Epaper – July 11 KHI 2021

CMYK

11 July, 2021 I 30 Dhul-Qadah, 1442 I Rs 25.00 I Vol XII No 12 I 32 Pages I Karachi Edition

IndIa wanted to harm PakIstan by stePPIng Into afghanIstan: IsPr dg g

MAjor GeNerAl BABAr iFtikHAr SAyS iNDiA'S iNVeStMeNt iN AFGHANiStAN APPeArS to Be SiNkiNG

d

ireCtor General of the inter Services Public relations (iSPr) Major General Babar iftikhar said on Saturday that “india’s investment in Afghanistan appears to be sinking”. “if india had invested in Afghanistan in good faith, then it would not have been disappointed today,” said the DG iSPr in a conversation with a private tV channel. the head of the military’s media wing said that india’s goal was to harm Pakistan by stepping into Afghanistan. “india’s goal was to harm Pakistan by stepping into Afghanistan.

[But] today, india’s investment in Afghanistan appears seems to be sinking” said Maj Gen iftikhar.

He added that New Delhi was trying to tell the world that Pakistan is the “cause of problems in Afghanistan”.

Maj Gen iftikhar said that there was no truth to the claims made by

india, adding that “the world knows that Pakistan has tried its utmost to solve the Afghan problem in the best possible manner”. the DG PiSPr, who spoke at length about Afghanistan and Pakistan’s response to the situation there, also spoke of the role played by the US. “the only expectation from the United States was that there would be a responsible withdrawal from Afghanistan,” said the DG iSPr. He explained that by a responsible withdrawal he meant a proper transfer of authority and lamented that the withdrawal by the US forces “was done a little early”. the DG iSPr also responded to the rumours circulating in the media on American bases in Pakistan. the DG iSPr said that the Pakistani government had made it clear that there was no question of giving bases to the US as there is no need for it. the head of the military’s media

wing regretted the lack of work done by the Afghan government on border management with Pakistan.

“Border management should have been done on the other side as well, but unfortunately that has not been done,” said the DG iSPr. However, he assured the nation that Pakistan is determined to not allow anyone to use its soil against another country.

“We will not allow any unwanted people to enter the country,” he said.

Maj Gen iftikhar said that border management was needed as everyone knows that Daesh and the ttP are in Afghanistan and have occasionally tried to harm interests.

He assured everyone that security at the country’s border with Afghanistan was much better today.

He also added that additional Frontier Corps wings have been formed to further enhance the security at the border. the DG iSPr said that 90% of the fencing on the PakAfghan border was complete.

He also said that the interior ministry has made plans to deal with the influx of refugees in case violence escalates in Afghanistan.

Maj Gen iftikhar stated that Pakistan sincerely spoke about advancing the Afghan peace process as troop withdrawal was announced by the then US president Donald trump.

“What kind of government and how they want to take Afghanistan forward is up to the Afghans,” said the DG iSPr. He also assured everyone that Pakistan will try to resolve the deadlock if the Afghans have reached that position. News Desk

CONTINUED ON PAGE 04

Eidul Azha to fall on July 21 as Zil-Hajj moon not sighted Central ruet-e-Hilal Committee Chairman Maulana Abdul khabir Azad announced on Saturday that the Zil-Hajj moon was not sighted and eidul Azha will fall on july 21 (Wednesday). the first of Zil-Hajj will fall on Monday (july 12). the Central ruet-e-Hilal Committee met on Saturday for the sighting at the Pakistan Meteorological Department in karachi. the committee’s chairman had arrived in karachi from islamabad to preside over the meeting.

Meanwhile, the provincial and district ruet-e-Hilal Committees met simultaneously at their respective headquarters. the meetings that convened in lahore, islamabad and Peshawar all reported that no testimonies of the moon having been

sighted were received.

Maulana Azad said that while the sky in most areas of the country was clear, it was clouded in a few.

He said that no testimonies of the moon having been sighted were received and so it was decided with consensus that the first of Zil-Hajj will be observed on Monday and eidul Azha will be observed on july 21.

According to astronomical parameters, there was already next to no chance of sighting the new moon of Zil-Hajj on the evening of Saturday. earlier in May, the Central ruet-e-Hilal Committee had announced the sighting of moon for the month of Shawwal after 11:30pm. the meeting in islamabad had lasted more than four hours. News Desk

more inside

Covid positivity rate inching towards 4pc in Pakistan STORY ON PAGE 03

‘Imran handed over Kashmir to India’, claims Maryam STORY ON PAGE 02

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Sunday, 11 July, 2021

KARACHI

NEWS

‘IMRAn hAnDED ovER KAshMIR to InDIA’, clAIMs MARyAM

P

NEWS DESK

AKISTAN Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Maryam Nawaz on Saturday again criticised Prime Minister Imran Khan for “handing over the valley to India,” as she continued her campaigning for the upcoming polls, The Express Tribune reported.

“Nawaz Sharif and I are pure Kashmiris, I see Nawaz Sharif in every participant of the rally,” she said as she addressed a gathering in Sharda town of Neelam district, Azad Jammu & Kashmir.

“Nawaz has a place in every person’s heart,” the PML-N leader said and went on to add that a “coward like Imran Khan couldn’t be the leader of Kashmiris”.

“A brave premier is the one who can lead Kashmiris. The selected doesn’t enjoy respect, neither at home, nor abroad”.

“He throws Kashmir to India and then asks Pakistanis to observe a two-minute silence,” said the PML-N vice president and added that the masses will not stay quite anymore. “The selected handed over Occupied Kashmir to India. [PM] Imran had said after meeting [former US president Donald] Trump that he had won a World Cup,” the PML-N leader said while addressing the participants of the rally.

Maryam observed that people were burdened by inflation and Imran Khan’s name brought ‘memories of long queues outside sugar and flour stores’.

She reiterated that Imran stole the 2018

elections on the slogan of a bat; his slogan should be of Kashmir’s betrayal, sugar theft and expensive flour instead, she added.

“How would someone who came to power with the help of selectors know about freedom. How will those who stole votes through creating a fault in the RTS system know about freedom,” she said.

On Thursday, while addressing a rally at ChattarKlas village to kick off the party’s campaign for the July 25 elections, Maryam said her party would stage a sit-in on Shahrah-e-Dastoor (Constitution Avenue) in Islamabad if the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-eInsaf rigged the polls.

She asserted that the PML-N had mastered “the art of removing stolen seats from the government’s throat”.

SC to hear case for TLP chief's release on July 12 NEWS DESK The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Saturday fixed a petition for hearing that seeks the release of Saad Hussain Rizvi, leader of the proscribed Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP).

A two-member bench of the Supreme Court headed

by Justice Sajjad Ali Shah will hear the case on July 12.

Saad, son of the late Khadim Hussain Rizvi, was detained on April 12 over allegations that he had incited his followers to take the law into their own hands as, according to him, the government had gone back on its promise to expel the French ambassador.

The party had been pressing the government for the expulsion of the French ambassador to Pakistan ever since blasphemous caricatures of the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) were published in France and their publication was supported by the French president.

The petition, filed by Saad’s uncle, calls for the annulment of his “illegal detention” claiming there was no proof on record against him. It further claims that 26 people were killed and over 400 activists of the party were injured in police firing during the TLP protests in April.

The petition says authorities took all actions on the basis of apprehensions and “so called reports of agencies”, adding that the government did not place before the court details of an agreement, dated November 16, 2020, regarding the expulsion of the French ambassador from the country.

"It misled the court through concealment of fact,”

PM Imran directs ERRA to expedite ongoing projects NEWS DESK Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday directed the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA) to expedite the pace of the ongoing projects to facilitate the public. He issued these directives while chairing a meeting to review the authority's ongoing projects related to reconstruction and development in the calamity-hit areas. PM Imran was apprised that the organisation, since its inception in 2006, had completed 75 per cent of total development portfolio of 14,704 projects, whereas 14 per cent were underway. The premier was also informed that currently, 885 projects in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 1,214 projects in Azad Jammu and Kashmir were underway. Earlier, it was reported that ERRA would be subsumed into the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

Empowering youth in line with PM’s vision govt’s top priority: Usman Dar ISLAMABAD INP

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Youth Affairs Muhammad Usman Dar has said that the government is committed to empower youth in line with the vision of PM Imran Khan. In a statement issued here on Saturday, he claimed of massive increase in economic activities across country as a result of successful and transparent execution of Kamyab Jawan Programme. Usman Dar was of the view that the government has so far helped over 13,000 youth to open their own businesses by disbursing loans amounting to 17 billion rupees under the Programme.

The Special Assistant to PM said that empowered youth would not only help supporting their families but would also change the destiny of the country.

reads the petition.

In the plea, the Punjab government, Lahore deputy commissioner, Lahore police chief, superintendent Kot Lakhpat Jail and SHO NawanKot Police Station have been made as respondents.

LHC RELEASE ORDER: On July 8, a review board of the Lahore High Court had released its detailed order in a case related to the detention of Saad Hussain Rizvi, observing that he should be "released forthwith" if he was not required in any other case.

In its detailed order, the three-member LHC review board, led by Justice Malik Shehzad, said the government counsel argued that Saad was detained on the basis of district intelligence reports in order to control deteriorating law and order. "The law officer or representatives of the government who appeared before the board didn’t produce any evidence that detenu (Saad Rizvi) was in contact with any person in the outside world during his detention," the order read, adding that the government had presented one side of its claim regarding law and order which showed its malice.

It further said: “We have noted the Government of Punjab has concealed material facts in its reference because the number of police officers martyred or injured during the incident in question [has] been mentioned in it, but the number of TLP activists or a number of persons from the public who died during the relevant period [has] not been mentioned in the reference.”

It stated that political parties like the PPP, PML-N and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf had also held protest

demonstrations in the past, but none of them were banned nor were their party leaders detained. The board quoted the government as complaining that Saad sought the expulsion of the French ambassador from Pakistan, however, it said various parliamentarians did not face any proceedings for raising similar clamour.

It said the failure of police to not incorporate Saad's arrest in the cases filed against the TLP leader reflected their “dishonesty”.

Last week, the LHC review board had rejected the Punjab Home Department's request to extend the TLP leader's detention.

SAAD'S ARREST AND TLP PROTESTS: In November, 2020, an agreement was reached between the TLP and the government – after the party held protests in the capital led by its then chief Khadim Rizvi – to involve the parliament in order to decide the matter of the French ambassador's expulsion in three months.

As the Feb 16 deadline neared, the government had expressed its inability to implement the agreement and had sought more time. The TLP had then agreed to delay its protest by two-and-a-half months to April 20.

A week prior to the deadline, Saad, in a video message, had asked TLP workers to be ready to launch a long march if the government failed to meet the deadline.

The move had prompted the government to arrest him on April 12. Police had swooped on Saad at around 2pm on Wahdat Road in Lahore where he had gone to attend a funeral. Outraged, the TLP had issued a call for countrywide protests.

Court directs FIA not to harass Shehbaz, Hamza NEWS DESK A Lahore sessions court on Saturday the ordered Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to not harass Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif and his son Hamza Shehbaz.

The PML-N leaders appeared before the court which heard their petition regarding the extension of interim bail in a money laundering case.

During the proceedings, the FIA investigating officer prayed that the investigation of the accused was not yet complete and that they were issued a show-cause notice for not re-joining the investigation.

Citing the reason for not re-joining the FIA's probe, the defendants' counsel argued that his clients were appearing before the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), with Shehbaz accusing the FIA investigation team of harassment.

"I served the needy people and widows of Punjab. I opposed my family members and gave cheap sugar to my people," Shehbaz claimed during the proceedings.

The former chief minister of Punjab further prayed to the court that after NAB, the same cases against him were being handed over to the FIA "I am accused today that I took commissions in

projects, I have replied to the FIA. I was insulted there.

The FIA members talked to me in vain. When I could not bear it, I stood up and asked them why they were doing this to me?" Shehbaz lamented adding that the FIA officers kept laughing and making fun of him.

The court stopped the FIA from harassing Shehbaz and Hamza and extended the interim bail in the sugar inquiry case till August 2.

Matric, inter exams begin in Islamabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa NEWS DESK Exams for matriculation and intermediate classes began in Islamabad and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Saturday.

The government and the opposition were at loggerheads over the examinations.

On Friday, opposition members walked out of the National Assembly session after Education Minister Shafqat Mehmood refused to postpone the assessments.

The minister accused the opposition of “doing politics on the education of children”. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz demanded the government delay

the exams.

Schools were closed and exams on provincial and national levels had been cancelled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Students were sitting Physics and Islamic History exam in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Saturday.

Over 3,000 examination centres have been set up across the province, according to the KP education director. More than 842,000 will sit exams in the province.

On July 5, matric exams started in Sindh. Inter exams are scheduled to begin on July 26 in the province.

Zulfi Bukhari serves defamation notice on Pindi commissioner NEWS DESK The PTI leader Sayed Zulfikar Bukhari aka Zulfi Bukhari on Friday sent a Rs1 billion defamation notice to Rawalpindi Commissioner Syed Gulzar Hussain Shah over mentioning his name in Rawalpindi Ring Road Project scam. In May, when the scam emerged, the Punjab government removed six mid-career officers including commissioner and deputy commissioner over their alleged involvement in bringing about changes in the Ring Road alignment. The provincial government ordered an inquiry which confirmed that changes had been made to the actual plan of the Rawalpindi Ring Road to benefit some influential personalities including Zulfi Bukhari and Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan. These changes had increased the cost of the project by Rs25 billion. As the controversy deepened, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Overseas Pakistanis Sayed Zulfiqar Bukhari resigned from his position and Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan rejected the allegation and offered to quit politics if corruption charges against him proved. On Friday, in a tweet, Zulfi Bukhari stated: “As promised, I will not stand and watch lies propagate. I’ve officially taken Commissioner Rawalpindi Syed Gulzar Hussain Shah to court for #RingRoadReport where he’ll have to prove:” Why he wrote in the report I ‘augmented’ influence without any proof”. “Let nation and courts hear reasons behind the allegation!” He also shared the defamation notice issued by Zulfi’s lawyer Mustafa Aftab A. Sherpao, asking Gulzar Hussain Shah to submit his reply within 14 days; retract the statement attributed to Zulfi in the report; openly seek apology from him, and also issue a rebuttal of the statement attributed to the plaintiff. The notice stated: “Defamatory statement made by you in the report against our client have defamed and traduced the reputation of our client. We, therefore, call upon you to forthwith and in any event within fourteen (14) days of the date of this legal notice: withdraw, recall and retract the said defamatory statement (and any other defamatory imputations) made by you in the report.”

Monsoon rains expected in Karachi from July 15 NEWS DESK The first monsoon rains are expected in Karachi from July 15 – 17, says Karachi Met Director Sardar Sarfaraz. The rain will serve as a break from the sweltering heat in Karachi. The Met office director said on Saturday that moderate rain is expected in the metropolis next week. Karachi will likely receive around 10 - 22 mm of rain in the first spell. Weather experts say low winds are hitting the northwest Bay of Bengal on July 11 and humid winds of the monsoon season will enter Pakistan via Gujrat. “Clouds are likely to fall in Tharparkar and surrounding areas on July 12,” announced the Met office.

The Met office also said Karachi could expect light rain on July 12 before the first spell of monsoons officially begins.

Sunday, 11 July, 2021

KARACHI

NEWS

AJK poLLs: pTI LeAdInG In MIrpUr, BhIMBer whILe ppp sTronG In KoTLI dIsTrIcT ISLAMABAD

A

MIAN ABRAR

S Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) is all set to go for general elections on July 25, Sunday, political temperature has started to boil. A total of 724 candidates will try their luck for 45 general seats this year – 33 in Kashmir valley and 12 seats allocated for Kashmiri refugees. Out of the 12 seats allocated across Pakistan for Kashmiri refugees from Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), nine fall in Punjab, two in Sindh and one in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Elections in AJK are contested mainly with support of family support as AJK has majority of population of Jaats, Gujjars, Rajas, Syeds, Abbasis, Sudhans, Afridis and others who are dominant families.

A tough battle is expected between Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

Traditionally, the ruling party in Pakistan wins as people tend to vote to the ruling party candidates due to their love for Pakistan.

Keeping its traditions of keeping its readers updated on the upcoming elections, Pakistan Today has conducted a survey of the AJK elections and will be sharing its analysis in next weeks.

