Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan’s son Junaid Khan recently made his acting debut in the film Maharaj.
During the launch of Raj Pandit’s song, proud father Aamir said, “When Junaid’s film Maharaj was released, I was very stressed thinking if the audience would like his work or not.”
The star has a surprise for us.
“I have started learning to sing. I have been training for the last year with Sucheta Ji as my guru,” the Dangal actor added.
Mahraraj was released on Netflix on June 21, 2024.
A girl fell in a storm drain in Rawalpindi while travelling to her office on a scooty.
CCTV footage shared by ARY News shows the girl being swept away in the storm drain after slipping from her bike.
A search and rescue operation by the District Emergency Service was launched. Spokesman Rescue 1122 said that a missing girl has been identified as Ammara, 20. She was a resident of Ghauri Town, Rawalpindi. She was going to her office when she got stuck in a heavy water wave.
Initial reports suggest that the victim fell from the scooty and was swept away by the water stream into a nullah.
Till the publishing of this story, Ammara hasn’t been found from the drain by rescue teams.
“The search and rescue operation has been extended to the nullah’s linked spot at Swan river opening”, said the spokesperson to ARY News, adding that the missing girl couldn’t be found in the nullah where she reportedly fell.
However, the operation to find the missing girl is underway.
Chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), Major General (retd) Hafeezur Rehman, stated that social media platform X (formerly Twitter), which is currently banned on government request, will be restored only if the government authorises so.
Chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Major General (retd) Hafeezur Rehman reaffirmed that there have been no cyber attacks on telecom infrastructure in the past two years. He stated that the PTA engages platforms on complaints related to social media content violating Pakistani laws and can block social media platforms upon government directive. He noted TikTok’s prompt response to complaints compared to X (formerly Twitter), which acts on only seven per cent of reported violations.
Responding to Senator Abdul Qadir’s query about unblocking X, Chairman PTA reiterated that the decision rests with the government. He also discussed the licensing process for IoT technology, revealing recent initiatives.
Federal Minister of Law and Justice Nazir Tarar expressed concerns over posts on social media platforms that could provoke religious sentiments, emphasizing that protests often follow such incidents. He differentiated government actions on YouTube and TikTok from those on X, highlighting differing approaches.
Chairman PTA addressed VPN usage in Pakistan, acknowledging a significant decline in X users (70%) due to VPN restrictions. He mentioned plans to whitelist specific VPNs for legitimate use in Pakistan.
Chairman PTA also highlighted the tax burden on telecom users in Pakistan (34.50%), comparing it with rates in neighboring countries like Sri Lanka (20-40%), Bangladesh (21-33%), India (18.5%), and Nepal (26%).
Usman Riaz’s first hand-drawn animated film, The Glassworker, made a successful debut with more than Rs 10 million collected at the box office in its opening weekend. The movie has created interest among people of all age groups and brought audiences to Pakistani cinemas.
The Glassworker is produced by Geo Films and directed by Usman Riaz and Mairam Riaz Paracha. The film showcases Riaz’s unique storytelling and artistic vision in the Studio Ghibli style. The film became a success story and is a new chapter in Pakistani cinema, after Geo Films’ previous hits like Khuda Kay Liye, Teefa in Trouble, The Legend of Maula Jatt, and The Donkey King.
In an interview with BBC, the writer and director of The Glassworker talked about how many years it took to make the film.
“These 10 years for me have just been purely driven with passion and obsession. The film’s production took four years, but the entire journey took 10 years. I was 23 when I started, and I am 33 now,” Usman Riaz added.
The Glassworker was released on July 26, 2024 all across Pakistan.
Former supermodel Iffat Omar has spoken out in defense of controversial playwright Khalilur Rehman Qamar following the scandal involving his leaked videos.
Using X (formerly Twitter), Omar addressed the situation without directly naming Qamar. She pointed out the irony that those Qamar had often criticized might now be the ones defending the misogynistic writer.
“If two consenting adults are together, their privacy is none of my concern. Their body, their choice.”
Qamar recently made headlines after falling victim to a honey-trapping scheme, resulting in his release after a ransom was paid. The main suspect in the case claimed to possess two videos, each about an hour and a half long, showing Qamar getting intimate with the woman who had trapped him. The videos leaked online later.
Qamar has alleged that the videos were made under duress at gunpoint. His defence seems in contradiction to the video, where he can be seen smoking while sitting with the woman and chatting with her casually with his feet up.
Iran held funeral processions on Thursday amidst calls for revenge after the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in a strike in Tehran blamed on Israel.
The Islamic Republic’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers for Haniyeh ahead of his burial in Qatar, having earlier threatened a “harsh punishment” for his killing.
