A football game in Indonesia turned deadly Saturday night as security personnel clashed with soccer fans, prompting a stampede and leaving 125 dead with dozens of others injured, officials and eyewitnesses said.
Four people present at the game told The Washington Post that armed security officers in uniform discharged what seemed to be tear gas into the crowd randomly and directly, which caused panic. It was predicted that 42,000 people would attend the event.
Frustrated supporters of the losing home team invaded the pitch in Malang in the province of East Java late on Saturday. To control the situation, police officers fired tear gas which triggered the stampede and led to suffocation.
“I can still hear the voices of children calling for their mothers,” said Bima Andhika, 25, who escaped the stampede with his 14-year-old sister. His uncle and three of his neighbors are among the dead, he said.
A police spokesperson said 323 people were injured, up from the initial count of 180.
Pakistan’s differently abled athlete Altaf-ur-Rehman has bagged a bronze medal in the Para Table Tennis at the 2022 Islamic Solidarity Games. He won bronze after losing in the semi-final.
“I am very grateful to all those who supported me and prayed for my victory,” said Altaf in a video message.
The Islamic Solidarity Games are being held in Konya, Turkey.
This is the second medal for Pakistan in the Islamic Solidarity Games. Earlier, Pakistan’s star athlete Arshad Nadeem won a gold medal in the javelin throw competition at the Islamic Solidarity Games. The 25-year-old athlete did a record throw of 88.55m to claim the medal.
This year’s Asian Games have been postponed for an indefinite period as China tries to stamp out a large resurgence in Covid infections in several parts of the country. The event was scheduled to be held in Hangzhou, China, from September 10-25, 2022.
According to the official statement by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), the new dates will be agreed between the OCA, the Chinese Olympic Committee (COC) and the Hangzhou Asian Games Organising Committee (HAGOC) and will be announced in the near future.
“HAGOC has been very well prepared to deliver the games on time despite global challenges. However, the above decision was taken by all the stakeholders after carefully considering the pandemic situation and the size of the games,” the statement further reads.
However, last month the organisers of the games said that Hangzhou has completed constructing some 56 competition venues for the Asian Games and Asian Para Games.
It is pertinent to mention that more than 11,000 athletes from 44 countries were to take part in the 19th Asian Games in September 2022.
It has also been confirmed by the OCA that the 3rd Asian Youth Games 2021, originally scheduled to be held last year but was rescheduled for this year, are now officially cancelled.
Most international sporting events in China have been postponed or cancelled since the start of the pandemic, with the notable exception of the Winter Olympics, which went ahead in Beijing under strict health controls in February.
The New York Times (NYT) has purchased the popular word game ‘Wordle’. The Times reported that Wordle was purchased for “in the low seven figures” from its founder, Josh Wardle. According to the company, new and existing users will be able to play the game for free at first.
Josh Wardle took to Twitter to announce the deal.
“I am incredibly pleased to announce that I’ve reached an agreement with The New York Times for them to take over running Wordle going forward. If you’ve followed along with the story of Wordle, you’ll know that NYT games play a big part in its origins and so this step feels very natural to me,” Wardle wrote on Twitter.
People are concerned whether the game will remain free for the users:
NYT buying Wordle is just an extension of today’s world where we can’t imagine a free good available to everyone, it has to be owned by someone & made available to few. A person created the game out of love for his wife & didn’t mind sharing because that’s what love is
Wordle has caught the attention of Pakistani Twitter for a while now. Miftah Ismail is among the many politicians who regularly shares his Wordle score on Twitter.
More recently, former wife of Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan, Jemima Goldsmith, shared her Wordle score on Twitter but the replies to her tweet were not related to the game.
Gaming has become the world’s largest entertainment industry, with global revenues of $170 billion in 2020. Yes, that’s billion, not million, and the industry is now almost three times bigger than both music and movies combined. So, it’s no surprise that game developers have become some of the most sought-after talent in the technology sector, and this holds true in Pakistan just as much as anywhere in the world. About 50 per cent of the world’s mobile games are made in Unity, so studios are scrambling to hire talented developers and artists who can join their team and perform at the highest level.
