The notorious pollutant, nitrogen dioxide gas, is predicted to stay low this year in Pakistan, thanks to the economic and energy crisis that the country is going through. This is seemingly a blessing in disguise because the result is reduced air pollution in the country.
For a few years the cities of Lahore and Karachi are constantly making it to the top charts of air pollution due to the smog. Higher concentration of nitrogen dioxide is released in the air due to the combustion of fossil fuels like petroleum, coal and gas which in turn pollutes it irreversibly.
This time around there is a record decrease of 24 per cent in the annual sale of petrol and diesel in Karachi alone. Simultaneously, there is a 20 percent decrease in the release of nitrogen dioxide.
Lahore has witnessed a decrease of 20 per cent in gas concentration whereas in Islamabad and Peshawar reduction of 14 and 5 per cent are recorded respectively. The same was observed during the winter of Covid times.
It is predicted that compared to last year air pollution will be a little less than it was in the winter. This may affect the lethal and obstructive smog to become a lot less than usual.
India said Thursday that eight of its citizens had been sentenced to death by Qatar in a case that media reported involved high-ranking ex-naval officers accused of spying.
New Delhi said it would “take up the verdict with Qatari authorities” and would continue to “extend all consular and legal assistance” to the prisoners, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“We have initial information that the Court of First Instance of Qatar has today passed a judgement in the case involving eight Indian employees of Al Dahra company,” the statement added.
“We are deeply shocked by the verdict of death penalty and are awaiting the detailed judgement.”
Al Dahra is a Gulf-based company that offers “complete support solutions” to the aerospace, security and defence sectors, according to its website.
There was no immediate confirmation from the Qatari authorities.
India’s foreign ministry gave no further details on the eight condemned or their alleged crimes.
“Due to the confidential nature of proceedings of this case, it would not be appropriate to make any further comment at this juncture,” the ministry statement added, saying it was “exploring all legal options”.
However, several Indian media outlets reported that among those sentenced were ex-naval officers -– including former captains and commanders -– and that the men had been arrested in Doha in August 2022.
The Times of India, Hindustan Times and the Press Trust of India all reported that the men were arrested for an “alleged case of espionage”.
Previously, the widely followed Instagram account Eye on Palestine (@eye.on.palestine), that had been extensively covering the situation in Gaza, has been removed by Meta.
It reportedly had more than six million followers.
It also had a second page created as a back-up which was also removed.
People react:
Meta censorship of Palestinian voices has been damning and damaging. Eye on Palestine had over 6 million Instagram followers. Call for @Meta to reinstate this account now and stop silencing Palestinian voices. pic.twitter.com/tRW0SMJO35
BREAKING Instagram has just removed the largest Palestinian news page on the platform.
Eye on Palestine had over 6 million followers and was the main source of news for most people. Our voices are being censored while a genocide is taking place! pic.twitter.com/cjWK4f2346
This is unbelievable. Instagram has banned the best account covering the events from Gaza ‘eye.on.palestine’. it was very active posting updates every hour, it had over 6 million followers.
As videos and pictures show the awful impact of Israeli airstrikes over Gaza, where the death toll is set to cross 7000, an awful trend of Israeli TikTok users mocking these war crimes has emerged online.
An Israeli TikTok user danarazmakeup is going viral on social media after her recent video showed her mocking the Palestinians for lack of access to clean water, electricity and air conditioning. In the video, she is running around using the applicants in her home while looking at the audience in a mocking manner.
Twitter user Hadi Nasrullah shared this clip with the caption: “Disgusting. More and more Israeli influencers and content creators are participating in trends mocking Palestinians in Gaza for not having water or electricity. And you want us to feel sorry for them.”
Disgusting. More and more Israeli influencers and content creators are participating in trends mocking Palestinians in Gaza for not having water or electricity. And you want us to feel sorry for them. pic.twitter.com/of8szp8ru3
They’re harming the propaganda of their government without realizing. I’m almost sure Israel is beginning to fear those tiktoks, and I hope you all save them and spread them like wildfire before they get deleted https://t.co/WSnOAII4sL
Other videos included parents along with their children, mocking Palestinians by applauding their lack of electricity, and even comparing them to dogs.
A trend has swept TikTok where Israeli’s mock the appearance of Palestinians, the fact they have no electricity and some even compare them to dogs.
Many of these videos also show parents making their kids take part in the trend. pic.twitter.com/5arRADPIQl
The first flight carrying asylum-seeking Afghans will depart from Islamabad International Airport for the United Kingdom on Thursday.