In Mirpur, PTI is leading on two constituencies while one each is dominated by PML-N and PPP. PTI

candidates are leading on two constituencies while one each from PPP and PML-N are leading.

On LA-1 Mirpur-I, PTI has fielded Chaudhry AzharSadiq while PML-N has fielded former minister Chaudhry Khalid Masood and PPP gave ticket to former minister ChAfsarShahid. Muslim Conference has fielded Ghulam Rabbani. Though Prime Minister AJK Farooq Haider is unhappy with Masood Khalid, PML-N’s Masood Khalid is leading while PTI’s AzharSadiq is trailing behind closely.

On LA-2, Mirpur-II, PPP has fielded QasimMajeed, the son of former AJK prime minister Chaudhry Majeed. NazirInquilabi is contesting from PML-N while Zafar Anwar is contesting on PTI ticket.

A tough contest is expected between PTI and PPP. On LA-3, Mirpur-III, former minister Chaudhry Mohammad Saeed is contesting on PML-N ticket while former prime minister and PTI AJK president Barrister Sultan Mehmood Chaudhry is contesting.

PPP has fielded Ch Mohammad Ashraf. A tough contest is expected between PTI and PML-N but Sultan Mehmood has an edge.

In LA-4 Mirpur-IV, PML-N’s former minister Chaudhry Rukhsar is pitched against PTI’s Chaudhry Arshad Hussain and PPP’s Faiz Hameed Faizi. A tough battle is expected between PTI and PML-N. In three Bhimber constituencies, two PTI candidates are in lead while one is being consolidated by the PPP. The PML-N has marginal lead on one

constituency while PTI is trailing closely behind.

LA-5 Bhimber-I, PML-N has fielded former minister Col Waqar Noor, while PTI has fielded Chaudhry AnwarulHaq and PPP has awarded ticket to former minister Ch Pervez Ashraf. Muslim Conference has fielded SardarShafiqueJaral. A tough contest is likely between the four parties but PPP’s Ch Pervez Ashraf is leading for now.

LA-6 Bhimber-II is close to the Line of Control (LoC). Chaudhry Ali ShaanSohni is contesting from any party for the first time. In the past, he has been winning as an independent. PML-N has fielded Raja Maqsood while the PPP fielded ChIdrees. Chaudhry Ali ShaanSohni is leading.

LA-7 Bhimber-III is the constituency where the toughest contest in across Azad Jammu and Kashmir polls. Former senior minister Chaudhry Tariq Farooq of the PML-N is facing a challenge from former speaker Chaudhry AwarulHaq who is contesting on PTI ticket.

In Kotli, PPP is dominating the contest as its candidates are leading on at least three out of six seats.

PTI is leading on two seats and one may be won by Muslim Conference.

LA-8, Nakyal, Kotli-I, Raj Mehal which is a new constituency. Malik Mohammad Nawaz had won in year 2015 from the platform of Muslim Conference and this time, Malik Nawaz is again contesting from Muslim Conference. He is being challenged by Zafar Iqbal Malik

from PTI and Malik Zulfiqar Ali from PML-N. PPP has fielded AftabAnjum Advocate.

In Raj Mehal, there is a neck-to-neck fight between Malik Nawaz of Muslim Conference and Zafar Iqbal Malik of the PTI but the former has an edge over his challenger.

LA-9 Kotli-II Nakyal. This is almost on Line of Control (LoC) and this constituency belongs to former premier AJK SardarSikandar Hayat. His brother SardarNaeem is contesting from Muslim Conference.

Muslim Conference had awarded ticket to SardarKhizer Hayat who is a strong candidate due to his Thakyal family but later ticket was given to SardarNaeem which made Thakyal outrageous and announced to support Javed Iqbal Budhanvi who is contesting from PPP. PPP’s candidate’s position is better now. PTI has awarded ticket to a new face, Asif Hayat Kailvi who is not a strong contender. SardarMunir is contesting from PML-N. LA-10 Kotli City was won by Sardar Farooq Sikandar, the son of SardarSikandar Hayat, from the PML-N in year 2015 who is now contesting from the Muslim Conference platform. He is facing Chaudhry Mohammad Yasin of the PPP while major contest is between Farooq Sikandar and ChYasin. PPP is leading slightly.

LA-11, Kotli-IV Raja Mohammad Naseer is facing a challenge from Chaudhry Akhlaq of PTI. PTI is leading this battle. PPP has fielded Sardar Bashir Pehalwan and Muslim Conference has pitted Raja Iftikhar. Raja family has been divided and PTI may take benefit.

LA-12 Kotli belongs to Chaudhry Yaseen of the PPP and he may win it again. He is facing Raja Rayasat of PML-N and Shaukat Fareed of PTI. At LA-13 Kotli VI, Raja Ayaz Ahmed Khan of PMLN is facing challenge from PTI’s NisarAnsarAbdali of PTI. PPP has fielded Waleed Inquilabi. PTI is leading the contest but tough contest is between PTI and PPP.

Covid positivity rate inching towards 4pc in Pakistan NEWS DESK Pakistan's daily coronavirus case load stayed over 1,500 for the fourth consecutive day after the country reported 1,828 new cases Saturday morning.

Another 35 people died of coronavirus in Pakistan in the last 24 hours, pushing the national death tally since the pandemic started to 22,555.

Latest data issued by the National Command and Operation Centre Saturday morning shows that after 48,134 tests were conducted on July 9, 1,828 people tested positive for coronavirus.

Pakistan's positivity rate is closing in on 4%, with the current rate at 3.79%.

The total active Covid-19 cases in Pakistan are currently 36,454.

According to a province-wise breakdown, the total cases reported in Sindh so far are 345,269, in Punjab 347,793, in Khyber Paktunkhwa 139,162, in Islamabad Capital Territory 83,513, in Balochistan 27,863, in Gilgit-Baltistan 6,769 and in Azad Jammu and Kashmir 20,935.

At least 912,295 people have recovered so far across Pakistan, making it a significant count.

According to NCOC's figures, the total number of cases has reached 971,304.

Menawhile, the government of Punjab on Saturday renewed its guidelines against

COUNTERS TO BE SET UP AT PUBLIC SPOTS TO CHECK COVID VACCINATION CERTIFICATES IN PUNJAB Covid-19, deciding to set up special counters at places frequented by people – such as wedding halls, cinemas and hotels – to check Covid-19 vaccination certificates of visitors.

"Those violating the standard operating procedures (SOPs) will face action as per law," said Sarah Aslam, Punjab Primary & Secondary Healthcare Department Secretary, in a statement issued today.

The provincial government also decided to establish a control room to monitor the implementation of SOPs at restaurants, wedding halls, cinemas and hotels.

The new SOPs are being introduced in view of the recent uptick in Covid-19 cases countrywide.

Earlier, the NCOC had confirmed the presence of different variants of coronavirus in Pakistan, including the Delta variant, first discovered in India, the Beta variant that was first detected in South Africa, and the Alpha variant that was discovered in the United Kingdom.

The NCOC had said that these variants were detected in Pakistan in May and June.

The government’s Covid-19 portal

seven-yeAr-oLd heArInGIMpAIred, MUTe chILd rAped HAFIZABAD INP

A seven-year-old hearing-impaired and mute girl was raped in Hafizabad, the police said Saturday.

“On Friday, the child went out to play at 1pm when a man from the neighbourhood abducted her,” the survivor’s mother told the police. He took her to an abandoned house and raped her, according to the investigating officer. The suspect has been arrested and is being questioned. His DNA samples have been obtained as well. A case has been registered at the City police station under Section 376ii [When rape is committed by two or more persons in furtherance of the common intention of all, each of such persons shall be punished with death or imprisonment for life] of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Punjab IG Kaleem Imam has taken notice of the crime and has summoned a detailed report from the district police officer. The seven-year-old’s mother has demands public hanging of the perpetrator.

indicates the number of daily Covid-19 cases dropped from four digits to three digits on June 25.

The daily cases being reported remained close to the 900 mark till June 27 and further fell to 735 on June 28.

However, the number of cases started going up again gradually and doubled in just one week. The positivity rate, which stood at less than 2 per cent in June, crossed 3pc after a gap of 20 days on Wednesday.

Aslam said the new guideless were being adopted in line with the directives of the NCOC issued a day ago.

Underlining that special SOPs have been devised for hotels, restaurants, wedding halls, gyms and cinema halls, she said counters would be set up at all such places to check vaccination certificates of people.

She also called upon all traders to ensure inoculation of their staff against the coronavirus.

Under the new directives, she said no restaurant will be allowed to operate dinein facility after 11.59pm, while only 50 per cent occupancy will be permitted at all

Top civil, military leadership striving for long-lasting peace in Afghanistan: Rasheed NEWS DESK Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed has said that all efforts are being made by the top civil and military leadership to bring both the Afghan government and Taliban on table for ensuring long-lasting peace in Afghanistan.

Addressing a public meeting in Rawalpindi on Saturday, he said Prime Minister Imran Khan, Chief of Army Staff General QamarJavedBajwa and Foreign Office were striving in that regard. He said that Pakistan wanted peace in Afghanistan, adding “Whatever the people of Afghanistan decide, we will accept.”

Rasheed categorically said that Pakistan would not allow any country to use its land for disturbing regional peace.

As regard to stranded people at Torkham, he said only those people who were vaccinated would be allowed to cross the border. The decision to this effect was taken in the wake of new variants of the coronavirus pandemic, he added. The Interior Minister said those who had not been vaccinated and tested positive, they would be sent for quarantine in the

dedicated area. Torkham border is open for vaccinated people, he added.

After the Azad Kashmir elections, he said that the relations between the Opposition and government would improve, adding the present government will complete its constitutional tenure of five years. Rasheed said that Prime Minister Imran Khan had raised the voice of people of Kashmir all over the world and he would play a historic role in resolving the Kashmir issue.

Replying to a question, he said that Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) was a ‘dead horse’ after failing to grab the attention of the people.

The Interior Minister said, I will also go with Prime Minister Imran Khan to Azad Kashmir in connection with election campaign and it is expected that the Prime Minister will go there the coming days. He ruled out any talk with India until restoration of pre-August 5 status of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

To another query, Sheikh Rasheed said that the NullahLeh Express project would be completed in three years which would eventually provide a major relief to people of Rawalpindi.

03

eateries. Similarly, no more than 200 guests will be allowed at wedding halls.

The provincial health secretary insisted that vaccination was the only solution to protect people from the dangerous “Delta variant” of the Covid-19.

Emphasising that Covid-19 vaccines were available at inoculation centres in “sufficient quantity” across the province, the secretary urged people to get themselves vaccinated and adhere to the precautionary measures laid by the government for safety of the masses.

A day ago, the NCOC announced that unvaccinated people will not be allowed to travel by air starting August 1.

In its review of the measures put in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus, particularly in view of the spread of the Delta variant, which it termed “extremely dangerous”, the NCOC also declared it mandatory for adult students to get themselves vaccinated by August 31.

The NCOC had also held a special meeting of the provincial chief secretaries two days ago to discuss measures for controlling violations of pandemic-related SOPs. During the meeting, the federating and administrative units were directed to take strict action against violators of the SOPs and expedite vaccination process so that herd immunity could be achieved at the earliest.

University students spend day with army troops at Lahore Garrison NEWS DESK Students from various universities in Lahore spent a day with the Pakistan Army at its Lahore Garrison on Saturday, according to a press release issued by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR). "The programme was specifically organised to enlighten students on the routine functioning of Pakistan Army, its organisation and defence capability," the military's media wing stated. The communique further added that students showed keen interest while riding on tanks and armoured vehicles. The students also praised the state of morale, commitment and professional competence of the Pakistan Army, the ISPR added. In 2017, Pakistan Army invited some 400 students from Rawalpindi to spend a day with the troops and be enlightened about the functioning of the military. The programme was designed by Rawalpindi Corps. The group of students belonged to different schools, colleges, and varsities who spent a whole day with the army personnel to their organisation and the defence capability.

Sunday, 11 July, 2021

04 NEWS

KARACHI

GovT TakinG STEPS foR PuBliC wElfaRE: faRRukh faiSaLaBad

S

TLTP

TATE Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Farrukh Habib has said that the incumbent government has launched the Sehat Insaf Programme and health cards are being distributed among the deserving people for provision of best medical facilities free of cost.

The minister was talking to the media after inaugurating Kidney Centre at the premises of Children Hospital on Saturday.

The state-of-the-art Kidney Centre has been equipped with the latest machines where kidney transplant, treatment and other facilities would be available to the children.

He said that a large number of families, living in different parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, are benefiting from health cards and getting free medical facilities.

He added that the second most basic facil-

ity of shelter is also being provided to the people through the Prime Minister’s housing scheme. He also appreciated the Kamyab Jawan programme, saying: “Under this initiative, the youth will be able to set up their own businesses by get-

ting loans at a low markup rate.”

Referring to the steps taken for strengthening the farmer community, the minister said that the farmers are earning a handsome amount of money by selling their products at reasonable rates in the

market. “The industrial sector is also importing modern machinery to gain speedy results in the products’ manufacturing,” he said, and added that people would get job opportunities due to progress in that sector.

Criticising the agenda of the opposition, he said that public meetings and sitins staged by the opposition parties could not disturb the process of development ensured by the PTI government, adding that the opposition is engaged in the politics of agitation. He remarked that the country is facing several challenges due to massive foreign loans borrowed by the past regimes. “Agreements for power production at expensive rates, signed by the governments of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), are the main cause behind inflation in the country,” he said.

On the occasion, Farrukh Habib appealed to the philanthropists to help the government for the well-being of the people of the country.

Registration of new companies up 63pc in June: SECP neWS deSK The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has Friday released company registration numbers for the preceding month saying a total of 2,504 new companies were enrolled by the regulator in June. This number indicated a 63 per cent growth when compared with the corresponding period last year, according to the regulator. With these numbers, the total number of registered entities has now increased to 145,913. It said that 99 pc of these registrations were done online “and 45 pc applicants were issued registration certificates the same day”, whereas, it added, 203 new foreign users were registered from overseas as well. Among the companies newly registered, SECP said, 65 pc were registered as private limited companies; 31 pc as single-member companies while the remaining “four pc as public unlisted companies, not for profit associations, foreign companies and limited liability partnership (LLP)”. “Total capitalization (paid-up-capital) of the newly regularized companies for the current month amounts to Rs3.3 billion.” Separately, the company watchdog said the foreign investment has been reported in 66 new companies. Of the city-wise breakup of the new registered companies, SECP said the highest numbers of companies, i.e. 810 were registered in Islamabad. This was followed by 807 and 394 companies registered in Lahore and Karachi respectively. The company registration offices in “Peshawar, Multan, Faisalabad, GilgitBaltistan, Quetta and Sukkur registered 174, 127, 98, 62, 22, and 10 companies respectively”. “These companies have foreign investors from Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, China, France, Germany, Ghana, Hong Kong, Iran, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Oman, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia Republic, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, the UK, Uruguay and the US.”

Pakistan to export mobile phones, bikes in next few years: Razak neWS deSK

GWADAR: Minister for Defence Production Zubaida Jalal awards a shield to a cadet during the annual prize distribution ceremony at PN Cadet College. PPI

Two new Congo virus cases identified in Balochistan QUETTA: Two new cases of Congo virus were reported from Balochistan, confirmed a health official. He said that the provincial health authorities were alarmed by the development. Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever — or Congo virus — is an infectious disease transmitted by ticks to humans and animals. These ticks can also be found on the skin of goats, sheep, cows, buffalos and camels that are sacrificed by Muslims during the Islamic festival of Eidul Azha. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a Congo virus outbreak constitutes a threat to the public health system since the disease can spread and has a high fatality ratio of 10 to 40 percent. The fatal Congo virus is still endemic in Africa and different parts of Asia.

“One of the patients who contracted the virus belonged to Loralai near the Pak-Afghan border area and had been discharged after getting medical treatment,” Dr Sadiq Baloch, who works as additional medical superintendent at the Fatima Jinnah Chest Hospital in Quetta said. “An 11-year-old boy from Chaman is still under treatment in the Congo Virus Isolation Ward.” Baloch feared the situation could get worse in the province if necessary precautionary measures were not taken against the disease. “With Eidul Azha less than two weeks away, cattle markets have emerged across the country,” he continued. “People must take safety precautions while visiting these places to buy animals.” TLTP

India wanted to harm Pakistan by stepping into Afghanistan: ISPR DG Continued from page 1 “If Afghans are at a deadlock then we too are working to resolve it. But even we have our limitations and we can only advance things to an extent,” said the DG IPSR. He added that international stakeholders know that Pakistan has made sincere attempts to resolve the Afghan conflict.

