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Denying justice ensuring delay

How can a judiciary build trust? ing syst point of em jus is the tice.A main hindrance ll the stakeholder t s o r of eac the h the judicial system never bothered for this plight of jusbut they disagree, institutions are required to cul- tice. There is a need to have a new tivate ideals of justice.These institutions may be comprehensive judicial policy to follow all justified by their approximate instantiation of courts, particularly the subordinate judiciary, justice, or they may be deeply unjust when com- which is bound to deliver justice in an expedipared with ideal standards. Justice is an ideal tious manner. It will take some time to produce which the world fails to live up to, sometimes good results as presently, we are facing an exdespite good intentions, sometimes disastrously. treme shortage of judges at all levels, whether it The question of institu- be in the civil courts, tive justice raises issues the district courts and of legitimacy, proce- more inconveniently in dure, interp co ret difica ation, tion w an hic d h This situation may be the wh Lahore High Court, ich is 20 judges are are considered by legal unintentional on the part of less than its sanctioned experts of law. and philosophy its stakeholders, but is strength. The High Court of Another def justice is that in it iti is on an bothersome to all who are being of the the highes province, t court has to independent investiga- seeking justice and who have shoulder a greater burtion of room, truth. law In a yers courtand failed due to the penetration den lants t ’ o decid cases e a of ppelthe akHtar aly kuresHy judges are suppo be independently sed to invesof corruption in our justice whole province as to decide the as well consti-

THERE is no secret that the beautiful tigating alleged t c he tr rime uth by of an argusystem, as the whole social tu m tional atters and hav cor ing porat mor e e word of justice is very attractive and ing the matter and con- system we are suffering is significance and urfascinating giving fare and peace for a good hope of welhuman beings. Howsidering evidence. the available This situation without any justification. g o enc nly y. B 40 ut j these udges days are proper o ever, rderin just g of ice thi con ngs cern and s p itself ersons with withi th n e a is to more the t logical and near ruth that everyApparently, in the given working course, are wh not o, able of to society or state.As a concept it has been subject body is in search of jus- circumstances the instant complete the work of to philosophical, and to a healthy legal, and debate thr theological reflection oughout the world.A tice solut and ion o s f eeki his ng or the her judicial system is not 6 b 0 ac judg klog es; of thus cases the is number of important questions surrounding the system of justice, have been fiercely debated in problems.The state the responsibility to has deenforceable in the Lahore being increased and people ar heavily e frussociety. What is justice? What does it demand liver justice and create High Court until the new trated by the scarcity of from prope i r ndividuals distributio a n nd of societi wealth es? and What resour is ce t s he in a e n qual atmosp ity and here equity o fo f r appointments of judges judges. honorab A le lthough, judges the and society: tus, or s equality, meritocracies, according to staome other arrangement?There are numall citizens. In the modern world, only the soemerge on the judicial lawyers have much to wor sacrificed k till sunberless possible answers to these questions from divergent perspectives on the political and philociety which can or which can survive be desurface to wash away the down, majorit e y ven of c then th ases wer e e sophical spectrum. clared as a good civi- inconvenience caused to the left over or adjourned, eve In one ryone sense, should all theories get what of he justice claim that deserves. Some lize wel d far s e ociet state y by or inte a r- general public, by creating a and p choice eople except ha to d n retur o n theories attitude disagree on the basis of the of human beings. The main uncivilized distinction na is tiona one l organ which izati has ons, the good image of an to their homes w obtaining justice. ithout is between theories that argue and are liable to fair system of justice independent judiciary which This situation may say that all are equal, counts of distributive therefor justice, e derive equal acfor instance, hard for its citizens This can . only be has te potential to provide be unintentional on the part of its stakeholders, work more and than merits others. by which some should have exp the lored supre by mac c y rea of ting law easy and instant justice to but is bothersome to all who are seeking justice According to most theories of justice, it is and a high respect for the citizens of Pakistan who and who have failed overwhelmingly i theories claim that mportant justice is , for instance the first virtue th of ese sohum full anity, moral having support the of have been disappointed by du of e to the p corruption en in etra our tion juscial thou inst ght. itutions Justice , c a a s n tru be th th is oug of ht a of sy as stem disti of nct t i he ts general departm pub ents lic w an hic d h our leaders since long tice system, as whole social system the we from and more fundamental than benevolence, are constitutionally li- are suffering is without charity, mercy, generosity and compassion. Jus- able to collect evidence any justification. Aptice has traditionally been associated with con- through a well disci- parently, in the given cepts of fate, reincarnation or heavenly fate, that plined and trained staff.Whereas in Pakistan; the circumstances the instant judicial system is not is, with a life in accordance with the cosmic word justice is intact in its symbolic state of def- enforceable in the Lahore High Court until the plan.The association of justice with fairness has inition without following the pragmatic se- new appointments of judges emerge on the judithus been historically and culturally rare and is quence, even with the unjustified absence of the cial surface to wash away the inconvenience perhaps chiefly a modern innovation. main ingredient of social justice.The people de- caused to the general public, by creating a good In contrast to the understandings canvassed sire to get all comforts and facilities, but they are image of an independent judiciary which has te so far, justice may be understood as a human reluctant to discharge their lawful and moral potential to provide easy and instant justice to creation, rather than a discovery of harmony, di- duty. the citizens of Pakistan who have been disapvine command, or natural law.This claim can be A similar situation has been dominating in pointed by our leaders since long. understood in a number of ways, with a funda- our courts as our judicial system is about to colmental division between those who argue that lapse and it would become a great source of ex- The writer is an Advocate of the Supreme justice is a creation of some humans, and those haustion for the citizens. Nobody is willing to Court of Pakistan, Law Professor, Member of who argue that it is the creation of all humans. appear as an independent witness before the International Bar Association and former In a world where people are interconnected court as the impression of a sluggish and fatigu- Assistant Attorney General for Pakistan.

Editor’s mail

Send your letters to: Letters to Editor, Pakistan Today, 4-Shaarey Fatima Jinnah, Lahore, Pakistan. E-mail: letters@pakistantoday.com.pk Letters should be addressed to Pakistan Today exclusively

Forced marriages

OUR constitution gives citizens the right to marry according to their willingness. Many underage girl’s and women are forced to marry against their consent. Forced marriage and honor killing have become extremely common in our society. It is one of such brutal cases of human rights violence. It occurs when one or both people do not freely consent to marry and they will be subjected to pressure abuse or coercion. There are more than 3,500 reports of forced marriage in the UK.Today there are 15 million people in forced marriage. Most forced before the age of 15 years. The forced marriage is the increased likelihood of domestic violence and abuse and sexual abuse. Anyone forced into marriage faces an increased risk of rape and sexual abuse as they may not wish to consent or may not be the legal age to consent to sexual relationship. I request the government to help take the culprit to task. Mahikan Sarwar kEch

Valuing women

DUE to our old mindset, females are already derieved from education. If they get it, they are killed in the name of honour. The reason for this is that we are living in men society. In an Islamic state, it was taught to everyone to value female and give them equal rights. Then, why is it easy to rape a girl? Why is it easy to kill a girl? These shows we value males more than females. Humans talk about animals and their right, firstly finish the gap between male and female then try to think about other organisms. Females are treated like animals, it is tragic to say this in an Islamic country, but it is true. If we want to finish this gap, we need the help of the government because public is not going to have any change. rahMatullah Shafiq Makran

Is there any law for children?

SIR: Apropos a news a item repeated incidents of child abuse warrant greater action from State, society (October 9, 2020) child abuse and kidnapping are increasing day by day in Pakistan. It really hurt me a lot when I read in this news that a five years old girl was kidnapped, raped and murdered and body was found on a garbage heap in Karachi. However MNA Mehnaz Akber Aziz declared there are 108 laws which are for child rights. Where are the laws that children are being kidnapped, raped, and murdered? Is there any law in Pakistan for children ? If there is , Why children are the victim of sexual abuse? Crimes against children who are innocent rising more in Pakistan. According to Sahil, a NGO worker the number of child sexual abuse cases has increased 14 percent. Since January to June 1,489 cases have been reported of repeated incidents. Among them 53 percent were girls and 47 percent were boys. Children who are the builder of nation are suffering a lot. The government needs to take steps to make country safer for children and also ensure that laws will take speedy action after a crime is committed so that parents of children can dare to inform police for enquiry. fazal turbat

