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  • Zainab Qayoom shares: ‘I’ve left my marriage plans in Allah’s hands’

    Zainab Qayoom shares: ‘I’ve left my marriage plans in Allah’s hands’

    Former supermodel Zainab Qayoom, also known as ZQ, has talked openly about marriage and happiness in a recent Ramadan show. The ex-model and host from Pakistan shared her honest thoughts on relationships, highlighting the importance of faith and being content with whatever life brings.

    During a chat with Nadia Khan and actor Aijaz Aslam, Zainab shared her views on finding love later in life. When asked about marriage, she spoke with a mix of self-reflection and faith in God’s plan. ‘I’ve left it to Allah,’ she said.

    Zainab talked more about her thoughts on marriage, saying that as you grow older, you become more used to your ways. “The older you get, you’re more set in your habits,” she explained. “It’s quite difficult. It’ll probably be a miracle.” She also mentioned that even though she might want it, she doesn’t want to feel bad about something that might not be meant for her. “I talk to God, I act, which I love, and I meet diverse, interesting people on sets. I’m happy,” she added.

    Talking about proposals, Zainab asked Aijaz if she seems unapproachable. She said, “I think my prayer has come true. I told Allah that I am not a good judge of character, keeping in mind my past record. I said, ‘Whatever You send should reach me, otherwise, let it go.’ It’s been thirteen years since my first divorce.” She stopped talking, accepting that this is how things have turned out for her so far. “I can’t go back in time,” Zainab concluded.

  • Emirates bans Usman Khan for five years

    The Emirates Cricket Board (ECB) has imposed a five-year ban on top-order batsman Usman Khan for violating their contract.

    In a statement issued by the UAE Cricket Board, it was said that Usman Khan misrepresented to the ECB and took advantage of the facilities, he was bound to play for the UAE but now he is not doing so.

    ECB had also given an annual contract to Usman Khan while he played as a local player of the Emirates in the recent ILT Twenty20.

    According to the ECB, Usman Khan violated the contract with it, as a result of which he will not be able to participate in any event under the UAE Board for five years.

    Usman Khan represented Multan Sultans in the PSL as an overseas player, after which the Pakistan Cricket Board included Usman Khan in the camp of the Pakistan team.

    After coming to the Pakistan camp, Usman Khan sent a notice to the UAE to terminate the agreement.

  • The hero cop who refused to surrender to militants

    According to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) police, a police personnel deployed on the security of Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) of Polio team was martyred in Ragzai, South Waziristan, KPK.

    LQAS is a global standard practice to check the efficacy of any immunization campaign conducted in the region. Since Polio campaigns are regularly implemented across the country, LQAS procedure is being conducted as well to check the quality of polio vaccination campaigns.

    Rahemullah Mehsud was surrounded by militants when they asked him to give up and lay down his weapons, however the brave son of the soil refused to surrender and said people of Waziristan would remember him as a coward if he did so and laid down his life in the line of duty. The story has been posted on X by journalist Iftikhar Firdous.

    According to KPK Police, during the last year, the number of martyred police personnel was 137 – a grim reminder of the country’s worsening security situation.

  • Stand Up Girl finale divides fans.

    Stand Up Girl finale divides fans.

    Green Entertainment’s famous drama serial, ‘Stand-up Girl’, has come to its end. Directed by Kashif Nisar, written by Awais Ahmad & Adeel Afzal, the series stars Sohail Ahmad, Zara Noor Abbas, Danyal Zafar, Saba Faisal, Adnan Shah Tipu, Saqib Sameer, Maira Saeed, and Adeel Afzal. The story revolves around stand-up comedian Zara, who falls in love with her friend Kabeer and decides to leave him.

    The last episode of the drama series ‘Stand-Up Girl,’ leaving fans disappointed with its conclusion.
    Many fans wanted Zara and Kabir to have a happy ending.

