Current Final

Category: Lifestyle

  • Malala expected to visit flood relief areas next week

    Malala expected to visit flood relief areas next week

    Nobel laureate and social activist Malala Yousafzai is expected to visit flood affected areas of Pakistan in the second week of October. She is expected to reach the country on October 12 on a three day visit.


    According to sources of Geo News, the Sindh Home Department has issued directives to make strict security arrangements for Malala. A specialised police unit is making arrangements.

    As per media reports, she will first land in Karachi. She will then travel to Dadu under strict security.

    She is expected to offer flood relief funding from the Malala Fund.


    As many as 33 million people of the 220 million South Asian nation have been affected in some way by the floods that swept away houses, roads, railways and bridges and submerged around 4 million acres of farmland.


    Yousafzai recently announced the launch of her production company, Extracurricular.

  • Flood update: UN passes resolution urging countries to support rehabilitation efforts

    Flood update: UN passes resolution urging countries to support rehabilitation efforts

    The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution on Friday calling for an increase in humanitarian aid to help Pakistan. The resolution has been passed to provide full support to rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts in Pakistan.

    The 193-member body unanimously adopted the resolution, which stated that improved access to international climate financing was crucial for assisting poor nations in reducing their emissions and adapting to climate change, especially the most vulnerable ones.


    159 nations representing all continents joined Pakistan in sponsoring the resolution. UNGA President Csaba Korosi asked the international community to assist the flood-devastated nation and stated that he stood with Pakistan in this hour of need.


    The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution on Friday calling for an increase in humanitarian aid to help Pakistan. The resolution has been passed to provide full support to rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts in Pakistan.


    The 193-member organisation unanimously adopted the resolution, which stated that improved access to international climate financing was crucial for assisting poor nations in reducing their emissions and adapting to climate change, especially the most vulnerable ones.

  • Who won the Nobel Peace Prize 2022?

    Who won the Nobel Peace Prize 2022?

    This year’s Peace Prize is awarded to human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties.


    Ales Bialiatski:

    Ales Bialiatski was one of the initiators of the democracy movement that emerged in Belarus in the mid-1980s. He has devoted his life to promoting democracy and peaceful development in his home country. Among other things, he founded the organisation Viasna (Spring) in 1996 in response to the controversial constitutional amendments that gave the president dictatorial powers and that triggered widespread demonstrations. Viasna provided support for jailed demonstrators and their families. In the years that followed, Viasna evolved into a broad-based human rights organisation that documented and protested against the authorities’ use of torture against political prisoners.

    The Center for Civil Liberties:


    The Center for Civil Liberties was founded in Kyiv in 2007 for the purpose of advancing human rights and democracy in Ukraine. The center has taken a stand to strengthen Ukrainian civil society and pressure the authorities to make Ukraine a full-fledged democracy. To develop Ukraine into a state governed by rule of law, Center for Civil Liberties has actively advocated that Ukraine become affiliated with the International Criminal Court.

    After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Center for Civil Liberties has engaged in efforts to identify and document Russian war crimes against the Ukrainian civilian population. In collaboration with international partners, the center is playing a pioneering role with a view to holding the guilty parties accountable for their crimes.


    The Memorial:


    The human rights organisation Memorial was established in 1987 by human rights activists in the former Soviet Union who wanted to ensure that the victims of the communist regime’s oppression would never be forgotten. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov and human rights advocate Svetlana Gannushkina were among the founders. Memorial is based on the notion that confronting past crimes is essential in preventing new ones.
    Since its inception in 1901, about 109 individuals and 25 organisations have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

  • Floods can push up to 9 million people in poverty: World Bank

    Floods can push up to 9 million people in poverty: World Bank

    The World Bank has said that catastrophic monsoon flooding linked to climate change may push between six and nine million Pakistanis into poverty.


    Unprecedented monsoon rains that hit Pakistan this year resulting in 1,700 fatalities, two million destroyed homes, and a third of the country being under water.


    In shabby tent cities and dispersed settlements close to the still waters that devoured their possessions and way of life, eight million people are still without a home.