Drug addiction

DRUG is any substance that causes a change in an organism physiology. But the conception of drugs can be via inhalation, injections, smoking, ingestion absorption via a patch on the skin and dissolution under the tongue. It is the chemical which damaged the body. Further, drugs change the brain in make it incapable to work. Forsooth, drug addiction is considered a relapsing and relaxation of people. Unfortunately, it is destroying the lives of them. According to UN report and estimated 7.6 million people in Pakistan are drug users but the 78% are male and 22% are female. The number of these addicts is increasing as the rate of 40,000 per year and making Pakistan one of the most drug affected countries in the world. It is not being decreased but day by day being increased. As a fact, and (UNODC) calculated in Pakistan more then 800,000 people users of heroin regularly between 15 and 24 aged. But the number of drug users is particularly high in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa which is neighbors of Afghanistan,where close to 11 percent of the population is hooked on drugs. Finally, the government should terminate such kind of dangerous things which are in benefit for the nation and save the children’s they are the new generation of the country. najEEb Swali turbat

Darkest city

PAKISTAN is facing a major issue in the name of electricity which is needed for everything and to everyone to do something. There are some areas of Pakistan which are facing shortage of electricity like Awaran and now karachi is one of them. Karachi is known the biggest city in the country which is facing shortage of electricity. However, shortage of electricity is a major problem by which people face maximum problems. Worst affected was the port city of Karachi, a city of 20million, where many people spent a sleepless night because of warm and humid weather. Moreover, the city is facing a serious issue that because of power breakdown after heavy rain and some areas ‘s power was restored but still some are without electricity. On the other hand, load shedding is at an time high and helpless citizens are left to crave for every drop of water, at least for 8 to 6 hours load shedding is there. Some areas are worst hit by the crisis including Lyari, Karangi, Landhi, new Karachi and ect. So the government should restore the power immediately to all people of Karachi that they should get electricity. SaMEEr aSlaM awaran

08 WORLDVIEW A new theory of western civilisAtion

AtlAntic JUdiTh ShUleViTZ

ArOunD 597AD, Pope Gregory I dispatched an expedition to England to convert the Anglo-Saxon king of Kent and his subjects. The leader of the mission, a monk named Augustine, had orders to shoehorn the new Christians into Church-sanctioned marriages.That meant quashing pagan practices such as polygamy, arranged marriages (Christian matrimony was notionally consensual, hence the formula “I do”), and above all, marriages between relatives, which the Church was redefining as incest. Augustine wasn’t sure who counted as a relative, so he wrote to rome for clarification. A second cousin? A third cousin? Could a man marry his widowed stepmother? He could not. Pope Gregory wrote back to rule out stepmothers and other close kin not related by blood—another example was brothers’ widows. He was lax about second and third cousins; only the children of aunts and uncles were off-limits. By the 11th century, however, you couldn’t get engaged until you ’d counted back seven generations, lest you marry a sixth cousin. The taboo against consanguineous family had expanded to include “spiritual kin, ” who were, mostly, godparents. (It went without saying that you had to marry a Christian.) Pope Gregory and Augustine’s letters document a moment in a prolonged process— begun in the fourth century—in which the Church clamped down, and intermittently loosened up, on who could marry whom. not until 1983 did Pope John Paul II allow second cousins to wed. You might assume that this curious story of how the Church narrowed the criteria for marriageability would be relegated to a footnote—a very interesting footnote, to be sure—but Joseph Henrich puts the tale at the center of his ambitious theoryof-everything book, The WEIrDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. Consider this the latest addition to the Big History category, popularized by best sellers such as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and Yuval noah Harari’s Sapiens:A Brief History of Humankind. The outstanding feature of the genre is that it wrangles all of human existence into a volume or two, starting with the first hominids to rise up on their hind legs and concluding with us, cyborg-ish occupants of a networked globe. Big History asks Big Questions and offers quasi-monocausal answers. Why and how did humans conquer the world? Harari asks. Cooperation. What explains differences and inequalities among civilizations? Diamond asks. Environment, which is to say, geography, climate, flora and fauna. Henrich also wants to explain variation among societies, in particular to account for the Western, prosperous kind. Henrich’s first cause is culture, a word meant to be taken very broadly rather than as referring to, say, opera. Henrich, who directs Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, is a cultural evolutionary theorist, which means that he gives cultural inheritance the same weight that traditional biologists give to genetic inheritance. Parents bequeath their DnAto their offspring, but they—along with other influential role models—also transmit skills, knowledge, values, tools, habits. Our genius as a species is that we learn and accumulate culture over time. Genes alone don’t determine whether a group survives or disappears. So do practices and beliefs. Human beings are not “the genetically evolved hardware of a computational machine, ” he writes. They are conduits of the spirit, habits, and psychological patterns of their civilization, “the ghosts of past institutions. ” One culture, however, is different from the others, and that’s modern WEIrD (“Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic”) culture. Dealing in the sweeping statistical generalizations that are the stock-in-trade of cultural evolutionary theorists—these are folks who say “people” but mean “populations” —Henrich draws the contrasts this way: Westerners are hyper-individualistic and hyper-mobile, whereas just about everyone else in the world was and still is enmeshed in family and more likely to stay put. Westerners obsess more about personal accomplishments and success than about meeting family obligations (which is not to say that other cultures don’t prize accomplishment, just that it comes with the package of family obligations).Westerners identify more as members of voluntary social groups—dentists, artists, republicans, Democrats, supporters of a Green Party—than of extended clans. In short, Henrich says, they ’re weird. They are also, in the last four words of his acronym, “educated, industrialized, rich, democratic. ”And that brings us to Henrich’s Big Question, which is really two linked questions. Starting around 1500 or so, the West becameunusuallydominant,becauseit advanced unusually quickly. What explains its extraordinary intellectual, technological, and political progress over the past five centuries?And how did its rise engender the peculiarity of the Western character? Given the nature of the project, it may be a surprise that Henrich aspires to preach humility, not pride. WEIrD people have a bad habitofuniversalizingfromtheirownparticularities.Theythinkeveryonethinkstheway theydo,andsomeofthem(notall,ofcourse) reinforce that assumption by studying themselves. In the run-up to writing the book, Henrich and two colleagues did a literature review of experimental psychology and found that 96 percent of subjects enlisted in the research came from northern Europe, north America, or Australia. About 70 percent of those were American undergraduates. Blinded by this kind of myopia, many Westerners assume that what’s good or bad for them is good or bad for everyone else. Henrich’s ambition is tricky: to account for Western distinctiveness while undercutting Western arrogance. He rests his grand theory of cultural difference on an inescapable fact of the human condition: kinship, one of our species’ “oldest and most fundamental institutions. ” Though based on primal instincts— pair-bonding, kin altruism—kinship is a social construct, shaped by rules that dictate whom people can marry, how many spouses they can have, whether they define relatedness narrowly or broadly.Throughout most of human history, certain conditions prevailed: Marriage was generally family-adjacent—Henrich’s term is “cousin marriage” —which thickened the bonds among kin. unilateral lineage (usually through the father) also solidified clans, facilitating the accumulation and intergenerational transfer of property. Higher-order institutions—governments and armies as well as religions—evolved from kin-based institutions. As families scaled up into tribes, chiefdoms, and kingdoms, they didn’t break from the past; they layered GOT 88% OF THE SUPPORT Forbes Michela Tindera new, more complex societies on top of older forms of relatedness, marriage, and lineage. Long story short, in Henrich’s view, the distinctive flavor of each culture can be traced back to its earlier kinship institutions. The Catholic Church changed all that. As of late antiquity, Europeans still lived in tribes, like most of the rest of the world. But the Church dismantled these kin-based societies with what Henrich calls its “Marriage and Family Program, ” or MFP. The MFP was really an anti-marriage and antifamily program. Why did the Church adopt it? From a cultural evolutionary point of view, the why doesn’t matter. In a footnote, Henrich skates lightly over debates about the motivations of Church leaders. But his bottom line is that the “MFP evolved and spread because it ‘ worked. ’” (Henrich’s indifference to individual and institutional intentions is guaranteed to drive historians nuts.) Forced to find Christian partners, Christians left their communities. Christianity ’s insistence on monogamy broke extended