    But Zara decided to end things because Kabir’s sudden disappearance hurt her. Fans were sad because they expected the drama to end on a lighter note. Some liked the ending, saying Zara chose peace over betrayal. One person on social media said, “We shouldn’t trust rich brats like Kabir.” Fans loved the part where Nana Ji performed stand up show with Zara. They praised Zara Noor Abbas for her great acting and Danyal Zafar for his presence on screen.

  • Is PTI getting cozy with the establishment again?

    Is PTI getting cozy with the establishment again?

    Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) Ali Amin Gandapur visited Corps Commander House Peshawar on an Iftar invitation and received a security briefing on the province from military officials.

    Barrister Muhammad Ali Saif, Advisor to the Chief Minister KPK on Information, clarified to Geo News that it was an iftar invitation and denied rumors on social media that the provincial government held a cabinet meeting at Corps Commander House.

    After the Iftar, mutual discussion on the security situation was held between them.

    More importantly, according to Geo News, Imran Khan was apprised of the said meeting and taken into confidence. Imran Khan displayed complete trust in Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur.

    Party leadership, especially CM Gandapur, is being criticized by their devout followers on social media for attending this meeting.

  • Israel increases Gaza aid; admits ‘mistakes’ in aid worker deaths

    TEL AVIV: The Israeli army on Friday admitted a series of errors and violations of its rules in the killing of seven aid workers in Gaza, saying it had mistakenly believed it was “targeting armed Hamas operatives”.

    The two brigade officers who ordered the drone strikes, a colonel and a major, are being fired, the army said, and its Southern Command chief reprimanded.

    It was a rare confession of wrongdoing by Israel in its nearly six-month war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, where the health ministry of the Hamas-ruled territory says more than 33,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed.

    The victims — an Australian, three Britons, a North American, a Palestinian and a Pole — were killed Monday night in three strikes over four minutes by an Israeli drone as they ran for their lives between their three vehicles, the military said.

    The US-based charity for which they worked, World Central Kitchen, demanded an independent inquiry, and Poland called for a “criminal” probe after the military’s announcement.

    The drone team who killed the aid workers made an “operational misjudgement of the situation” after spotting a suspected Hamas gunman shooting from the top of one of the food trucks the aid workers were escorting, an internal Israeli military inquiry found.

    Senior Israeli officers showed reporters clips from drone footage of what they said was a “Hamas operative” joining the US-based World Central Kitchen (WCK) convoy.

    Although the roofs of the three aid workers’ vehicles were emblazoned with WCK logos, retired Israeli general Yoav Har-Even, who is leading the investigation, said the drone’s camera could not see them in the dark.

    “This was a key factor in the chain of events,” he said.

    The aid group has said its team was travelling in a “de-conflicted” area at the time of the strike. “Despite coordinating movements with the (Israeli army), the convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse,” WCK said.

    The army said aid was moved at night to avoid deadly stampedes by hungry Gazans.

    The aid workers’ deaths “outraged” US President Joe Biden who demanded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu order steps toward an “immediate ceasefire”.

    Israel later said it would allow “temporary” aid deliveries into northern Gaza, where the United Nations has warned of imminent famine.

    Har-Even admitted that “the three air strikes were in violation of standard operating procedures”.

    But he argued that “the state of mind” of the Israeli drone commanders “was that they were striking cars that had been seized by Hamas” after they thought one passenger was carrying a gun rather than a bag.

    “One of the commanders mistakenly assumed the gunmen were inside the vehicles and were Hamas terrorists,” the army said in a statement.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it was “very important that Israel is taking full responsibility for this incident.”

    The aid workers were killed after they had overseen the unloading of a ship carrying 300 tonnes of food aid from Cyprus to a warehouse inland.

    But as they drove south at 11:09 pm on April 1 the drone “struck one car, and identified people running out of the car and entering the second car,” Har-Even said.

    “They decided to hit it, which was against standard operating procedures. Then they struck the third car.”

    Asked by AFP, the general was not able to explain what happened to the “Hamas gunman” on the truck but he conceded they had been mistaken to think armed Hamas suspects had joined the WCK aid workers in the three pickups.