    “The recent floods are expected to have a substantial negative impact on Pakistan’s economy and on the poor, mostly through the disruption of agricultural production,” said Najy Benhassine, the World Bank’s Country Director for Pakistan. “The Government must strike a balance in meeting extensive relief and recovery needs, while staying on track with overdue macroeconomic reforms. It will be more important than ever to carefully target relief to the poor, constrain the fiscal deficit within sustainable limits, maintain a tight monetary policy stance, ensure continued exchange rate flexibility, and make progress on critical structural reforms, especially those in the energy sector.”

    As many as 33 million people of the 220 million South Asian nation have been affected in some way by the floods that swept away houses, roads, railways and bridges and submerged around 4 million acres of farmland.

  • Ex-policeman killed children at a nursery in Thailand

    Ex-policeman killed children at a nursery in Thailand

    An ex-policeman identified as Panya Kamrab has killed at least 37 people, most of them children, in a gun and knife attack at a childcare centre in north-east Thailand.

    Trigger warning

    At least 22 children were among the dead in the mass killing. Some victims, aged as young as two, were attacked as they slept.

    Police say that the attacker then killed himself, his wife and his son after the horrific incident. According to Thai police, the attacker mostly stabbed his victims before fleeing the scene.

    “The shooter came in around lunchtime and shot four or five officials at the childcare centre first,” a local official told Reuters.

    “After inspecting the crime scene, we found that the perpetrator tried to break in and he mainly used a knife to commit the crime by killing a number of small children,” said Police Chief.

    “Then he got out and started killing anyone he met along the way with a gun or the knife until he got home. We surrounded the house and then found that he committed suicide in his home.”

    The country’s Prime Minister (PM) Prayut Chan-o-cha described the incident as “a shocking event”.

    The attacker was a police lieutenant colonel before he was dismissed last year for drug use.

  • Outrage in India after video of Police beating Muslim men in public goes viral

    Outrage in India after video of Police beating Muslim men in public goes viral

    A video showing plainclothes police officers whipping Muslim men who are strapped to a pole has gone viral in India. The video shows large crowds of people present at the incident cheering and applauding police for the flogging.

    The crowd can also be heard chanting, “maro, maro” (beat them).


    The video footage is thought to have been shot on Tuesday in the Kheda area of western Gujarat. It surfaced on social media and spread like wildfire.

    A group of police officers in civilian attire can be seen beating a group of at least four or five men with sticks as they are each tied to an electricity pole. One of them is using a holstered pistol. The pistol is customary for Indian police officers.


    The muslim men were accused of attacking a garba celebration in Undhela hamlet in the district on Monday.
    Police arrested a dozen people and cases were registered against 150 people, including women.

  • Nobel Peace Prize 2022: Muslim Indian journalist listed as unofficial favourite

    Nobel Peace Prize 2022: Muslim Indian journalist listed as unofficial favourite

    Co-founders of Indian fact-checking website Alt News, Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair have been listed as an unofficial favourite for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, ahead of the announcement of the winner on October 7.


    TIME magazine, in a report, compiled a list of “some of the favourites to win, based on nominations that were made public via Norwegian lawmakers, predictions from bookmakers, and picks from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.”


    The list includes journalists Mr. Sinha and Mr. Zubair, who “have relentlessly been battling misinformation in India.” The Time report said that the duo has “methodologically debunked rumors and fake news circulating on social media and called out hate speech.


    Mohammed Zubair is a co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News. He is a critic of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, and regularly tracks and highlights anti-Muslim hate speech by Hindu right-wing activists and politicians.


    He was detained earlier this year because of a tweet from 2018 that included a screenshot from a well-known Hindi film, which authorities claim was insulting to Hindu religious beliefs.

  • Fake posts from India fueled Hindu Muslims fighting in England after match

    At least 47 people were arrested in an operation to “deter further disorder” in Leicester, England, as the city dealt with unrest amid tensions involving mainly young men of Muslim and Hindu communities.