200 Afghan refugees are reportedly going to fly out today.
The Independent has reported that around 3,000 Afghans, many of whom worked for the British army, are to be given UK residency after the Afghan Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021.
For the time being, the UK has accommodated them in Pakistan since 2022, whereas hundreds have been stuck and await their turn to get relocated.
The Independent wrote that in “A U-turn of government policy, ministers have pledged that all Afghans eligible for the UK’s resettlement schemes will no longer have to wait for accommodation to be confirmed before coming to Britain”.
This u-turn was taken after Pakistan gave an ultimatum to all undocumented foreign nationals to leave by November 1 after which they will be deported.
A British High Commission delegation met senior officials from the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) on Tuesday.
According to the senior CAA official, around 2,000 Afghan refugees will be repatriated by mid-December through one or two weekly chartered flights from Islamabad to the UK.
University campuses across the USA staged walkouts on Wednesday to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, as the death toll climbs to almost 6000 civilians. According to Teen Vogue, the walkout was organised by a number of groups including the Palestinian Youth Movement; Dissenters, an anti-war youth movement, National Students for Justice in Palestine and several others.
Zoe DeMarcado, a student from Xavier University in Louisiana, said the walk-out was staged to bring attention to calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israeli airstrikes have targeted bakeries, schools and mosques sheltering civilians. “The goal of our walkout and moment of silence is to disrupt the day-to-day complicity on American college campuses across the US,” she said. “We can’t stay silent about this.”
Islamophobic hate crimes are on the rise in the US after six-year-old Palestinian-American Wadea Al-Fayoume was stabbed by his neighbour in Chicago on October 16. On 23 October, another 20-year-old Palestinian American was hospitalised after a hit-and-run in Cleaveland.
More student activists are joining in on the call for a ceasefire and hold Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nethanyu accountable for being a war criminal. A week ago, climate change activist Greta Thunberg expressed solidarity towards Palestine in an Instagram post, calling for a ceasefire. Several students from Harvard University were doxed by a conservative group, after they wrote an open letter calling out Israel over the genocide of Palestinians.
Currently the Wednesday walk-out in support for Palestine is the first nationally coordinated student movement of this scale, with students from campuses like NYU, Yale and Duke demanding for an end to Israel’s siege on Palestine, ban on weapons sales to Israel and for an end to university investment in the Palestinian genocide.
The walkouts are still going strong!
1000+ at McGill University in Montreal 500+ at University of Massachusetts-Amherst Now 400+ at Loyola 60+ at Xavier University of Louisiana
Rania, the Queen Consort of Jordan, talked to CNN about the situation in Gaza on Tuesday evening. Right now, Al-Jazeera reports, the death toll in Gaza, where airstrikes have bombed homes, hospitals and bakeries in the South, has reached almost 6000.
Queen Rania, who is also of Palestinian descent, criticised the silence of the West as the violence in Gaza goes on: “The people all around the Middle East, including in Jordan, we are just shocked and disappointed by the world’s reaction to this catastrophe that is unfolding.”
Addressing the bias in the media, she pointed out that Palestinian deaths are not acknwoledged as war crimes committed by Israel:
“For the last couple of weeks, we have recieved silence around the world. Countries have stopped expressing concern over the casualties, always with a preference of declaration of support for Israel. Are we being told it is wrong to kill a family at gunpoint, but its oaky to shell them to death? There is a glaring double standard here, and it is just shocking to the Arab world.”
“This is the first time in modern history there is such human suffering and the world is not calling for a ceasefire. The silence is deafening, and to many in our region, it makes the Western world complicit through their support and coverage they give to Israel.” Further Queen Rania added how her people shocked to see this act as the West aiding and abetting the violence.
Speaking on the violence of October 7, Queen Rania responded Jordan reiterated its position by being against the killing of any innocent civilian, whether Palestinian or Israeli. “But why isn’t there equal condemnation to what is happening now?”
Queen Rania went on to slam the one-sided narrative of the Western media by emphasising how the war did not begin with the Hamas attacking out of the blue on October 7th, but because of the 75-year-long history of oppression of the Palestinians by Israel. She stressed on Israel’s history of documented crimes over Palestinians is missing from the narrative.
“This conflict did not begin on October 7th, although it is being portrayed as that. Most networks are covering the story under the title of ‘Israel at war’. But for many Palestinians on the other side of the separation war, on the other side of the barbed wire, war has never left. This is a 75 year old story. A story of overwhelming death and displacement for the Palestinian people. It’s the story of an oppressed people under an apartheid regime that occupies land, demolishes houses, confiscates lands, night raids.”