The major general said that Afghans have the ability to sit down and decide on the future they want for their country.

“The direction of things to happen will be determined by

the internal situation in Afghanistan.

“Decisions such as these cannot be forced with the use of guns. If that was the case, then it would have happened in these 20 years that have passed,” said Maj Gen Iftikhar.

The DG ISPR warned that decisions will have to be made through talks or the situation may go towards a civil war. He added that no one would benefit from civil war and it would only harm the whole region.

“All factions in Afghanistan are tired of the 40-year violence,” he said.

Adviser to the Prime Minister on Investment and Commerce Abdul Razak Dawood has said that Pakistan will start exporting mobile phones and motorcycles within the next few years. Addressing an event at the Faisalabad Chambers of Commerce and Industry, he said, “We have to take the total volume of Pakistan’s exports to $200 billion.” He added that Pakistan is in dire need of inflow of capital from abroad. “The national economy is on the right track,” Dawood maintained, calling for pushing up the growth rate. The PM’s aide on investment and commerce reiterated the government’s resolve to facilitate exporters.

The advisor congratulated the textile sector for their highest contribution in exports. He also heard the issues of the textile industry. He ensured complete support to the chamber in ease of doing business. The office-bearers of Faisalabad chamber also provided its feedback on the federal budget 2021-22 to the advisor on the occasion. Earlier this week, the advisor tweeted: “Our exports have done quite well in our major markets.” He said Pakistan’s exports to China increased by 34 percent to $2.33 billion during the fiscal year 2020-21 as compared to $1.74 billion in the previous financial year, going up by $586 million. The country’s exports to Germany grew by 19 percent to $1.5 billion over the previous FY’s $1.3 billion, he added. Razak said Pakistan exports to the Netherlands increased by 23 percent to $1.2 billion as compared to the previous fiscal year’s $1 billion and exports to Poland increased by 28 percent to $308 million in the fiscal year 2020-21 as compared to $241 million in the fiscal year 2019-20.

PNAC suspends accreditation of PSQCA’s key labs iSLamaBad GHULAM ABBAS

The national standards setting agency of the country, Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA), is facing a new challenge as the majority of its labs and departments are currently not authorised to execute operations.

According to details, seven out of nine labs and technical offices of the PSQCA do not have valid operating licenses. In this regard, details posted at the website of the Pakistan National Accreditation Council

(PNAC) show that only the food testing laboratory in Karachi and the Technical Services Centre (TSC) in Lahore have licences valid up to May 2022 and November 2021, respectively.

Entities with expired licenses include the Sugar Testing Lab, Quality Control Centre (QCC), Water Testing Lab, Oil and Fat Testing Lab, Microbiological Laboratory, Building Material Testing Lab, PSQCA, Standards Development Centre (SDC) and Conformity Assessment (CAN).

Incidentally, the functions of all these labs are not limited to maintaining standards

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of industrial products but also includes consumer as well as the edible items.

The PSQCA Quality Control Centre (QCC) has not had a valid operating license since July 2019; however it continues to work as a multifunctional testing lab and offers services in the field of food, materials, papers and textiles, microbiology and water.

It is currently providing testing facilities against 120 samples, including animal feed, biscuits, bleaching agents, cement, cold drinks, cooking oil, fertiliser, dry battery cell, electric fans, electric iron, and electric motors. While responding to the query, a

senior official of the Ministry of Science and Technology said that around Rs16 million was needed for the accreditation of labs but the top management of the authority has yet to move a summary in this regard.

Interestingly, the regulatory body has been issuing the tests reports from the above mentioned labs despite suspension of accreditation for almost two years. According to an official at the PSQCA, the accreditation of key labs was suspended due to non-compliance of mandatory approval from international bodies which required participation in certification programmes.

Sunday, 11 July, 2021

KARACHI

NEWS

05

BiAs iN meDiCAl reseArCH: stuDies By womeN CiteD less ofteN tHAN tHose By meN

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How your DNA may affect whether you get Covid-19 or become gravely ill A STUDY OF MORE THAN 45,000 PEOPLE OFFERS HINTS TO WHY SOME PEOPLE GET SICK AFTER INFECTION Some people can blame their DNA for making them more likely to get Covid-19 or becoming severely ill if they get infected. A study of more than 45,000 people with Covid-19 has uncovered 13 genetic variants linked to an increased risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2 or a higher chance of developing severe illness, researchers report July 8 in Nature. The team includes more than 3,300 researchers in 25 countries. Some of the variants had been uncovered in previous studies. For instance, researchers again confirmed a genetic link between blood type and the likelihood of getting infected, but don’t know why people with type O blood may be slightly protected.

The study also verified that a variant that disables the TYK2 gene raises the risk of critical illness and hospitalization. That variant is known to protect against autoimmune disease, but leaves people more vulnerable to tuberculosis. Sign up for e-mail updates on the latest coronavirus news and research But at least one association was unknown: A variant in a gene called FOXP4 is associated with more severe Covid-19, the team found. That variant boosts the gene’s activity and has been previously linked to lung cancer and interstitial lung disease, a group of diseases that cause scarring and stiffness of the lungs. Yet-to-bedeveloped drugs that inhibit activity of FOXP4’s protein might help people recover from Covid-19 or prevent them from becoming very ill. The disease-associated version of the gene is more common among Asians and Latino populations in the Americas, geneticist Mark Daly said July 7 during a news briefing.

This link might never have been discovered if people of diverse ancestries from around the world hadn’t been included in the study, said Daly, of the Institute of Molecular Medicine Finland in Helsinki (SN: 3/4/21). Only 2 percent to 3 percent of people with European ancestry carry the variant, compared with 7 percent of people in the Middle East, 20 percent of Latinos in the Americas and 32 percent of East Asians. Originally published on Science News. AGENCIES

new study from Perelman School of Medicine and the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia explores the influence of gender in the citation of high impact medical research articles.

The study finds that research articles with female authors are cited less often than those by male authors.

The study’s lead author, Paula Chatterjee, M.D., MPH, an assistant professor of General Internal Medicine at Penn Medicine, explains: “The number of times a peer-reviewed article is cited by other researchers is commonly used as a metric for academic recognition [and] influence, as well as in professional evaluations and promotions.”

“Female academics already face a number of barriers to career advancement,” says Dr. Chatterjee, “and the disparity in citations only broadens the gap between them and their male peers.”

OVERLOOKING RESEARCH BY WOMEN: The researchers performed a cross-sectional analysis of 5,554 original research articles that five important medical journals published in 2015–2018.

These journals are The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, British Medical Journal, and Annals of Internal Medicine.

For each article, the researchers identified the gender of the lead and senior au-

WHEN BOTH THE LEAD AUTHOR AND SENIOR AUTHOR ARE MEN, ARTICLES RECEIVE ALMOST TWICE AS MANY CITATIONS AS THOSE WITH WOMEN AS BOTH THE LEAD AUTHOR AND SENIOR AUTHOR thors and tracked the number of citations the article received.

Overall, a woman was the lead author for 35.6% of the research articles and the senior author for 25.8% of the articles.

Research articles in which the lead author was female received an average of 36 citations, whereas papers with a male lead author received an average of 54 citations.

When the researchers looked at senior authors, they found a similar disparity.

Articles for which the senior author was a woman were cited an average of 37 times compared with an average of 51 citations for research with a man as the senior author.

For research articles where both the lead and senior authors were female, the gap was somewhat larger. Articles with male lead and senior authors were cited almost twice as often — 59 times vs. 33 times — than those with female lead and senior authors.

The researchers note that some of these journals specialize in internal medicine research, which is an area with a higher proportion of women. Due to this,

the differences in citations in this study may actually underrepresent the disparity.

“What’s worse,” bioethicist L. Syd M Johnson of SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York, told Medical News Today, “research has shown that the gap is increasing rather than decreasing over time, even as these various fields diversify.”

The authors of the current study also analyzed the citations that commentary articles received, finding less of an imbalance.

REASONS FOR THE DISPARITY: The study’s authors cite several possible causes of the disparity in citations. They write that women typically have “smaller professional networks, smaller audiences, and narrower reach on virtual platforms,” limiting their amplification through social media. It may also be that women investigate topics of interest to smaller audiences than men.

However, Dr. Johnson said, “Several studies have shown that the driver of the gap is that male authors cite women less often than they cite other men.”

Dr. Johnson added: “We may be seeing

systemic bias being replicated and amplified by individuals in their citation practices. Or it may simply be individual implicit or explicit bias on the part of male authors who undervalue the work of their women peers.”

ACHIEVING BALANCE: As more women are pursuing careers in medicine and academic medicine, disparities such as the one that this study revealed stand in the way of correcting the traditional gender imbalance in medicine and research.

The study’s senior author, Rachel Werner, M.D., Ph.D., executive director of the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics, says: “Gender disparities in citations are just one way in which inequities in academic medicine should be examined. Our findings highlight that disparities stem in part from inequities in recognition and amplification of research.”

“This imbalance will not be solved through hiring and mentoring more women alone.”

According to Dr. Werner: “We must also work to ensure that women already in academic medicine are equally valued and promoted for their contributions and their successes. From the journals publishing this work to academic institutions promoting articles once published, everyone should be invested in bridging this gender divide.”

Originally published on Medical News Today. NEWS DESK

NARAN: A beautiful view of the mountains in Naran. PP I

Covid-19 vaccine: What to do about side effects All vaccines, including those for Covid-19, carry the possibility of side effects. Across the globe, there are currently 15 Covid-19 vaccines that are authorized for use in at least one country each.

The most common side effects following Covid-19 vaccines are fatigue, a fever, headaches, body aches, chills, nausea, diarrhea, and pain at the site of injection, according to the World Health Organization.

Everyone is affected differently by vaccination. Some people may experience few or no side effects while others may experience multiple side effects and feel pretty ill.

In this feature, we explain what to do about side effects of a Covid-19 vaccine.

OVER-THE-COUNTER TREATMENTS: Anyone concerned about the side effects of vaccination might wonder they should take an over-the-counter medication before getting the vaccine, to ward off any side effects before they occur.

However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)Trusted Source do not recommend it. While taking steps to prevent symptoms of other health issues is a good idea, that is not the case here.

It is best to wait and see whether any side effects arise, then treat these individually, as opposed to guessing and taking several over-the-counter products ahead of time.

A person should visit their local pharmacist before taking any over-the-counter med-

ications to ease side effects of the vaccine.

Because a pharmacist is aware of a person’s medications and medical history, they have a good understanding of any interactions that may occur.

But what if a person is unable to contact their pharmacist and needs immediate relief from muscle aches, injection site pain, a fever, or a combination of these issues? In this case, the following may help: • ibuprofen (Advil) • acetaminophen or paracetamol (Tylenol) • aspirin HOME REMEDIES: For anyone who prefers not to take over-the-counter medications or is looking for additional treatments, several self-care techniques can help ease any Covid-19 vaccination side effects.

For reactions at the injection site, such as pain or swelling, use a clean, cool wet washcloth to create a compress. This might also help with muscle and joint aches.

To ease soreness or stiffness in the arm, move it as much as possible. This may seem counterintuitive and cause a little discomfort, but it helps prevent further stiffness by loosening up sore muscles.

Anyone with chills and a low-grade fever should make sure to drink plenty of water to avoid dehydration. Wearing light clothing and dressing in layers will help prevent overheating.

WHAT IS ‘COVID ARM’? This can be a side effect of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccination. It is a red, blotchy rash that can appear around the injection site, typically about 7 daysTrusted Source after receiving the first dose of vaccine, though the timing can vary.

While the appearance of the rash may be alarming, it is not life threatening. If this rash develops and is bothersome, use a cool compress — either a cool, clean wet washcloth or an ice pack wrapped in a towel.

Another option is to speak with a pharmacist to determine whether taking an antihistamine, such as diphenhydramine (Benadryl), would be safe. Antihistamines can cause drowsiness, so a person should not drive until they are certain about the effects of the medication.

The rash tends to last about 5 days, but it may last as long as 3 weeks. There is no need for concern if it develops after and lasts longer than other vaccine side effects.

HOW LONG DO SIDE EFFECTS LAST? Adverse effects of Covid-19 vaccines should only last for a few days. If they last longer, contact a doctor.

Some side effects, such as a fever, chills, and fatigue, are also symptoms of Covid-19.

It is possible to get a SARS-CoV-2 infection right before or after receiving the vaccine — before the body has a chance to produce the right antibodies and build up immunity.

Also, while the vaccines are very effective,

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they do not guarantee 100% protection against the virus.

It is important to keep in mind that no vaccine can cause Covid-19 because none contains the entire SARS-CoV-2 virus. Anyone who develops Covid-19 after receiving the vaccine was likely exposed to the virus before they could build up enough immunity.

If side effects that resemble Covid-19 symptoms persist, take a Covid-19 test and follow local guidelines about self-isolation.

WHEN TO SEE A PHARMACIST: A pharmacist can help determine whether overthe-counter medications are safe and appropriate for each person, and if so, which are the best options. They consider a person’s health history and make sure that any overthe-counter products will not interact with other medications. In addition, a pharmacist can recommend home remedies and advise about whether to contact a doctor. They can also explain how to use a medication, how it works, and what side effects to look out for.

WHEN TO SEE A DOCTOR: Contact a healthcare professional if any side effects grow significantly worse. This might involve extreme tenderness, pain, or redness at the injection site. Also, seek professional care if any side effects last longer than a few days.

Anyone who may be having a severe allergic reaction to the vaccine should call 911 or otherwise receive emergency medical attention. This reaction can lead to anaphylaxis

and may involve difficulty breathing, closing of the throat, facial swelling, and hives.

These reactions to the vaccine are very rare, and anaphylaxis affects 2–5 in every 1 million people who receive a Covid-19 vaccine.

Anaphylactic reactions to the vaccine tend to occur quickly. After having a dose of the vaccine, a person will be observed by a healthcare professional for about 15 minutes.

This is to ensure that if an allergic reaction occurs, medical professionals are on hand and prepared with treatment.

MONITORING SIDE EFFECTS: Above, we described some of the more common side effects of the vaccine, but experiencing other adverse effects does not necessarily indicate that anything is wrong.

Side effects show that the vaccine is working, that the body is creating antibodies and developing immune memory to fight off future SARS-CoV-2 infections.

Everyone reacts to vaccines differently, and some people experience more severe side effects than others. The severity of side effects does not correlate with the body’s level of immunity.

People in the United States might consider downloading the CDC’s V-safe appTrusted Source after receiving a vaccination.

This app allows a person to track and report side effects. It also allows the CDC to contact the person and ask any questions about the reported effects. AGENCIES

Sunday, 11 July, 2021

06 COMMENT

Imminent is here

Unprepared for Taliban takeover Consequences for Pakistan

Preparing for the killing heat

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AKiStAn faces grave internal and external challenges as talban continue to advance. Earlier, retreating Afghan soldiers had taken refuge in neighbouring tajikistan. now in order to escape capture, a number of them have crossed over to Pakistan where they have been taken into custody.

Briefing the Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, national Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf presented a grim picture of the Afghan situation, warning that the taliban fighters could slip into Pakistan as refugees. the Committee observed that Pakistan’s first priority must be to protect its population from a surge in violent extremism. the committee rightly suggested that Pakistan alone was not capable of dealing with the situation and its burden must be shared by the region and international community in meaningful ways. For this, Pakistan must urgently launch a diplomatic offensive for a big-tent conference that shared the task of negotiating peace, and shoring up a torn country driven by a war economy. How long the government delays this urgent move remains to be seen. to complicate matters further, the relationship between Pakistan and the uSA has become testy after the PM’s strong words describing uS policy in the region. this led the Senate Committee chairperson to observe that it was not the best time to be making enemies.