households into nuclear families. The Church uprooted horizontal, relational identity, replacing it with a vertical identity oriented toward the institution itself. The Church was stern about its marital policies. Violations were punished by withholding Communion, excommunicating, and denying inheritances to offspring who could now be deemed “illegitimate. ” Formerly, property almost always went to family members. The idea now took hold that it could go elsewhere. At the same time, the Church urged the wealthy to ensure their place in heaven by bequeathing their money to the poor— that is, to the Church, benefactor to the needy. In so doing, “the Church’s MFP was both taking out its main rival for people’s loyalty and creating a revenue stream, ” Henrich writes. The Church, thus enriched, spread across the globe. Loosened from their roots, people gathered in cities. There they developed “impersonal prosociality ” —that is, they bonded with other city folk. They wrote city charters and formed professional guilds. Sometimes they elected leaders, the first inklings of representative democracy. Merchants had to learn to trade with strangers. Success in this new kind of commerce required a good reputation, which entailed new norms, such as impartiality. You couldn’t cheat a stranger and favor relatives and expect to make a go of it. By the time Protestantism came along, people had already internalized an individualist worldview. Henrich calls Protestantism “the WEIrDest religion, ” and says it gave a “booster shot” to the process set in motion by the Catholic Church. Integral to the companies they run), our society White House, while more than 230 others the reformation was the idea that faith entailed personal struggle rather than adherence to dogma.Vernacular translations of the Bible allowed people to interpret scripture more idiosyncratically. The mandate to read the Bible democratized literacy and education. After that came the inquiry into Godgiven natural (individual) rights and constitutional democracies. The effort to uncover the laws of political organization spurred interest in the laws of nature—in other words, science. The scientific method codified epistemic norms that broke the world down into categories and valorized abstract principles. All of these psychosocial changes fueled unprecedented innovation, the Industrial revolution, and economic growth. If Henrich’s history of Christianity and the West feels rushed and at times derivative—he acknowledges his debt to Max Weber—that’s because he’s in a hurry to explain Western psychology. The bulk of the book consists of data from many disciplines other than history, including anthropology and cross-cultural psychology, to which he and colleagues have made significant contributions. Their Kinship Intensity Index, for instance, helps them posit a doseresponse relationship between the length of time a population was exposed to the Catholic Church’s Marriage and Family Program and the WEIrDness of its character. Henrich gets amusingly granular in his statistics here. “Each century of Western church exposure cuts the rate of cousin marriage by nearly 60 percent, ” he writes. Amillennium of the MFPalso makes a person less likely to lie in court for a friend— 30 percentile points less likely. Henrich anticipates a quibble about what he calls “the Italian enigma”: Why, if Italy has been Catholic for so long, did northern Italy become a prosperous banking center, while southern Italy stayed poor and was plagued by mafiosi? The answer, Henrich declares, is that southern Italy was never conquered by the Churchbacked Carolingian empire. Sicily remained under Muslim rule and much of the rest of the south was controlled by the Orthodox Church until the papal hierarchy finally assimilated them both in the 11th century. This is why, according to Henrich, cousin marriage in the boot of Italy and Sicily is 10 times higher than in the north, and in most provinces in Sicily, hardly anyone donates blood (a measure of willingness to help strangers), while some northern provinces receive 105 donations of 16-ounce bags per 1,000 people per year. To go further afield: While Europe was first compiling its legal codes, China was punishing crimes committed against relatives more harshly than those against nonrelatives; especially severe penalties were reserved for crimes against one’s elders. As recently as the early 20th century, Chinese fathers could murder sons and get off with a warning; punishments for patricide, by contrast, were strict. Asymmetries like these, Henrich writes, “can be justified on Confucian principles and by appealing to a deep respect for elders, ” even if the WEIrD mind finds them disturbing. Henrich’s most consequential—and startling—claim is that WEIrD and nonWEIrD people possess opposing cognitive styles. They think differently. Standing apart from the community, primed to break wholes into parts and classify them, Westerners are more analytical. People from kinship-intensive cultures, by comparison, tend to think more holistically. They focus on relationships rather than categories. Henrich defends this sweeping thesis with several studies, including a test known as the Triad Task. Subjects are shown three images—say, a rabbit, a carrot, and a cat. The goal is to match a “target object” —the rabbit—with a second object.Aperson who matches the rabbit with the cat classifies: The rabbit and the cat are animals. A person who matches the rabbit with the carrot looks Because Trump bucked tradition by filing his reelection papers on the day he took office in 2017, the tracker includes more than three years of donations to the sitting president’s campaign. Some 101 billionaires and their spouses have donated $25.8 million to his campaign and its joint fundraising committees since then. Joe Biden got started much later, launching his campaign in late April 2019. He has made up ground quickly, raising money from 134 billionaires and their spouses, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. His campaign and its joint fundraising committees for relationships between the objects: The rabbit eats the carrot. You have to wonder whether the Triad Task really reflects fundamentally different cognitive bents or differences in subjects’ personal experience. Henrich cites a Mapuche, an indigenous Chilean, who matched a dog with a pig, an “analytic” choice, except the man then explained that he’d done so for a “holistic” reason: because the dog guards the pig. “This makes perfect sense, ” Henrich muses. “Most farmers rely on dogs to protect their homes and livestock from rustlers. ” Exactly! A Western undergraduate, probably not having grown up with dogs protecting her pigs, sees dogs and pigs as just animals. Henrich is more persuasive when applying his theory of cumulative culture to the evolution of ideas. Democracy, the rule of law, and human rights “didn’t start with fancy intellectuals, philosophers, or theologians, ” Henrich writes. “Instead, the ideas formed slowly, piece by piece, as regular Joes with more individualistic psychologies—be they monks, merchants, or artisans—began to form competing voluntary associations” and learned how to govern them. Toppling the accomplishments of Western civilization off their great-man platforms, he erases their claim to be monuments to rationality: Everything we think of as a cause of culture is really an effect of culture, including us. Henrich’s macro-cultural relativism has its virtues. It widens our field of vision as we assess Western values—such as objectivity, free speech, democracy, and the scientific method—that have come under sharp attack. The big-picture approach soars above the reigning paradigms in the study of European history, which have a way of collapsing into narratives of villains and victims. (Henrich forestalls the obvious objections with this jarringly offhand remark: “I’m not highlighting the very real and pervasive horrors of slavery, racism, plunder, and genocide. There are plenty of books on those subjects. ”) He refutes genetic theories of European superiority and makes a good case against economic determinism. His quarry are the “enlightened” Westerners—would-be democratizers, globalizers, well-intended purveyors of humanitarian aid—who impose impersonal institutions and abstract political principles on societies rooted in familial networks, and don’t seem to notice the trouble that follows. It should be said, though, that Henrich can make a person feel pretty helpless, with his talk of populations being swept along by cultural riptides that move “outside conscious awareness. ” Cultural evolutionary determinism may turn out to be as disempowering as all the other determinisms; a WEIrD reader may feel trapped inside her own prejudices. But perhaps some comfort lies in Henrich’s dazzling if not consistently plausible supply of unintended consequences. Who would have imagined that the Catholic Church would have spawned so many self-involved nonconformists? What else might our curious history yield? Henrich’s social-scientist stance of neutrality may also relieve Westerners of some (one hopes not all) of their burden of guilt. “By highlighting the peculiarities of WEIrD people, I’m not denigrating these populations or any others, ” he writes. WEIrDos aren’t all bad; they ’re provincial. Henrich offers a capacious new perspective that could facilitate the necessary work of sorting out what’s irredeemable and what’s invaluable in the singular, impressive, and wildly problematic legacy of Western domination.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ is the author of The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time.

The Weirdest People in the World: How and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Billionaire backers

BIDEN DOMINATES CALIFORNIA, WHERE HE CAPTURED 84% OF BILLIONAIRE DONORS. TRUMP RULES TEXAS, WHERE HE

sweeping influence in our economy (through (through the products they develop) and our politics (through the candidates they fund). On the political stage, they ’ ve never played a bigger role. One billionaire is sitting in the are spending money to help keep him in the Oval Office—or kick him out. With the moment in mind, Forbes put together a one-ofa-kind, interactive tracker that shows where America’s richest people have placed bets so far in the 2020 election. the West Became Psychologically Peculiar have received $13.4 million directly from billionaires, less than Trump’s. But Biden’s richest backers are putting more money into super-PACs supporting the former vice president, adding at least another $19 million to the effort. Dig into the data, and you ’ll see plenty of other trends. For example, more donors for both candidates made their money in finance and investments than any other industry. Beyond Wall Street, however, Biden and Trump’s constituencies diverge. Biden dominates California, where he captured 84% of billionaire donors. Trump rules Texas, where he got 88% of the support. The tool includes some donors who have already made a splash in Washington (Adelson, Soros, Bloomberg) as well as hundreds who haven’t (including Ballmer, Skoll and Broad).

