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  • VIDEO: PEMRA bans energy drink ad for being ‘vulgar, un-Islamic, against ethics of Pakistani society’

    VIDEO: PEMRA bans energy drink ad for being ‘vulgar, un-Islamic, against ethics of Pakistani society’

    Continuing to keep an eye out for content that “does not go in line with social norms of Pakistani society”, Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) has banned an energy drink commercial for being “vulgar, un-Islamic and unethical”.

    “It [PEMRA] has monitored that most satellite television channels are airing a TVC [television commercial] of Power Full (energy drink). The content of the advertisement is considered to be indecent, vulgar and against Islamic values, social norms and ethics of Pakistani society,” read a notification by the media watchdog, a copy of which was also released by PEMRA on Twitter.

    It added that they had been receiving complaints by the general public against the advert for being unethical and vulgar, and went on to direct satellite TV channels to conform to the Electronic Media (Programmes and Advertisements) Code of Conduct, 2015.

    The commercial was prohibited under Section 27 of PEMRA (Amendment) Act, 2007, the notification said, warning of legal action in case of non-compliance.

    While it has been taken off the air, the advert is still doing rounds over the internet.

    Here is a censored version of the commercial.

    What do you think of the advert and the action against it? Let The Current know in the comments.

  • VIDEO: Peshawar doctor celebrates 71-year-old coronavirus patient’s birthday

    VIDEO: Peshawar doctor celebrates 71-year-old coronavirus patient’s birthday

    A doctor working at the coronavirus ward brought a cake to celebrate the birthday of a 71-year-old patient to fulfill his wish as he is away from his family.

    A video, doing rounds on social media, shows a patient in Abbottabad Medical Complex, clapping and cutting his birthday cake with the health professional standing by his side.

    Finance and Health Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Taimur Jhagra also shared the video with a caption: “Something to make everyone smile.”

    Doctors and other healthcare professionals have been praised across Pakistan and all over the world for the sacrifice and commitment they have shown by treating the virus patients while putting their lives at risk.

    Pakistan has reported 108,317 cases of COVID-19 so far.

  • Sony PS5 to be launched Thursday

    Sony PS5 to be launched Thursday

    Sony has announced that the launch event for its upcoming PlayStation (PS) 5 will be held on Thursday (June 11) at 8 pm, GMT+5.

    The event was originally scheduled for June 4 but it was postponed due to the death of George Floyd and subsequent protests against police brutality and racism around the world.

    Sony also plans to show PS5 games during the event, and it will run for “a bit more than an hour,” Sony Interactive Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jim Ryan had said while announcing the original event.

    The event will be broadcasted at 1080p and 30 fps because it will be easier to produce while several Sony staffers work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Sid Shuman, senior director for Sony Interactive’s Content Communication.

    Sony has revealed the name, logo, specs and its news DualSense controller, but hasn’t revealed the design of the console.

    The PS5 will have a custom eight-core AMD Zen 2 CPU, a custom AMD RDNA 2-based GPU, 16GB of GDDR6 RAM, and a proprietary SSD with 825GB of storage and 5.5GB/s of performance.

    The DualSense controller will have haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, an integrated microphone, and a USB-C port. The controller’s share button has also been renamed to the “create” button, but Sony hasn’t shared much about what it will let players do just yet.

  • PIA incurring Rs6 billion loss per month, Air Marshal Arshad Malik tells PM Imran

    PIA incurring Rs6 billion loss per month, Air Marshal Arshad Malik tells PM Imran

    Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Air Marshal Arshad Malik has told Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan that in the prevailing situation, the national flag carrier is running into a loss of around Rs6 billion on a monthly basis.

    A sum of Rs24 billion was being spent yearly on the payment of salaries to its 14,500 employees alone, the PIA CEO briefed the premier, who was chairing a meeting on the reforms and restructuring of the national airline.

    The CEO also apprised the PM about the progress on the investigation into the Karachi plane crash, handing over of bodies to their bereaved families and payment of compensation amount to the heirs of plane crash victims, the PM Office Media Wing in a press release said.

    The meeting was attended by Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan, Information and Broadcasting Minister Senator Shibli Faraz, Advisor to PM on Reforms Dr Ishrat Hussain, Special Assistant Lt Gen (r) Asim Salim Bajwa and other senior officials.

