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  • Goswami WhatsApp chat proves Modi used Balakot strikes to gain popularity: PM

    Goswami WhatsApp chat proves Modi used Balakot strikes to gain popularity: PM

    Prime Minister Imran Khan said the leaked WhatsApp conversation between Indian journalist Arnab Goswami and another Indian senior media official proved that the Indian government led by Narendra Modi used the Balakot strikes for electoral gains.

    Imran was referring to WhatsApp conversations between Goswami and Pratho Dasgupta — the incarcerated head of ratings company Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC).

    According to the conversation that was a part of a chargesheet filed against Goswami in a ratings scam, the firebrand anchor knew about the strikes three days before the Indian air force bombed an alleged militant camp inside the Pakistani territory.

    In the conversation on Feb 23, 2019, Goswami said that ‘something big will happen’ and three days later, the Indian jets carried out a strike in Pakistan, bringing the two countries on the brink of a full-fledged war.

    The conversation had also suggested that the strikes were conducted to boost ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) popularity ahead of the national elections.

    In a comment on this conversation, PM Imran Khan made a series of tweet. He recalled that in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in 2019, he had told the international community that the ruling BJP had “used the Balakot crisis for domestic electoral gains”.

    “Latest revelations from communication of an Indian journalist, known for his warmongering, reveal the unholy nexus between the Modi govt & Indian media,” he said, referring to Goswami having access to the “confidential information”.

    “Now India’s own media has revealed the dirty nexus that is pushing our nuclearised region to the brink of a conflict it cannot afford,” the premier said.

    “I want to reiterate that my government will continue to expose India’s belligerent designs towards Pakistan and Modi government’s fascism. Int(ernational) community must stop India from its reckless, militarist agenda before the Modi government’s brinkmanship pushes our region into a conflict it cannot control.”

    Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that India stood further exposed with the leaked chats revealing a “staggering new low”.

    The Foreign Office issued a statement on the issue as well. It said the anchorperson knowing the plan to attack Pakistan “further exposed India’s sinister designs and vindicated Pakistan’s long-held position”.

    In a statement on Sunday, the FO said: “The latest revelations further confirm… [that] BJP government stages ‘false-flag’ operations; maligns Pakistan with terrorism-related allegations; stokes hyper-nationalism in the country; claims to have launched so-called ‘surgical strike[s]’; and then deviously manipulates national sentiment in its bid to win elections.”

    REPUBLIC TV RESPONDS TO PAKISTAN STATEMENTS:

    Meanwhile, Republic TV issued a statement, rejecting the “allegations against Goswami” by the Pakistan government.

    “Goswami…as India’s leading journalist exposed every sinister design…. of the government of Pakistan and ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence),” it said in response to the statements by the Pakistani officials. It also termed these statements as part of “deep conspiracy” to target Arnab Goswami.

    “The desperations with which government of Pakistan has attacked the Republic Media Network in an open forum today also lays bare the involvement of anti-India forces in the conspiracy,” it added.

    The statement also took a potshot at Congress, saying the opposition party should stop working in tandem with the government of Pakistan to spread lies against India’s interests.

  • ‘Koh-i-Noor’ goes on display at Pakistan museum

    A replica of Koh-i-Noor, one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, has gone on display at the Pakistan Museum of Natural History (PMNH) in Islamabad.

    The disputed original diamond, which weighs 105.6 carats (21.12g), and is believed to have been mined from the Kollur mine, Golconda, India and was acquired by Alauddin Khalji, Sultan of Delhi, is part of the British Crown Jewels.

    The legendary diamond had also been part of the Mughal Peacock Throne (Takhat-e-Taoos) where it was lodged at the very top of the throne, in the head of a glistening gemstone peacock.

    Persian ruler Nadar Shah invaded Delhi in 1739 and took the Peacock Throne along with other treasures but removed the Tamur Ruby and the Koh-i-Noor to wear it on his armband.

    The diamond remained in Afghanistan for almost 70 years after which, in 1813, Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh won back all the Indian land and brought back the Koh-i-Noor to India.

    Today, the diamond is on public display in the Jewel House at the Tower of London, where it is seen by millions of visitors each year.

    The governments of Pakistan, India, Iran and Afghanistan have all claimed rightful ownership of the Koh-i-Noor and demanded its return ever since India gained independence from the United Kingdom (UK) in 1947. The British government insists the gem was obtained legally under the terms of the Last Treaty of Lahore and has rejected the claims.

  • Danish Taimoor cannot ‘imagine a single second without’ Ayeza

    Danish Taimoor cannot ‘imagine a single second without’ Ayeza

    Danish Taimoor has penned a heartfelt note for Ayeza Khan on her 30th birthday.