Private sector set to import LNG before peak winter UGDC CEO CONFIDENT OF GAS SHORTAGE ISSUE BEING RESOLVED SOON

ISLAMABAD APP

Aprivate sector company, which secured gas sales and marketing licence from Oil and Gas RegulatoryAuthority (OGRA), is all set to start importing Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) in October and November, supplementing the government efforts to meet the consumers’increased demand. “We are ready and just waiting for the implementation on legal framework prepared by the government to facilitate private sector in the LNG import, ” Universal Gas Distribution Company (UGDC) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) GhiyasAbdullah Paracha told APP. He said there were some bureaucratic snags for private import and utilisation of the LNG, which would hopefully be removed at the earliest as the government believed in opening up the energy sector for private sector players. “The UGDCL has planned to import its first LNG shipment in October and November subject to implementation on the legal framework, ” Paracha, who is alsoAll Pakistan Compressed Natural GasAssociation’s (APCNGA) central chairman, said. Recently, he said, the government had also invited the private sector to use the unutilised and access private capacity of the LNG terminals to ensure improved supply of the gas to consumers in the upcoming winter season. With the private sector import, Paracha expressed confidence that the commodity shortage would be overcome to great extent; besides CNG stations and other industries would continue to operate as per routine. He said it would also help the government saving around Rs97 billion on account of the LNG terminals ‘fixed charges, ’if the private import continued throughout a year. In addition, he said, the government would generate around Rs104 bn revenue in a year after the flow of private sector LNG in transmission network of Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) and Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL). “The country ’s oil import bill would also come down by Rs800 bn, ” he said, adding that imported LNG was almost 13 per cent cheaper than the other imported fuel. “We will import our own LNG, inject in the pipelines of the gas companies, supply to CNG stations and other industries and collect bills from our consumers by paying rent to SSGC and SNGP against the utilisation of their transmission network. ” The UGDC CEO said it would be a win-win situation for all stakeholders as the private sector would get business and consumers smooth supply of gas throughout the year without any financial involvement of the government. Paracha said the UGDC had signed agreements with 670 CNG stations and some other industrial units for supply of the gas and “We are just looking for implementation on the Legal Framework to start the LNG import. ” Meanwhile, theAPCNGA welcomed the Economic Coordination Committee’s (ECC) decision with regard to allowing the OGRAto issue licences for setting up new CNG stations after a break of 12 years. The ECC has permitted OGRAto issue new CNG Licenses to Regasified Liquefied Natural Gas (RLNG)-based filling stations. “We are thankful to the government. It is an extremely positive step, which reflected the government’s prudent policy and future vision for the revival of the CNG sector, ” Paracha said, adding that the decision would help bring down the country ’s oil import bill and create around 1.2 million job opportunities. “With the increased use of CNG in major cities, environmental pollution would also come down drastically, ” he concluded.

BUSINESS 09 No chANGe iN PermissioNs uNDer forex reGuLAtioNs: sBP

KARACHI MEIRYUM AlI

tHE State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Sunday issued a clarification on the recently announced federal rules on foreign currency accounts. “There has been no change in the general or special permissions given by the State Bank to individuals under the foreign exchange regulations, ” the central bank emphatically stated.

In its clarification, the State Bank said that according to paragraph iv, Chapter 6 of the Foreign Exchange Manual, foreign currency accounts can be fed by remittances received from abroad, travellers’ cheques issued outside Pakistan and encashment of securities issued by the government of Pakistan.

Aforeign currency account of a citizen of Pakistan residentinPakistancanalsobefedwithcashforeigncurrency only if the account holder is a filer as defined in IncomeTax Ordinance, 2001. On October 6, the federal government issued Foreign Currency Accounts Rules, 2020undertheprovisionsofProtectionofEconomicReformsAct, 1992, in a bid to stop money laundering.

According to the document, a foreign currency account of an individual may be credited with the remittancesreceivedfromabroadthroughabankingchannel, except for payment for goods exported from Pakistan.

Additionally, payment for services rendered in or from Pakistan, proceeds of securities issued or sold to non-residents, and any foreign exchange borrowed from abroad under any general or special permission of the State Bank, provided that the SBP may issue any general or special permission for credit the account, will also not be allowed.

However, the new rules do allow people in foreign countries to send money to Pakistan in different ways, forexample,aforeigncurrencyaccountmaybecredited through transfer from another individual foreign currencyaccount.Thereisalsonorestrictiononcashwithdrawal or transfer from the foreign currency account.

Despite the differences in the wording between the federal government and the central bank, in its notice, the central bank said, “The recently issued rules aim to provide a regulatory framework for the operation of individual foreign currency accounts. Such a framework represents a continuation of the State Bank of Pakistan’s efforts to strengthen the foreign exchange regime and make it more market-oriented. ”

The regulator also said it would continue to take steps to facilitate greater use of banking channels for individuals to meet all their foreign exchange needs.

Bisconni and Snack City CEO Hamid Ismail, PTI MPA Adeel Khan and MQM’s Hashim Raza cut the ribbon WASL water plant in Korangi on Sunday. PRESS RElEASE

Digital banking grows 12pc, paperbased transactions down 10pc in FY20

LAHORE TAIMOOR HASSAN

A total of 905.9 million e-Banking transactions worth Rs65.9 trillion via automated teller machines (ATMs), internet and mobile banking,pointofsale(POS)systemsand other digital banking channels were processed in the country, growing 4.2 per cent in volume and 12.2pc Year-on-Year (YoY), according to the data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Sunday.

On the other hand, 424.6 m transactions of worth Rs131.2 tn were carried out using paper-based instruments such as cheques, pay orders and demand drafts etc., recording a decline of 8.7pc in volume and 10.1pc in value as compared to last year.

In the annual Payment Systems Review for Fiscal Year 2019-20, the central bank noted that Pakistan had seen major improvements in the number of transactions through digital means, especially after the start of Covid-19 lockdown period when the SBP waived all charges on digital fund transfers.

The State Bank underlined that significant progress has been observed in the usage of internet banking and mobile banking channels duringthelastfewyears,whichisevidentfromthefactthatinthelastfive year,theinternetbankingtransactions have seen compound annualised growth of 31pc, whereas mobile banking transactions have grown by 86pcduring thesaid period.

The overall volume and value of financial transactions in the countryduringFY2019-20declined by 0.3pc and 1.9pc, respectively.

As of end June 2020, the total number of ATMs in the country were 15,612, up by 6pc from last year, accounting for approximately 7.5 ATM touchpoints for a population of 100,000, which is quite low whencomparedwithothercountries in the region, including 22ATMs in India, 9 ATMs in Bangladesh, 14 ATMs in Nepal, and 88 ATMs in Iran per 100,000 population.

Furthermore, a turnover of 70.3 m POS transactions valuing Rs364.2 bn was recorded in FY20 as compared to 72.4 m transactions valuing Rs366.2 bn in FY19, showing a YoY decline of 2.9pc by volume and 0.5pc by value of transactions. The number of POS terminals also declined to 49,067 from 56,911 terminals last year.

POS transactions have 7.8pc share in the total volume of transactions, with a value share of 0.6pc showing low uptake of merchant onboarding and insignificant usage of debit cards for retail transactions. The central banks had anticipated the decrease in POS transactions due to the impacts of Covid-19 pandemic as most of the shops and markets were closed during the long lockdown period.

On the eCommerce side, consumers carried out 10.2 m online transactions of worth Rs34.9 bn on locally registered eCommerce merchants during the year FY20.These transactions showed significant YoY growth of 78.9pc and 33.7pc by volume and value respectively.

KP fisheries dept fails to utilise ADP funds in first quarter

PESHAWAR AZIZ BUNERI

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Fisheries Department could not manage to spend a single rupee of the government allocated Rs380 million for various projects during the first three months of the current financial year (FY). It may be mentioned here that Rs111.334 million of the total amount has been released by the finance department. In fact, the department has postponed plans to increase trout fish production across the province despite the availability of funds.According to the KPFinance Department documents, the provincial government has approved the Establishment of Trout fish Villages in Malakand and Hazara Division at the cost of Rs180 m while Rs114.6 m were released for the development of Cold Water Fisheries in KPunder the Prime MinisterAgriculture Emergency Programme but none of the projects has been started by the fisheries department. Moreover, for the promotion of trout fish farming in Northern areas, the KPFinance Department has released Rs40 million but the fisheries department has yet to start work on the project.According to sources in the Fisheries Department, several important projects have been made part of the annual development programme to increase trout production in different districts of Malakand and Hazara divisions where cold water is available, but due to the incompetence of the fisheries department, no such project could be launched. Critics believe that the cost of projects will increase with the passage of time. Sources state that on one hand, the department is unable to spend funds while on the other, the provincial government is trying to limit hatcheries to one district; and Swat, Dir and Malakand which are suitable for the trout production have been ignored completely. Earlier, the department had set up several hatcheries in Upper Swat to increase trout production but the recent floods destroyed most of them.

UK economy faces‘perfect storm’as winter looms

LONDON AGENCIES

The UK economy is expected to stall in the coming months — and may even go into reverse — as it faces a triple threat of the COVID-19 second wave, the end of furlough, and Brexit.

“Going forward, the UK almost has this perfect storm, ”Alejandra Grindal, senior international economist at Ned Davies Research, told Yahoo Finance UK.

The UK economy was already weak before the pandemic struck and suffered the biggest economic collapse of any developed nation during the crisis.

Data from the Office for National Statistics, published on Friday, showed a nascent recovery from this collapse lost steam inAugust. GDP grew by just 2.1% in the month, well below economists’ forecasts and down from 8.7% in June. “The absence of momentum does not bode well, ” said Barclays economist Fabrice Montagne.