When crucial decisions are not taken on time, unwanted and at times harmful solutions are forced on the policymakers. While there is a broad consensus that Pakistan should not allow Afghan refugees to meld into the population as happened in the 1980s, the policymakers have yet not decided on steps that need to be taken. As a result once the refugees start to converge in tens of thousands, it would be extremely difficult for Pakistan to block them. other urgent decisions that continue to be kept on the backburner include whether to recognise the taliban government when they capture Kabul or follow the international community’s decision and whether to allow the uS drones and aircrafts to use our airspace to launch attacks on Afghan territory. Events do not wait for the double-minded or the incompetent. they are already gathering pace and before we know it, the answers to these questions may be forced on Pakistan.

raBia aHmed

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E have been warned over the years that climate change is imminent, that glaciers will melt and shrink, global temperatures will rise, and there will be other disastrous consequences of throwing bouncers at the environment. We did not pay much attention to those warning us, ignoring them and often labeling them as some kind of a plot…Zionist, Western, take your pick, the usual stuff. unfortunately, the warnings are now reality. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on water courses is breaking up too early, sea levels are rising and several places in the world such as a hitherto benign British Columbia in Canada and the never-so-benign Death Valley in California are witnessing heatwaves to rival Jacobabad in Sindh, once known as Khanger, the erstwhile heat champion of the world. Welcome to the year 2021, the year many of us might find ourselves inside an overheated oven simply because we neglected to learn how to turn down the heat. now the world either learns to live with an up to ten-degree Fahrenheit increase in temperatures in the coming years, or people will die on a very large scale. We must heed the warnings, there may still be time. We must do something constructive to combat global warming.

The arrival of the monsoon

Fighting pollution

Preparations must be made for the inevitable

t

The crisis is pressing

HE moon rains have not yet arrived, but the increasing humidity in the air is a sure sign that they are nearing. At the moment, all that is being awaited is their arrival. Already, there has been rainfall in the northern parts of the country, but it is only when the rainfall takes place in the indus Plain, which basically constitute Punjab and Sindh, that the monsoon is considered to have arrived. it should have arrived by the beginning of July, but is still to come. if that was proved wrong, it is to be hoped that the one about Karachi receiving more rain than usual might also be wrong, for the last two or three monsoons there have been disastrous. Apart from flooding, which had been heightened by encroachments on drainage nullahs and other channels, the menace of electrocutions had been added, causing a large number of deaths (39 were reported last year in Karachi upto August 10). it can be argued that some of the devastation was because of a federal-provincial rivalry between the Pti and PPP that is still there, but that should prevent neither from coordinating such efforts this year. in any case, there is no such dichotomy in KP or Punjab, where the Pti itself rules, or Balochistan, where an ally is in office, to explain last year’s tame surrender to the elements. the delay will only be usefully if the government makes proper preparations. An additional danger this year is the coming of the monsoon during Eid-ul-Azha. this means that the cities will have unusual amounts of animal dung and offal in urban areas, which means that floodwaters are likely to be messier than usual.

Preparations should have been made regardless of Eid, and the lack of preparation of recent years has made it seem that the present government simply lacks competence, for it surely cannot complain that it has not got fair warning. the signal has not yet come from the highest level, and no has it transmitted down the line, that the government takes the rains seriously. Without that signal, the assumption cannot be avoided that those in rarefied heights simply do not care.

Homer Jan BalocH

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ollution is one of the detrimental dilemmas that the World witnesses. the ominous challenges by pollution, have put everyone in fear and afflicted the atmosphere and ozone layer. the pollution that occurs by the spewing of wastes by humans and gases coming out from industries, releases disparate gases which have many effects on living things and the atmosphere, so the air we breathe and the water we drink are totally polluted and unhealthy for living things on the earth. in addition, there are many countries in the world where pollution exists because they are overpopulated, like Pakistan.

Pakistan is the fifth most populated country in the world and ranked as the world’s second most polluted country in the world after Bangladesh. this is the case because of the irresponsible population that makes the places dirty and unfit to live in. industrial pollution is also common which produces a large amount of solid waste, which is thrown out in too many places without proper treatment, which hits the water, air, and land, and due to this pollution rises in the country. the country is hit by water pollution, soil pollution, plastic pollution and air pollution, and the air quality in Pakistan, especially in places like Karachi and lahore is very poor, and the air is highly polluted by industrial and vehicle smoke. the air is also massively polluted by un-lubricated vehicles and burning plastic which create gaseous pollutants like carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide which is very injurious for people’s health.

Fresh air is very important for a clean environment, so if the air is polluted then how can people be safe and live a long life. the air pollution also causes diseases like asthma, bronchitis, lung and skin ailments which can kill people at a young age, mostly kids are suffering from asthma. Pollution also causes various types of cancer which are increasingly common in the country.

As mentioned, another type of pollution is water pollution. the water we drink and use is not clean due to the pollution in water. Moreover, marine life is in danger and in water there is plastic pollution. Due to that water is turning dirty and the rivers and lakes in many places are dirty are also polluted, as whatever we eat or use we throw near rivers, or in seas which makes the water polluted.

Dedicated to the legacy of the late Hameed Nizami

Arif Nizami Editor Yousaf Nizami Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad Managing Editor

Joint Editor

Umar Aziz Executive Editor

Lahore – Ph: 042-36300938, 042-36375965

the urgent need to minimize the effects of this warming on our long-suffering population is what this write-up is about. the rich have enough, and although their practices need to be changed, the same practices that have brought about global warming, it is the poor who need most help.

Pakistan is a poor country. Most of Pakistan’s population lives in the rural areas. Most people in these rural areas are unable to afford much by way of housing, so a small house composed of a single bedroom, a courtyard mostly for the cattle, and nothing else, is the norm. A corner of the courtyard serves as a kitchen and the fields as bathrooms.

Because rural areas are mostly fields, little concrete and no bitumen, you can get a little respite from the heat under a tree or in the great outdoors by night. the excessive morality of urban life does not plague the life of villagers, so if they must sleep on charpoys on the roof where the women are visible to neighbours, so be it. that is not the case in our cities where villagers sometimes move to, so they can find work in fields other than agriculture, pun not intended.

What they discover when they move, however, cannot be an improvement on what they leave behind.

Cramped living conditions, filthy and excessively hot, thanks to the concrete and bitumen everywhere; this is what city life turns out to be for the poor. it is not possible for women to sleep on the roofs here, because the tight housing means they can be seen by their neighbours, and nerves are not taught to recover from such sights in our cities.

Many things can and must be done to prepare for the global warming that is upon us, because the resultant heat is beyond human endurance. one is to ensure that houses, however small, are constructed and designed better, to protect their residents against the heat. to increase the number of trees must be made a priority. Construction and design must be overseen and thermal insulation made mandatory. there are a variety of insulation materials out there. they must be made available and affordable. Buildings must face away from the sun at its hottest. Bricks that are used in the construction of buildings must be designed to hold a layer of air within them. Windows must be recessed as much as possible and shaded against the sun. it should not be allowed to use metal in outside doors and windows because metal emits much more heat than wood.

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Karachi – Ph: 021-35381208-9

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Many areas in Pakistan do not even have clean tap water. Due to this many people are becoming ill.

Water is the basic and necessary need of for living life and if water is polluted and people not get access to water. How can human life survive when people in Pakistan do not have access to pure water? in some areas, the water which people get is mixed with drain water, and that remains the main reason why most of the population suffers from stomach, kidney and skin diseases. the other main problem is noise pollution which has a lot of effects on the people; the large size of the population and their daily usage of human transport and mechanical activities creates noise pollution and disturbs the people. Pakistan has a weak and uncontrolled traffic system which creates a lot of noise, and this pollution has many effects such as causing high blood pressure, depression, headache and anxiety.

Moreover, another prevailing problem in Pakistan is land pollution. this major pollution is affecting the environment badly, as Pakistan’s large population produces large amounts of solid waste, which is thrown onto roads and places where people usually visit like parks and streets. this not only makes public places too dirty, but also makes people ill. And when you visit each places you see garbage in the streets. Even the cleaning organisations like the municipalitlies fail to clean the garbage on a daily basis.

Pakistan lacks trees due deforestation. trees control the atmosphere and give us oxygen, they absorb carbon dioxide and control the air pollution. if we want that air pollution should reduce, instead of cut-

Islamabad – Ph: 051-2204545

the older systems of construction such as verandahs and ventilators high up on walls made great sense in our weather conditions. Extremely effective as they are, verandahs are not always affordable given the shortage of space, but ventilators can and must be mandatory to allow the hot air to exit the building, seeing that hot air rises. Attention must also be paid to cross ventilation. in the absence of verandahs, green netting fabric must be provided free of cost to low-income housing as protection against the sun. the old methods of plastering over construction with mud and clay are a great method of insulation. they should be used as a crucial finishing touch to all buildings, and renewed as required. there is a greater danger of fire in extreme heat conditions. Fire proofing must be incorporated and fire escapes and evacuation regulations ignored at very great cost to those responsible. one of the most common means of storing water now are those ubiquitous blue plastic storage tanks mounted on rooftops. it is best if plastic storage is not exposed to the sun long-term. According to the National Geographic, ‘most plastic items release a tiny amount of chemicals into the food or beverages they contain. As temperature and time increase, the chemical bonds in the plastic increasingly break down and (those) chemicals are more likely to leach’ into the stored item. According to the FDA, the long-term effects build up in a big way. Alternate methods of storing water must therefore be found and used and these must be comparable in cost to the blue plastic tanks, or else they will not catch on.

Measures rarely have a long life in this country, which appears to favour a stop, start and disappear stance until someone suddenly decides to move again. that sporadic lifestyle has become the norm. it has been this way with encroachments for example, when those who encroached around drains and markets were allowed to do so for years until suddenly, the authorities decided to enforce the rules, ruthlessly ousting the long-term offenders in the process. the fact is that those who allow encroachments to take place and to persist are as much the offenders as those who build those encroachments. they should be held equally responsible for infringements of the law. the same must apply to those who build chicken coops for people to live in, airless, hot ovens that are a crime against anything living - animal, or human. the problem of course is that those who are less affluent are often not considered to be human by those with wealth in their pockets. that is the biggest problem in every sector of life in Pakistan.

Rabia Ahmed is a freelance columnist. Read more by her at http://rabia-ahmed.blogspot.com

ting trees every day, we need to grow more trees and maintain the atmosphere. We must control air pollution by our own selves as it is the responsibility of each citizen to make his or her environment clean, and the government is supposed to improve good environmental policies for eradicating air pollution in Pakistan, and getting free of it.

Water is life, there is a need to clean our water and do not let it get wasted and the government should arrange for cleaning the seas. Beaches like Clifton in Karachi are facing water pollution, and the plastic in seas looks bad and also adversely affects the life of sea organisms like fishes and other aquatic creatures. the government must also get the people pure water other than the dirty tap water which we drink or use.

For the purpose of making our environment better we have to clean our country by not throwing garbage or waste in the streets or we must not burn the plastic that can create bad air quality. Since our country’s population is large, we throw away a lot of plastic. While throwing them away, we must reuse or recycle them. it would be much better than creating land pollution and our government should make good rules for cleaning the roads or streets. the Pti government should make new and better policies for eradicating pollution because pollution is very harmful for people in Pakistan, and we must create a green Pakistan and make our country beautiful. if we do eradicate pollution the atmosphere will be good. there will be low air pollution by growing more trees and less pollution in water by cleaning the water, which can be beneficial for both human and aquatic life, and we can make our land beautiful by throwing away less waste on land.

The PTI government should make new and better policies for eradicating pollution because pollution is very harmful for people in Pakistan, and we must create a green Pakistan and make our country beautiful. If we do eradicate pollution the atmosphere will be good.

There will be low air pollution by growing more trees and less pollution in water by cleaning the water, which can be beneficial for both human and aquatic life, and we can make our land beautiful by throwing away less waste on land

I

Web: www.pakistantoday.com.pk

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The writer is based in Turbat, and is interested in environmental issues

Email: editorial@pakistantoday.com.pk

Sunday, 11 July, 2021

COMMENT 07 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

Future of Pakistan’s education AFtEr the announcement for reopening educational institutions, Shafqat Mehmood tweeted on twitter about negative messages and tweets regarding his decision. He said most of the students don’t want opening of schools and because of them education in Pakistan seems very worst. the reason behind students’ will to not open educational institutions very soon is just because of our failing educators. We have schools, but with ghost teachers whose teaching efforts are less than educating and who makes students’ future less brighter than making it completely dark. the authorities must look into the education system of Pakistan because the education future in Pakistan is now getting worse day by day.

AdnAn MAqsood TurbAT

Companies in Hub city

Of humans (not) being human Drifting in an ocean of emptiness, oblivious to the call of duty and truth

candid corner raoof Hasan “Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything – except his own nature.”

— Henry Miller

T

HErE has been a spate of incidents of late involving violence, rape and other such monstrous indulgences which should put humans to shame. But, in reality, does it really make a difference to people who are relentlessly engaged in crass and malevolent pursuits which do not leave even the littlest time to attend to such sicknesses and, much less, initiate some credible effort to remedy them? it is actually scary to be alive in a world which seems so full of creatures moving along by their evil instincts without scant realisation that what they may be indulging in is so wicked and so shameless. it is as if they command a celestial injunction to administer justice of the most demeaning kind to all who may not be inclined to imbibing their whims and fancies. it is as if their minds have stopped functioning and their senses numbed as they ride a rollercoaster ravaging through columns of humans. those who do not give in to their writ are deemed to have lost the right to their life. one cringes at the sheer brutality that these animals are capable of inflicting upon those who dare to disagree. Such people forfeit their right to be called humans. they are some form of beastly creatures, come here masquerading as humans to hide the ugliness within. their cruelty is fathomless and their inhumanity brutal. they are moulded of a different material and cannot be explained in mere words. it is Shakespeare who spoke about such creatures in King Lear: “i’ th’ last night’s storm i such a fellow saw, Which made me think a man a worm.”

And in Julius Caesar: “i had rather be a dog and bay the moon than such a roman.”

And again in King Lear: “Howl! Howl, howl, howl! o, you are men of stones!

Had i your tongues and eyes, i’d use them so that heaven’s vault should crack.”

Much of this is also reflected in our daily undertakings. in a desperate and maniacal pursuit of selfish interests, we lose sight of reason and decency. it is as if special rights and privileges have been bestowed upon some who can use them as and when desired and in a manner that may be deemed right. in the process, we may trample upon others’ rights and tarnish their dignity. But that is of no consequence. We are like dead weight going through the motions of living

which does not carry a meaning.

Every time a beastly act is brought to notice, there are loud proclamations of administering exemplary punishments to the perpetrators to teach them a lesson. Along the way, people generally forget about it till another incident of a similar nature happens which elicits a replication of outbursts of the last time. one has been abreast of a sequence of such vows followed with little to no action which generates a no-fear atmosphere for these animals to continue stalking their prey. the victims keep falling, some losing their lives, but the beasts are neither contained, nor discouraged in any meaningful manner. things have deteriorated to such an extent that it is no longer possible to set these monstrous creatures apart from those who may still have some human feelings stirring within their beings.

Much is to blame. Principally, the system is to blame which does not offer effective laws and mechanisms to punish such inhuman acts. then, whatever laws are there which could lead to administering punishments of a minimal kind are laid hostage in the grip of a rampant environment of corruption where everything is up for sale for a price. if some crime ever gets beyond the stage of investigation, it falls prey to the corruption that is layered in the corridors of the judiciary. Cases drag on for years, nay generations, with no justice ever in sight. on top of that is the gross antipathy of those who are associated with such matters. So the whole thing is lost in the labyrinth of multilayered corruption spread through a host of institutions of the state which deal with such matters. this is what encourages these criminals to not only continue their beastly indulgences, but to do so ever more daringly. it is as if there is no fear to deter them from committing such fiendish acts. At the end of the day, these crimes are couched in a host of self-righteous espousals.

While the whole habitation may be coerced into pleading for reprieve for the criminals, there is none who would come to the rescue of the poor and the powerless segments of the society. injustice is built deep into the fabric of the system that is practised.

But then such a system breeds reaction where people are forced to take law into their hands and start dispensing justice of their own making. that brings forth a different kind of people who are born out of deep discontent with the existing dispensation and feel that they have a right to go their own way to secure justice for the wrongs done to them. this is a dangerous trend which has been increasing for a considerable time, creating a breed of rebels who have

been forced to practise their own brand of injustice, at times more brutal than what they may have been subjected to. this would inevitably mean privatisation of justice in the hands of those who have been the victims of one or the other form of injustice.

We often talk about the inefficiency of a system. these symptoms are much worse than just inefficiency. these are rooted in the making of a system which is neither effective nor relevant to meet the demands of the times. this system is plagued with innumerable shortcomings and enormous dysfunction. it needs changes to make it respond to contemporary requirements which the society is plagued with.