“Is the word terrorist reserved solely for Muslims and Arabs,” Queen Rania questioned when speaking about the way Israeli’s are protected under the claim of ‘self defense’ when Palestinians are murdered, but Palestinians are blamed as terrorists while trying to protect their homeland. “There are no two equal people in the conflict. One is an occupier and one is the occupied. One has a military force that is one of the mightiest in the world and the other doesn’t have a military at all.”
Civilians around the world and human rights activists are staging protests outside US and Israeli embassies demanding an end to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, where the death toll is now about to reach 6,000 — with 2,000 among them children. At protests, the rallying cry is: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’. What does this phrase mean and why does it hold so much significance for the Palestinian civilians? We’ll decode it all here.
The phrase ‘From the river to the sea’ was officially endorsed by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1964, which called for a liberated Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, former Palestinian territories that are currently under forced occupation of Israel.
Since then, the chant has been widely used in pro-Palestinian protests as a demand for the end to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel and also that they are handed back their land. However, Zionists have consistently tried to paint it as ‘Anti Semite’ chant by claiming it calls for the genocide of Israeli Jews. A tube driver of the London Underground Train was suspended from his position after a viral video showed him leading the chant ”Free Free Palestine”. Similarly, UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman claimed the chant was ‘anti semitic’, and was “widely understood” to call for the destruction of Israel.
Along with this phrase, another common thing spotted among Palestinian protests is the symbol of a watermelon, which is plastered on flags and posters as protestors condemn the growing death toll in Gaza.
In a few decades, future generations will come across a photo of German protesters sketching a slice of watermelon with “Free Palestine” written on it. What does watermelon have to do with Palestinian freedom? They will ask. The explanation will be that certain authoritarian… pic.twitter.com/Zao5dZnZGy
The watermelon became a powerful symbol of resistance during 1967 when Israel seized control over the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, during which the public display of the Palestinian flag was considered a criminal offence.
The symbolic relevance of the watermelon began in 1980 when Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour was arrested by Israeli officials along with Nabil Anani and Issam Badrl as well as their works, because they featured the colours of the Palestinian flag.
“They told us that painting the Palestinian flag was forbidden, but also the colours were forbidden. So Issam said, ‘What if I were to make a flower of red, green, black and white?’, to which the officer replied angrily, ‘It will be confiscated. Even if you paint a watermelon, it will be confiscated,’” Mansour revealed to The National in 2021.
Watermelons were also a popular fruit exported around the world before the Nakba, as Palestinian controlled valleys like the Jordan Valley, Jenin and Arabet Al-Batouf were well known for growing enormous watermelons. Hyperallergic writes after Israeli defence forces drove out Palestinians from their neighbourhoods and brought in their own seed companies, Palestinian watermelons still remained popular due to their size in countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Since then, Palestinian artists used the watermelon as a symbol of Palestinian independence to protest against Israel’s illegal occupation. Artists like Khaled Hourani crafted a silkscreen series titled ‘The Story Of The Watermelon’ (2007), which is a series of watermelon slices in front of a white background.
Hourani later went on to co-found the International Art Academy of Palestine along with Mansour and Anani. Speaking about the growing resurgence of the political symbolism behind the watermelon, he was happy at how the Palestinian cause was receiving attention:
“For me, it was kind of sudden. This is just one of my projects, which was not as successful or widespread as it is right now. It’s a unique kind of solidarity… It’s very powerful. I honestly don’t know how to deal with it. Some people are getting it as a tattoo, some are making patterns for clothes, putting it on flags, different mediums. I’m happy that it brings attention to the Palestinian cause.”
Speaking on the rise of social media support for Palestine, Hourani said:
“People around the world are standing up and saying that the occupation has to come to an end. This is a historical moment. As an artist, as a human being, I feel honoured that my work is being used as a tool or is a part of this driving force.”
New details reveal that among the total staff members of 687 in the Supreme Court, only 45 are women.
The information came to light as a judicial order directed Supreme Court Registrar Jazeela Aslam to give details on staff following a petition filed in 2019, appealing the Right of Access to Information Act 2017 and Article 19-A of the Constitution.
The apex court reportedly has 894 sanctioned positions at the moment but 207 of them are vacant and 687 employees were working as of September 25.
146 are employed on a daily wage basis.
84 new positions have been created since January 2017.
The details also reveal that out of all the 45 women working in the apex court, 33 hold regular positions while 12 are contingent employees.
Additionally, only two people with disabilities and two transgenders are employed.