Deceleration is expected to continue in the months ahead.The government is poised to introduce new restrictions to cope with COVID-19, a Brexit deadline looms, and changes to government support schemes could force many onto the dole queue.

“There is further cause for concern ahead, ” said Dr Kemar Whyte, a senior economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. NO SUBSTITUTE FOR OPEN ECONOMY: As restrictions ramp up, the government’s flagship job support scheme is coming to an end. The furlough programme will close at the end of October.

On Friday, chancellor Rishi Sunak announced new support to help areas hit by local lockdowns. The programme amounts to a local furlough scheme for staff and includes cash grants of up to £3,000 ($3,883) per month for affected businesses.

Roger Barker, director of policy at the Institute of Directors, said the extension would “provide a lifeline for many companies and people impacted by the efforts to stop the virus spreading. ” But he said there would still be “potential second-order impacts of local lockdowns. ” Shutting restaurants will mean lower demand for meat and vegetable suppliers, for example. If those suppliers are based outside of the lockdown area, they won’t be eligible for support.

“At the end of the day, no fiscal support will ever be a substitute for an open, functioning economy, ” said Adam Marshall, the director general of the British Chamber of Commerce. The end of furlough creates problems not just for areas hit by local lockdowns, but the wider economy too. The ONS this week estimated that 9% of the workforce remains on furlough.

The chancellor has announced a new scheme that will subsidise the wages of parttimeworkersafterfurloughaslongastheirjobs remain viable. But the key word here is viable —manypeoplecurrentlyonfurloughmayfind themselvesoutofworknextmonthasemployers judgetheir jobs areno longer needed.

Grindal said the replacement programme was “not going to cover nearly as much people as the furlough scheme. ”

Floods kill 17 people in central Vietnam, next storm due soon

HANOI AGENCIES

At least 17 people have been killed by floods in Vietnam’s central provinces in the past week and 13 are still missing, state media said on Sunday as the country braced for another tropical storm. In the next few days, the central region should be prepared for another typhoon, Linfa, which will bring more rains and result in more flooding, state broadcaster Vietnam Television (VTV) reported. Footage broadcast by VTV showed fishermen being rescued by coastguard and helicopters as strong winds battered the central Vietnamese coast in the central province of Quang Tri. Floods have cut food supplies to thousands of people.Around 31,000 people have been displaced and more than 33,000 houses submerged and damaged by floods, according to a government report. Vietnam is prone to destructive storms and flooding due to its long coastline. Natural disasters - predominantly floods and landslides triggered by storms - killed 132 people and injured 207 others in the country last year.

turning local, British PM Johnson to unveil new coronavirus rules

LONDON AGENCIES

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce new measures to tackle a growing coronavirus crisis on Monday, moving to work more closely with local leaders from England’s worst affected areas. With Johnson reluctant to repeat a national lockdown that would further hurt a struggling economy, the government is trying to contain a surge in cases, as well as growing anger, in parts of northern and central England. England’s deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam described Britain as being at a “tipping point” , saying the spread would soon translate into more deaths and that the country should act now. Robert Jenrick, Britain’s housing minister, refused to detail the new measures the prime minister will announce but said they would focus on local areas. Johnson was expected to speak to ministers later on Sunday. “In addition to the basic simple rules that apply to the whole country, we are designing a framework for those places for where the virus is very strong, ” Jenrick told Sky News. “We want the strongest possible working relationship now between central government and local government, ” he said, “So it’s right that we take action in those communities and design the measures in conjunction with people who know those places best. ” Jenrick said local leaders would be more involved in contact tracing after the robustness of Britain’s test-and-trace system has been repeatedly questioned, and that there would be more guidance on travel. The government, local media said, might also introduce a three tier-system to try to simplify the rules and the messaging, which opposition parties and some in the governing Conservative Party say has been too confusing and might have contributed to rising cases. But with many in northern England having already lived with tightened restrictions for weeks, the government might have to do more to quell growing anger over any new measures. Local leaders said there was a “gulf” with the government on the best steps forward after complaining for months that they were being left out of decision-making by what some called an overly centralised strategy. “We’ ve certainly not agreed with them. I think there is probably a large gulf at the moment between us and the government, ” Richard Leese, the leader of Manchester City Council, told Times Radio. Labour also urged the government to offer more financial support if businesses were told to close, and that the opposition party would work on offering an alternative package to one announced by finance minister Rishi Sunak on Friday. “What we really want ... is the government to come forward with a package of financial support that enables people to comply with the health restrictions, ” Lisa Nandy, Labour’s foreign policy chief, told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show.

IraQI FIghterS Say they haVe halted antI-US attackS

BAGHDAD AGENCIES

aN array of Iran-backed Iraqi armed groups have suspended rocket attacks on US forces on condition that Iraq’s government present a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops, one of the groups said on Sunday.

A spokesman for Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most powerful Iran-backed groups in Iraq, said the groups were presenting no set deadline, but that if US troops “insisted on staying” they would unleash much more violent attacks.

Washington, which is slowly reducing its 5,000 troops in Iraq, threatened last month to shut its embassy unless the Iraqi government reins in Iranaligned groups that have attacked US interests with rockets and roadside bombs.

The US warning caused alarm in Iraq, where it wasseenasasteptowardsairstrikes,potentiallyturning Iraq into a battleground in a proxy war between the US and Iran. A broad array of politicians called on the groups to stop provoking theAmericans.

“The factions have presented a conditional ceasefire, ” Kataib Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Mohi told Reuters. “It includes all factions of the (anti-US) resistance, including those who have been targeting US forces. ”

OnSaturday,groupscallingthemselvesthe“Iraqi Resistance Coordination Commission” published a statement suggesting they would suspend attacks in returnforaclearplanforUStroopstoleave.Mohidid not specify which groups had drafted the statement.

He said that the Iraqi government must implement a parliamentary resolution in January calling for foreign troops to withdraw. ROADSIDE BLAST: Iraq is one of the few countries with close ties to both the US and Iran, both of which provided military support to help defeat IS fighters, who were beaten back in a three-year war after seizing a third of Iraq in 2014.

Iraqishavelongfearedtheircountrycouldbecome a proxy battleground, especially since Washington killedTehran’s military mastermind QasemSoleimani in a drone strike at Baghdad airport in January.

Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an Iraqi leader of proIran militias, was also killed. Factions that Soleimani and Muhandis commanded, including Kataib Hezbollah, swore to avenge them.

But pro-Iran groups have faced a popular backlash from Iraqis who accuse them of putting the country ’s security at risk by attacking theAmericans.

Mohi said that there was no deadline for the government to expel foreign troops, but “if America insists on staying and doesn’t respect the parliament’s decision then the factions will use all the weapons at their disposal” .

He said that rockets fired at US forces and diplomatic compounds were a message, and worse attacks could follow.

US officials blame Kataib Hezbollah for dozens of rocket attacks against US installations in Iraq.

Kataib Hezbollah denies involvement, and some attacks have been claimed by smaller, little-known groups, though Iraqi officials believe these may be fronts for bigger groups.

Aroadside blast hit a convoy in southern Iraq on Sunday delivering equipment to the US-led military coalition in the country, damaging a tyre but causing no casualties, the military said. There was no claim of responsibility.

Police in Belarus crack down on protesters, detain dozens

MOSCOW AGENCIES

Security forces in Belarus detained dozens of protesters on Sunday and used force, including water cannon and batons, to break up crowds demanding a new presidential election, TV footage showed.

Footage published by local news outlets showed police officers wearing black balaclavas dragging protesters into unmarked black vans and beating protesters with their batons at a rally that drew thousands onto the streets of Minsk, the capital.

One sequence showed a police van unleashing a powerful jet of water from a cannon into crowds, visibly pushing them back.

Belarus,aformerSovietrepubliccloselyalliedwith Russia, has been rocked by street protests and strikes sinceauthoritiesannouncedthatveteranleaderAlexanderLukashenkohadwonanAug.9votebyalandslide.

People have since taken to the streets every week to demand that Lukashenko step down and allow for a new election to be held. Lukashenko, a former collective farm manager who has been in power since 1994, denies his win was the result of cheating.

Security forces have detained more than 13,000 people during a post-election crackdown, some of whom have been later freed.

Lukashenko’s key political opponents are either in jail or have fled abroad.

Sunday ’s violence followed a meeting Lukashenko held on Saturday in a Minsk jail with detained opposition leaders, an unusual event that prompted some opposition activists to believe he was preparing to make concessions.

Police in Minsk said on Sunday they had detained “several dozen” people.

Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that around 50 people had been detained and that police had used stun grenades to dispel demonstrators.

The United States, the European Union, Britain andCanadahaveimposedsanctionsagainstastringof seniorofficialsinBelarusaccusedoffraudandhuman rights abuses in the wake of the presidential election.

