With the world on a standstill and everyone cooped up in their homes as we all self-isolate, celebrities are taking to social media to connect with their fans. Instagram live(s) and Twitter interactions are the new norm.
Mahira Khan, who had promised her fans both, took to Twitter to answer some questions from her fans giving us an insight into her life, which she usually keeps under wraps: like a moment she would like to live again.
The coronavirus induced lockdown has forced everyone to stay at home. While the home is thought to be a safe place, it is being reported that cases of domestic violence have spiked in the past couple of days – not only in Pakistan but across the world. Human Rights Organisations in all countries are stepping up to assist women and children who are victims of domestic abuse and feel unsafe in their homes.
Rozan, a non-government organisation, is offering psychological counselling in Pakistan through a telephonic helpline.
It was launched to help the survivors of gender-based violence and women and girls in abusive situations during the coronavirus quarantine. There will be a special focus on women and children’s needs during this time, said the CSO on Twitter.
Rozan counsellors are working from home from Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm to provide counselling on telephones. The helpline numbers are: 0335-5000401, 0335-5000402 and 0335-5000403. Their toll-free number is 0800 22444.
Work crisis management will also be available. The organisation said it will provide guidance on how managers and employees can work more effectively.
This service, called the Rozan response to COVID-19, was a result of a collaboration between the CSO and the United Nations Population Fund which is the UN’s agency working on sexual and reproductive health issues.
Ministry of Human Rights also launched a helpline for those facing violence during this lockdown.
International trade is on the brink of collapse due to COVID-19 pandemic, and the results can be as severe as of 1930s Great Depression, The Guardian reported.
According to World Trade Organization (WTO), the trade might shrink by 13%, and in the worst-case scenario, the trade will shrivel down to 32%; a bigger drop than 2008-09 recession caused by banking crises.
Director general of WTO also added that an end to the trade tension between the US and China would help minimise the dire effects caused by the pandemic.
He further added, “We need to lay the foundations for a strong, sustained and socially inclusive recovery. Trade will be an important ingredient here, along with the fiscal and monetary policy.”
As per the official statement of WTO, recovery of trade is expected next year, but it is largely depended on the duration of the outbreak and the effectiveness of policy responses.
Lock down in big cities left hundreds of caged cats, dogs and rabbits dead inside pet markets, Dawn reported.
Empress Market, Karachi: Very few animals were rescued when activists appealed the authorities to access closed shops. The cries of the locked pets could be heard from outside Empress Market. Together, the market housed more than 1,000 animals.
“When we got inside, the majority of them were dead, about 70 per cent. Their bodies were lying on the ground,” said Ayesha Chundrigar, who runs ACF Animal Rescue.
“It was so horrific, I can’t tell you.”
Starving and locked in cages with no light or ventilation, the survivors sat amongst the dead, trembling.
After the desperate rescue, Chundrigar has now convinced the Karachi authorities to allow pet shop owners and her team daily access to the animals.
In Lahore, animals were found under the same circumstances. The bodies of about 20 dogs were found dumped in a sewer near Tollinton Market, a hub for pet businesses which had closed leaving animals to starve.
Kiran Maheen was able to rescue more than two dozen dogs, rabbits and cats after convincing officials at the market to let her in, but a large number had already died.
“When the police opened up the shutters, a lot of animals were already lying dead inside, many had suffocated from a lack of air.”
We knew Bilal Maqsood is a multi-talented artist, but we had no idea that he is ambidextrous as well. Ambidexterity is the ability to use both the right and left hand equally well.
The singer showed off artistic skills by drawing a couple in lockdown using both his hands at the same time, the video of which is truly mesmerizing.
With everything else on hold, celebrities are using this time to connect with their fans through social media. Instagram Lives have become the new norm and every night social media apps are lit with celebrities aiming to entertain their fans across the world. Bilal has also been entertaining his fans by sharing short clips of him humming classic songs and playing the guitar. Check them out below:
Bilal sings the evergreen ‘Sanwali Saloni’ in memory of the legendary Junaid Jamshed.
