Current Final

Category: Lifestyle

  • Another case of domestic staff torture surfaces in Islamabad

    Another case of domestic staff torture surfaces in Islamabad

    Islamabad police have arrested a woman after yet another case of torture on a minor working as domestic help in a house.

    Andaleeb Fatima, 13 was named as the victim in the FIR, filed by her mother, Khalida Bibi, a resident of Chiniot in Punjab. Andaleeb had been working for the accused woman since July of this year and according to her mother, she was unable to talk to her daughter since was not allowed to do so by her employer.

    It was only when Khalida Bibi visited Fatima after several unanswered calls that she found out about the torture inflicted upon her daughter. She found bruises on different parts of her daughter’s body. Fatima told her mother that her employer routinely beat her and tormented her with a hot spoon. She also locked her up and did not feed her food.

    On Khalida’s arrival, the employer locked mother and daughter in a room so that they are unable to speak against her. However, later, she released them from confinement and sent them off without Andaleeb’s salary.

    Andaleeb has been admitted in a hospital for medical examination while investigation into the case has been initiated. The registered case is based on the charges of 328-A (cruelty to a child), 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) under the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).According to Dawn.com, the accused was presented before a magistrate’s court and was later sent to Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi on judicial remand.

  • CNN has exacerbated my ‘pain and suffering’, says Saima Mohsin

    CNN has exacerbated my ‘pain and suffering’, says Saima Mohsin

    British-Pakistani journalist Saima Mohsin, has won the right to take her former employee, CNN, to a full tribunal at the London Central Employment Tribunal. As per her claims, she was unfairly dismissed and discriminated against following an injury she sustained on an assignment in Israel.

    Previously, CNN claimed that Mohsin cannot bring the matter into a court in London under her contract but following a preliminary hearing last month, Judge Klimov ruled in Mohsin’s favour, allowing her to proceed with her case to sue CNN for negligence.

    Saima Mohsin currently works with Sky News on a freelance basis and has a programme on ITV about living with invisible disabilities.

    In 2014, Mohsin was reporting on the Israel-Palestine conflict from Jerusalem when her cameraman ran over her foot. This damaged her tissue, resulting in chronic pain, forcing her to walk with a stick and reducing her to work part-time only. Mohsin suffered from depression as a consequence. In 2017, CNN terminated her contract. As per a Guardian report, Saima had requested CNN if she could switch to a presenting role in order to reduce the amount of time spent travelling but she was told “You don’t have the look we are looking for”.

    Later, according to Deadline.com, Mohsin “repeatedly indicated her willingness to settle outside of legal proceedings, but CNN has so far declined to do so”. She also said that the news network has exacerbated her “pain and suffering” by continuing with the legal action.

    In her statement, Saima Mohsin said, “I have constantly offered reinstatement or mediation and negotiations. I didn’t ask for this battle while learning to deal with an invisible disability and rebuild my life. But it was important I take a stand.”

  • Zulfikar Jr forms Sindh’s first locally initiated wildlife foundation

    Zulfikar Jr forms Sindh’s first locally initiated wildlife foundation

    Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Jr., grandson of former Pakistani President and Prime Minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, has taken a step forward with advocacy for wildlife and climate justice. In his latest Instagram post, he has announced the launch of Bulhan Foundation.

    Bulhan Foundation aims to “foster a culture of care and compassion for all living beings”. Further details have been given on the foundation’s official Instagram page where they highlight their vision. Their goal is to “operationalize and implement pro-nature and pro-people laws”. Under this ambit, they look forward to the preservation of wildlife as well as indigenous visual cultures.

    Acknowledging that Pakistan is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change, the foundation also intends to be one of the “first responders providing on-the-ground relief” to humans and animals during natural calamities like floods, drought, possible economic-induced famine etc.

    With a solutions-oriented approach, Bulhan Foundation will be Sindh’s first locally initiated wildlife foundation. Bhutto’s sister, author Fatima Bhutto and friend, Menaal Munshey, are the co-founders.

    The mascot for the foundation is the Indus River Dolphin, known locally as Bulhan.

    Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has been working for wildlife protection for a long time now, especially when it comes to dolphins. Earlier this year, at his art exhibition at Como Museum Lahore, he dedicated an entire section to the blind dolphins of river Indus.

  • CIE students continue to demand justice

    CIE students continue to demand justice

    On August 10, Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) announced the results for this year’s May/June A Level examinations, leading to a loud uproar from students who believed that the marking was unjustified. Students have said that their devastation stems from the fact that only a few students have achieved A or B grades while many only managed to get Cs, Ds, Es, and Us.

    This year, Cambridge examinations were disrupted in Pakistan following the May 9 and 12 riot, leading to a shut down across many areas and cities. The riots also resulted in the cancellation of three whole days of examinations.

