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Category: Uncategorized
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GUYS, FREE GIVEAWAY! Fill it out NOW!
So, as we announced earlier, the Google News Innovation Fund is funding The Current to start Pakistan’s first membership program. What does that mean? That means that while everything we do for you will always be free, IF you want something more from us, we can now make that happen! This is so exciting guys! But obviously we need to know from you…what do you want? Fill out this survey and we will start working on what to do for you. And to make it more fun, we are sending GIVEAWAYS to FIVE PEOPLE who fully complete the survey! Thank you so much for supporting us! Means a lot! And we can’t wait to do more!
Check out this link to fill the survey
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‘Jhooti’: Can Iqra Aziz’s acting save a lame storyline?
There is no doubt that Iqra Aziz is a great actor. From her role in Suno Chanda to her portrayal of a greedy, selfish manipulator in Jhooti, she gets her roles down. But why she picked Jhooti is a question she might soon need to answer. 16 episodes in, the drama is going from lame to lamer and watching it makes it even more painful.
Lovesick husband Nasir with classic manipulator Nirma, handing her money to save his marriage Maybe the pain comes from the fact that Yasir Hussain really can’t act or that the storyline is so typical that only an Indian soap opera miracle can help it. Nirma (Iqra Aziz) is a self-absorbed thief who manipulates sad, lovestruck Nasir (Ahmed Ali Butt) into giving her a lot of cash and property because he wants to marry her. They marry, get divorced and she meets Ali (Yasir Hussain) who she thinks is this loaded bachelor and is going to invest all her ill-gotten money in property.
Read more – Jhooti: The drama that replaced ‘Meray Paas Tum Ho’
She falls for him, marries him but turns out he’s just as big a manipulator as her. He’s using Nirma to get money so he can pay back his ex-wife who is threatening him if he doesn’t. So here he is, lying to Nirma, trying to get money out of her while she turns from manipulator to manipulated.
Ali, played by Yasir Hussain, is probably the most important but the most mediocre character in the series Painful isn’t it? And so very typical. The running into your lying husband who says he is in Dubai but ends up at Park Towers Mall is so overdone. Bus kardo yaar, we all know she will find out that she got what she deserved and everyone was right about what a jhooti she was and oh ho, she totally deserved it.
Read more – Iqra Aziz, Yasir Hussain’s ‘Jhooti’ sparks outrage for trivialising domestic abuse
There is no doubt that Iqra Aziz is a fantastic actress as she fully takes on the role of Nirma The only saving grace is Iqra. Her acting as Nirma is on-point perfection. She seems like a greedy sister, a classic narcissist right down to her nails. Even Iqra’s height suits the role, this little innocent girl who is lying to everyone around her. But that’s just it. The drama doesn’t inspire anything else. It’s one that can be watched while you’re doing something else and it just plays in the background, or be seen because you have to write a review on it. Otherwise, it’s a dead bore and the only way it can be redeemed is if…well can’t really think of anything that can help this storyline.
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LUMS breaks silence on fee hike amid coronavirus outbreak
Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) clarified on Monday that the hike was decided before the Covid-19 outbreak in the country. This official statement came when people were protesting on Twitter against 41 per cent tuition fee increase.
The statement was issued by the office of Vice-Chancellor Dr Arshad Ahmed which states that the increment was “entirely consistent with prior years and took into account extraordinary increases in inflation, energy costs and currency devaluation.”
According to reports, per credit hour fee has been increased by 13 per cent. On average, students opt for 16 credit hours per semester, this adds up to 41 per cent overall increase in tuition fees.
“The increase was 13 per cent which we will monitor in determining the next fee card. Previously, a blanket fee was being charged for students registering between 12 to 20 credit hours. This fee is now [being] calculated on per credit hour basis which will increase the semester fees for some and decrease it for others [depending on the number of registered credit hours],” the statement said.
Furthermore, one of the reasons behind increasing the fee is to “discourage students from taking course overloads which negatively impacts their learning.”