    Sharing a picture of the two from Ayeza’s birthday celebrations, Danish wrote: “I cannot imagine a single second of my life without this woman, and the beautiful family she has provided me with.”

    “I can’t thank you enough for the amount of peace and love you have brought to my world,” he continued. “I hope we continue to grow like this and be with each other till the very last breath of our lives.”

    Ayeza, who celebrates her birthday on December 16, had a small and intimate party with her family.

    IN PICTURES: Ayeza Khan, Danish Taimoor’s family vacay

    The actor also thanked her fans and friends for their sweet wishes.

    “You guys brought me so much joy on my special day,” said Ayeza in a social media post. “The amount of love I received last night is inexpressible for me.”

    Ayeza and Danish tied the knot in 2014 and have two children together.

  • Khan Academy receives $5 million from Elon Musk

    Tesla CEO Elon Musk has donated $5 million to online learning organisation Khan Academy.

    In a YouTube video posted Monday, Khan Academy founder Salman Khan thanked Musk for the donation, which the Tesla CEO made through his Musk Foundation.

    “Elon, I hope you really feel good about this,” said Khan in the video. “This is going to allow us to accelerate all sorts of content. Our aspirations are all subjects — from kids to the early stages of college. This will accelerate our science content, allow us to do more early learning, allow us to make the software and the practice that much more engaging.”

    Founded in 2002, the Musk Foundation supports research in renewable energy, human space exploration, pediatrics and science and engineering.

    Read more – ‘Bijli aati hai?’: Twitter reacts to Fawad Chaudhry’s invitation to Tesla’s Elon Musk

    Khan Academy is a nonprofit that aims to “provide free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.” Students worldwide can utilize Khan Academy videos, which are translated into more than 36 languages, and learn at their own pace. The resources — videos, practice exercises, and personalized learning dashboards — are also used by parents and teachers.

    As the coronavirus pandemic forced schools to turn to distance learning, many students and parents who struggled with the transition turned to Khan Academy for help, the organisation says.

    While many students may not recognise Khan by his face, millions of them know him by his voice, because of his video tutorials on subjects ranging from photosynthesis and calculus to the American Revolution.

    Khan Academy has over 120 million registered users, with up to 30 million students using the platform every month.

    “I view this type of investment in what we’re doing as really foundational for us to be able to build a multi-generational institution so that future Elon Musks of the world are also able to tap into their potential and help all of us up-level who we are as a civilization,” said Khan.

  • Nawaz’s election campaign was funded by Gulf country, claims Sheikh Rasheed

    Nawaz’s election campaign was funded by Gulf country, claims Sheikh Rasheed

    Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed has claimed that a Gulf country funded former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s election campaign in the 1990s.

    In an interview with Samaa, the minister said that he was a minister in the cabinet of Nawaz Sharif at the time. Rasheed said he was accompanying Nawaz Sharif when it was revealed that the country, that is rich in oil and gas and also has an LNG deal with Pakistan, funded the former PM’s party as a “token of love”.

    According to the minister, the Arab country leader asked Nawaz: “Mr Prime Minister, we have given you a token of love on your election expenditure. Did you receive it?”

    At this, Nawaz responded that yes, he had received the money, said Rasheed, adding that he asked Nawaz to send them a ‘thank you note’ at least.

    It may be noted here that PM Imran Khan had alleged that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) received funds from foreign countries. The comments by the PM came in the wake of the hearings of a foreign funding case against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

    Last week, the PTI had said that its agents managing two limited liability companies (LLCs) in the US could be responsible for any illegal funding and PTI Chairman Imran Khan had nothing to do with it.

    In a response to the petition in the foreign funding case, the PTI, that had denied any links to the foreign funding, said that if the two LLC registered after the written instructions of party chief Imran Khan were involved in the illegal act, it would be due to its agents who were managing them in the US.

    The case was filed by PTI founding member Akbar S Babar in 2014. The Election Commission of Pakistan had started fresh scrutiny of the PTI accounts — a process going on since March 2018.

  • Ice cream tests positive for COVID-19

    Ice cream has been found to have been contaminated with COVID-19 in China after three samples of the dessert tested positive for the virus.

    As per details, authorities in China are tracing people who may have come into contact with the contaminated batches, which were produced by the Chinese food company.

    All products made by the firm have been sealed after the samples it sent to the municipal centre for disease control this week tested positive for coronavirus.

    Initial epidemiological investigations show the ice cream batch has used raw materials that include milk powder imported from New Zealand and whey powder imported from Ukraine.