If you don’t believe us, listen to the CEOs of Pakistan’s top gaming studios who talk about the challenge to find quality game development talent for their companies:
The search for talent is on, and GameTrain is a Pakistani game development accelerator that is helping young computer science grads get on a fast track into the sector. They’ve partnered with the Foundation for Youth Employment Pakistan, a non-profit that specialises in creating employment bootcamps for different high demand industries.
Hear the CEO of GameTrain talk about the exciting pathway for CS talent to get employed into the gaming industry:
But we’re saving the most interesting reason for last: GameTrain and FYEP have brought Unity Technologies themselves onboard to sponsor a certified Jnr Unity Game Developer Program for 120 lucky new entrants! This is the first instructor led Unity Certified program in the world, and it is happening right here in Pakistan. Not only that, but employers have come on board to offer scholarships for the talent they aim to hire from this program, so each learner has to pay absolutely nothing for the entire training and just focus on investing their time and energy to build up their Unity development skills to the next level.
Hear what Unity’s own Program Manager for Inclusive Economic Opportunities has to say about the program:
If you’re a college graduate with any programming background, this is the career for you. Get on the fast track with this 12-week bootcamp and join the industry when you graduate. Don’t just play, change the game. Seats are limited, so click on the link below to apply now!
Mariam Nusrat Adil, who hails from Pakistan, has made it to ‘Forbes Next 1000’.
As per Forbes , “Mariam is a Pakistani national, is an education specialist at the World Bank, who set up not-for-profit GRID — Gaming Revolution for International Development — in 2016. Its aim is to create low-cost mobile games to educate, engage and empower people for positive social change. They include games on reproductive health, compassion for animals and climate change, amongst others. She claims total downloads have exceeded 15,000.”
“The most successful is Nari Paila, a reproductive health game. One of Adil’s career highlights was presenting at sessions moderated by President Clinton at a Clinton Global Initiative University meeting. In March, she co-founded Gaming Revolution for International Development, which is building a platform that empowers people to create their own video games with no-code, at low-cost and lightning speed.”
— Mariam Nusrat -Founder Breshna.io (@gamingfordev) June 17, 2021
Mariam is the founder of the social-impact-gaming studio, GRID. Mariam holds two Masters Degrees, an MA in International Development Studies from George Washington University, USA and an MSc in Economics from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan.
Earlier, this year in April Pakistani musician Abdullah Siddiqui Forbes list of ’30 under 30′ 2021 Asia list and in the same month chef Zahra Khan, made it to Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe in the Retail and E-commerce category
As coronavirus outbreak has forced people to stay at home and self-isolate themselves, the gaming platform Steam had a record number of players online from all over the world this weekend.
According to their data, over 20 million gamers connected at the same time. The highest single peak in terms of players was on Sunday afternoon when 20,312,000 players all connected at the same time – the most in its 16 year history. Out of the 20 million users logged on to the steam app on Sunday, nearly 6.4 million of them were actively playing a game.
According to Mail Online, it’s a notable peak for the platform as it didn’t coincide with any major gaming release – unlike previous usage peaks. It has been put down to countries going into lockdown and people into self-isolation as a result of coronavirus. With major sporting events cancelled, gatherings of large groups banned and pubs beginning to close – people are looking for ways to pass the time indoors.
In Italy, public life has also come to a complete halt as schools, restaurants, theatres and gyms have shut down indefinitely. As a result, Telecome Italia SpA’s national network registered a surge of more than 70 % of internet traffic over its landline network, with a major contribution from online gaming such as ‘Fortnite’ and ‘Call of Duty’.
The popular online game Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds or PUBG had taken the world by storm and many people are addicted to this game. Recently, a man died of a stroke while playing the game.
25-year-old Harshal Menane, from the Indian state of Maharastra, died as he suffered a brain stroke while playing PUBG on the mobile. As per reports, the man suffered from an Intracerebral hemorrhaging because he got too excited while playing the game.
Following the stroke, the man was instantly taken to the hospital to undergo surgery. Unfortunately, it was too late as he died during the process. The autopsy report stated,
This is not the first time that the popular mobile game has taken a life. A 20-year-old Saurabh of India accidentally drank a bottle of chemical instead of water. This happened because he was too focused on the video game to notice what he was consuming.
There are many negative effects of violent video games which sometimes are too severe to ignore. The Current asked game players and developers how do these games affect them psychologically? Here is what they said.