    “It is a tragedy. It is a serious mistake that we are responsible for,” Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters. “That shouldn’t have happened.”

    Har-Even said it was a breakdown in communication in the chain of military command which may have led to the strikes.

    He said that WCK had provided all the information necessary, but it was not passed down.

    “The biggest mistake was that (the drone team) didn’t have the coordination plan,” he said. “Their belief was the vehicles were Hamas, based on operational misjudgement and misclassification.”

  • UN chief ‘deeply troubled’ by reports Israel using AI to identify Gaza targets

    UN chief ‘deeply troubled’ by reports Israel using AI to identify Gaza targets

    UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday expressed serious concern over reports that Israel was using artificial intelligence to identify targets in Gaza, resulting in many civilian deaths.

    According to a report in independent Israeli-Palestinian magazine +972, Israel has used AI to identify targets in Gaza — in some cases with as little as 20 seconds of human oversight.

    Guterres said that he was “deeply troubled by reports that the Israeli military’s bombing campaign includes Artificial Intelligence as a tool in the identification of targets, particularly in densely populated residential areas, resulting in a high level of civilian casualties.”

    “No part of life and death decisions which impact entire families should be delegated to the cold calculation of algorithms,” he said.

    The +972 report claims that “the Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties.”

    The report said that, according to “six Israeli intelligence officers”, a system dubbed Lavender had “played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war.”

    “According to the sources, its influence on the military’s operations was such that they essentially treated the outputs of the AI machine ‘as if it were a human decision’,” +972 reported.

    Two sources said “the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians”.

    If “the target was a senior Hamas official… the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians,” it added.

    The Israeli army, known as the IDF, on Friday rejected the claims.

    “The IDF does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist,” it said.

    Instead it has a “database whose purpose is to cross-reference intelligence sources… on the military operatives of terrorist organizations” to be used as a tool for analysts, it added.

    “The IDF does not carry out strikes when the expected collateral damage from the strike is excessive,” it said, using a term that includes civilian casualties.

    Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 33,091 people since October 7, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry.

    The United Nations has warned of imminent famine in the besieged territory.

    Israel began hyping AI-powered targeting after an 11-day conflict in Gaza during May 2021, which commanders branded the world’s “first AI war”.

    The military chief during the 2021 war, Aviv Kochavi, told Israeli news website Ynet last year the force had used AI systems to identify “100 new targets every day”, instead of 50 a year previously.

    Weeks into the latest Gaza war, a blog entry on the Israeli military’s website said its AI-enhanced “targeting directorate” had identified more than 12,000 targets in just 27 days.

    An unnamed Israeli official was quoted as saying the AI system, called Gospel, produced targets “for precise attacks on infrastructure associated with Hamas, inflicting great damage on the enemy and minimal harm to those not involved”.

    But an anonymous former Israeli intelligence officer, quoted in November by +972, described Gospel’s work as creating a “mass assassination factory”.

    In a rare confession of wrongdoing, Israel on Friday admitted a series of errors and violations of its rules in the killing of seven aid workers in Gaza, saying it had mistakenly believed it was “targeting armed Hamas operatives”.

    Alessandro Accorsi, a senior analyst at Crisis Group, said the +972 report was “very concerning”.

    “It feels very apocalyptic. It’s clear… the degree of human control is very low,” he told AFP.

    “There are a thousand questions around this obviously — how moral it is to use it — but it is hardly surprising it is used,” he said.

    Johann Soufi, a human rights lawyer and former director of the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA’s legal office in Gaza, said the +972 article described methods that were “undeniably war crimes”.

    They were “likely crimes against humanity” in view of the high civilian casualties, he added on X, formerly Twitter.

  • UN survey forecasts modest growth for Pakistan’s GDP amid inflation projections

    UN survey forecasts modest growth for Pakistan’s GDP amid inflation projections

    Pakistan is projected to experience a real GDP growth rate of 2 per cent in 2024, with a slight increase to 2.3 per cent expected in 2025, according to a United Nations economic survey.