Opposition leader SviatlanaTsikhanouskaya, who is now based in Lithuania, has called for new elections and for all political prisoners to be freed.

“We will continue to march peacefully and persistently and demand what is ours: new free and transparent elections, ” Tsikhanouskaya wrote on her Telegram channel on Sunday.

Similar rallies were held in other cities across the country on Sunday.

‘Israel would oppose any US F-35 sale to Qatar’

Israel would oppose any US sale of advanced F-35 warplanes to Qatar, Israel’s intelligence minister said on Sunday, citing a need to maintain Israeli military superiority in the region. Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen made the comments in response to a Reuters report that Qatar - whose Iran links trouble Israel had submitted a formal request to Washington to buy the Lockheed Martin Corp. stealth jet. The United States consults with Israel on proposed sales of advanced arms to other countries in the region, under a principle of preserving Israel’s “qualitative military edge” . Some such sales have gone ahead over Israeli objections.Asked whether Israel would oppose an F-35 sale to Qatar, Cohen told Army Radio: “The answer is yes. Our security and military superiority in the region are the most significant things for us. Our region has still not turned into Switzerland. ” Qatar’s F-35 request follows anAugust deal in which Washington agreed to consider giving the UnitedArab Emirates approval to buy the jets in a side deal to a US-brokered agreement normalising ties between Israel and that Gulf power. Israel, which has bought and deployed the F-35, has voiced discomfort at the prospect of UAE also getting the warplane - though the two countries have played up shared concerns about threats from Iran. Qatar, by contrast, maintains ties with Iran as well as with the Palestinian group Hamas, against which Israel has fought three wars in Gaza. But Qatar has also funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Gaza, payouts Israel has facilitated in hope of heading off another conflict in the impoverished enclave. AGENCIES

Analysis: North Korea's Kim speaks softly, shows off new military might

SEOUL AGENCIES

North Korea’s unprecedented nighttime military parade on Saturday showcased an unusually broad array of new weapons, from a show-stopping “monster” ballistic missile to previously unseen battle tanks.

The hardware, likely still in varying stages of development, offered leader Kim Jong Un a chance to show the world his cutting-edge military power while adding practical capabilities to the North Korea’s already formidable nuclear and conventional forces, experts said.

Kim is walking a fine line, seeking to increase pressure on the United States to ease sanctions while not destroying rapport with US President DonaldTrump or Pyongyang’s partners in China.

“Kim Jong Un’s speech was not threatening to the United States, instead labelling North Korea’s nuclear forces as self-defensive, ” said Bruce Klingner, a retired CIA North Korea analyst now at the Heritage Foundation. “The clear message was that, counter to US claims, the North Korean nuclear threat has not been solved. ”

Video from the parade suggested a huge intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) potentially more lethal either because of multiple warheads or a bigger payload, larger missile carriers, a next-generation submarine-launched missile, and advances in conventional weaponry, military analysts said. MULTIPLE WARHEADS? The star of Saturday ’s show was a massive, previously unseen ICBM carried on an equally huge “transporter-erector-launcher” (TEL) vehicle with 11 axles.

Estimated to be 25 to 26 metres (82 to 85 feet) long and 2.5 to 2.9 metres (8 to 9.5 feet) in diameter, the unidentified missile would be the largest road-mobile ICBM in the world, military analysts said.

Given that the Hwasong-15, the largest missile ever test-flown by North Korea, can already target anywhere in the United States, the most likely practical use for the new ICBM would be the ability to carry multiple warheads, said Melissa Hanham, deputy director of the Open Nuclear Network.

It is much cheaper for North Korea to add warheads than for the United States to add interceptors, said Jeffrey Lewis, a missile researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS).

“If each new North Korean ICBM can carry 3-4 warheads, we would need about 12-16 interceptors for each missile, ” he said onTwitter. “The last time the U.S. bought 14 interceptors, it cost $1 billion. ”

Other analysts said the missile could simply be designed to carry a single, larger warhead.

“A bigger warhead doesn’t necessarily mean multiple warheads, a technology I believe North Korea has not secured yet, ” said Kim Dong-yup, a former South Korea Navy officer who is now a professor at Kyungnam University ’s Far East Institute in Seoul. MISSILE CARRIERS: Analysts said it was also notable that North Korea appeared to have built the huge newTELs to carry the new missiles.

“They have a very limited supply of long TELs they acquired from China, ” said another CNS researcher, Dave Schmerler, adding that the lack of vehicles has limited the number of ICBMs that could be deployed. “So the longer TELs we saw were indigenously produced. ”

But the massive size of the new missile and its carrier also has drawbacks, said Markus Schiller, a missile expert based in

NADAL wiNS 13tH FreNCH OPeN tO CLAiM reCOrD-equALLiNg 20tH grAND SLAM titLe

AgenCIes

SPAIN'S Rafael Nadal demolished world number one Novak Djokovic of Serbia 6-0 6-2 7-5 in the French Open final to claim a record-equalling 20th Grand Slam title on Sunday.

With his record-improving 13th triumph at Roland Garros, world number two Nadal is now tied with Swiss Roger Federer as the player with the most men's singles major titles. Nadal was the early aggressor as he choked Djokovic to win the opening set in brutal fashion having made only two unforced errors. He then kept a firm grip on a subdued Djokovic in the second set under the roof of court Philippe Chatrier. Djokovic, who was looking to win his 18th Grand Slam title, rebelled in the third set, breaking back for 3-3, only to drop serve on a double fault in the 11th game before Nadal went on to bag his 100th victory at Roland Garros with an ace.

Danish, Hassan help Sindh record thrilling triumph in National T20 Cup

KARACHI PPI

Two childhood friends’Danish Aziz and former Pakistan U19 captain Hassan Khan performed brilliantly to take Sindh from a likely defeat to a thrilling win in National T20 Cup for First XI.

Languishing at the fifth spot with a mere two points and four losses in their first five games, Sindh looked destined for another defeat Saturday night at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium in their sixth match of the event when they lost their fifth wicket of the big-hittingAzam Khan with only 97 runs on the board

in their chase of 171 runs against the BabarAzam-led Central Punjab.The match was then turned decisively on its head in a stunning sixth wicket partnership of 57 runs in a mere 27 balls between two childhood friends’ man-of-the-match Danish Aziz and former Pakistan U19 captain Hassan Khan.

Hassan, who led Pakistan in the ICC U19 Cricket World Cup 2018, stunned both the Central Punjab team and cricket fans with a series of huge sixes which belied his slight frame. The right-hander sealed the fate of the match by hitting fast bowler EhsanAdil for three sixes in the 17th over of the Sindh innings.

Before the start of the over, Sindh needed 37 off 24 balls, Hassan went into the top-gear smoking sixes on the second, fourth and fifth ball of the over as 20 runs were taken of the over. Hassan eventually fell for 36 off a mere 15 balls (two fours, four sixes) but had done enough to make the job easy both for his batting partner Danish and the batsmen to follow as Sindh completed their chase on the first ball of the 20th over with three wickets to spare.

Hassan Khan: “When I joined Danish at the crease, we decided to attack to bring the asking rate down. Danish briefed me about the behaviour of the pitch and how we needed to approach the task at hand. We aimed to get at least one boundary per over and score runs in singles or doubles in the rest of the over.

“I really enjoyed the flick over square-leg that went for six in that Ehsan Adil over; I was very pleased to play a match winning role and that too in the company of my childhood friend Danish. ”

Danish remained calm despite losing Hassan and then Anwar Ali, with nine runs required off the last seven balls, Danish hit Ehsan for a six over long-on which proved to be the decisive blow. Sohail Khan scored two runs off the first ball of Waqas Maqsood’s final over of the match before a wide bowled by Waqas finished the match in Sindh’s favour.

Danish who scored 59 not out off 32 balls, (five fours, three sixes) was equally pleased with his effort of seeing his side through to victory, like Hassan, he also enjoyed the company of his good friend in the crucial sixth wicket partnership.

