Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Secretary General Omar Ayub lashed out at military and spy agencies on Saturday, calling on the state institutions to “stay within limits.”
“Politicians are also bound to do their politics within the constitutional parameters,” said the PTI leader while talking to media in Lahore.
He also clarified that no deal has been struck between Imran Khan and the establishment, blaming the ruling coalition for trying to create rifts between the army and the nation.
Meanwhile, another top PTI leader, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said in a conversation with reporters at Kot Lakh Pat jail that he has been in politics for 41 years. However, not a single case had been registered against him. But after 9 May, he faced several cases.
“A dozen cases were lodged against me in a year. Whether anyone likes it or not, Imran Khan is a reality. There will be no stability if they do not accept this reality.”
Commenting on cooling political heat, the former foreign minister said national leaders should bar themselves from calling their rivals ‘’traitors’’.
He further stated, ‘’We have been distributing traitors certificates for 75 years.”
Shahroz Sabzwari has shared the cutest birthday message for his younger daughter, Zahra, as she turns two.
On Friday morning, the actor posted an adorable video of adorable toddler on Instagram to celebrate her birthday.
In the video, with the song “Little Hands” playing in the background, Shahroz wrote, “Happy Birthday, Mama and Baba’s life. May you have many, many more, INSHA ALLAH.” He and his wife, Sadaf Kanwal, added, “We love you a lot,” along with a heart emoji.
The video quickly went viral, getting lots of likes and sweet birthday messages from fans and other celebrities.
Shahroz Sabzwari and Sadaf Kanwal welcomed Zahra in August 2022.
Following pressure from Bangladeshi student protesters, the Chief Justice of Bangladesh, Obaidul Hasan, has decided to resign “in principle.”
Local media reports that hundreds of protesters surrounded the Supreme Court in Dhaka and gave Chief Justice Obaidul Hasan a one-hour ultimatum to resign.
The protesters had announced that they would storm the judges’ residences if they did not resign.
Justice Obaidul Hasan will submit his resignation after consulting the President this evening.
He called for a full court meeting with the judges of both divisions.
On the other hand, Bloomberg’s report states that Bangladesh Bank Governor Abdul Rauf resigned from his position yesterday. However, he resigned for personal reasons.
Chief Traffic Officer (CTO) Lahore, Amara Azhar, has ordered the display of the national flag on all government vehicles and motorcycles.
In a statement Azhar announced that traffic police are making extensive arrangements for Independence Day. During the celebrations, additional personnel will be deployed at Greater Iqbal Park, Wagah, and other key locations.
She also mentioned that special measures are being implemented to address issues such as wheeling and racing.
The CTO stated that temporary speed bumps will be installed to manage traffic during Independence Day celebrations.
The poor, rural hometown of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif erupted in joy on Friday as she won gold at the Paris Olympics in the face of a major gender controversy.
Cheers of Khelif’s name and the country’s famous chant “one two three, viva l’Algerie” broke out in Biban Mesbah, a town of around 6,000 people.
“It’s Algeria’s victory,” her father, Omar Khelif, told reporters as he watched the fight on a giant screen along with the rest of the village around 300 kilometers (185 miles) southwest of Algiers.
Villagers fired shots into the air in honour of 25-year-old Khelif’s first Olympic medal following her victory over China’s Yang Liu in the women’s 66kg final.
Imane after winning a Gold medal
The jubilation also spread to the capital Algiers, where crowds invaded the city center, celebrating the victory with fireworks and a chorus of car horns.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune joined the celebrations on social media site X, saying: “We are all proud of you, Olympic champion Imane, your victory today is Algeria’s victory and your gold is Algeria’s gold.”
Ahead of Khelif’s fight, hundreds of volunteers turned out in Biban Mesbah to help prepare for the big night.
Despite scorching temperatures of 46 degrees Celsius (114 degrees Fahrenheit), the men carried out a vast clean-up operation while dozens of women were busy cooking a giant couscous.
“We agreed to give the village a new face and breathe new life into it, with the victory of Imane Khelif,” her cousin Mounir Khelif, 36, told AFP.