    Authorities said the company produced 4,836 boxes of the contaminated ice cream of which 2,089 had been sealed away in storage.

    A total of 935 boxes of the ice cream, out of 2,747 boxes that entered the market, were in Tianjin and only 65 were sold to markets.

    Authorities said citizens who may have bought the product must report their health and physical movements to those in their communities.

    The city has also informed the market regulation authorities in other provinces where the ice cream was sent so it can be traced.

    Meanwhile, 1,662 employees of the company have gone into isolation.

  • Pakistan ranks 2nd in South Asia in terms of ease of starting a business: World Bank

    Pakistan has improved its position in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index for the second year in a row.

    According to the latest rankings released by the global organization, Pakistan has improved its position by an impressive total of 28 points, surging from 136th place to 108th on the rankings. The World Bank report calls this an “unprecedented improvement”, and it is highly indicative of the country managing to exceed even its own expectations yet again.

    Out of the six reform areas highlighted in the 2020 edition of the report, Pakistan made the highest improvement in the “Starting a Business” indicator, which is an area largely being revolutionized by the Securities and Exchange Commission Pakistan (SECP).

    Pakistan’s ranking in this indicator has improved from 130 to 72 and is placed at second position in South Asian countries in terms of ease of starting a business.

    The improvement, according to the SECP, is primarily due to the integration of e-services with the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and the Employees Old Age Benefits Institution (EOBI) at the federal level and with business registration portals of Punjab and Sindh at the provincial level.

    After this integration, SECP’s e-services offer a one-window facility for company registration with FBR, EOBI, provincial employees social security institutions, the labour department and excise and taxation departments of Punjab and Sindh.

    As a result of this reform, the number of procedures to start a business, as recorded in the Doing Business Report 2020, have been reduced from ten to five and Pakistan has managed to rank “among the top ten reformers globally”.

    Pakistan emerging as an increasingly business-friendly nation is massively good news for the local hustle culture and the entrepreneurship environment that has rapidly been garnering interest over the past few years.

  • Newsletter- 17th January 2021, Sunday

    Newsletter- 17th January 2021, Sunday









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    NO NEWS WEEKEND
    Sunday, 17th January 2021

    This week we’ve been asking some pretty tough questions on our Instagram stories. Asking our followers to vote in polls with questions like, ‘Are you with the one you love’, ‘Do you think your parents know you’, and ‘Are you happy right now’. I loved checking to see how many people were engaging with the poll since so many were, and I was amazed to see how many people inboxed us wanting to talk about their lives. 58 percent said they were not with the one they loved, and 62 percent said they weren’t with who they wanted to be with because of family issues rather than societal norms. 59 percent felt their family knew them and 64 percent said they felt happy right now. You know what that shows me?  Resilience. Hum aik muaashray mein rehte hain jahan it’s difficult to have a love marriage or date lekin hum phir bhi khush hain.

    Urooj Ali The Current kay lifestyle desk ko manage karti hain and when I met Urooj, I was so impressed by how happy she was. And yes, being happy is an impressive thing. She was energetic, smart and so very young. She had been working at another online channel and wanted to join us to do reporting — but there is no challenge that Urooj has not taken up — and succeeded at. Not because she’s lucky, but because she is incredibly hardworking. Some of our best lifestyle stories are written by her, she goes out and gets people to talk to her for our social questions (like the ones asked in the polls above) called Mujhe Samajh Nahin Aata and let’s not forget her amazing exploration of historical sites called Secrets of Lahore. 

    This week Urooj takes us on a tour of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s son Maharaja Sher Singh’s summer house (most people haven’t even heard of or seen it) and it’s such a fun watch (lifestyle of the historical and famous) that you will most definitely want to join Ashar as he checks out Badshah Tandoors’ Pizza Naan on this week’s food review. I can’t wait for the day I can go out and eat without a mask but to my anger and disappointment, aisa nahi lagta kay Pakistan mai vaccine jald ayegi. Apparently, the government doesn’t care because according to journalist Saleem Safi and Suhail Warriach, government officials have secretly gotten vaccinated and are home corona-free. At this point, it’s just speculation and when it comes to knowing what’s going on in government, PM Khan has also told his spokespersons to stop sharing details of his party meetings with the media. And I promise this wasn’t planned but Mahwish Bhatti’s opinion piece called, “Pata Nahin Imran Khan” seems quite apt today (I’m really hoping this vaccine news isn’t true). 