    During the meeting, a timeline for the restructuring of the PIA and a comprehensive roadmap over reforms and implementation was also submitted before the prime minister.

    Addressing the meeting, the PM said due to the coronavirus pandemic, the country’s economy was facing difficulties, adding that people had to bear the burden of billions of rupees losses on a monthly basis suffered by the state-owned entities.

    He said under the current situation, it was imperative to expedite restructuring and reforms process in the PIA, which had been running into billions of rupees loss owing to Covid-19.

    PM Imran stressed upon bringing down expenditures of the organisation, focusing on increase in its income and financial resources and upgradation of its fleet.

    He also directed that special attention should be paid so that the PIA-owned domestic and foreign assets, which could be utilised through a completely transparent and clear manner. The assets should create financial resources for the organisation instead of becoming a burden on the general public, he observed.

    Arshad Malik on the occasion also gave a detailed briefing on the restructuring, improvement in the financial discipline, better and effective utilisation of the PIA’s assets, and strategy over other related issues.

    He said due to the prevailing situation, the airlines industry throughout the world had been affected and reforms in that regard, were carried out in the organisation.

  • Amid shortage, govt likely to allow petrol stations to set their own prices

    Amid shortage, govt likely to allow petrol stations to set their own prices

    As consumers across the country face difficulties due to petrol shortage, the government is currently contemplating completely deregulating pricing and marketing of petrol. 

    According to a report published in Dawn,  the government is considering doing away with uniform pricing of petrol and deregulating it in line with other petroleum products like hi-octane blending component (HOBC) which are already deregulated. 

    Recently oil marketing companies (OMCs) have come under severe criticism for their alleged collusive behavior that has seen the price of HOBC, to increase to Rs148-160 per litre. 

    While the government slashed petrol prices to Rs74 per litre in line with the decrease in international oil prices, no such reduction was seen in the price of HOBC. 

    According to the report, the government has also decided to deregulate the Inland Freight Equalisation Margin (IFEM) that currently ensures uniform prices throughout the country. As a result, consumers that are close to ports and refineries will be able to buy petroleum products at a cheaper price that may differ anywhere from Rs1 to Rs5 depending on the transportation cost.

    Earlier, on June 4, the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) had taken notice of public concerns and complaints about the shortage of petroleum products in the country and had initiated an inquiry to see whether such a shortage is the result of any anti-competitive activity.

    The CCP’s inquiry will determine the possibility of the existence of any anti-competitive practices causing the shortage of fuel in the country and the undertakings involved in it.

    The inquiry will further examine why the impact of the reduction in the prices of oil have not resulted in the corresponding reduction in the prices of the lubricants and other oil-based products, including the prices of hi-octane, which are primarily deregulated products.

    Similarly, the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) had also expressed its reservations last week regarding high prices of HOBC and had asked OMC’s to set prices at reasonable levels keeping in view the interests of the consumers. 

  • Aima Baig says it is impossible to ‘satisfy our society’

    Aima Baig says it is impossible to ‘satisfy our society’

    Fresh off the success of her new song Te Quiero with Haadi Uppal, Aima Baig, in a recent social media, commented that in the last three to four years of her career the one thing she learned is that the “most difficult thing to pull off in this industry is to satisfy our society. According to how they want us to look like or what they want us to wear, what they want us to sing or what they want us to say.”

    Pretty sure, all female actors will be agreeing with Aima on this.

    “Whereas I thought it is a free country, where men and women both have been given the right to follow their heart and live their own life,” she added.

    Read more – It’s official: Aima Baig is Shahbaz Shigri’s ‘better half’

    Aima then went to recall when she started her career as part of Mazaaq Raat’s team, before adding how blessed she feels to have achieved the success she has.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CBImAXXBrBc/
  • Shaniera Akram hits back at troll who told her that Pakistan is not for ‘whites’

    Shaniera Akram hits back at troll who told her that Pakistan is not for ‘whites’

    Shaniera Akram has never been one to shy away from hitting back at trolls.