But there is a method here. the system has been crafted with the intent that it should not be equipped with features to deliver. instead, it has been rendered subservient to the hubris of those in the seats of power, most notably the bureaucracy, so that they are able to manipulate it to advance their petty personal objectives. it is a deep-rooted mess which is not confined to one person alone. the entire institutions and their managers are complicit in this game plan to perpetuate their shenanigans. i dare say that the vilest component of this whole manifestation are the members of the infamous bureaucracy who have succeeded in keeping themselves insulated from any changes which, from time to time, may have been incorporated in their service rules and regulations. these individuals may have intense differences among themselves with regard to insatiable lust for catching the most prized posting and accruing other benefits, but they are glued as one when it comes to protecting their interests. Because of the key role the bureaucracy plays in implementing the plans of the government, it is imperative that this institution is given a comprehensive overhaul that has been long overdue as, without that, the delivery to the needy and the impoverished sections of the society would remain a pipedream. in the absence of justice and consequent despondency that it breeds, all that mortals can do is raise their hands in prayer that those who seek should be rewarded and those who have been bereft of their way should be shown the right path. that may not be the best of remedies but, with a corrupt, inefficient and manipulative bureaucracy lording over the system, this is just about all that is left within the reach of the people.

In the absence of justice and consequent despondency that it breeds, all that mortals can do is raise their hands in prayer that those who seek should be rewarded and those who have been bereft of their way should be shown the right path. That may not be the best of remedies but, with a corrupt, inefficient and manipulative bureaucracy lording over the system, this is just about all that is left within the reach of the people

The writer is a political and security strategist, and heads the Regional Peace Institute – an Islamabad-based think tank. Email: raoofhasan@hotmail.com.

Twitter: @RaoofHasan

HuB city is an industrial city of Pakistan,after Karachi it is one of the most industrial areas in Pakistan. Hub city is located in Balochistan it connects Sindh and Balochistan. it one of the emerging cities of Pakistan.

But it is not getting its fundamental rights by the Government.

However,as Government said that place where a company is organized it is up to the company to give electricity. But unfortunately, in Hub there are more than 200 industries are held. Still public is not getting any betterment from them. local people are unemployed, they move to different industries for work and do not get jobs. As we know that electricity is very expensive a poor can not afford. if companies give free electricity to public it will be a big solution for public. As we go towards companies asking about these issues .they reply that your leaders take money from them about these issues. i request the Government to give free electricity to the public for their sacrifice. they get plots from companies for their betterment.

M.IrfAn Hub

Registering companies to end secret business ownership by Parliamentarians and to increase tax paying companies, the Government should enact a new law which would compel all applicants willing to contest next election to declare all their companies ownership and to ensure that their companies have tax registrations. Anyone found to be owner of a secret company would be disqualified for five years by the Election Commission of Pakistan. thus to end secret business ownership by Parliamentarians and to increase tax paying companies, the Government should enact a new law which would compel all applicants willing to contest next election to declare all their companies ownership and to ensure that their companies have tax registrations. in this way, anyone found to be the owner of a secret company would be disqualified for five years by the Election Commission of Pakistan. sHAHryAr KHAn bAseer P.engr.

PesHAwAr

Child labour crisis A very important social issue that is tearing our society apart is the menace of child labour. it is affecting the children of our country. Many children between the ages of 7 to 15 start working for their families to help them.

152 million kids are still in child labour and it also said that in some places children work in hazardous places too. our society is not helping these children. they are making these children to do more work and then they give them less wages. these children also get mentally and physically abused. now a days, due to CoViD-19, i feel these children might be in much worse conditions and without a safety net. We as a society should work together to find a solid solution to end child labour. We need to realise that change starts with us!

We need to change our mindset and Pakistan needs to create better living standards for the underprivileged so that their children never have to work.

M HAMzA eHsAn rAwAlPIndI

Support the farmers toDAY’S writing is just to direct the government’s attention to a sector that is adding more than 25% to the economy. yes, this is the agriculture sector. our peasants are facing three types of pandemics when the worlds are combating only to the novel virus.

Firstly the borders are closed and the export is limited due to which the prices of tomato and watermelon and other corps are too low, which is unable to provide meat to the peasant’s family. Secondly, locust is also an epidemic that is abolishing the crops in more than fifty districts in the country. the third one is the change in weather, due to which rain in awkward days, rise, and fall of temperature are also affecting the growth of corps. Considering the above problems govt should chalk out a supportive program for the poor and small peasants, by providing them resources not only to make sure the availability of basic needs of life but also to bring them able to grow the corps. Such a program will be like as a helping hand to improve the agriculture sector. fArI AHMed HAvelIAn

Our leaders the right people? i want to draw your attention towards an important issue that is that have we as a nation, chosen the right people to govern on us ? Are the people in positions of power able enough, to make decisions for us ? With the recents fight in the assembly, are these the delinquent we are expecting to be our saviour in times of need ? With the Prime Minister giving questionable statement regarding serious matter on international forums and our MnAs fighting like hormonal teenagers, are they going to guide us ? is it too late to press the reset button ? is there a reset button ? wAnIA AsHrAf KArACHI

Sunday, 11 July, 2021

08 WORLD VIEW

Biden’s AfghAnisTAn speech WAs WorsT of his presidency

Cnn

o

PEtEr BErgEn

N Thursday President Joe Biden spoke in defense of his ill-considered, hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, in remarks peopled with straw men and littered with false assertions.

First, Biden contended that he was bound by a 2020 Trump administration agreement with the Taliban to withdraw all US troops

by May 2021. But that was an agreement conducted by a previous administration — so it’s not binding — and it was predicated on the Taliban breaking with al-Qaeda. They didn’t, according to the UN in a report released just last month. It was also predicated on the Taliban engaging with the Afghan government in real peace negotiations.

They haven’t, according to Abdullah Abdullah, an Afghan official who leads the high Council for National Reconciliation. he told CNN a week ago that there has been “very little progress” in those negotiations.

A comparison with the Iranian nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, is instructive. It was negotiated by

AFTER HIS SPEECH, BIDEN TOLD REPORTERS THAT IT’S “HIGHLY UNLIKELY” THAT THE TALIBAN WILL TAKE OVER AFGHANISTAN, WHICH IS NOT WHAT HIS OWN INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY IS WARNING. BIDEN ALSO CLAIMED THAT AFGHANISTAN HAS NEVER BEEN UNIFIED, AN ODD ASSERTION WHEN A UNITED AFGHANISTAN HAS EXISTED SINCE 1747, MAKING IT OLDER THAN THE UNITED STATES the Obama administration with a sovereign government and was a deal that, after it was consummated in 2015, was being observed by the Iranians: they were not enriching nuclear fuel, according to both international inspectors and the US intelligence community.

That deal was also brokered, together, with three of the US’s closest allies, Britain, France and Germany.

Yet, the Trump administration pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, while Biden is now honoring an agreement with an insurgent/terrorist group that is not abiding by the terms of the deal that was negotiated last year by the Trump team.

Second, Biden claimed in his speech that the US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, would “work vigorously” for a negotiated solution between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

This is a fanciful notion, as this is the same Zalmay Khalilzad who, while working under the Trump administration, ceded much of Afghanistan to the Taliban with the “peace” negotiations he spearheaded — based on the farcical premise the Taliban would renounce al Qaeda and also engage with real peace talks with the Afghan government. In any event, Afghanistan leaders accused Khalilzad of cutting them out of his negotiations with the Taliban. Trump administration officials denied the allegations. The Khalilzad-led peace process hasn’t worked for the past three years.

Why would it suddenly work now?

Third, Biden said that the US can’t be in Afghanistan “indefinitely,” yet there are some 28,000 US troops in South Korea three-quarters of a century after the end of the Korean War, because the US has a strategic interest in defending the country against the nuclear armed North Korean despot, Kim Jong Un.

Withdrawing from Afghanistan makes sense, but Biden’s execution is a disaster I NEARLY BURNED TO DEATH IN AFGHANISTAN. BIDEN’S HASTY WITHDRAW IS A BLATANT DISREGARD OF OUR SACRIFICES. WE SHOULD HAVE BETTER PREPARED THE AFGHANS one September evening in 2008, I was riding with in a M1151 humvee in Kandahar. Another platoon north of us was taking fire and we advanced to help them. Then, our humvee erupted in flames. We had hit a roadside bomb, an IeD.

USA TodAy

T

Sam Brown

he United States has been a world leader since the end of World War II. In today’s world of cyberattacks and asymmetrical conflict, our nation’s leadership is tested in unique ways. That is why, as a combat veteran, President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan alarms me.

Withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan is not wrong – it’s long overdue. In 2014, after 13 years, we ended our combat mission. It should have ended years earlier, after we defeated the Taliban elements that harbored those responsible for 9/11.

After years of arrogant nation-building efforts, President Trump’s 2020 ceasefire agreement with the Taliban finally set the right course. We’ve lost thousands of American lives and spent nearly $200 billion helping the Afghan government build an army to defend their country against the Taliban.

Now is the time for the Afghan army to do just that.

WITHDRAWING OR DISAPPEARING? Yet, the Biden administration’s disorganized withdrawal is an affront to our sacrifices, as a military and as a nation. Last Friday, in the middle of the night, Bagram Airfield was evacuated. Without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, we cut the electricity plunging the complex that once housed 100,000 U.S. troops into darkness.

As the sun rose, the Afghan army became aware of what was going on. They arrived to find looters ransacking buildings. Most amazing of all, the Biden administration’s evacuation plan left behind weapons, ammunition, thousands of trucks and vans, and hundreds of armored vehicles. A picture from the abandoned airbase shows about a dozen armored humvees the Afghan Army was able to hold onto.

The picture of those humvees struck me hardest.

I remember countless rides in humvees like those in the picture. As an infantry platoon leader

I NEARLY DIED IN AFGHANISTAN: In an instant, I was on fire. I screamed for my God and my mother. I was rolling on the ground. The fire would not stop. I threw sand in my face. The flames burnt on. I don’t know how long I fought the flames. It seemed like forever. It might have been 30 seconds.

Daylight was fading. My men were scattered. The enemy was firing at us from behind the walls of a village. I was still burning, and I couldn’t see anything because my face was on fire. I hit a point where I just let go. I was ready to die.

Then, as bullets whistling around me, I heard a voice. It was one of my soldiers. he said, “sir, I’ve got you” as he and others began to smother the flames.

In war, as in life, we depend on each other. As a nation, as neighbors, as friends and family, we support each other. We help with things small and large.

We keep our commitments, and if we can’t accomplish something, our loved ones know we tried.

The Biden administration did not try. Their reckless withdrawal from Bagram is an incredible, incompetent error of commitment and judgement.

Bagram is about 400 miles west of China and about 500 miles east of Iran. It is a strategic asset that should have been passed to Afghan government with care. Instead, the Biden administration abandoned Bagram in the middle of the night with no coordination, no warning, and no effort.

Worst of all, our abrupt departure did real damage to the Afghan army’s chances of success. The equipment, vehicles, arms and ammunition we left behind have now been looted by the Taliban, strengthening an enemy that enthusiastically supports terrorism.

What we tried to accomplish as a nation, what I and so many other fought for was damaged by the Biden administration’s negligence.

President Biden should launch an investigation.

The American people deserve to know why this mistake happened, and we should hold our leaders accountable.

In today’s complex world, we need to learn from our mistakes. Anything less than trying to understand how this happened and addressing our leader’s failures, would betray not only the Afghan’s trust, but the trust of the American people.

Captain Sam Brown is a disabled U.S. Army veteran. He now resides in Washoe County, Nevada. He is a Republican considering challenging United States Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV).

So too, the US could have left its 2,500 troops in place in Afghanistan, a force that is less than 10% of the American service personnel in South Korea, to enable the Afghan government to fight the Taliban and its jihadist allies, such as al Qaeda.

Fourth, Biden speciously implied that if the US has troops in Afghanistan then somehow it won’t be strong enough to “meet the strategic competition with China and other nations.” The US military consists of 1.3 million active-duty personnel and yet it can’t leave 2,500 troops in Afghanistan? To use a trademark Biden expression: C’mon man!

After his speech, Biden told reporters that it’s “highly unlikely” that the Taliban will take over Afghanistan, which is not what his own intelligence community is warning.

Biden also claimed that Afghanistan has never been unified, an odd assertion when a united Afghanistan has existed since 1747,

making it older than the United States.

In response to a question about whether he saw any parallels between this withdrawal and the US exit from Vietnam in 1975, the President asserted “none whatsoever.” he went on to say that “There’s going to be no circumstance for you to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan,” yet an urgent evacuation is exactly one of the contingencies US military planners are preparing for, a senior defense official with knowledge of the planning process told CNN. To use another trademark Biden expression, his Afghanistan speech was a bunch of malarkey.

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is author of the forthcoming book “The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden.”

As the US withdraws, Afghanistan’s neighbours must step up FIGHTING HAS CREATED AN ESTIMATED 200,000 INTERNAL REFUGEES THIS YEAR. RELIEF AGENCIES FEAR THAT A DROUGHT, THE WORST SINCE 2018 AND WHICH DISPLACED 250,000 PEOPLE, THREATENS A HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE. THE RED CROSS HAS WARNED THAT ABOUT HALF THE POPULATION — 18.4 MILLION AFGHANS — NEED ASSISTANCE AND NEARLY 17 MILLION PEOPLE ARE EXPERIENCING SERIOUS FOOD INSECURITY JApAn TimeS

W

Editorial Board

heN U.S. President Joe Biden announced in April that the United States would withdraw its military forces from Afghanistan by Sept.

11, the only real question was whether the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist movement that seeks to retake control of the country, would wait until that departure to launch their offensive.

They did not. Taliban forces have moved relentlessly forward, taking control of nearly one-third of Afghanistan’s districts and threatening many more.

Civil war is not Afghanistan’s only danger. The country is also dealing with a massive drought and the COVID-19 outbreak. Food insecurity is on the rise. The resulting instability threatens not only Afghanistan but will spill over and roil its neighbours.

Diplomacy is unlikely to stave off the Taliban’s return to power, but it is absolutely necessary — to explore peaceful solutions to the conflict and to engage regional countries and give them a stake in Afghanistan’s future and its stability.

Intelligence officials and military strategists warned that a U.S. (and allied) withdrawal would imperil the survival of the government in Kabul. One assessment reportedly gave the Afghan government six months after American troops left. That may have been optimistic.

The Taliban launched its offensive shortly after Biden announced that he intended to end the “Forever War,” and the gains have been impressive. The group is believed to already control about half the territory of Afghanistan, and it is expanding quickly.

In the country’s northern and southern provinces, Talib fighters have been routing government forces, with an estimated 1,600 soldiers fleeing to neighboring Tajikistan, prompting that government to deploy its own military to the border.

The government in Tajikistan is already coping with an influx of Afghans, reported to be about 1,000 a month, who have fled in fear of a Taliban takeover. It is said to soon be setting up camps for the growing number of refugees.

Iran, Afghanistan’s western neighbor, is worried, too.

That country is already home to an estimated 2 million undocumented Afghans, and fears that renewed fighting will spur more to cross the border. Iran is a Shiite country and the Taliban are militant Sunnis. Iranian forces clashed repeatedly with the Taliban when that group was in power in Kabul during the 1990s. Iranian politicians have warned that a Taliban presence on the border would cross a red line. That concern, and a desire to spread its influence in south Asia, prompted Iran to host last week peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan government representatives. The Afghan government has been insisting on negotiations with the Taliban, but the group has preferred to do its talking on the battlefield. Quiet talks in Qatar made no progress but the Taliban’s gains may encourage its leadership to use diplomacy to avoid a bloody fight for the capital.

China too is watching developments in Afghanistan, worried about the potential impact of instability on its western, predominately Muslim provinces. Beijing hosted the fourth round of the China-Afghanistan-Pakistan Trilateral Foreign Ministers’ Dialogue.

Chinese officials have also been pursuing talks with Afghan counterparts about investing in the country through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s multibillion-dollar project to build infrastructure throughout the world to spur development, facilitate trade and extend Chinese influence.

China has already tightened links with Pakistan through the BRI, and the prospect of adding Afghanistan to the effort appeals to the governments in Beijing and Islamabad.