DanishAziz: “Hassan and I are childhood friends; we have played a lot of cricket together for Karachi and have represented Pakistan in age-group cricket together. We play a lot of club cricket together and also practiced at the same academy. We know each other’s capabilities and game very well which I feel helped us a great deal out in the middle. I am very pleased that I contributed to my side’s win in a tournament which has a lot of interest and following, I enjoyed all my boundaries but the six against Ehsan Adil in the penultimate over stands out. ”

SPORTS 11 Afridi to coach Pakistan’s physically disabled cricketers and head PDCA

KARACHI: Former Pakistan captain Pakistan cricket team ShahidAfridi will coach and train Pakistan’s physically disabled cricket team and he has also accepted Pakistan Disabled CricketAssociation chairmanship role. The ShahidAfridi Foundation (SAF) has signed an MoU with the Pakistan Disabled CricketAssociation to support Pakistan’s physically disabled cricketers. Under this initiative, SAF will provide assistance to PDCAfor the betterment of Pakistan’s Physically Disabled Cricketers. SAF ChairmanAfridi signed a Memorandum of Understanding on behalf of SAF and SecretaryAmiruddin Ansari on behalf of PDCAat his residence. On the occasion, Secretary PDCAAmiruddinAnsari offered the chairmanship of PDCAto the legendary captain of Pakistan cricket team ShahidAfridi. The former captain gladly accepted the offer.Afridi said that the PDCA, despite its limited resources with the supporter of the Pakistan Cricket Board, has rendered exemplary services to the development of physical disability cricket. The former captain further said that steps will be taken to run the PDCAin a more professional manner. The former Pakistani all-rounder called on cricket sponsors to come forward to support these rare cricketers along with other cricketers so that these cricketers can also get their rightful place.Afridi assured that the ShahidAfridi Foundation will fully support the PDCAfor the promotion and noble cause of Physically Disabled Cricketers in Pakistan and will work with the PDCAfor national and international activities. Secretary PDCA,AmiruddinAnsari congratulated ShahidAfridi on becoming the Chairman of PDCAand thanked the Foundation.AmiruddinAnsari further said that he is very hopeful for the betterment of the disabled cricketers of the country in collaboration with SAF. PPI

Lewis Hamilton ties Michael Schumacher’s record of 91 F1 race wins

Lewis Hamilton moved level with Michael Schumacher’s record of 91 Formula One wins with a victory at the Eifel Grand Prix in Nurburg, Germany, on Sunday. Hamilton won comfortably after Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas suffered a raceending engine issue. The win increases Hamilton’s lead to 69 points in the championship. After the race, Hamilton was presented with one of Schumacher’s famous red race helmets by the seven-time world champion’s son, Mick. Asked what the gesture and the record meant to him, Hamilton replied: “I don’t even know what to say. “When you grow up watching someone, generally idolised them, in terms of the quality of driver they are but also what they ’re able to continuously do year on year, race on race, week on week, with their team. “I don’t think anyone, especially me, thought I’d be anywhere near Michael in terms of records. It’s an incredible honour and it’s going to take some time to get used to. Honestly, as I came into the pit lane that’s only when I realised, I hadn’t even computed it when I crossed the line. I couldn’t have done it without this incredible team pushing behind me and giving it their everything. “Avery big thank you and a huge respect to Michael. ” By way of comparison, Hamilton reached his current tally on his 261st F1 race start. Schumacher reached the 91-win mark at his 247th start, the 2006 Chinese Grand Prix. The pair are comfortably clear of the next drivers in the record books. After Hamilton and Schumacher, the next drivers on the all-time winners list are Sebastian Vettel (53), Alain Prost (51), Ayrton Senna (41), Fernando Alonso (32), Nigel Mansell (31), Jackie Stewart (27), Jim Clark, Niki Lauda (both 25) and Juan Manuel Fangio (24). Hamilton is also on course to claim a seventh world championship this season, which would move him level with the only remaining significant record in Schumacher’s name. AGENCIES

PCB announces revised itinerary for Zimbabwe series

KARACHI PPI

Pakistan will launch its bid to qualify directly for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 by taking on Zimbabwe in the three ICC Men’s CricketWorld Cup Super League matches in Rawalpindi on 30 October, 1 and 3 November, the Pakistan Cricket Board confirmed on Sunday.

The ICC has introduced the Super League to provide context to ODI cricket and will serve as a qualification for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2023 with the hosts and other top seven sides automatically booking their spots for the India event. Featuring 13 teams, the 12 Test playing countries and the Netherlands, the Super League will see each side play four home and four away three-match series.

The three ODIs were originally scheduled for Multan, but have been moved to Rawalpindi due to logistical and operational challenges. The change in the venue also means Lahore will now stage the three Twenty20 Internationals on 7, 8 and 10 November. These matches were initially planned to take place in Rawalpindi.

Explaining the changes, PCB Director –InternationalCricket,ZakirKhansaid:“After Multan became unavailable due to logistical and operational reasons, we took the opportunity to revisit the entire schedule and have come up with an itinerary that is suitable for the teams, match officials, broadcasters, event staff and other support agencies. “In the meantime, we are also in regular touch with the Metrological department and seekingtheirforecastforsmogduringNovember. WewillcontinuetoliaisewiththeMetOffice and monitor the situation, and, if required, will make necessary changes.

“The availability of Rawalpindi has ensured there is no uncertainty for our ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup Super League matches as we aim to collect maximum points from this series to achieve our target of qualifying directly for the ICC’s pinnacle 50-over event. ”

Zimbabwe last visited Pakistan in 2015 for three ODIs and two T20Is. However, they now return after international cricket has resumed in Pakistan with full force following the successful tours of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in the 2019-20 season.

In addition to this, HBL Pakistan Super League, for the first time in its young history, was staged in Pakistan until the last four matches were postponed on 17 March due to Covid-19 pandemic. These matches of the fifth edition will be staged in Lahore on 14, 15 and 17 November.

NEWS

naGorno-KarabaKh truCe under severe strain as both sides alleGe violations

BAKU AENCIES

aRussian-brokered humanitarian ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh was under severe strain on Sunday a day after it was agreed, withAzerbaijan andArmenia accusing each other of serious violations and crimes against civilians.

The ceasefire, clinched after marathon talks in Moscow advocated by President Vladimir Putin, was meant to halt fighting to allow ethnic Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh and Azeri forces to swap prisoners and war dead.

The Moscow talks were the first diplomatic contact between the two since fighting over the mountainous enclave erupted on Sept 27, killing hundreds of people.The enclave is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but is populated and governed by ethnicArmenians.

THE CEASEFIRE MEANT TO HALT FIGHTING TO ALLOW BOTH COUNTRIES TO SWAP PRISONERS AND WAR DEAD

Both sides accused one another of breaking the ceasefire almost immediately on Saturday, and Azerbaijan gave the impression in public comments from top officials that it saw it as only a brief and temporary breathing space anyway.

On Sunday,Azerbaijan accusedArmenia of heavily shelling a residential area in Ganja, its second largest city, in the early hours of the morning, and of hitting an apartment building. The Azeri Prosecutor General’s Office said five people had been killed and 28 wounded in the attack, which it said violated the norms of the Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians.

TheArmenian defence ministry called theAzeri allegations “an absolute lie” and accused Azerbaijan of continuing to shell populated areas inside Karabakh, including Stepanakert, the region’s biggest city.

A Reuters photographer in Ganja saw rescue workers carrying one dead person from the ruins of a large apartment building on Sunday morning. The structure had been almost levelled. An excavator was clearing the debris. Buildings and cars in the immediate vicinity had also been severely damaged. Reuters could not independently verifyAzeri assertions about the number of fatalities.

Azerbaijan accused Armenia of also launching an unsuccessful rocket attack on an Azeri hydro-electric power station in Mingachevir. Ethnic Armenian forces in Karabakh denied the assertion.

Arayik Haratyunyan, the leader of ethnic Armenian forces in NagornoKarabakh, described the situation as relatively calm on Sunday morning, but said he did not know how long it would last and that the frontline remained tense.

He accused Azeri forces of trying to unsuccessfully take control of the town of Hadrut, and said the process of the two sides exchanging prisoners should have started on Sunday, but that it was unclear if and when that would happen. Renewed fightinginthedecades-oldconflicthasraised fears of a wider war drawing in Turkey, a close ally of Azerbaijan, and Russia, which has a defence pact with Armenia. The clashes have also increased concern about the security of pipelines that carryAzeri oil andgastoEurope. The fighting is the worst since a 1991-94 war that killed about 30,000 people and ended with a ceasefire that has been violated repeatedly.

Covid-19 Cases Cross 7m in india as experts warn of ComplaCenCy

NEW DELHI: India’s confirmed coronavirus toll crossed 7 million on Sunday with a number of new cases dipping in recent weeks, even as health experts warn of mask and distancing fatigue setting in. The Health Ministry registered another 74,383 infections in the past 24 hours. India is expected to become the pandemic’s worst-hit country in coming weeks, surpassing the United States, where more than 7.7 million infections have been reported. The ministry also reported 918 additional deaths, taking total fatalities to 108,334. The number of people who have died of Covid-19 has remained relatively low in South and Southeast Asia — from India to Vietnam and Taiwan — compared to European countries and the US, said Dr. Randeep Guleria, a government health expert. “We have been able to keep the curve rise slow, but I do agree that we have not been able to get it to move aggressively down. That’s related to our population density, diversity of our country and socioeconomic challenges in our country, ” said Guleria, referring to India’s burgeoning population of nearly 1.4 billion. Some experts say though that India’s death toll may not be reliable because of poor reporting and health infrastructure and inadequate testing. India aims to provide vaccines to 250 million people by July 2021, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said last week. He said that the government was planning to receive 450 million to 500 million vaccine doses and would ensure “equitable access” . India saw a steep rise in cases in July and added more than 2 million inAugust and another 3 million in September. But it is seeing a slower pace of coronavirus spread since mid-September, when the daily infections touched a record high of 97,894. AGENCIES

TrumpseekstoputCovid-19behind him,getbacktoelectioncampaign

WASHINGTON AGENCIES

Donald Trump is no longer a transmission risk for Covid-19, his doctor said late on Saturday, as the United States president seeks to put his bout with coronavirus behind him and return to the campaign fray.