“We all helped each other, some bringing couscous, others oil and vegetables, while those who couldn’t help with provisions helped with the preparation,” said Amina Saadi, 52, a mother of six.
“We are all united behind Imane Khelif, who has honored Algeria, that’s the least we can offer her,” she said.
The boxer has been the victim of a social media hate campaign that portrays her as a “man fighting women.”
“I’m a strong woman with special powers. From the ring, I sent a message to those who were against me,” she said Friday after her win.
The gender controversy ignited in the French capital when Khelif defeated Angela Carini in 46 seconds in her opening bout, the Italian reduced to tears and abandoning the fight after suffering a badly hurt nose.
Algerians from all walks of life have showed their solidarity with Khelif, irritated that her father was forced to show her birth certificate to journalists to prove she was born a girl.
Amar, father of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, gestures during an interview with Reuters outside his house, in Tiaret province, Algeria, on Friday. – REUTERS PIC
Khelif’s international career took off with her participation at the Covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, where she finished fifth in her weight class.
In 2023, she made it to the semifinals of the world championships in New Delhi.
But then she was disqualified following gender eligibility testing by the International Boxing Association, which is not recognized by the International Olympic Committee and is not running the sport in Paris.
From a family of limited means, she spoke before the Games of the difficulty of her life in “a village of conservative people” in semi-desert surroundings. Imane said that her father initially found it difficult to accept her boxing.
Imane’s family
“I came from a conservative family. Boxing is not a widely practiced sport by women, especially in Algeria,” she told Canal Algerie a month before the Games, smiling readily and her voice soft.
In an interview with UNICEF, she said she used to sell scrap metal and her mother sold homemade couscous to pay for bus tickets to a nearby town.
An airplane carrying 57 passengers and four crew crashed Friday in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state, killing everyone on board, the airline said.
The aircraft, an ATR 72-500 operated by Voepass airline, was traveling from Cascavel in southern Parana state to Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos international airport when it crashed in the city of Vinhedo.
Voepass initially said the plane was carrying 58 passengers, but a statement on the airline’s website later revised the figure to 57.
Images broadcast on local media showed a large plane spinning as it plummeted almost vertically, while other footage showed a large column of smoke rising from the crash site in what appeared to be a residential area.
“There were no survivors,” the city government in Valinhos — which was involved in the rescue and recovery operation in nearby Vinhedo — said in an to AFP.
Vinhedo, with about 76,000 residents, is located approximately 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo.
Recovery of the victims’ remains for “identification” has begun and “will continue throughout the night,” Sao Paulo State Governor Tarcisio de Freitas told reporters at the scene.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declared three days of mourning.
Voepass said it was cooperating with authorities to “determine the causes of the accident,” while giving full assistance to families of the victims on flight 2283.
The plane, a twin-engine turboprop, took off “without any flight restrictions, with all its systems operational,” the company said.
Brazil’s CENIPA aviation accident agency has launched an investigation.
ATR, a Franco-Italian aircraft maker and Airbus subsidiary, said its experts were working to help investigators.
Truck driver Martins Barbosa, 49, was working when he learned of the plane crash, which occurred 150 meters (500 feet) from his home.
“I thought it might have fallen on my house, with my son inside,” he told AFP, adding he felt despondent before learning his family was okay.
Nathalie Cicari, who lives near the crash site, told CNN Brasil the impact was “terrifying.”
“I was having lunch, I heard a very loud noise very close by,” she said, describing the sound as drone-like but “much louder.”
“I went out on the balcony and saw the plane spinning. Within seconds, I realized that it was not a normal movement for a plane.”
Cicari was not hurt but had to evacuate her house, which was filled with black smoke from the crash.
“I arrived at the scene and saw many bodies on the ground — many of them,” another witness, Ricardo Rodrigues, told local Band News.
Firefighters, military police and state civil defense were deployed at the scene.
Military police told local media the accident had not caused any casualties on the ground, and that the fire sparked by the crash had been brought under control.
The plane’s black box “has already been found, apparently preserved,” Sao Paulo state security official Guilherme Derrite told reporters at the scene.
The doomed plane recorded its first flight in April 2010, according to the website planespotters.net.