In Tehran’s city centre, thousands of mourning crowds carrying posters of Haniyeh and Palestinian flags gathered for the ceremony at Tehran University before a procession, according to an AFP correspondent.
Haniyeh’s death was announced the day before by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who said he and his bodyguard were killed in a strike on their accommodation in the Iranian capital at 2:00am on Wednesday.
It came just hours after Israel targeted and killed top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in a retaliatory strike on the Lebanese capital Beirut, sending fears of a wider regional conflict soaring in the fallout from the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.
Israel has declined to comment on the Tehran strike.
Iran’s state TV showed the coffins of Haniyeh and his bodyguards covered in Palestinian flags during the ceremony attended by senior Iranian officials. President Masoud Pezeshkian and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief, General Hossein Salami, were present.
Haniyeh had been visiting Tehran for Pezeshkian’s inauguration ceremony on Tuesday.
Senior Hamas figure Khalil al-Hayya, the movement’s foreign relations chief, vowed during the funeral ceremony that “Ismail Haniyeh’s slogan, ‘We will not recognise Israel,’ will remain an immortal slogan” and “we will pursue Israel until it is uprooted from the land of Palestine.”
Iran’s conservative parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Iran “will certainly carry out the supreme leader’s order (to avenge Haniyeh.)” “It is our duty to respond at the right time and in the right place,” he said in a speech with crowds chanting “Death to Israel, Death to America!”
The caskets, with a black-and-white pattern resembling a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, were borne on a flower-bedecked truck through leafy streets where cooling water mists sprayed the flag-waving crowds.
Khamenei, who has the final say in Iran’s political affairs, said after Haniyeh’s death that it was “our duty to seek revenge for his blood as he was martyred in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
The Islamic Republic has not yet officially published any information on the exact location of the strike.
Pezeshkian said on Wednesday that “the Zionists (Israel) will soon see the consequences of their cowardly and terrorist act”.
The international community, however, called for de-escalation and a focus on securing a ceasefire in Gaza — which Haniyeh had, according to a Hamas official previously, accused Israel of obstructing.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the strikes in Tehran and Beirut represented a “dangerous escalation”. All efforts, he said, should be “leading to a ceasefire” in Gaza and the release of hostages taken during Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel which began nearly 10 months of fighting.
The prime minister of key ceasefire broker Qatar said Haniyeh’s killing had thrown the whole mediation process into doubt. “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said in a post on the social media site X.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday called on “all parties” in the Middle East to “stop escalatory actions.” Earlier he said a ceasefire in Gaza was still the “imperative”, though White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the twin killings of Haniyeh and Shukr “don’t help” regional tensions.
While Iran has blamed the attack on its arch-foe, Israel has declined to comment on Haniyeh’s death. It did, however, claim the killing of Shukr, whom it blamed for a weekend rocket strike that killed 12 youths in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.
The killings come with regional tensions already inflamed by fighting in Gaza, a conflict that has drawn in Iran-backed militant groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.
One of those groups, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, “declared three days of mourning” for Haniyeh, with political leader Mahdi al-Mashat expressing “condolences to the Palestinian people and Hamas” over his killing, according to the group’s Saba news agency.
The United Nations Security Council also convened an emergency meeting Wednesday at Iran’s request to discuss the strike.
Hamas has for months been indirectly negotiating a truce and hostage-prisoner exchange deal with Israel, in talks facilitated by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States, but with Haniyeh killed, the situation is back to square one.
Analysts told AFP that Haniyeh was a moderating influence within the Islamist group, and that while he would be replaced, the dynamics within Hamas could change.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attack that ignited conflict in Gaza.
That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Hamas also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Concern grew among Israelis over the fate of those still held in Gaza. Haniyeh’s killing “was a mistake as it threatens the possibility of having a hostage deal,” said Anat Noy, a resident of the coastal city of Haifa.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 39,445 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.
A lawyer for a man arrested in suspicion of being a drug dealer took Lahore High Court to task for denying his clients the privileges given to former Imran Khan, currently also in jail.
A bail hearing was scheduled today at the Lahore High Court.
During the proceedings, the suspect’s lawyer cited legal precedents, including cases involving the founder of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan who is currently incarcerated.
Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, presiding over the bench, deliberated on the eligibility for bail in such cases. He stated that the accused involved in drug trade deserve punishment without bail, emphasizing the detrimental impact of drugs on society and its influence in educational institutions.
The lawyer argued under Article 25 of the Constitution, the man deserved the same conveniences given to Imran in legal matters. “My client and the PTI founder should be considered equally under Article 25,” the lawyer asserted.
Responding to this, Justice Mansoor questioned the relevance of Khan’s cases to the current bail application. The lawyer replied back that despite facing numerous cases, the PTI’s founder had been granted bail in a cipher case by the Supreme Court.