Trump,trailinghisDemocraticchallenger Joe Biden in opinion polls, addressed supporters from a White House balcony on Saturday afternoon. He urged a crowd of hundreds of largely Black and Latino supporters to help get out the vote in the Nov. 3 election.

His physician Sean Conley said in a statement later that Trump had taken a test on Saturday showing he was no longer “a transmission risk to others, ” and there was no longer evidence “of actively replicating virus. ”

The White House had no immediate comment on whether Conley ’s statement meant Trump had actually tested negative for the coronavirus.

Trump first revealed that he had tested positive on Oct. 2, and spent three days in hospital. The White House has not disclosed when Trump last tested negative.

Trump is eager to get back on the campaign trail after an absence of more than a week. He plans to travel to the key battleground state of Florida on

Monday, followed by rallies in Pennsylvania and Iowa on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.

“I’m feeling great, ” he told the crowd. The president’s illness has cast a spotlight on the pandemic, which has infected nearly 7.7 million people in the United States and killed over 213,000. His administration has faced criticism for its handling of the crisis, and for its lax approach to mask-wearing and social distancing in the White House. At least 11 close Trump aides have tested positive for coronavirus.

Speaking firmly and with no sign of the raspy throat evident in recent interviews, Trump delivered a shorterthan-usual campaign speech.

He attacked Democrats as pursuing a “socialist” or even “Communist” agenda, and hailed his own record in fighting crime and boosting the US economy, while flag-waving supporters cheered and chanted, “We love you. ”

Democrats and some commentators criticized Saturday ’s event for potentially exposing a new batch of supporters to the virus and for using a federal building as an election prop.

Asked about it in New Castle, Delaware, Biden said he hoped the president and his supporters were taking precautions.

“They should be socially distant and wearing masks, ” he said. “It’s the only responsible thing to do. ”

Trump standing alone at the event, was not wearing a mask as he spoke. In the crowd, most were wearing masks but not following social distancing guidelines.

Trump repeated past calls for states to reopen their economies even as new cases hit a two-month high on Friday. A Reuters analysis showed more than 58,000 infections were reported and hospitalizations in the Midwest hit a record for a fifth successive day. Opinion polls show Biden with a substantial lead nationally, although with a narrower advantage in some of the states that may decide the election outcome.

World’s biggest gold mine grapples with Covid-19

Global demand for ppe fuels China’s exports: wsJ

NEW YORK: China’s exports globally benefited both from its ability to reopen factories faster than other countries and its ability to provide massive amounts of the products needed to fight the novel coronavirus, reported The Wall Street Journal. China posted a 9.5 percent rise in outbound shipping in August compared with the same period last year, as the global lockdowns “played to China’s manufacturing strength, ” and the United States tariffs exemption on medical goods from China also helped, the paper quoted Rory Green, a Seoul-based economist at research company TS Lombard, as saying. For example, as US Census data showed, a textile category of Chinese exports to the US that includes face masks rose 156 percent in the first eight months of this year, and stripping out other items in the category shows cloth masks surged 465 percent in the period, the paper said in its report titled “Chinese Exports to U.S. Get a Pandemic Lift. ” Scott Rein, president of Western Medical Consulting & Supplies LLC which provides medical expertise to Chinese entities including hospitals, told the paper that due to the pandemic, he suddenly found himself in the business of importing Chinese medical products to the United States. With an acute shortage of personal protection equipment (PPE) as the virus spread widely in the United States, Rein said his company managed to purchase more than four million masks, hand sanitizers and other personal products from China. He sold most of it directly to hospitals. Still in the US, he is now selling Chinese masks and hand sanitizers directly to consumers, reported WSJ. China’s total exports to the United States were down by only 3.6 percent in the first eight months of this year from the same period in 2019, Chinese official data showed. “As China bounced back from pandemic lockdowns earlier than the rest of the world, activity picked up. In July, exports to the U.S. jumped by 13 percent from a year earlier, followed by a 20 percent rise in August. September figures aren’t out yet, ” the paper reported. However, an expert cautioned against reading too much into the export momentum. In a September essay, Zhang Yanling, a researcher at the Chongyang Institute of Financial Studies, a Beijing-based think tank, wrote that the strong export was evidence of the resilience of the Chinese economy in the face of a pandemic, but called the future uncertain given the US-China relationship, the paper reported. AGENCIES

SINGAPORE/HOUSTON AGENCIES

When miners at Indonesia’s giant Grasberg gold and copper mine started testing positive for coronavirus early in the pandemic, the mountain-top mining complex was quickly locked down with a skeletal staff left in place to maintain production.

But as months of travel curbs dragged on, angry workers blockaded the mine for four days in August until the operator – a unit of US miner Freeport McMoRan Inc –relented and let them resume weekly rotations out of the site via a four-hour trek by cable car and bus to towns below.

Now the workers are happier, but health experts fear the greater risk of a new outbreak.The tensions expose the balancing act to maintain output at full blast, while containing Covid-19 in mines like Grasberg, the world’s largest gold mine and second-largest copper mine.

“We’ ve put the priority and the health of our workers and community at the top of our list, ” Freeport McMoRan Chief Executive Richard Adkerson told Reuters. “From the outset, we recognized that (Grasberg) was a particularly vulnerable place due to the size of the workforce” of nearly 30,000 people.

While Freeport has halted some global operations due to the pandemic, production has continued at the 14,000 foot (4,267 metre) -high Grasberg mine despite Indonesia facing one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in SoutheastAsia.

In May, Freeport said it would operate with a “skeletal team” because of a rise in coronavirus cases in the area, including at the workers’living quarters. Freeport said at the time it was limiting contractors and removing “high-risk” workers but did not specify how many people would be working at the mine. But the lockdown took a psychological toll on the workers stuck above the clouds at the site since April, some of whom said that they were unable to attend funerals of family members.

“We were frustrated, we wanted to see our families. So we had to protest, ” said a worker, speaking from a dormitory shared with four others. He asked not to be named due to fears of losing his job. Workers who were kept from working the mine were also unhappy because of lost wages. RISK OF SECOND WAVE? Grasberg is located in Papua province’s Mimika regency, which has seen a steady rise in coronavirus cases. As of Oct. 8, there had been 1,902 cases in a population of about 224,000, the second-most infected area in Indonesia’s easternmost province.

Five people have died of Covid-19 at the mine with 724 confirmed cases as of Sept. 29, according to Mining Industry Indonesia, the state company holding a majority stake in Freeport Indonesia.

Since the protests, workers have returned to a weekly crew-change roster, the local company PT Freeport Indonesia said, with about 400-500 workers leaving and entering the mine daily after temperatures checks and a rapid Covid-19 test.

If a rapid test is positive, this would be followed up by a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, which experts consider far more accurate. Before the pandemic, twice as many workers would enter and leave the mine daily, Freeport Indonesia said.

Adkerson said Freeport is treating its employees for coronavirus free of charge at its own medical facilities.

TriYunis MikoWahyono, an epidemiologist at the University of Indonesia, said crew changes should be less frequent to limit the risk of spreading the virus. “The shortest crew change should be two weeks unless a company is willing to pay for PCR tests for every worker every week, ” he said. But that strategy keeps workers on site longer, adding to potential friction with the company. “EVERYONE WANTS US TO KEEP WORKING” To help resolve the protests, Freeport Indonesia paid workers compensation of up to 15 million rupiah ($1,010) for working longer than usual, although it said it did not have responsibility for contractors, who make up nearly three quarters of the 29,201 workers.

A Freeport contractor said by telephone he had not received any payment yet, but the issue was being discussed with management and there were no plans for more protests.

Freeport is one of Indonesia’s biggest taxpayers, with direct contributions of more than $16 billion in taxes, royalties, dividends and other payments between 1992 and 2015, according to company data.

The mine is also crucial for Freeport McMoRan, the world’s largest publicly traded copper producer, which made a profit in the second quarter partly due to higher production at Grasberg.Operations at the Indonesian mine are expected to ramp up even further as it transitions from open pit to underground mining. “Everyone wants us to keep working. The government does, the community does, it’s important for all stakeholders. Even, in the US, mining is considered essential, ” saidAdkerson.