    While students believe that the CIE grading criteria has been unfair and that the papers should be taken again, Cambridge International on August 13, published an official statement to address the controversy.

    Responding to students, the CIE stated that this year’s marking has returned to the pre-pandemic 2019 standard. This means achieving, for example, an A grade, would mean getting an A grade in 2023. “Students all around the world have seen this return to the 2019 standard,” the statement said.

    The grading has been done on the basis of the components given. CIE has acknowledged the disappointment of students in Pakistan but it has also offered reassurances of its fairness and reliability of grading for the missed exams.

    The anger, however, has refused to cool down. On Tuesday, several students went out on the streets of Lahore and Karachi to protest against the “unfairness”.

    The students demanded retakes so they could improve their grades.

    Institute of Business Administration (IBA) has taken into consideration that many students have not been able to achieve the grade they could have otherwise. According to IBA’s Registrar Dr Asad Ilyas, the number of students who cannot meet their usual admission standards is more than double this time. Henceforth, the university will also reconsider their admission requirements for this year to be fair to the students.

    Nonetheless, A Level students apply to universities across Pakistan and around the globe, and with the grade they have been granted this year, their chances of getting into prestigious universities have lowered.

  • Turkish journalist jailed fifth time

    Turkish journalist jailed fifth time

    Turkish investigative journalist Baris Pehlivan, who was ordered to return to prison by text message this month, was jailed on Tuesday for the fifth time in three years.


    The justice ministry informed him on August 2 via an SMS message that he had to surrender himself by August 15 to the prison in Silivi on the outskirts of Istanbul, where many of the government critics are held.


    Pehlivan’s latest book, “SS”, accuses former interior minister Suleyman Soylu of having links to organised crime.
    “Baris might be released on parole,” his lawyer Huseyin Ersoz told AFP. “A decision could be made at any time,” he said.
    A former editor in chief at Oda TV and contributor to daily newspaper Cumhuriyet, Pehlivan has already been imprisoned four times.
    Two of those incidents involved him spending a day behind bars — once in February and once in May.


    Pehlivan and six other journalists were sentenced to three years and nine months in prison in 2020 for reporting the funeral of a member of Turkey’s MIT secret services who was operating in Libya, where Ankara supports the UN-recognised Tripoli government.
    While his death has never been denied by the Turkish authorities, the reporters were charged with revealing “state secrets”.
    Pehlivan was recalled this time to serve eight months of the 2020 sentence for violating the country’s national intelligence laws.


    “People go to jail (in Turkey) just for writing the truth, just for doing journalism,” Pehlivan said before being sent to prison.
    “Mine is a drop in this ocean, in this big fight,” he said.

    Press freedom advocates last week condemned the “judicial harassment” of the journalist and urged the Turkish government to respect media freedom.
    Erol Onderoglu of Reporters Without Borders said Pehlivan was the 13th journalist to be jailed this year.
    “Arresting a reporter is an anachronistic attack on public opinion,” he commented on Twitter, recently rebranded as X.


    Turkey is ranked 165th out of 180 countries in the RSF’s latest press freedom index.

  • Disney to shut Lucasfilm studio in Singapore

    Lucasfilm’s visual effects and animation studio in Singapore will close down in the coming months due to economic reasons, parent firm Disney said on Tuesday.

    The Singapore studio was set up in the 2000s by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), which was founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas and is a division of Lucasfilm.

    For years, its home in Singapore was the striking Sandcrawler building, named after the Star Wars transport that inspired its design. Lucasfilm sold the building in 2021.

    “Over the next several months, ILM will be consolidating its global footprint and winding down its Singapore studio due to economic factors affecting the industry,” Disney said in a statement.
    It did not say how many employees will be affected in Singapore.

    Disney said in February it was cutting 7,000 jobs worldwide — part of a reorganisation as its traditional television business erodes and in the face of stiff competition and eroding subscriber numbers for its streaming service, Disney+.

    “Lucasfilm’s decision to wind down its Singapore operations is in response to changes in the industry and business conditions,” Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and the Economic Development Board (EDB) said in a joint statement.

    “The global media industry is facing disruption from rapid technological advancements, while studios are coping with challenges relating to talent and profitability.”

    The Singapore studio was involved in high-profile Hollywood productions including “Iron Man”, “The Avengers” and Star Wars films, according to the EDB’s website.

  • Justice delayed and denied

    Justice delayed and denied

    Rizwana, a teenaged victim of domestic torture, awaits justice. Her case, with horrifying details of injuries, is being followed with great interest by the public, mainly because the main suspect, Somia Hafeez, is the wife of civil judge Asim Hafeez. Somia has been charged with allegedly physically torturing the girl, who worked as a maid in her home, after accusing her of stealing jewellery.