“LUMS fees cover a fraction of the total costs. As a not-for-profit university, gifts from donors, trustees, etc. helps to subsidize one out of three students.”Yesterday, ‘#LUMSFeeHike’ was trending on twitter after the Lahore University of Management and Sciences (LUMS) confirmed its students through email that they would increase tuition fee by 40 per cent for the upcoming semesters.
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Quiz – Which lockdown type are you?
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Coursera to give 3,800 free courses to unemployed people
Coursera — an online learning platform — will be making 3,800 courses free for people who have lost their jobs due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent global economic crisis, a private media outlet reported.
“We are proud to announce Coursera Workforce Recovery Initiative to help governments worldwide provide unemployed workers with free access to 3,800 online courses,” a statement read.
The objective of the initiative is to support affected workers in developing knowledge and skills to get employed again.
These free courses are covering skills like business development, information technology (IT) and data science skills, and they are taught by the world’s leading universities, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Duke University, University of Michigan and Yale among others.
Courses on professional certifications like Google IT support, IBM Data Science, or Date Engineering with Google Cloud are also available to train people for high-demand jobs.
This step towards public and private sector partnerships is imperative, and various government leaders have made the initiative available to their respective states and countries.
Earlier, Google and YouTube also launched new resource pages to help teachers and families continue to educate students under quarantine.
Coursera works with universities and other organisations to offer online courses, specialisations and degrees in a variety of subjects, such as engineering, data science, machine learning, mathematics, business, computer science, digital marketing, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences and others.
Coursera was founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller.
Princeton, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania were the first ones to offer content on the platform.
Offerings have since expanded to include specialisations — collections of courses that build skills in a specific subject — as well as degrees and a workforce development product for businesses and government organisations.
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Wikipedia breaks record: 673 million page views in a day on COVID-19
A large number of users are switching to Wikipedia as a trusted source to share and find COVID-19 updates. Around 4,504 Wikipedia pages have been created to record different aspects of the pandemic like it’s spread to different countries, research to find its treatment and popular conspiracy theories, a private media outlet reported.
Although the information on Wikipedia is available in 130+ languages, however, the English-language articles on Wikipedia about the virus alone have registered over 240 million views.
The report also says that Wikipedia Foundation observed a record five-years high traffic, with over 673 million page views in a single day –the traffic was mostly — if not completely to COVID-19 articles.
On March 12, 2020, the day World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic, the main English Wikipedia article on virus received over 1.4m page views; which means that it increased by 73 per cent from the day before WHO’s declaration.
BATTLING MISINFORMATION
It is not easy to control misinformation, that is why a dedicated page titled as ‘Misinformation related to the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic’ is constantly charting and debunking falsehoods on the outbreak. Also, a large number of people are editing information by citing credible sources.
According to the editor, the key to maintain accuracy on the platform is to cite sources, a single line cited with the credible source will be published but a complete paragraph written by a doctor, without citation will not be published on the platform.
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Quiz: Who should be your quarantine partner
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Quiz: Which show/drama should you be watching during self-isolation
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Exclusive: Ehsanullah Ehsan speaks out for the first time after escaping from military custody
“The Pakistani Taliban has suffered from American and Pakistani security operations in recent years, but its cells are still active in Pakistan’s cities and are still capable of carrying out attacks,” he told Al Jazeera in his first interview since escaping from Pakistani military custody in January.
The groups are active in the eastern provinces of Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan, said Ehsanullah Ehsan.
He further added, “We cannot say that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Jamaat-ur-Ahrar or other anti-Pakistan [armed] groups are completely finished. They definitely have a set-up and perhaps they have gone silent as part of a plan. They are present in Pakistani cities and they have the ability to carry out attacks.”
The interview was conducted from an undisclosed location through voice notes exchanged over an internet-based messaging service.
As per the report, Pakistan’s military is provided with a detailed list of the allegations made by Ehsan in this interview, but they offered no comment. The Pakistani interior ministry did not respond to a request for comment.