    Even though it’s been hard to stay isolated this past year, I know what I want to do when I get the vaccine. Hop over to Sindh to see the site where archaeologists say was a third-century settlement and eat at The Grizzly Burger, a restaurant that hired a transgender staff to challenge the unfair practises of the Pakistani society. I’m also looking forward to seeing actor Sajal Aly in Jemima Goldsmith’s new movie  ‘What’s love got to do with it?’ But there doesn’t seem to be an end to the virus anytime soon. What do you think? When will we be free?

    At this sad, yet hopeful note, Karachi is going to have a wonderful sunny day today, Islamabad, Quetta and Peshawar are also sunny while Lahore will be cloudy. Oh and I almost forgot a story you guys might be interested in. Singer Asim Azhar has asked the Pakistan Cricket Board to stop ignoring him. (I promise I wasn’t. I just forgot to add him in). 

    Haha, kal milte hain! Theek 8:30AM!
    Marium

    Urooj Ali| The Current’s Lifestyle sub-editor

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  • Vaccine procurement woes

    Vaccine procurement woes

    We thought the year 2021 will be a year of hope after last year’s pandemic outbreak. This year will indeed be a year when a vaccine is rolled out around the world but there is a catch. According to the People’s Vaccine Alliance – a coalition including Oxfam, Amnesty International and Global Justice Now – just one in 10 people in dozens of poor countries will be able to get vaccinated against the coronavirus because wealthy countries have hoarded more doses than they need.

    The Alliance said that the rich nations have bought more than 50 per cent of the total stock of the world’s most promising vaccines, despite being home to just 14 per cent of the global population. According to the Duke Global Health Innovation Centre, the current models predict that there will not be enough vaccines to cover the world’s population until 2023 or 2024. This is quite worrying. Pakistan, too, has yet to procure the vaccines.

    Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan told Dawn that Pakistan’s target is to procure the vaccine in the first quarter of the current year, and “we are confident of doing so. But it is quite difficult to say on which date we will acquire the vaccine”. Reports indicate that apart from Chinese vaccines and the Oxford vaccine, Pakistan will also be relying on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) COVAX initiative, which insures “rapid and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all countries, regardless of income level”. Some government officials say that Pakistan did not have enough resources to place orders initially for vaccines. It is understandable given that Pakistan’s economy is already struggling.

    The lesson to learn from this pandemic is that countries like Pakistan must invest in science, technology and medical/health research. If we do this, we would be able to work on our own vaccines and manufacture them in the future. Healthcare is one of the top priorities of the current government. The government must step up and invest in research related to healthcare so that it helps Pakistan in the future. Coronavirus may have been a once-in-a-century pandemic but there will be new health emergencies that we could face in the future. Thus, it is important to invest heavily in research because the future is all about scientific research and development.

  • ‘Sky is your limit’: ‘Proud sister’ Saboor Aly tells Sajal

    ‘Sky is your limit’: ‘Proud sister’ Saboor Aly tells Sajal

    Saboor Aly has expressed that she is a “proud sister” after Sajal Aly bagged a role in Jemima Goldsmith’s upcoming production What Love Got to do with It?. Sajal will be sharing the screen with Emma Thompson, Lily James, Shabana Azmi, and Shazad Latif in the upcoming film directed by Shekhar Kapur.

    Sharing the news on Instagram, Saboor congratulated her sister, writing: “Proud sister. Your hard work paid off. We believe that sky is your limit, so go out and spread your wings and soar high.”

    Meanwhile, Sajal’s colleagues and other Pakistani celebrities including Humayun Saeed, Mahira Khan, Bilal Abbas Khan, Ali Rehman Khan, Zara Noor Abbas and Yasir Hussain celebrated Sajal’s big achievement and congratulated the actor on achieving the milestone.

    Humayun and Mahira said that this was a very proud moment for them.

    Ali Rehman said that this was the “best news” he has heard all year.

    Yasir predicted that Shabana [Azmi] jee will soon also agree that Sajal is one of Pakistan’s finest actors.

    Mira Sethi said she was thrilled with the news. The two worked together in Ye Dil Mera.

    Bilal Abbas, Gohar Rasheed, Saadia Ghaffar and Hassan Hayat Khan wished Sajal all the best for her upcoming project.

    As per details, Sajal will essay a groundbreaking role in the film. She is currently shooting for the film in London.

    Meanwhile, even producer Jemima was excited with the development.

    Jemima also shared that her and Prime Minister Imran Khan’s sons Qasim and Suleman are ecstatic that musician Asim C has agreed to be part of the film.

    Written and produced under Goldsmith’s production house, Instinct Productions, What’s Love got to do with It? is set between London and South Asia and will explore cross-cultural conflicts of love and marriage.

    A release date for the film has not yet been announced.