    But will the courts be fair in their judgement?

    In 2016, 10-year-old Tayyaba, working as a domestic worker, was severely tortured by her employees. Tayyaba, a native of Faisalabad, was living in Islamabad to work and financially support her family after her father lost a finger. The employers in question were Islamabad judge Raja Khurram Ali Khan and his wife.

    According to Dr. Tariq Iqbal, who was heading the medical board, the girl had “some burns, some traumas, some lacerations, some blisters [on her body]”.

    In April 2018, the couple was found guilty and sentenced to 12 months in jail. The sentence was increased to three years by Islamabad High Court in June 2018, following an appeal by prosecutors, with a Rs500,000 fine.

    However, in 2019, the verdict was reversed as Tayyaba’s lawyer claimed that no abuse was inflicted on the convict and that her bruises were “accidental” while the statement she gave in court during cross-examination was “memorised like a parrot”.

    Resultantly, in 2020, the apex court set aside the three year sentence and maintained the one-year jail term for the convicts.

    Like Tayyaba, will 14-year old Rizwana be left at the whims of power? Will she too one day say that the injuries she has, requiring surgeries and stays in ICU wards, were incurred accidentally?

    Will justice be served? Or delayed and denied once again?

  • Exclusive: Man who made fake bomb threat on Malaysian flight is former Pakistani model Arif Ali

    Exclusive: Man who made fake bomb threat on Malaysian flight is former Pakistani model Arif Ali

    On August 14th, a Malaysia Airlines flight from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur was forced to turn back when an agitated man claimed he had “explosives” in his backpack, Australian police said.

    The 45-year-old was arrested after the plane returned to Sydney and has been charged with one count of making a false statement about a threat to damage an aircraft.

    Videos of the man went viral where he can be seen praying on a prayer mat in the airplane’s aisle and repeatedly asking people if ‘they are a slave of Allah’.

    https://youtu.be/PJ5KW0oi83Q

    The Current has confirmed with multiple sources that the man is a former Pakistani model and actor, Muhammad Arif Ali. According to his LinkedIn profile, he graduated from NCA in 2002. He worked as an architect at a number of firms in Karachi and Lahore from 2002-2016.

    He was also featured in renowned Pakistani singer Abrar-ul-Haq’s song, “Preeto” and as an actor he was in a Pakistani sitcom, “Kollege Jeans”, which revolves around the campus life of the National College of Arts, directed by Jawad Bashir.

    Most of his entertainment industry friends say that they lost contact with him while one of our sources confirmed that, “I lost contact a long while ago but I heard that he has developed extremist views”.

    We followed his social media and here is what we found:

    His Behance profile as an architect was made in January 30th, 2012, where he shared different projects he worked on during his career.

    His Facebook profile is open and shows that he lives in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. People have started commenting on his public posts.

    His YouTube channel “food for thought” is made up of shorts and videos, mostly based on his religious views. The last video on August 12 2023.

    His Instagram profile was made in June 2014 and has a throwback video with his “Kollege Jeans” co-actors. His former colleagues and his lawyer say they hope he is given a psychological assessment and is dealt with in a fair manner, saying that he likely suffers from mental health issues.

    https://youtu.be/e8GpD8BhDL4
  • Child dies after falling into uncovered manhole in Karachi

    Child dies after falling into uncovered manhole in Karachi

    While the Mayor of Karachi, Murtaza Wahab, works on improving the infrastructure of his city, a toddler has died after falling into an uncovered manhole in Malir’s Memon Goth.

    As reported by _, the incident took place in the area of Jamot Mohalla on Monday where the sewer was left open.

    “Where do we go, which door to knock? There is no one to hear about the loss,” says the grieving father, Abdur Rehman, who has now lost his only son. He pointed out that the manhole had been without a lid for more than 15 days while complaints had been lodged by locals to the union council but staffers said that they did not have a lid to cover the sewer.

    In June, Mayor Wahab promised to make the city ‘Clean and Green’. So far, he has banned plastic bags, improved basic infrastructure and provision of street lights, but sewers remain uncovered, making the roads a danger zone for pedestrians and bikers.

    On meeting Rehman, Karachi’s Deputy Mayor Salman Abdullah Murad offered his condolences. He promised to take action against the officials responsible for maintenance.

  • Life in Afghanistan: Two years since the Taliban takeover

    Two years since the Taliban stormed back to power on 15 August 2021 after two decades of war against the US and its allies, life has changed dramatically for many Afghans. A businesswoman, a former Taliban fighter and a farmer tell AFP how the changes have impacted them.