    The survey, titled ‘Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2024: Boosting Affordable and Longer-term Financing for Governments,’ released on Thursday, also forecasts a decrease in the inflation rate from 26 per cent to 12.2 per cent in the same period.

    The report highlights the challenges faced by Pakistan’s economy in 2023, citing political unrest and a significant flood that disrupted agricultural production.

    To address fiscal pressures, Pakistan, along with Sri Lanka, sought external assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with additional support from bilateral partners such as China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

    Both countries are implementing fiscal adjustments, including debt restructuring in Sri Lanka and subsidy removal in Pakistan’s power sector.

    Despite moderate tax gaps in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, the report suggests that improving tax policies and administration alone may not suffice to bridge development financing gaps, emphasising the need for broader improvements in socioeconomic development and public governance.

    The macroeconomic conditions in the developing Asia-Pacific region remain challenging, with a disparity in economic growth among different economies.

    While some larger economies experienced a rebound in economic growth, others saw only moderate growth in 2023. Pakistan’s GDP growth rate for the second quarter of fiscal year 2023–24 stood at a modest 1 per cent, below earlier projections ranging from 2–3 per cent.

  • Pakistan anticipates final IMF tranche approval in late April

    Pakistan anticipates final IMF tranche approval in late April

    The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that its Executive Board meeting, anticipated for late April, is crucial for approving Pakistan’s final tranche of approximately $1.1 billion (SDR 828 million). 

    This sum represents the last portion of the $3-billion Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) initiated in June of the previous year.

    Julie Kozack, IMF Communication Director, revealed this information during a media briefing, highlighting the significance of the staff-level agreement reached on March 19 between IMF staff and Pakistani authorities. 

    This agreement, subject to approval by the IMF’s Executive Board, acknowledges Pakistan’s strong program implementation by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the interim government, as well as the new government’s commitment to ongoing policy and reform endeavors aimed at transitioning Pakistan from stabilisation to robust, sustainable recovery.

    Kozack emphasised the improvement in Pakistan’s economic and financial position since the completion of the first review, with growth and confidence steadily rebounding. 

    Looking ahead, she mentioned the possibility of a successor IMF-supported program to address Pakistan’s fiscal and external stability challenges and foster inclusive growth, indicating the IMF’s readiness to engage in discussions with Pakistani authorities.

    Meanwhile, Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves witnessed a modest increase, reaching $8.04 billion as of March 29, although still considered low for an import-dependent economy, raising concerns about potential future pressure. 

    Finance Minister Muhammad Aurganzeb has acknowledged the need for another IMF bailout, with discussions slated for the upcoming Spring meetings of the Board of Governors of the World Bank Group and IMF scheduled for April 15-20, 2024, in Washington DC, where Aurangzeb is expected to lead Pakistan’s delegation.

  • ‘Didn’t mean to cause offence’, Adnan Siddiqui in sticky situation after ‘women like makhis’ comment, apologies

    ‘Didn’t mean to cause offence’, Adnan Siddiqui in sticky situation after ‘women like makhis’ comment, apologies

    Update: After the internet slammed Adnan Siddiqui’s comments comparing women to flies, the actor has issued an apology. In an Instagram story he said, “I regret any unintended offence. I hope to speak with greater clarity and sensitivity in the future.”

    Veteran TV actor Adnan Siddiqui has landed in hot waters due to a comment he made on a show, a statement perceived as misogynistic. As a guest on Nida Yasir’s show ‘Shan e Suhoor’, Adnan made a strange comment that made the host uncomfortable. Nida distanced herself from Adnan’s comment, but he stood by his words. “Women are like bees, the more you chase them, the further they’ll fly away, but when you sit calmly, they will come to you on their own.” He continued, “When I was trying to catch a bee, it wasn’t coming to my hand, but when I sat down calmly, it came and sat on me.”

    Notably, Siddiqui used the word ‘makhi’ that could mean a house fly or a honey bee.

    The Internet is reacting to the video and there is a lot of negative commentary on the video