    It was reported that the unrest started after a Pakistan vs India cricket match after which news reports of kidnapping of a Muslim girl by Hindu groups emerged online.

    The unrest continued for weeks. Most of the fake tweets fueling the violence came from India, reports Reuters.


    “It is a powerful illustration of how hashtag dynamics on Twitter can use dubious inflammatory claims to … escalate tensions on the ground,” said a spokesperson at fact-checking site Logically, which analysed the posts’ veracity.

    Experts say most of the incendiary tweets, rumours and lies came from India, showing the power of unchecked social media to spread disinformation and stir unrest a full continent away.


    “I’ve seen quite a selection of the social media stuff which is very, very, very distorting now and some of it just completely lying about what had been happening between different communities,” Peter Soulsby, Leicester’s mayor, told BBC radio.


    Rob Nixon, who runs Leicestershire Police, concurred, telling the BBC that misinformation on social media had played a “huge role” in last month’s unrest.
    To counter some of these claims, police took to social media themselves, saying they had fully investigated reports of three men approaching a teenaged girl in an attempted kidnapping, and found no truth whatsoever to the online story.


    “We urge you to only share information on social media you know to be true,” they said.

    Many of the misleading posts alleging that Hindus and Hindu sites were being attacked came from India, analysis showed.
    Some 80% of tweets with geographic coordinates, or geo-tagged information, were connected to India, Logically said.


    “The ratio of tweets geo-tagged to the UK versus those geo-tagged to India was remarkably high for what, ostensibly, was a domestic incident,” a spokesperson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.


    “The involvement of high-profile figures in India setting the discourse was a key element.”

    “The events in Leicester did not happen out of the blue,” said Keval Bharadia at the South Asia Solidarity Group, a British community non-profit.

  • Horrifying report reveals incidents of rape, sexual abuse in Attock Jail

    Horrifying report reveals incidents of rape, sexual abuse in Attock Jail

    The Provincial Intelligence Centre (PIC) has in a report accused several staff members at the Attock district jail of raping and harassing female visitors and prisoners.

    On September 30, PIC filed the report to Inspector General of Prisons, Mirza Shahid Saleem Baig, after conducting a covert investigation into the operations of the district jail.


    “A girl who visits the jail to see one of the inmates supplies drugs to the prisoners. A pack of charas worth Rs500 outside is sold for Rs3,000 to Rs3,500 inside the prison,” the report has stated.

    “Powerful mafias of drug peddlers have deep roots inside the jail with the support of jail administration and are making unchecked profit by selling contraband. And they also pay due share to the jail management,” the report said, adding that influential visitors are frequently given permission to meet face-to-face in the DSP’s (Deputy Superintendent of Police) room in exchange for a bribe of up to Rs. 10,000. Additionally, after paying bribes, inmates are permitted to order food from outside.

    The report recommended that jail workers who had been found guilty of breaking the rules of the jail manual or of engaging in acts of sexual harassment, corruption, or torture be disciplined.

    The damning report also suggested that female staff members should be the only ones in charge of handling female visitors to the jail in order to protect their privacy and dignity.

    “This is quite disturbing and can lead to a scandal that will reflect poorly on the Punjab administration,” read the report.
    PIC has ordered a high-level investigation into this matter.

  • 4,000 dengue cases reported in five months in Balochistan

    Up to 4,000 dengue cases of dengue have been reported in Balochistan over the past five months, Syed Ali Shah has reported for Express Tribune.


    Flood victims across the country have been in the grip of a variety of mosquito and waterborne diseases as Balochistan has reported over 4,000 dengue cases over the past five months.


    Lasbela, Kech, Gwadar, and Panjgur districts reported the majority of the cases.


    Around 250 dengue cases have been detected over the past several days from various locations in Balochistan, a health official said.
    To limit the spread of dengue and malaria, Abdul Aziz Uqaili, Chief Secretary of Balochistan, has ordered the authorities to spray repellent fog in the afflicted districts.


    Dengue, a viral illness spread by the Aedes Egypti mosquito, is a potentially fatal disease with common symptoms being high-grade fever, body aches and eye pain