Check out this rendition of Ali Zafar’s classic Channo.
Bilal gives the 90’s kids a little pop quiz. Can you guess any of these songs?
And the like the rest of us, Bilal is washing his dishes.
In his first media encounter after resigning as Punjab food minister, Samiullah Chaudhry has claimed that Asad Umar, as then federal finance minister, had asked for exporting wheat despite his opposition, Dawn reported.
Threatening to expose the forces involved in the wheat flour report conspiracy, he said the inquiry committee never wished to summon him for investigation.
“Asad Umar as federal finance minister had chaired a high-level meeting in Islamabad early last year and asked for exporting some of the wheat stocks, 7.2 million tonnes in Punjab at that time. I opposed the move because the government would have to offer subsidy for the export [for the grain being costlier than the world prices],” he said while speaking to a private media outlet.
“I said the country could not afford to give the subsidy and suggested rather selling out the same stocks in the local market [for the benefit of the local population],” he said, adding that flour mills in Islamabad and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) still enjoyed subsidised wheat at the cost of Punjab’s exchequer.
The former minister maintained that he had also asked the inquiry committee to also include this fact in its report.
In his reaction to the allegation, now Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar said it was not his personal but a collective decision taken on the condition that prices won’t be allowed to be increased in the local market. He said the decision was first taken by the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) and then endorsed by the federal cabinet.
Due to the coronavirus outbreak in United Arab Emirates (UAE), 10,000 plus Pakistanis have lost their jobs, The News reported.
Moreover, around 35,000 Pakistanis have registered with the consulate in Dubai in a bid to return Pakistan, Consul General Ahmed Amjad Ali Said.
The officials informed that preparations are underway to bring back the stranded Pakistanis.
Besides, “Tourists, unemployed and the elderly will be given preference,” as per evacuation policy.
The screening measures have been completed at the Dubai airport but bringing Pakistanis back in such large number in very challenging for the authorities.
According to Pakistani diplomats, Pakistan is a big labour supplier to the UAE — more than a million Pakistanis — who are living and working in UAE.
In March, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Security Division Moeed W Yusuf had assured the nation that the government was in touch with the authorities of those countries where Pakistani passengers are stuck in transit.
We are all being bombarded with Whatsapp forwards about coronavirus cures or other related issues in our family/friends or other Whatsapp groups. Many times, these messages turn out to be fake.
With heightened scrutiny on the potential of private message apps to spread misinformation related to the coronavirus pandemic, WhatsApp on Tuesday said it would place new limits on the forwarding of messages. Messages that have been identified as “highly forwarded” — sent through a chain of five or more people — can only be forwarded to a single person. The move is designed to reduce the speed with which information moves through WhatsApp, putting truth and fiction on a more even footing.
“We know many users forward helpful information, as well as funny videos, memes, and reflections or prayers they find meaningful. In recent weeks, people have also used WhatsApp to organize public moments of support for frontline health workers,” the company, which is part of Facebook, said in a blog post. “However, we’ve seen a significant increase in the amount of forwarding which users have told us can feel overwhelming and can contribute to the spread of misinformation. We believe it’s important to slow the spread of these messages down to keep WhatsApp a place for personal conversation.”
For much of WhatsApp’s existence, it was easy for users to forward a single message to as many as 256 people with just a few taps. Initially, these messages were not labelled as forwards, and the end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp could make it almost impossible for authorities to determine who might be using the app to spread hate speech or calls to violence. This triggered a crisis in India, where WhatsApp was linked to mob violence.
In 2018, WhatsApp began experimenting with limits on the number of times a message could be forwarded. It also began labeling forwarded messages for the first time, and adding two arrows to show that a message has been repeatedly forwarded. Last year, the company began limiting the number of people you can forward a single message to to five.
It’s a soft limit: nothing prevents you from forwarding the same message over and over again to different people. But introducing more friction helped to slow the rate of forwarding overall — in the past year, WhatsApp says, forwards are down 25 percent around the world.
