligence Bureau (IB) under the “administrative and financial” control of the Ministry of Interior, but the notification was retracted following a backlash from the military officials.

    Similarly, attempts by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government to reform the intelligence agencies of the country failed.

  • Child marriage: Rape charges added in Arzoo Raja case

    Child marriage: Rape charges added in Arzoo Raja case

    Sindh police have added rape charges in the FIR [first information report] against the purported husband of teenage Christian girl Arzoo Raja who married the minor after forced proselytisation.

    Along with Syed Ali Azhar, six other people, including two lawyers and justice of peace, were also booked in the case. They have been charged under Section 3 (punishment for male contracting party), Section 4 (punishment for solemnising a child marriage) and Section 5 (punishment for parent or guardian concerned in a child marriage) of the Sindh Child Marriages Restraint Act.

    Azhar has also been charged with Section 375 (v) (sexual intercourse with a minor) of the Pakistan Penal Code. 

    The brothers and a friend of the prime suspect were absolved of all charges for lack of evidence, whereas the kidnapping charge was also struck down following Arzoo’s denial, who has been sent to a shelter home by the court.

    Meanwhile, a report in Geo News claimed that Arzoo Raja has tested positive for coronavirus and is in isolation at Panah Shelter Home.

    CASE:

    Prime suspect Ali Azhar allegedly abducted Arzoo from Karachi’s Muhalla Railway Colony West Camp Road locality on Oct 13, according to the family, which registered a kidnapping case on the same day. On Oct 15 police summoned them to the local station and showed them documents claiming that Arzoo was 18 years old and had willingly converted to Islam to marry Azhar.

    Subsequently, a plea was filed in the Sindh High Court and the court allowed Arzoo Raja to stay with her alleged husband. However, following an uproar, a review plea was filed and the court ordered the formation of a medical board to determine the age of the girl.

    The medical board report found out that the girl was a teenager, strengthening the family’s claims that their girl was abducted was forced to convert for marriage.

  • How to renew your passport online

    How to renew your passport online

    You can apply online for renewal of your machine readable passport if it has been expired.

    What documents are required?

    The following documents are required while applying for renewal of Machine Readable Passport through online passport service provided that your current passport is expiring within a period of seven months :

    • Color scanned copies of valid CNIC or NICOP or Smart CNIC or NICOP both sides
    • Color scanned copies of existing Passport (First two pages and one random page asked by system).
    • Color scanned copy of Valid Visa/ Aqama/ Residence Permit/ Asylum card/ Other Nationality Passport

    For minors (less than 18)

    The following documents are pre-requisite for issuance of passport to minors below 18 years:

    • Color scanned copies of valid NICOP or Smart card (both sides) or Computerized B- Form or Family Registration Certificate
    • Color scanned copies of mother and father valid National ID Cards (both sides)
    • Guardianship certificate/ court decision in case of separation.
    • Color scanned copy of minor’s attestation form ( available in the download tab).
    • Color scanned copy of Death Certificate if mother or father has passed away.

    Color scanned copy of Valid Visa/ Aqama/ Residence Permit/ Asylum card/ Other Nationality Passport

    Government employees

    f the applicant is an employee of the Government of Pakistan, the following documents will be required:-

    • Color scanned copies of valid CNIC or NICOP or Smart CNIC or NICOP both sides
    • Applicant must provide No-Objection Certificate (NOC) in case he/ she is working as Government Officer/ Official, Armed forces Officers/  or employee of employee of Semi Government/ Autonomous Bodies/ Corporation. The NOC with be subject to confirmation/ verification by the department concerned.
    • Color scanned copies of existing Passport (First two pages and one random page asked by system).
    • Color scanned copy of Valid Visa/ Aqama/ Residence Permit/  Asylum card/ Other Nationality Passport.

    Note:

    Online portal is only for renewal of Machine Readable Passport. Following categories of passports cannot be applied through online portal.

    1. New:

    Issuance of Machine Readable Passport first time.

    1. Modification:

    In case applicants wants any changes in existing Machine Readable Passport i.e. name, father name, husband name, date of birth, caste, profession, dual nationality, marital status, religion and official to ordinary.

    1. Reprint Exhaust:

    In case applicant wants a new passport as all pages of previous passport utilized due to several visas/ frequent travelling.

    1. Loss of Passport:-

    In case applicant’s existing passport has been lost (misplaced and not in his possession) and they want a new passport.

    In the above cases, the passport applicants are requested to approach nearest Pakistan Embassy/ High Commission/ Consulate General where MRP facility is available

    How to upload documents?