Despite the many different perspectives, one thing most of those countries agree on is that the dire situation in Afghanistan is the fault of the U.S. Blame is affixed for either invading in 2001 or pulling out this year.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov faulted “the hasty withdrawal of NATO.” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad decried the “failure of the U.S. in Afghanistan,” while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called the U.S. “the origin of problems in Afghanistan” and warned that it “cannot cause instability or war by withdrawing troops.”

There is some truth to charges that the U.S. presence contributed to the Kabul government’s difficulties, but the bulk of the blame rests on a feckless class of elites that have prioritized personal or tribal gains over those of the nation.

The result is a country that is weak and divided, with no social capital and little resilience.

Fighting has created an estimated 200,000 internal refugees this year. Relief agencies fear that a drought, the worst since 2018 and which displaced 250,000 people, threatens a humanitarian catastrophe. The Red Cross has warned that about half the population — 18.4 million Afghans — need assistance and nearly 17 million people are experiencing serious food insecurity. Aid officials expect to see cases of malnutrition rise significantly, especially among infants and young children.

This is occurring amidst a third COVID-19 outbreak that is overwhelming hospitals and health care systems. Despite testing just 500,000 people (out of a population of 40 million) the United Nations reports that 42% of recent tests come back positive. The country lacks tests, vaccines, hospitals and other basic health care equipment.

The combination of war, disease and drought has pushed Afghanistan to the brink. It desperately needs money and other forms of assistance but much of the world is ready to turn its back on the country. It is telling that the United Nations humanitarian appeal for Afghanistan is only 13% funded.

The U.S. withdrawal will prompt regional countries to devote time and attention to Afghanistan, to figure out how to pacify the country’s warring factions and prevent instability from spilling over the borders and affecting them. The risk of a wider conflagration may prove to be the motivation that they need to put effort and energy into what has until now been someone else’s problem.

Sunday, 11 July, 2021

BUSINESS 09

KARACHI corporate corner IMC vaccinates workforce against Covid-19 KARACHI: Indus Motor Company (IMC) in collaboration with the Government has initiated the COVID-19 Vaccination Drive for its workforce of 4,000 regular and contract employees. The vaccination process was completed over a period of four days. The Company’s Chief Executive, Ali Jamali said, “The coronavirus pandemic has completely changed the country’s social fabric, bringing with it despair and misery. In order to return some normalcy to life, the Government’s pro-active effort to control the pandemic through mass vaccinations, free of cost, is commendable.” He further added, “Maintaining a safe and healthy working environment for our people is at the core of Toyota’s CSR Policy. This vaccination drive at IMC is in line with Government directives for organizations to ensure that all employees are inoculated.” IMC has been at the forefront, in battling the COVID-19 pandemic since its onset last year, helping with its community services and supporting hospitals’ around the country, like the Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital, SIUT, Indus Hospital, etc. PRESS RElEASE

NITL declares dividends for funds under its management KARACHI: National Investment Trust Limited (NITL), has declared its annual results for its funds under management for the year ended 30th June 2021.

NITL MD Adnan Afridi said that despite the economic effects and challenges of the pandemic, majority of funds managed by NITL generated a competitive return. He said last year NIT introduced Asset Allocation fund (NIT-AAF) and Pakistan’s first Exchange Traded Fund (NIT-PGETF) which attracted investors and performed well. NITL is in process of launching NIT Social Impact Fund (NIT - SIF) and NIT Islamic Money Market Fund (NIT-IMMF). NIT Social Impact Fund (NIT - SIF) is an open-end Micro Finance Sector Fund that shall channelize funds of impact investors to leverage on the strengths of rated asset pool of micro-finance sector, for financial returns and sustainable social impact. He said during the year 2020-21 (FY21), NITL achieved the highest asset manager rating of AM1 by accredited rating agencies, PACRA and VIS Credit Rating Co. Ltd. This is the top-quality asset management rating for asset management companies.

Despite challenging macroeconomic conditions and the impact of Covid-19, NIT has maintained its 58 years track-record of consistently paying dividends and declared a cash dividend of Rs1.61 per unit for its unit holders of NI(U)T Fund against the dividend of Rs1.29 last year. The payment of dividend @ Rs1.61 per unit translates to a payout of Rs1.38 billion among its unit holders. The MD stated that during FY21, the Fund earned a total return of 37.14% where its NAV appreciated from Rs54.93 (Ex-Dividend) as on (Date30-06-2020) to Rs75.33 as on (Date 30-062021). PRESS RElEASE

OPPO donates health supplies to General Hospital in Lahore LAHORE: OPPO has donated thousands of medical supplies and hundreds of OPPO Band Styles to the General hospital in recognition and appreciation of the health workers’ continuous efforts during the ongoing pandemic. OPPO is an idealist who dreams of a better world for all and with this belief; the company continues to contribute in society for the greater good. OPPO Pakistan CEO, George Long, shared a few words at the donation ceremony; “OPPO believes in technology for mankind and kindness for the world – and we hope that through this initiative we can overcome this difficult time together.” General Hospital HOD Prof Anwar Chudhary added, “We at General Hospital are incredibly thankful to OPPO for their generous donation and for recognizing all the hard work our Doctors have put in to save countless lives.” He also praised the doctors for showing great strength and bravery during this period of difficulty and uncertainty. All care kits were distributed to the doctors

by OPPO personnel. Meanwhile, extra measures were taken and COVID SOPs were strictly followed to ensure the safety of everyone present. OPPO has always gone above and beyond to do what is right. Just last year, the company donated Rs6.2 million to the Prime Minister’s COVID relief fund. PRESS RElEASE

Gas sECTOr CIrCuLar DEBT CrOssEs rs532BN T

HE circular debt in the gas sector has grown to more than Rs532 billion as the twin Sui companies fail to make payments to their suppliers on account of poor cash flows. According to a report by Dawn, owing to the inordinate delay in the publication of financial accounts by the two gas companies, the exact figure for the sector’s circular debt is unavailable. But one proxy for the build-up of the inter-corporate debt within the gas segment shows the amount stood at Rs532.2bn at the end of March, up 5.5 per cent from June 2020.

Unpaid government subsidies meant for residential and export-oriented consumers have constrained the cash flows of Sui Northern Gas Pipelines (SNGPL) and Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC).

This has resulted in bloated receivables on the balance sheets of energy exploration companies — mainly the Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDC) and Pakistan Petroleum Ltd (PPL) — from the twin gas distributors.

The OGDC’s receivables from SNGPL and SSGC amounted to Rs272.3bn at the end of March.

The corresponding figure on PPL’s balance sheet was Rs259.9bn.

Meanwhile, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Petroleum and Power Tabish Gauhar Friday said the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had devised a multi-pronged strategy to reform the gas sector and meet the country’s energy needs in an efficient manner.

“Our government is determined to reform the gas sector and for this purpose we have devised a strategic work stream that is further divided into three parts; short term, medium term and long term,” he said in a series of tweets.

GoVt deVises Multi-PronGed strAteGy to reforM GAs seCtor Under the short term plan of 6-12 months, the SAPM said excess capacity of 300 Million Cubic Feet per Day (MMCFD) gas of the two existing Regasified Liquefied Natural Gas (RLNG) terminals and additional LNG cargoes would be utilized to bridge the demand and supply gap especially in the next winter season.

“There could potentially be up to 300 MMCFD (3+ additional LNG cargoes per month) of 'excess capacity' available at the existing two RLNG terminals that may be utilised on a strictly private-to-private i.e. without any GOP “take or pay” payment obligation and on an open/third party access basis to further bridge the demand and supply gap, especially in the coming winters for the domestic gas consumers, under a ‘without prejudice’ arrangement sanctioned

by OGRA,” he said.

Tabish said a few parties had proposed supplying up to 300 MMCFD of LNG, on private to private basis, to industrial customers via cryogenic road tankers from Gwadar, what he called the virtual LNG pipeline.

Aside from meeting the industrial gas demand in and around Karachi without the need to physically access the SSGC pipeline network, he said the proposal may potentially make available the 150 MMCFD of RLNG that SSGC is currently retaining in their system and accordingly release the same to meet the deficit up north in SGPL's system.

The SAPM said the Petroleum Division now had a comprehensive draft policy in place after discussion

CCP raids PVMA offices in three cities over anti-competitive behaviour allegations

with key stakeholders, but it needed to get through the internal approval process by July end to enhance supply of the alternative fuel to domestic consumers and correspondingly reduce the burden on natural gas provision via the pipeline network.

He said to remove the price anomaly between the rates of indigenous and imported gas, and the associated adverse impact on the sector’s financial sustainability, the long awaited “political consensus” on Weighted Average Cost of Gas (WACOG) must be reached at the earliest, ideally before the year end.

Under the medium-term (2+ years) strategy, Tabish said the government hoped that two new merchant LNG terminal developers would achieve financial close and start construction this year. “We do need at least one additional import terminal without any take or pay commitment on the part of the GOP) by 2023.”

Besides, he said, the funds collected under the Gas Infrastructure Development Cess (GIDC) would be utilised to start construction of on-ground LNG storage facilities at the Port Qasim to maintain 10day reserves in Phase 1.

Accordingly, the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) was finalising third party access rules.

"We need to show substantial progress on this by 2023,” Tabish said.

Furthermore, in the long term (3+ years) plan, the SAPM said that impediments to accelerated natural gas drilling activities in the frontier regions of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) would be removed.

He said upstream regulatory functions would be transferred from the Petroleum Division to an independent authority, the summary of which had already been approved by the Cabinet. NEWS DESK

Govt forms NEDB to increase exports ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT

ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT

The Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) on Friday seized possible evidence during the inspection of the Pakistan Vanaspati Manufacturers Association (PVMA) offices in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi as part of an investigation of alleged violations of Sections 3 and 4 of the Competition Act, 2010 in the edible oil and ghee sector.

As per details, the inspections were carried out to impound documents and computer-stored information related to PVMA’s suspected role in anti-competitive activities.

Three teams of authorised officers entered and searched the premises and seized what they claimed was important evidence. Officials of the association cooperated fully with the search teams and handed over the required documents and computer-stored information after signing inventory details.

During the investigation, the CCP’s inquiry committee noted that PVMA is an association of 125 edible oil and ghee manufacturers, and as per media reports, seems to be involved in

the collective price fixing of retail prices of various brands of cooking oil and ghee for various market segments.

According to data available with the committee, PVMA circulates freight charges among its member mills and frequently revises these charges based on the increase and decrease in the prices of the High-Speed Diesel (HSD). Such deliberations at the level of the PVMA appear to be a prima facie contravention of Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2010.

It appears that the association's platform is being used to make collective business decisions with respect to the prices of oil and ghee, and its cost components. However, the competition act prohibits such business practices.

The impounded record with the inquiry committee may prove the PVMA’s alleged role and other undertakings in the recent hike in the prices of edible oil and ghee.

The CCP is mandated to ensure free competition in all spheres of commercial and economic activities to enhance economic efficiency, and to protect consumers from anticompetitive behavior, including the price-fixing of essential commodities.

The federal government has formed the National Export Development Board (NEDB) with Prime Minister Imran Khan its chairman, to boost Pakistan's exports, a notification issued by the Ministry of Commerce said on Friday. Federal ministers for finance, planning, energy, industry and production, national food security, trade advisers, SBP governor, FBR chairman, Board of Investment chairman, secretary finance, commerce board secretary, FPCCI president, Pakistan Business Council chairman and Overseas Investors Chambers of Commerce and Industry president are members of the board. Members of the private sector have also been included in the board whereas Terms of Reference (ToRs) have also been issued. Other important government and private sector members will be invited on a special invitation for the relevant agenda. NEDB can invite representatives of textile, leather, pharmaceutical, engineering, rice, fruits and vegetables, agriculture, surgical instruments, information technology and e-commerce. The meeting of NEDB will be held bimonthly and MoC will serve as its secretariat. The Terms of References (TORs) of the board will be to provide strategic guidance to increase Pakistan export competitiveness by continuously enabling an environment for export and increasing the firm's export capabilities. In addition, the board will also oversee the alignment, progress and implementation of the strategic trade policy framework and various sector-specific policy initiatives.

PC defers decision on PSM deal The Privatisation Commission (PC) board on Friday deferred approval of transaction structure for the sale of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) owing to differences over classification of its core and non-core assets, which will be handed over to the new buyer, according to a report by The Express Tribune.

The board could not take a decision after it found that some of the operating assets had been described as non-core assets by the valuator, Joseph Lobo, the report said quoting a senior official of the Privatisation Ministry.

The classification of assets by the valuator varied from the audited financial statement of PSM. Board members were also divided on whether the

government should sell up to 75 per cent assets being transferred to a new PSM subsidiary – Steel Corp Private Limited – or opt for the sale of 100pc stake.

“Matters leading to the filing of the Scheme of Arrangement with SECP were discussed in the (board) meeting, which included updated financial reports of PSMC and its subsidiary, approval of the board for transferring utility connections to the newly formed subsidiary without encumbrances, approval for retention of the new subsidiary either by the Ministry of Industries or PSM and the potential size of divestment among others,” said a brief statement issued by the privatisation ministry after the meeting.

Board Chairman and Federal Minister for Privati-

sation Mohammad Mian Soomro stressed that they were resolving pending matters in collaboration with the main stakeholders and Expressions of Interest (EOIs) would likely be invited by the end of July.

The board was informed that the new subsidiary, Steel Corp Private Limited, will have authorised capital of Rs150 billion and paid up capital of Rs1 billion.

It may be noted here that the PSM board has approved tentative core land of 1,228 acres and its right of use will be awarded without entering into a lease agreement as per the standard terms to subsidiary until the strategic partner comes in. The draft land lease deed has been prepared by the advisors and shared with privatisation ministry. MONITORING REPORT

KARACHI: Shell Pakistan Limited (SPL) and K-Electric (KE) have inaugurated the first ‘Rapid Charger’ station with a capacity of 50 kWh for Electric Vehicles at the Shell Askari-4 forecourt located at Rashid Minhas Road.

This initiative follows the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between both companies earlier this year; pursuant to which, Shell will establish ElectricVehicle (EV) Charging Stations at strategic locations in Karachi, and KE, in its capacity as Karachi’s sole power supplier, will ensure enhanced power supply to the agreed locations. A special demonstration of the rapidcharging process was given to stakeholders attending the inauguration ceremony to provide product knowledge, training, and test drives. PR

Sunday, 11 July, 2021

10 FOREIGN NEWS

KARACHI

BiDen signs orDer to tAckle corporAte ABuses Across us economy WASHINGTON

p

REUTERS

reSIDenT Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order on Friday to promote more competition in the U.S. economy, urging agencies to crack down on anti-competitive practices in sectors from agriculture to drugs and labor.

If fully implemented, the effort will help lower Americans' internet costs, allow for airline baggage fee refunds for delayed luggage and cut some prescription drug prices, among many other steps.

Biden said the order "commits the federal government to full and aggressive enforcement of our antitrust laws." "no more tolerance of abusive actions by monopolies. no more bad mergers that lead to massive layoffs, higher prices and fewer options for workers and consumers alike," he said at a White House signing ceremony.

The president noted areas where many advocates feel that prices are too high, wages are tamped down or new businesses excluded from competition. "Let me be very clear, capitalism without competition isn't capitalism, it's exploitation," he said.

FDA seeks probe into its talks with Biogen before Alzheimer's drug approval REUTERS The U.S. drug regulator on Friday called for an independent federal probe into the interactions between its representatives and Biogen Inc (BIIB.O) that led to the approval of the company Alzheimer's disease drug last month.

The drugmaker's shares fell 3% after the agency's acting commissioner Janet Woodcock asked the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services to probe if the talks were inconsistent with the regulator's policies. Biogen said it will cooperate with any inquiry in connection to a possible review. The drug, Aduhelm, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on June 7 despite strong objection from its expert advisory panel, resulting in the resignation of three of the 11 members. "There continue to be concerns raised...regarding contacts between representatives from Biogen and FDA during the review process," Woodcock said in a letter posted on Twitter. Woodcock, however, said she had "tremendous confidence" in the integrity of the staff involved in the review of the drug. Aduhelm was approved despite one of its two largescale clinical trials failing to show a benefit to patients. The move was based on evidence that it can reduce brain plaques, a likely contributor to Alzheimer's disease, rather than proof that it slows progression of the lethal mind-wasting disease. Stifel analyst Paul Matteis said the latest development was unlikely to impact Aduhelm's status as an approved drug.