But amid a huge surge in use related to the pandemic, WhatsApp has come under the spotlight for the way it can be used to spread misinformation. Last month, CNN and other news organisations found that the app had been used to share a variety of false information about “cures” for COVID-19 and hoaxes about military activity related to the disease. The prime minister of Ireland, Leo Varadkar, urged people to “please stop sharing unverified info on Whatsapp groups.”
In response, WhatsApp promoted a bot made by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that provides information about the disease that has been vetted by healthcare professionals. The app has been used by more than 10 million people. WhatsApp also donated $1 million to the International Fact-Checking Network.
In yet another embarrassing development for the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the government’s lawyer has told the Supreme Court (SC) that Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) — a flagship project of the Pakistan People’s Party’s (PPP) government for poverty reduction — was renamed as Ehsaas — a similar and much-boasted-about initiative by Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan.
As per the details, Attorney General for Pakistan (AGP) Khalid Jawed Khan on Tuesday told the apex court that the data collected by BISP, “which had been renamed as Ehsaas”, was being used by the government to ensure that money reaches the poor amid lockdowns due to the spread of coronavirus.
A five-member larger bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Gulzar Ahmed and comprising Justice Umar Ata Bandial, Justice Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin Ahmed was hearing the case regarding the closure of hospitals in the country during the global outbreak.
During the course of proceedings, the AGP apprised the court that he had talked to Special Assistant to the PM (SAPM) on Health Dr Zafar Mirza regarding the court’s query about the closure of out-patient departments of hospitals, who wanted to give a briefing to the court on the steps taken by the government in the health sector. The government was taking steps to combat the virus, he added.
Justice Umar Ata Bandial said the government had to help the people on the ground. “If there were local governments, the people would have been helped at the grassroots level,” he said, adding that the local government system in the country, including Islamabad, was dysfunctional.
The CJP said the government’s job was not to keep employees on contract instead of appointing on a regular basis.
The AGP said that the federal cabinet had discussed the matter.
The CJP asked the government to appoint all employees on a regular basis in all the departments of hospitals. “Many cases were pending in the SC regarding the regularisation of employees,” he remarked.
CJP Gulzar further said the government had appointed the employees on a contract basis, instead of recruiting them through the Public Service Commission.
He said the parliament should be in session at all times to formulate new laws. The job of courts was not to make laws, he added.
The CJP then asked who was being paid under the Ehsaas programme, to which the AGP replied that the government would give money to those below the poverty line.
“How will the government know if money reached the poor or not?” the top judge question.
“The data collected by BISP, which had been renamed as Ehsaas, is being used,” the lawyer said in response, adding that Ehsaas programme had been approved by a foreign agency.
WATCH VIDEO:
PPP REACTS:
Reacting to the revelation, PPP Information Secretary Dr Nafisa Shah has expressed her shock and said that a law made by the parliament could not be changed.
“Thousands of poor have been left without income support by the people who are haters of the late Benazir Bhutto,” she said in a statement and asked what kind of Ehsaas took away bread from the poor women of Pakistan.
Shah said that this was the time when the neglected needed the most help, but the government had let them down.
“BISP had given confidence to the poor women of Pakistan. By changing the name of this programme poor women have been deprived of their income. Imran Khan and his government have no right or authority to change the name of a programme established by [the] parliament,” she concluded.
Jack Dorsey is devoting $1 billion of his stake in Square Inc., the payments firm he co-founded, to help fund coronavirus relief efforts.
“After we disarm this pandemic, the focus will shift to girl’s health and education, and UBI,” Dorsey said Tuesday in a tweet, referring to universal basic income. The pledge represents about 28% of his wealth.
At the end of his Twitter thread, Jack said: “Why now? The needs are increasingly urgent, and I want to see the impact in my lifetime. I hope this inspires others to do something similar. Life is too short, so let’s do everything we can today to help people now. ✌?”
Dorsey, also co-founder of Twitter Inc., has a net worth of about $3.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Meanwhile, Malala thanked Jack for his generosity.