    You can upload supporting documents from the ‘Document’ tab in your e-Services Portal application session. 

    Before you start attaching files to your application, please remember:

    • There is a limit to the type and size of file that you can attach.
    • If you attach low quality scanned documents, it might slow down the processing of your application.
    Type of files

    We are able to accept the following types of files:

    • .JPEG
    • .JPG
    • .PNG
    Size of files

    We are able to accept the following sizes of file types:

    • Supporting document: 1MB
    • Fingerprint Form: 3MB
    • Photograph: 5MB
    Naming tips

    When naming your files to be attached to an online application only use numbers 0–9 and letters A–Z (upper and lower case), dashes ‘–’ and underscores ‘_’.

    You must avoid using spaces ‘ ‘, periods ‘.’, ampersand ‘&’, hash ‘#’, star ‘*’, exclamation marks ‘!’, quotations ” “” and any other character that is not a letter, a number, a dash or an underscore.

    How much will it cost?

    How long will the Online Application Process take?

  • Nawaz won’t accompany mother’s body to Pakistan

    Nawaz won’t accompany mother’s body to Pakistan

    Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who has been in London for over a year due to health concerns, will not able to accompany his deceased mother to Pakistan owing to poor health and other reasons.

    Shamim Begum, the Sharif family matriarch, breathed her last in London on Sunday due to a chest infection at the age of 89. The death prompted PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz to abandon a joint opposition rally in Peshawar and return to Lahore.

    Maryam, who complained about the government’s apathetic attitude in a tweet, also shared that she would ask her father Nawaz Sharif not to come back to Pakistan.

    “I have requested Mian sahab not to come back [to Pakistan] at all. These are tyrants, these are the people hellbent on exacting revenge, and no humanity is expected from them,” Maryam Nawaz wrote on Twitter.

    Furthermore, a report published in The News also claimed that the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif will not be coming back with the dead body on the advice of his doctors. “Nawaz Sharif has been advised by doctors not to travel because of his ailing health,” the report quoted PML-N leader Ishaq Dar as saying.

    It may be noted here that the PML-N supreme leader was taken to a hospital last week after his condition deteriorated due to kidney pain.

    According to the report, the body will be brought back to Pakistan sometime later this week after the issuance of the death certificate.

    Meanwhile, PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif along with his son Hamza Shehbaz has also applied for parole to attend the funeral of his mother. Subsequently, the Punjab government granted permission to attend the last rites of Shamim Begum. The father-son duo is in jail on suspicion of corruption.

  • Shireen Mazari deletes tweet equating French president with Nazis after France strikes back

    Shireen Mazari deletes tweet equating French president with Nazis after France strikes back

    France on Sunday objected to a statement by Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari equating President Emmanuel Macron’s new measures to counter “Islamist separatism” in France with the anti-semitic policies of Nazi Germany, however, the issue was later resolved when both sides held dialogue after a false claim in the cited news article came to light.

    Earlier this week, Macron issued a “charter of republican values”, detailing a series of steps aimed at purging France of what he declared as “radical Islam”. One of the measures made it necessary for school-going children to wear an identification number that would be used to ensure they are attending school.

    Mazari, who apparently understood that the identification number would be issued exclusively to Muslim children, censured the move, saying through the new measures, “Macron is doing to Muslims what the Nazis did to the Jews” in Nazi Germany.

    “Muslim children will get ID numbers (other children won’t) just as Jews were forced to wear the yellow star on their clothing for identification,” she added linking to an online article.

    Responding to the tweet, the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs on Sunday issued a statement, calling the minister’s remark “insulting […] blatant lies, loaded with an ideology of hatred and violence.”

    The rather unceremonious statement asked Pakistan to “return to the path of dialogue based on respect.”

    The publication later amended the article and issued a clarification stating that the law mentioned in the article applies to all children in France, not specifically Muslim children.

    The embassy also sent a series of tweets to point out the mistakes in the article.

    In response to the French envoy’s message, Mazari deleted her tweet and issued a clarification on Twitter and admitted her mistake. “The French Envoy to Pak sent me the following message and as the article I had cited has been corrected by the relevant publication, I have also deleted my tweet on the same,” she tweeted.

    Responding to the minister’s tweet, the French Embassy thanked Mazari for the clarification and apology, and wrote that “freedom of expression and debates are essential in democracies, based on verified and accurate facts.”

    READ: ‘Stay out of our domestic affairs,’ French minister tells Pakistan and Turkey

    Macron on Wednesday unveiled the bill and asked Muslim leaders in France to agree to its instructions as part of a broad clampdown on so-called “Islamic extremism”. He gave the French Council of the Muslim Faith 15 days to work with the interior ministry.