Air safety has improved dramatically in recent decades, with deadly passenger plane crashes becoming ever-more rare worldwide, though more frequent in developing nations.
Excluding Friday’s crash, CENIPA data shows Brazil has recorded 108 aircraft accidents so far this year, resulting in 49 deaths. Over the last ten years, 746 people have died in 1,665 accidents in the country.
In January 2023, another ATR 72 operated by Yeti Airlines crashed after stalling in Nepal, killing all 72 on board.
Nepalese authorities attributed the incident to pilot error.
Heartthrob Sheheryar Munawar has finally given fans a peek into his love life with a surprising Instagram post. After months of speculation, the popular actor has shared a heartfelt post showing affection for actress Maheen Siddiqui, calling her his “jaan” (beloved).
In the post, Sheheryar shared photos from his birthday celebration, where close friends, including Maheen, surprised him late at night. Maheen was the first person he tagged in the post. She responded by resharing the post with a red heart emoji.
In another story, Sheheryar reposted Maheen’s post with the sweet caption “meri jaan” (my beloved), thanking her for making his birthday extra special. This public display of affection has fans talking, especially since rumors have been circulating that the two might get married in December.
Earlier this year, Sheheryar hinted at someone special in his life during a podcast, but he didn’t share any details until now.
The Economist, a British weekly news magazine, published this week’s issue with a picture of the Bangladesh students’ protest on the front page of its magazine, alongside the headline, “Bangladesh Begins Again.”
However, social media users pointed out a significant difference between the pictures used by the magazine and the same pictures available on the internet. The picture that wasn’t used by The Economist had protestors raising a Palestine flag along with the Bangladesh flag.
Earlier this week, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, resigned and fled the country as massive protests gripped the nation. The protests, which initially started as student protests against civil service job quotas, spiralled into demands for Hasina to quit after more than 200 people were killed in the violence.
Social media was abuzz with footage of Bangladeshi youth tearing down the statues of their country’s founding father, Sheikh Mujeeb ur Rehman, marking the end of Hasina’s almost 15 years of rule.
America defends giving aid to an army unit involved in the killing of a Palestinian-American by saying Israel had already taken remedial action.
Omar Assad, 78, a grocer who spent most of his adult life in Milwaukee, was on a return visit to the West Bank in January 2022 when he was handcuffed, gagged and blindfolded, dying after lying on the ground for more than an hour on a cold winter night.
The incident was linked to the Israeli army’s Netzah Yehuda, a unit founded in 1999 to encourage recruits from the ultra-Orthodox community, which is largely exempt from compulsory military service.
A State Department panel decided against imposing sanctions on the unit after being presented with information by the government of Israel, which has vocally opposed action against its military amid the ongoing war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“After thoroughly reviewing that information, we have determined that violations by this unit have also been effectively remediated,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.
“This unit can continue receiving security assistance from the United States of America,” he said.
A US official said that two soldiers involved in the incident, while not ultimately prosecuted, were removed from combat positions and have left the military.
The military has also taken steps “to avoid a recurrence of incidents,” including enhanced screening of recruits and a two-week educational seminar specifically for the unit.
Experts say that Netzah Yehuda has mostly drawn ultra-Orthodox youths who see the military as a way to integrate into Israeli society. Still, it has also attracted fervent nationalists from the West Bank.
The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, is home to three million Palestinians alongside some 490,000 Israelis living in settlements considered illegal under international law.
The army concluded that Assad’s death was the result of “a moral failure and poor decision-making on the part of the soldiers.”
It said Assad “refused to cooperate” when stopped by soldiers in the village of Jiljilya and that soldiers tied his hands and gagged him without checking on him later.
It was unclear why soldiers stopped Assad. The Palestinian official news agency Wafa said he died from a stress-induced heart attack.
Additionally, US is all set to give $3.5 billion to Israel to purchase American weapons and military equipment from a $14.1bn supplemental bill approved by Congress in April.
“On Thursday, August 8 the Department notified Congress of our intent to obligate $3.5bn in FY 2024 Foreign Military Financing using funding provided by the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act,” said a State Department spokesperson as reported by CNN.