"Dr. Woodcock's letter appears to be more of a maneuver to alleviate pressure on FDA and it centers around the nature of interactions/discussions, not the actual essence of the approval decision," he said. Memos released by the FDA last month showed a clear struggle within the agency ahead of its controversial decision to approve Aduhelm. After months of internal deliberations, agency officials cleared the drug using its accelerated approval pathway, which required a study to confirm that the drug works as intended.

The White House says the rate of new business formation has fallen by almost 50% since the 1970s as large businesses make it harder for Americans with good ideas to break into markets.

Biden's action goes after corporate monopolies across a broad swath of industries, and includes 72 initiatives he wants more than a dozen federal agencies to act on.

The order instructs antitrust agencies to focus on labor, healthcare, technology and agriculture as they address a laundry list of issues that have irritated consumers, and in the case of drug prices, has bankrupted some.

Lower wages caused by lack of competition are estimated to cost the median American household $5,000 per year, according to a White House fact sheet that cites research from the American economic Liberties Project - an influential Washingtonbased anti-monopoly group.

The initiatives will no doubt kick off a series of fights with the affected industries.

The powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a statement saying the move "smacks of a 'government knows best' approach to managing the economy" and pledged to "vigorously oppose calls for gov-

ernment-set prices, onerous and legally questionable rulemakings, efforts to treat innovative industries as public utilities, and the politicization of antitrust enforcement."

INTERNET, HEARING AIDS: Among

the administration's plans to open up the U.S. economy are new rules to mandate ending excessive internet contract termination fees, allow hearing aids to be sold over the counter and end non-compete clauses for millions of workers and many occupational licensing requirements.

"President Biden is doing this at the beginning of his administration, which gives his agencies more time to execute on the orders here," White House economic adviser Bharat ramamurti told reuters.

Biden's order pushes the Agriculture Department to act to stop what the White House called "abusive practices of some meat processors," reacting to farmers and ranchers who sometimes say they face too few buyers for their animals.

The administration also seeks to make it easier for customers to switch banks and take their transaction data with them, and restore net neutrality rules that require companies to treat all internet services equally. reuters first reported Biden's plan to issue a competition executive order in late June and subsequently published stories on how it will impact industries such as farm equipment manufacturers, banking, rail and sea shipping. read more The executive order will direct the De-

partment of Justice and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to carefully review mergers, and to challenge prior deals that have closed.

It directs the FTC to issue rules to address competition concerns from Big Tech companies, Facebook, Apple, Alphabet's Google and Amazon, and limit "killer acquisitions" where large internet platforms acquire potential competitors.

On prescription drugs, it aims to lower prices for consumers by allowing importation of drugs from Canada, where they are cheaper. It also urges the Department of Health and Human Services to draw up a plan to fight high drug prices, and gouging. evercore/ISI analyst Michael newshel said in a research note that the impact of allowing imports from Canada on pricing would be limited given Canada's limited drug supply and that Canada has indicated in the past that it would not cooperate with any program. He said the government's decision to turn to executive orders on drug pricing was surprising given ongoing legislative efforts in Congress.

The executive order also establishes a White House Competition Council, led by the Director of the national economic Council and including many cabinet secretaries, to monitor progress.

Special Report: Afghan pilots assassinated

by Taliban as US withdraws KABUL REUTERS

Afghan Air Force Major DastagirZamaray had grown so fearful of Taliban assassinations of off-duty forces in Kabul that he decided to sell his home to move to a safer pocket of Afghanistan's sprawling capital.

Instead of being greeted by a prospective buyer at his realtor's office earlier this year, the 41-year-old pilot was confronted by a gunman who walked inside and, without a word, fatally shot the real estate agent in the mouth.

Zamaray reached for his sidearm but the gunman shot him in the head. The father of seven collapsed dead on his 14-year-old son, who had tagged along. The boy was spared, but barely speaks anymore, his family says.

Zamaray “only went there because he personally knew the realtor and thought it was safe," Samiullah Darman, his brother-in-law, told reuters. "We didn’t know that he would never come back."

At least seven Afghan pilots, including Zamaray, have been assassinated off base in recent months, according to two senior Afghan government officials. This series of targeted killings, which haven't been previously reported, illustrate what U.S. and Afghan officials believe is a deliberate Taliban effort to destroy one of Afghanistan's most valuable military assets: its corps of U.S.- and nATO-trained military pilots.

In so doing, the Taliban -- who have no air force -- are looking to level the playing field as they press major ground offensives. The militants are quickly seizing territory once controlled by the U.S.-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani, raising fears they could eventually try to topple Kabul. reuters confirmed the identities of two of the slain pilots through family members. It could not independently verify the names of the other five who were allegedly targeted.

In response to questions from reuters, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed the group had killed Zamaray, and that it had started a program that will see Afghan Air Force pilots “targeted and eliminated because all of them do bombardment against their people."

A U.n. report documented 229 civilian deaths caused by the Taliban in Afghanistan in the first three months of 2021, and 41 civilian deaths caused by the Afghan Air Force over the same period.

Afghanistan's government has not publicly disclosed the number of pilots assassinated in targeted killings. The nation's Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment. The Pentagon said it was aware of the deaths of several Afghan pilots in killings claimed by the Taliban, but

declined comment on U.S. intelligence and investigations.

Afghan military pilots are particularly attractive assassination targets, current and former U.S. and Afghan officials say. They can strike Taliban forces massing for major attacks, shuttle commandos to missions and provide life-saving air cover for Afghan ground troops. Pilots take years to train and are hard to replace, representing an outsized blow to the country's defenses with every loss.

Shoot-downs and accidents are everpresent risks. Yet these pilots often are most vulnerable in the streets of their own neighborhoods, where attackers can come from anywhere, said retired U.S. Brigadier General David Hicks, who commanded the training effort for the Afghan Air Force from 2016 to 2017.

"Their lives were at much greater risk during that time (off base) than they were while they were flying combat missions," Hicks said.

Although Taliban assassinations of pilots have happened in years past, the recent killings take on greater significance as the Afghan Air Force is tested like never before.

Just last week, U.S. forces left America’s main military bastion in Afghanistan, Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, as they complete their withdrawal from the country 20 years after ousting the Taliban following the Al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"Pilots are on top of the Taliban's hit list," the senior Afghan government official said.

That Afghan official and two others, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they're working to protect pilots and their families, moving some to on-base housing and relocating others to safer civilian neighborhoods.

A White House national Security Council spokesperson strongly condemned “all targeted assassinations in Afghanistan” and stressed U.S. commitments to continue providing security assistance to the Afghan military.

The Afghan Air Force is heavily dependent on U.S. training, equipment and maintenance as well as logistics to ensure a reliable pipeline of munitions and spare parts. The Pentagon has yet to fully detail how it will keep Afghan aviators flying after the U.S.-led mission formally ends in coming weeks, as ordered by President Joe Biden.

The Pentagon told reuters it would seek to provide Afghanistan with extra aircraft to ease the strain of combat losses and maintenance downtime.

David Petraeus, a former CIA director and former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, warned that failure of the United

States to provide enough support for the Afghan military could be disastrous.

"We are potentially consigning Afghanistan and the Afghan people to a civil war," Petraeus said in an interview.

Washington is moving to evacuate interpreters who worked for the U.S. military, but it’s unclear if the Biden administration would risk doing the same for Afghan forces, like pilots. Some officials believe offering an exit strategy for elite Afghan troops could accelerate a feared collapse following the U.S. withdrawal.

U.S. intelligence assessments have warned that the Afghan government could fall in as little as six months, two U.S. officials told reuters. "no one wants to have the (Afghan forces) preemptively throw in the towel," another U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

PRECIOUS, OVER-STRETCHED: Two Afghan Air Force pilots were killed on June 7 while trying to evacuate troops wounded during a surge of fighting against the Taliban insurgency.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for shooting down their russian-made, U.S.-financed Mi-17 helicopter. Local media identified the deceased pilots as Milad Massoud and Abdul Alim Shahrayari. The Afghan Defense Ministry said in a statement that the aircraft crashed, but it did not say why, nor would it identify the pilots. An Afghan official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the chopper was shot down.

Both the crew and the aircraft were precious.

The Afghan fleet contained just 13 Mi-17 helicopters and 65 qualified aircrews of pilots and co-pilots to fly them, according to U.S. military data from April 2021 and november 2020, respectively.

Those data show the entire Afghan Air Force comprises 339 qualified aircrews and 160 aircraft -- less than a quarter of the fleet size of U.S. commercial carrier Southwest Airlines. The "usable" fleet is even smaller around 140 aircraft - after accounting for aircraft undergoing maintenance, according to the same April data.

Built in America's image, the Afghan Air Force is equipped with UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and lumbering C-130H transport aircraft, neither of which Afghans know how to maintain, according to a Pentagon report released in April. Those aircraft are serviced by U.S.-funded contractors, which also handle most maintenance for the rest of the fleet, including A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft, AC-208 eliminator planes and MD-530 helicopters, according to that report.

A separate 2020 report by the Pentagon's

Lead Inspector General warned that Afghanistan's fleet would stop being "combat effective" within a few months if the Afghan Air Force were to lose contractor support. The Pentagon has not said how many contractors will remain in Afghanistan. reuters contacted two large U.S. defense contractors that support the Afghan Air Force: Leidos Holdings Inc and DynCorp International, now part of Amentum Services Inc. Spokespeople for those companies declined to say how many contractors, if any, were still in Afghanistan.

In comments to reuters, the Pentagon acknowledged the withdrawal of contractors could impact routine maintenance, something it was working to address. Spokesman Major rob Lodewick said it had already become common practice to send aircraft abroad for heavy maintenance.

Petraeus said that’s not only costly, but it’s "impractical" in a wartime setting to fly aircraft out of Afghanistan for repairs. remote instruction and meetings via video-conference also have natural limitations.

Along with Afghanistan's Special Forces, the Afghan Air Force is a pillar of the nation's strategy for preventing a Taliban takeover of cities. In addition to providing air cover and performing bombing raids, pilots conduct medical evacuations, ferry supplies and transport troops for the country's over-stretched army.

Since Biden’s April withdrawal announcement, Taliban militants have more than doubled the number of districts under their control in Afghanistan to 203, which is nearly half the country’s 407 districts, according to the Long War Journal, an online publication associated with the conservative think-tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. reuters could not independently verify the data.

Western security officials said insurgent forces have captured more than 100 districts, but the Taliban say they have control of more than 200 districts in 34 provinces comprising over half the Central Asian country.

The U.S. military has stopped releasing its tally of Taliban-controlled districts and says that information is now classified. But on Thursday, a Pentagon spokesman acknowledged the Taliban had taken "dozens" of district centers.

Swift gains by the Taliban are putting more strain on Afghan Air Force crews and aircraft to repel the advances, four U.S. officials said. even before the latest wave of Taliban offensives, the Afghan Air Force was flying missions at a faster pace than anticipated, piling up maintenance checks that took more planes out of circulation, according to a May report by the Pentagon's Inspector General.

Sunday, 11 July, 2021

SPORTS 11

KARACHI Sri Lanka delay home series against India after Covid-19 cases NEW DELHI: India's limited-overs tour of Sri Lanka has been delayed by five days after two Covid-19 infections were detected in the home team contingent, India's cricket board (BCCI) said on Saturday. Batting coach Grant Flower and data analyst G. T. Niroshan tested positive for the new coronavirus soon after their return from England on Tuesday, Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) said in a statement on Friday. The three one-day internationals will now be played on July 18, 20 and 23, followed by three Twenty20 matches on July 25, 27 and 29. All matches will be held in Colombo. "We understand that the circumstances are extraordinary, but the BCCI would like to extend its full support to Sri Lanka Cricket during these tough times for the smooth conduct of the upcoming series," BCCI secretary Jay Shah said.

"Our medical team is in constant touch with the team of doctors at SLC and together following all safety protocols that will help the series to get underway." SLC chief executive Ashley de Silva said he was "grateful to the BCCI for understanding the situation". Three English players and four staff members also tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday, forcing them to field an entirely new squad for their home series against Pakistan. ReuteRs

BOP sponsors Junior National Ranking Tennis Championship 2021

LAHORE: The Bank of Punjab has always been on the forefront when it comes to empowerment of the youth. BOP sponsored the Junior National Tennis Championship 2021.

The tournament took place at Punjab Tennis Academy under the Punjab Lawn Tennis Association (PLTA). Different players from across Pakistan got the chance to be in action after a long gap due to Covid restrictions. Closing ceremony was held at Punjab Tennis Academy where Ijaz-ur-Rehman Qureshi (Group Head Operations – BOP) graced the occasion as chief guest and distributed prizes among the winners of different age categories. Secretary PLTA Rashid Malik, players and their families were also present at the occasion. Speaking at the closing ceremony Ijaz-ur-Rehman said, “Such tournaments and activities play an important role in boosting the morale of youngsters who want to pursue their career in sports. Such events provide immense opportunities to our youngsters and encourage healthy lifestyle. I am really glad to see the youth in action and the enthusiasm they showed in the tournament. I want to appreciate all the participants and congratulate the winners and their families. We should all encourage our youth to participate in physical sports as they are important for healthy brain, while competitions prepare them to handle pressures of practical life ahead. BOP will continue to support such events to encourage our youth.” PR

AShLeIgh BARTy wINS fIRST wImBLedON TITLe LONDON

A

AFP

SHLEIGH Barty won her first Wimbledon title on the 50th anniversary of fellow indigenous Australian Evonne Goolagong Cawley’s maiden crown, beating Karolina Pliskova 6-3, 6-7 (4/7), 6-3 in the final on Saturday.

The 25-year-old Australian — who wore a specially-designed dress in tribute to Cawley’s iconic scallop one she sported in 1971 — adds the Wimbledon crown to her 2019 French Open title.

“It took me a long time to verbalise, to dare to dream it and say it,” said Barty, who was also fulfilling a childhood dream.

“I didn’t sleep a lot last night, I was thinking of all the what-ifs. I hope I made Evonne proud.”

It was the first women’s Wimbledon final to go to three sets since 2012 when Serena Williams beat Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska.

Barty is also the first top seed to win the women’s title since Williams in 2016.

Barty had looked like cruising to victory after soaring into a 4-0 lead over her opponent — the Australian’s start so blistering that she won the first 14 points.

However, 29-year-old Pliskova steadied herself while Barty faltered when she served for the match at 6-5 in the second set.

The Czech broke and then swept the tiebreaker to take the final into a decider.

Barty got the break for 2-0 in the final set and despite one or two wobbles she got herself over the line sinking to her knees, her hands over her face in disbelief.

She wiped a couple of tears away before climbing up to the player’s box, just like her compatriot Pat Cash did when he won the Wimbledon men’s title in 1987.

Victory would taste sweeter too as only last month she retired from the French Open in the second round due to a left hip injury.

“This is incredible,” said Barty, the third Australian woman to be crowned Wimbledon singles champion in the Open era (Cawley and Margaret Court (1970) the others). “I have to start with Kaja (Karolina Pliskova).

“Congratulations on an incredible tournament to you and your team. I love testing myself against you and I’m sure we’ll have many many matches.”

Barty is masterful at remaining pokerfaced on court and she managed to restrain her emotions largely at the presentation ceremony. However, once off court she sobbed

as she hugged her boyfriend Gary Kissick.

For Pliskova, it was more heartbreak as the former world number one fell at the final hurdle in three sets in the 2016 US Open final. At one point with Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise looking on it looked feasible, though, that she could pull off mission impossible in winning the title.

However, her previously superb weapon — her serve that had only been broken four times prior to the final — deserted her when she most needed it.

So did her emotions as Pliskova — the fourth Czech woman to appear in a Wimbledon singles final in the Open era — spoke after receiving the runner-up trophy.

Her tears, though, did not compare to

'Getting a five-for overseas is even more special’, says Mehidy Hasan Miraz AGENCIES TakudzwanasheKaitano is the latest of 13 Test openers that Zimbabwe have tried in the last five years. On day three in Harare, he made 87, the highest score by a Zimbabwe Test opener, breaking Grant Flower's 29year-old record.

Kaitano kept Zimbabwe in the game for a long period, adding 61 with Milton Shumba for the first wicket and 115 with Brendan Taylor for the second.

Having only made the XI after Kevin Kasuza pulled out injured, Kaitano gave a good account of himself, facing 311 balls, the third-most by a Zimbabwe debutant, and the third-most in any innings by a Zimbabwe opener since 2000.

The 28-year-old Kaitano's elation at making his mark at the highest level was mixed with disappointment at the

Zimbabwe collapse that gave Bangladesh a 192-run firstinnings lead.