    The bill includes measures which include: restrictions on home-schooling and harsher punishments for those who intimidate public officials on religious grounds; giving children an identification number under the law that would be used to ensure they are attending school and a ban on sharing the personal information of a person in a way that allows them to be located by people who want to harm them.

    Parents who break the law could face up to six months in jail as well as large fines, it said.

    The draft law — which Macron said will strengthen a 1905 law separating Church and state in France — will be discussed by the French cabinet on December 9.

    The new bill comes on the heels of three separate instances of terrorism following the publication of blasphemous caricatures by Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly best known for vulgar irreverence, and Macron’s insistence on defending the act in the name of freedom of expression.

    Following the publication of these cartoons and Macron’s defense of it, relations between France and the Muslim world grew sour as tens of thousands of Muslims in several countries joined protests, burned effigies of Macron, chanted anti-French slogans and called for a boycott of French goods.

  • Locally-produced AI software to detect COVID-19 in seconds

    The National Institute of Electronics has developed an artificial intelligence-based software that would detect the coronavirus in the lungs in 60 seconds.

    The AI software was developed by the institute to upgrade the testing process, as currently, it takes several hours for the PCR tests to detect the virus in a patient. The new virus detecting system named ‘Cov-Raid AI Detection’ has already been approved by the Drug Regulatory Authority Pakistan (DRAP).

     DRAP said that the Cov-Raid “shall employ Convolutional Neural Networks to predict [presence of] Covid-19 in suspected individuals” by using X-rays and it has been approved for “secondary detection” of the virus, reported Dawn.

    According to the creators of the software, ‘Cov-Raid’ has been developed by “creating a data repository of Chest X Rays (CXR) for Covid-19 or non-Covid-19 detection”.

    “The Cov-Raid requires a chest X-Ray image as an input for the detection of Covid-19 positive or negative patients in less than one minute,” the description on the website said.

    “The algorithm has been trained on more than 35,000 CXRs (data authentication done through multiple certified radiologists and PCR reports),” the website said, adding that the test can be used to test a large number of patients in a limited time.

    Meanwhile, DRAP Chief Executive Officer Dr Asim Rauf has reportedly said that the new software is registered under the DRAP Act of 2012.

  • Lahoris, find out if your area is under smart lockdown

    Following a sharp increase in cases of coronavirus, the Punjab Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department has enforced a smart lockdown in six cities in the province including Lahore to control the spread of the disease.

    According to a notification issued by the department, hotspot areas of district Lahore included Block F1, Valencia Town, Nishtar Town; Blocks E1, E2, F1, F2, G2, G4, G5 Johar Town; Boys’ Hostel No. 11, Superintendent House, PU, Allama lqbal Town; Sector AA, Sector BB, Sector CC, Sector FF, Phase 4, DHA; Sector XX, Phase 3, DHA; Sector N, DHA Phase 1; Paragon City, Lahore Cantt; and Block A, Block B, FCC, Gulberg-4, Gulberg Town. Other areas of Lahore shall remain open.

    In the closed areas, the following shall be exempted from this order: grocery stores, general/karyana stores, atta chakkis, fruit & vegetable shops, tondoors & petrol pumps shall be open from 9am to 7 pm for seven days a week; all medical services and pharmacies/medical stores, laboratories and collection points, hospitals and clinics for 24 hours a day, seven days a week; and milk shops, chicken & meat/fish shops, and bakeries shall remain open from 7am to 7pm seven days a week. Large departmental stores will only keep their grocery/pharmacy sections open while all others sections will remain closed.  

  • FIR to be registered against littering in Karachi

    In Karachi, an FIR under section 188 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) will be registered against anyone found littering the city for the next two months, according to Karachi Administrator Iftikhar Shallwani.

    Shallwani highlighted that a large amount of garbage dumped at undesignated locations is wreaking havoc on the sewerage system, causing traffic jams and spreading an unpleasant odour. To reduce garbage problems in Karachi, police will impose Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to ban people from dumping litter in the streets or at undesignated locations.

    Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) also reported how a massive amount of used contraceptives, such as condoms, in gutters has been causing sewerage problems in Karachi. The KWSB further stressed the need for generating awareness about the issue and urged government departments and social organizations to play their role.

    Earlier in October, Sindh Local Government Minister Syed Nasir Hussain Shah launched the first real-time digital monitoring of waste disposal work in Malir district of Karachi. Additionally, over 200 Qingqi rickshaws were set up by the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board (SSWMB) to initiate a ‘door-to-door’ garbage collection system.