    Read more – Shaniera Akram loves being Pakistan’s bhabi

    In a recent incident, Akram slammed a troll, who told her that Pakistan is “not for whites like her”. Syed Sharjeel Ahmad Qureshi, who identifies himself as a political analyst and blogger, replying to Akram’s tweet about the coronavirus pandemic said that in the eight years Akram has been in Pakistan, she has “not been able to read the word and become a Muslim and name a Muslim”.

    In response to his remarks, Shaniera said that he has two pandemics to worry about: coronavirus and racism.

    Following this, several people apologised to the nation’s ‘bhabhi‘ for Qureshi’s comments.

    https://twitter.com/HaseebAhmaddd/status/1269552135190065152?s=20

    Following the backlash, Qureshi deleted the tweet.

    Meanwhile, it is pertinent to mention here that this is what Shaniera’s pinned tweet is:

  • ‘Man-eating’ tiger sentenced to a lifetime in captivity

    ‘Man-eating’ tiger sentenced to a lifetime in captivity

    A tiger accused of killing three people will spend the rest of its life in captivity, Indian officials said Sunday, saying the big cat was “too dangerous” to be allowed to roam free.

    According to AFP, the five-year-old male predator, also blamed for attacking cattle, had embarked on a trek more than 500 kilometres (310 miles) long from western Maharashtra state to central India’s Betul district in Madhya Pradesh state in 2018.

    “We gave it several chances to re-wild but it habitually went into human habitations,” said Madhya Pradesh’s chief wildlife warden, S.K. Mandal.

    “The only option left was to put it in captivity to ensure both the tiger and humans are safe.”

    The tiger — dubbed the “vagabond” or “nomad” by some local media — was first trapped in December 2018 after its long journey and held in captivity for two months.

    The big cat was eventually fitted with a tracking collar and shuttled between a tiger reserve and a national park.

    Officials however said it repeatedly strayed and hunted near human settlements, attacking cattle and endangering humans.

    Finally the tiger was tranquilised and sent to a zoo in Madhya Pradesh capital’s Bhopal on Saturday.

    Officials said the decision to capture the adult tiger was taken a few months ago, but was delayed due to the novel coronavirus lockdown.

    “It will take sometime for him to adjust to the new environment. We will be monitoring his behaviour,” Bhopal’s Van Vihar National Park director, Kamlika Mohanta shared.

    “As of now it will remain in solitary confinement. A decision to put it on display at the zoo or send it to a (fenced) safari will be taken later.”

    Human encroachment on tiger habitats have increased in recent decades in the nation of 1.3 billion people, leading to deadly conflicts with the animals.

    Nearly 225 people were killed in tiger attacks between 2014 and 2019, according to government figures.

    More than 200 tigers were killed by poachers or electrocution between 2012 and 2018, the data showed.

    India is home to around 70 percent of the world’s tigers. Last year, the government said the tiger population had risen to 2,967 in 2018 from a record low of 1,411 in 2006.

  • Malala Yousafzai graduates from Oxford

    Malala Yousafzai graduates from Oxford

    Malala Yousafzai has officially graduated from the University of Oxford in a virtual graduation ceremony.

    The activist was also part of the popular lineup in YouTube original, ‘Dear Class of 2020’ – where Michelle Obama, Beyoncé and more stars came together to celebrate the graduates.

    YouTube posted a 12-second clip of Malala from the special virtual commencement ceremony.

    Inspirational leaders, celebrities and YouTube creators were there to celebrate graduates at the virtual commencement event.

    Other than the Obamas and Malala, popular K-Pop band BTS which brought the Dear Class Of 2020 YouTube event to a roaring close with a 12-minute performance of three-hit songs.

    Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Alicia Keys, Shawn Mendes, Katy Perry and Taylor Swift also joined the event.

  • Indian man spends two days in jungle after entry to quarantine centre denied

    Indian man spends two days in jungle after entry to quarantine centre denied

    A labourer returned from Chennai, spent two days in jungle after allegedly being denied entry to the quarantine centre, and village in Odisha’s Ganjam district of India.

    Barik Nayak reached his village after travelling on a train and then a bus. However, when he reached his village, the local residents did not allow him to enter the village.

    According to Nayak, he spent two days in the jungle near his village after the Sarpanch and local administration did not help him get admitted to any quarantine center.

    Later, the police took him to a nearby quarantine centre.