"I cannot express in words how special the feeling is," he said at the end of the day's play. "It has been a dream come true for me to play Test cricket for the country. It is a good feeling but you want to get over the line, and get a big score. The wicket was really good. I really wanted to get a big score and put the team in a good position.

"Going forward, I will take every innings as it comes. We just have to keep going as a team. We would have wanted to bat for longer, and get close to their total. Unfortunately we are back in the field again. We just have to keep it tight and hopefully restrict them to a low score that's chaseable."

Zimbabwe slumped from 225 for 2 to 276 all out, losing their last eight wickets for just 51 runs. Kaitano was one of those dismissed, caught down the leg side

Could Steven Smith's potential absence open T20 World Cup door for Marnus Labuschagne?

AGENCIES It has been a theme of Marnus Labuschagne's career that he has taken opportunities provided by Steven Smith's absences. He made his Test debut in the UAE when Smith was midway through his Sandpapergate ban, and his Ashes debut a year later as a concussion replacement for Smith after he was felled by a Jofra Archer bouncer.

And the streak could extend into T20I cricket, with Labuschagne among the potential beneficiaries if Smith's persistent elbow injury causes him to miss the T20 World Cup in the UAE later this year. Smith hinted last week in an interview with cricket.com.au that he would be willing to miss the tournament if it meant ensuring his fitness for the start of the Ashes, and if Australia decide they want a similar player anchoring the innings at No. 3, Labuschagne is an obvious candidate.

It was a great anomaly of Labuschagne's career that he had only played 10 professional T20 matches before this year, but with opportunities hard to come by in the BBL, he had pitched his case as a short-form player by

hitting a 51-ball hundred in an intra-squad warm-up match at the Ageas Bowl in England last year. He contributed without starring for the Brisbane Heat in their run to the Challenger final earlier this year, but his game has clearly progressed in the Vitality Blast with Glamorgan.

Labuschagne's 294 runs in the competition have come at an average of 58.80 and a strike rate of 137.38 - healthy enough, given four of his six innings have come on Cardiff's two-paced pitches. His method has been similar to Smith's, starting slowly by giving himself 1015 balls to play himself in, before accelerating at the back end - he has scored 68 runs off the 35 balls he has faced at the death. He has also chipped in with seven wickets at an economy rate of 7.43, and could yet provide Australia with a third spin option to complement Ashton Agar and Adam Zampa.

"I think the tournament has gone alright," he told ESPNcricinfo at Pencaerau Primary School in Cardiff, where he was coaching schoolchildren at a Chance to Shine event as part of Yorkshire Tea's National Cricket Week - a rare morning spent throwing, rather than hit-

ting, balls. "I obviously started really well in those first three games [he scored 93*, 59 and 74]. The last couple of games, we've played on some tougher wickets and obviously I haven't been able to get that big score - a couple of 20s and a 30.

"I think that's the way T20 goes. I don't think you're ever going to go six or seven games where you're getting big scores consistently because the format demands you to play a higher-risk game earlier in your innings, and so you can't get that consistency. But I've loved it, growing and learning my game, and learning every game about how I can continue to get better."

Labuschagne has spoken repeatedly during his time in Wales about his ambition to play in the T20 World Cup, and in particular, his excitement at the opportunity to play a 14-match stretch of games in the tournament's group stage - nearly doubling his career tally.

Circumstances have got in the way, with Nick Selman's positive Covid-19 test forcing him to self-isolate for 10 days along with compatriot Michael Neser as close contacts, but he will return to the squad on next

those shed by her late compatriot Jana Novotna when she lost in the 1993 final and had to be consoled by the Duchess of Kent.

Perhaps of some consolation to Pliskova is Novotna picked herself up after that defeat and won the title in 1998.

“I never cry, never, and now,” said Pliskova stepping back a bit.

“I want to say Ash [Barty] played an incredible tournament, I fought to make it difficult for her but she played very well so congrats to her.

“I want to thank all my team. All the success goes to them, without them I would not be here, and my family of course. “No matter which trophy I have we have had an incredible two weeks here.”

off Mehidy Hasan Miraz, who was rampant from that point on, running through the tail in a quick burst.

Miraz, who has now taken eight five-wicket hauls in Test cricket, said this one was special for being only his second five-for away from home.

"I took a five-for after a long time. A five-for gives the bowler a lot of confidence," he said. "I have been getting two or three wickets lately, so this is good. Getting a five-for in overseas conditions makes it even more special. I last took a five-for in the West Indies in 2018."

Miraz said Bangladesh captain Mominul Haque had reminded him and the other bowlers during the lunch break that they had to cut down the runs, after they had gone for a fair bit in the first session.

"It is a very slow and flat wicket, which made it difficult for our spinners," Miraz said. "We tried to bowl in the right areas, and contain the runs. Most of all, we waited for their mistakes.

"Our captain told me that the spinners should contain the runs, whether we take the wickets or not. They were building partnerships but you may have seen that we bowled very well in the post-lunch session, when we only gave away 35 runs in 29 overs. We also took three wickets." Originally published on ESPNcricinfo

week to play the final two group games. The timing has been particularly frustrating as Labuschagne was left out of the squad to tour the Caribbean primarily to avoid long stretches of quarantine and in order to give him the chance to play consistently in the format.

"There's been a lot of talk about my ambition to play in the T20 World Cup, but my job is just to keep scoring runs," he said. "If it becomes an option and Australia are looking for someone in that middle order then it'd be an amazing opportunity to play.

"What is really exciting is really, for my own benefit, the opportunity to just get some confidence about my T20 game and learn my game. There's not really much conversation [with the selectors], it's just keep putting runs on the board, keep taking wickets, and we'll see where we're at." Once the group stages are over, Labuschagne will fly home, cutting short his second stint with the club (he is already under contract for a third next summer). While he considered staying in the UK, potentially to take part in the Hundred, he decided - perhaps uncharacteristically - that he could do with a break from the game before a busy home season.

"I'm going to take some time and go home before a pretty big summer ahead," he said. "Our domestic season starts on September 11 so there's not much room there - once you're out of quarantine, it's almost mid-August, and then you've only got three weeks before you're playing again. It'll be a nice time to recuperate and catch up with family before a really busy 18 months for Australia."

Sunday, 11 July, 2021

prayer timings

NEWS

PAkIsTAn wArns oF dAngers oF UsIng MIlITIAs AgAInsT AFghAn TAlIbAn KABUL

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afp

AKISTAN’s ambassador to Afghanistan urged the international community on Saturday to strengthen the country’s security forces, warning that deploying militiamen against Taliban could worsen the situation in the war-torn country.

The Taliban have launched a blistering offensive across Afghanistan since early May, capturing a vast swath of the country as US forces leave the country after 20 years.

With the group claiming to control 85 percent of the country, several warlords have started mobilising fighters to defend their territory and back government forces against the Taliban.

But Pakistan’s ambassador to Kabul, Mansoor Ahmad Khan, warned that this could make things worse.

“If things translate into some kind of warfare between militias and Taliban, it will be dangerous,” Khan said in an interview with AFP.

“Therefore, it is important that Afghan government’s capacity to defend these attacks and these security challenges is strengthened.”

On Friday, veteran warlord Ismail Khan — whose forces helped topple the

FM says will visit Uzbekistan, Tajikistan to discuss Afghan issue MULTAN staff report

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said that Pakistan is coordinating with regional countries to find a durable solution to the Afghan issue. Talking to the media on Saturday, the foreign minister said that Pakistan is also inviting the Afghan government, Taliban and Northern Alliance for a peaceful solution of the issue. The foreign minister said that durable peace in Afghanistan can only be achieved through negotiations among all the stakeholders. He said that Pakistan does not want to see civil strife and instability in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of US forces. He said peace in Afghanistan will help Pakistan to economically integrate with Central Asian countries. Qureshi said that he will visit Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to discuss the Afghan issue with his counterparts of respective countries. About Kashmir, the Foreign Minister said Prime Minister Imran Khan has been effectively raising voice for resolution of the issue at International fora.

Talking about PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who had addressed several rallies in AJK, Qureshi said that he is “speaking irresponsibly and childishly”. Qureshi said that the government will never allow occupied Kashmir to be bartered for anything and rather Pakistan will play its role in protecting the

Taliban in 2001 — vowed to back government forces fighting against the group.

Pakistan’s envoy Khan said more international cooperation was needed in support of President Ashraf Ghani’s government, which he said was a “le-

gitimate government at the moment in Afghanistan”.

“Therefore all the countries, the international community, have to extend all possible support to Afghanistan in dealing with the security challenges,” Khan said.

He also expressed concern that a worsening situation in Afghanistan could trigger a fresh wave of refugees crossing into Pakistan.

“If the situation continues to worsen and deteriorate in Afghanistan… there can be an influx of refugees because of very close crossborder cultural contexts and religious context existing between our two societies,” he said.

“Our first effort or first focus is to avoid things going into that direction,” he said, insisting that a political solution was the only way to resolve the conflict in Afghanistan.

“If there is an inclusive, broadbased and comprehensive political settlement, it will be in the interest of not only Afghanistan but all of Afghanistan’s neighbours.”

England down Pakistan in 2nd ODI LONDON agencies

England thrashed Pakistan by 52 runs in the second one-day international at Lord’s on Saturday to secure a 2-0 lead in the threematch series.

Pakistan, set 248 to win in the match reduced by rain to 47 overs per side, were dismissed for 195 with six overs left after Saud Shakeel had made 56, his maiden ODI fifty.

Lewis Gregory took 3-44 after the Somerset all-rounder made a valuable 40 in England´s 247.

Phil Salt top-scored for the home side with 60 — his maiden ODI fifty and James Vince made 56, with Hasan Ali taking 5-51 in what was the first ODI at Lord´s since England´s dramatic 2019 World Cup final win over New Zealand.

The series will conclude with a day/nighter at Edgbaston on Tuesday.

Pakistan captain Babar Azam said, “We used the first 10 overs well, but we didn’t bowl well for the next 10, but credit to Hasan Ali for bringing us back with five wickets. We didn’t start well with the bat, lost back to back wickets, and couldn’t put up partnerships.

We hope we can fix this in the next match. Hasan bowled outstand-

ingly, and Saud Shakeel showed his performance, we see the next match as a good opportunity, and points are still at stake.”

England captain Ben Stokes said, “The way we came out and showed intent with the bat early on really set us up. Tricky period in the middle, but the pleasing thing was the inexperienced players coming in and showing the mindset to keep attacking. We were still above the run rate that we should have been at that stage. And with the ball, we were just clinical.

Lewis and Brad are very capable batsmen, and their partnership gave us a good total, with the wicket offering a bit of seam.

We’ve won the series already, but there’s nothing better than continuing the winning streak. We’ll take the same mindset into the next game, and if anything we’ll come harder.”

Squads: England: Phil Salt, Dawid Malan, Zak Crawley, James Vince, Ben Stokes (captain), John Simpson, Lewis Gregory, Craig Overton, Brydon Carse, Saqib Mahmood, Matt Parkinson.

Pakistan: Fakhar Zaman, Imam-ul-Haq, Babar Azam (captain), Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Saud Shakeel, Sohaib Maqsood, Shadab Khan, Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Ali, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Haris Rauf.

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Indian police investigate misuse of Muslim women photos in fake online ‘auction’ NEW DELHi afp

Police in India are investigating how dozens of Muslim women were offered for sale in fake “auctions” online without their knowledge, in a case the victims say illustrates growing Islamophobia across the country.

Photos of more than 80 women were reportedly uploaded in recent weeks to GitHub, an open software development platform, under the title “Sulli deal of the day”. “Sulli” is derogatory slang for Muslim women. Hana Mohsin Khan, an airline pilot, was alerted last week by a friend who directed her to a link that led to a gallery of images of women. “The fourth picture was mine. They were literally auctioning me as their slave for the day,” Khan told AFP. “It sends chills down my spine. From that day till today, I am just in a constant state of anger,” she said. GitHub said it has now suspended the users’ accounts, saying they violated its policies on harassment, discrimination and inciting violence. Delhi police have filed charges — but against unknown persons because they do not know the identity of the perpetrators.

Troll army: Sania Ahmad, 34, who also found herself “up for sale” last week, points the finger at what she calls an online troll army of Hindu zealots in India that has proliferated in recent years. They have become adept at hounding people including journalists and activists with thousands of abusive messages to the extent that some shut down their social media accounts. Many among India’s 170 million Muslims say they feel like second class citizens since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP party came to power in 2014. A string of lynchings of Muslims by Hindu mobs over so-called cow protection — a sacred animal for many Hindus — and other hate crimes has sown fear and despair in the community. Indian journalist Fatima Khan, who was also among the women targeted on GitHub, said the fake “auction” fitted into this pattern. “How is this acceptable? What will be the punishment, if any, meted out to the people who made this list?” she tweeted.

“Muslim men are lynched, Muslim women are harassed and sold online. When will this end?”

782 ScreeNShoTS: Online harassment of women and girls — including threats of violence, rape and manipulated pornographic images — is a huge problem, not just in India. A 2020 survey by UK-based Plan International of 14,000 girls in 31 countries found more than half had been victims of such treatment. “Rather than free and empowered to express themselves online, girls are all too often harassed, abused and driven from online spaces,” it said. In India, Muslim women are a particular target, said Ahmad, 34, who works for an Indian media company. “It starts with petty abuse and grows into death and rape threats,” she told AFP. “I have 782 screenshots of abuse — mostly on Twitter — targeted at me.

Afghanistan to rush troops to border as Taliban extend gains KABUL afp

Afghan authorities prepared Saturday to retake a key border crossing seized by the Taliban in a sweeping offensive that the insurgents claim has helped capture a vast swath of the violencewracked nation.

As US troops continued their withdrawal, the Taliban said its fighters had seized two crossings in western Afghanistan – completing an arc of territory from the Iranian border to the frontier with China.

It now held 85 percent of the country, a Taliban official said Friday, controlling about 250 of Afghanistan’s nearly 400 districts – a claim impossible to independently verify, and disputed by the government. Beijing, meanwhile, which has criticised Washington for its hasty withdrawal, urged its citizens to leave the country “as soon as possible” after evacuating 210 nationals.

The “complex and severe do-

mestic security situation” prompted the evacuation warning, the foreign ministry said, adding that 22 of those flown out tested positive for coronavirus on arrival in China.

On Friday Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP their fighters had captured the border town of Islam Qala on the Iranian frontier and the Torghundi

crossing with Turkmenistan.

Herat governor spokesperson Jilani Farhad said Saturday the authorities were deploying fresh troops to retake Islam Qala post, the biggest trade crossing between Iran and Afghanistan.

“They will be sent there soon,” he told AFP. The Afghan government has repeatedly dismissed the Taliban’s gains as having little strate-

gic value, but the seizure of multiple border crossings and the taxes they generate will likely fill the group’s coffers with new revenue.

With the Taliban having routed much of northern Afghanistan in recent weeks, the government holds little more than a constellation of provincial capitals that must largely be reinforced and resupplied by air.

Afghan troops tell of carrying wounded to Tajikistan after commanders fled KUNDUZ: Afghan soldiers have described carrying their wounded comrades across the border to Tajikistan after being abandoned by their commanders when the Taliban seized a key border crossing. The soldiers — part of a group of more than 1,000 who fled to Tajikistan when the insurgents took Shir Khan Bandar at the end of June — were talking to AFP this week after being flown back to Afghanistan. As they spoke the Taliban were making sweeping advances across Afghanistan, and now claim to be in control of 85 per cent of the country. Their latest offensive started in early May as the United States and NATO began the final troop withdrawal following a 20-year occupation sparked by the September 11 attacks. The Taliban and government were supposed to have agreed a political roadmap for the country at peace talks in Doha, but they have largely fizzled out after months of deadlock, and the insurgents appear now to have their sights set on a military victory. The Taliban advances have raised fears Afghan security forces may swiftly become demoralised without the vital air support provided by the Americans, and collapse. afp

Published by Arif Nizami at Plot No 66-C, 1st Floor, 21st Commercial Street, Phase-II (Extension), DHA Karachi and printed at Ibn-e-Hassan Printing Press, Hockey Stadium, Karachi, for PT Print (Pvt) Limited. Ph: 021-35381208-9. Email: newsroom@pakistantoday.com.pk

Sunday, 11 July, 2021

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Sunday, 11 July, 2021

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