“Imran Khan was granted bail despite facing over 200 cases, including terrorism charges,” the lawyer elaborated. “In contrast, my client faces only 14 cases and should similarly be eligible for bail.”
Justice Shah differentiated between the nature of charges against the PTI founder and the suspect, emphasizing the severity of the charges in each case.
The lawyer countered by highlighting the specific charge against the PTI founder, which carries the death penalty. “There is a cipher case against the PTI founder, a capital offense,” the lawyer pointed out.
The lawyer also drew attention to the disparity in facilities between the PTI founder and his client while in custody. “The PTI founder enjoys better living conditions in jail, which are not available to my client,” the lawyer argued.
After considering legal precedents and arguments presented, the three-member bench, headed by Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, approved the bail application of the accused, Obaidullah.
Bella Hadid has broken her silence after sporting giant Adidas dropped her under pressure from pro-Israel groups. The controversy started when Adidas featured Hadid in a campaign about the 1972 Munich Olympics but did not mention the 11 Israelis killed by the Palestinian group Black September at the same event.
Hadid was wearing shoes inspired by Adidas’ SL72 sneakers, first released during the 1972 Munich Olympics. On Instagram, Hadid explained that she did not know about the tragic events linked to the Olympics when she agreed to the campaign. She said she would never knowingly take part in something connected to a tragedy.
In her statement, Hadid said, “I want you to hear directly from me about my recent campaign with Adidas. I would never knowingly engage with any art or work that is linked to a horrific tragedy. Before the campaign was released, I did not know about the connection to the events in 1972. I am shocked, upset, and disappointed by the lack of sensitivity in this campaign.”
Hadid made it clear that she would not have participated if she had known about the attack. She criticized herself, her team, and Adidas for not being aware of the historical context. She emphasized that she always speaks up against what she believes is wrong.
Hadid also addressed the issue of antisemitism. “I do not believe in hate in any form, including antisemitism. I stand by this fully,” she said. She criticized linking the “liberation of the Palestinian people” to terrorism, saying it misrepresents Palestinians. Hadid declared her pride in being Palestinian and emphasized that there is more to their culture than recent negative associations.
She stated, “I will forever stand by my people of Palestine while continuing to advocate for a world free of antisemitism. Antisemitism has no place in the liberation of the Palestinian people. I will always stand for peace over violence. Hate has no place here, and I will always advocate for my people and everyone worldwide.”
Earlier in the summer, when the Adidas campaign was launched, the American Jewish Committee called the decision a “massive oversight or intentionally inflammatory.” Adidas pulled the campaign photos and apologized in mid-July for any upset caused, stating that the connections to tragic historical events were unintentional. That did not stop pro-Palestine people from staging a boycott of the brand.
Adidas later apologized to Hadid and other partners involved, saying, “We made an unintentional mistake. We apologize to our partners, Bella Hadid, A$AP Nast, Jules Koundé, and others, for any negative impact and are revising the campaign.”
Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec has become a viral sensation at the Paris Olympics, not just for winning a silver medal in the Mixed 50-meter Pistol event but also for his unique style.
Unlike other shooters who use ear protectors and special lenses for accuracy, Dikec appeared to be wearing only his prescription glasses and just a t-shirt with pants. He casually kept his non-shooting hand in his pocket as he aimed and fired, helping him win the silver medal.
Dikec became instantly famous on social media, the face of a thousand memes.
Military analyst for the Middle East, Elijah J. Magnier, has explained how Israel reached the location of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, invading the tight security of the Revolutionary Guards.
In a Twitter post, he said that Israel tracked Ismail Haniyeh through a spying software similar to the infamous Pegasus.
Israel planted the latest spyware in Ismail Haniyeh’s WhatsApp message, after which the spy software told the Israeli intelligence his location. “Israel reportedly planted sophisticated spyware through a WhatsApp message sent to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. This software allowed Israeli intelligence to localize his exact position within his apartment. Subsequently, Haniyeh was assassinated following a conversation he had with his son, during which his location was pinpointed,” Elijah claimed.
Shedding light on the spy software, Elijah opined that it is the same as Pegasus, which once made headlines for its potential for surveillance. “The spyware in question is believed to be similar to the notorious Pegasus software developed by the Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO Group. Pegasus has the capability to infiltrate smartphones, allowing the operator to access messages, photos, and location data, and even control the phone’s camera and microphone without the user’s knowledge.”
In a press conference after the martyrdom of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital, Tehran, Hamas spokesperson Khalil Haya said that Haniyeh was neither in a secret location in Iran nor isolated from the people. Killing people with such intelligence cannot be called success.
Khalil said that Haniyeh was martyred with the help of a missile. The results of the complete investigation are awaited. However, media reports say that those who were with Haniyeh said that the missile broke the window of the room and hit him directly.