Epaper – October 16 ISB 2021

Saturday, 16 October, 2021 I 9 Rabi-ul-Awwal, 1443 I Rs 15.00 I Vol XII No 108 I 12 Pages I Islamabad Edition

Govt announces Rs1.39 peR unit hike in poweR taRiff fRom nov 1

ISLAMABAD

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AhmAd AhmAdAni

he government on Friday decided to increase the power tariff

by Rs1.39 per unit which will be applicable from November 1. In this regard, speaking during a press conference in Islamabad along with the State Minister for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh habib, Minister for energy hammad Azhar said that the hike was due to mounting circular debt and the costly power houses installed by the last government.

Azhar said that NePRA had recommended an increase of Rs3.5 per unit in March. “however, this increase in power tariff will not be applicable to the lifeline and domestic consumers who use less than 200 units of electricity in a month and in this way this increase is not applicable on 46 per cent of the consumer base”, Azhar said. he added that this hike in the power tariff will also not affect the seasonal electricity package or the industrial package.

According to sources, for the period Jul-Oct 2021, the net subsidy amounting to Rs102 billion and for the period effective from November till June, subject to implementation of this proposal, the net subsidy for Nov 21 to June 2021 shall amount to Rs67 billion. In aggregate the subsidy requirement will be reduced from Rs240 billion to Rs168billion.

Sources also said that based on the consolidated revenue requirements of power distribution companies (DISCOs) as well as the economic and financial policy of the government, the tariff differential subsidy (TDS) was proposed to be modified and reduced through the circulation summary.

Blaming the previous government for expansive power plants, the minister said that the government had to increase the electricity tariff because of the costly power houses installed by the last government and the government has been making efforts to reduce the circular debt.

“Circular debt is also because of capacity payments and because of the wrong decisions taken by the previous

coRonaviRus in

pakistan

CONFIRMED CASES:

1,262,771

LAST UPDATED AT 6:17 AM ON OCTOBER 15, 2021

DAY'S DEATH TOLL:

NEW CASES:

27

1,086

RECOVERED:

DEATHS:

1,194,590 28,228 SINDH:

PUNJAB:

464,746

437,316

KPK:

BALOCHISTAN:

176,501 AJK/GB:

33,108 ISLAMABAD:

34,380/10,363

106,357

governments,” said hammad, adding that the government had no option but to increase power tariff to control the circular debt.

“The government had introduced an industrial package last year which remained successful and an increase of 15pc in the demand was seen. Meanwhile, we have also seen a 6-7pc increase in the demand for electricity as peak hours for the industrial sector have been removed.”

The minister said that keeping in view the success of this package, the government decided to introduce another package — known as the seasonal electricity package — under which consumers who use an extra unit compared to their last year’s usage will get an extra discount.

Furthermore, hammad Azhar announced that it had been decided to halt all ongoing schemes and new connections of sui gas companies until legislation for the new mechanism was completed.

Taking to Twitter, he said that the government has planned to introduce a new pricing mechanism to bill consumers for imported gas.

“Local gas reserves [are] depleting at a rate of 9pc per annum. Govt does not have legal mechanism to collect costs of imported gas from consumers. We have forged a consensus on new pricing mechanism but till its legislation, govt is halting all expansion in domestic gas networks,” he tweeted. he said that currently only 28pc households are getting piped gas while local gas reserves had been depleting at a fast pace as gas is now insufficient for fertiliser and other industries; therefore, he said the government would bring a new pricing mechanism to bill consumers for imported gas.

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NCOC allows reopening of shrines, cinemas for fully vaccinated citizens The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) on Friday allowed the reopening of cinemas and shrines for fully vaccinated citizens across the country.

The forum in its meeting took detailed stock of the prevailing disease situation and complete vaccination ratio in the districts of the country.

The forum decided to abolish the mandatory weekly one-day closure (safe day) and lowered the restrictions under non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) amid declining disease trend and ongoing vaccination campaign.

“In light of the spread of the disease (Covid-19) slowing down and the ongoing vaccination campaign, the forum has [also] decided to end the one-day [weekly] closure of businesses across the country,” the statement said.

The forum decided that the implementation of NPIs would continue from October 16 to 31.

It allowed allowed increase in the number of participants in indoor wedding ceremonies from 200 to 300 individuals, while the number of participants in outdoor wedding ceremonies was increased from 400 to

At least 41 dead, scores injured in Kandahar mosque explosion KABUL Afp

Suicide bombers attacked a Shia mosque in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar during Friday prayers, witnesses said, killing at least 41 people and injuring scores more.

The assault came just a week after a suicide attack on Shia worshippers at a mosque in the northern city of Kunduz, which was claimed by the Islamic State group.

There has not yet been any claim of responsibility for the attack in Kandahar, the spiritual heartland of the Taliban.

“Our initial information shows it was a suicide bomber who blew himself up inside the mosque. We have launched an investigation to find out more,” a local Taliban official told AFP. hafiz Abdulhai Abbas, director of health for Kandahar, told AFP: “Information from the hospitals shows 41 killed about 70 wounded in today’s mosque attack.”

At least 15 ambulances were seen rushing to and from the scene, as Taliban security threw a cordon around the area.

“We are overwhelmed,” a

500 individuals.

The existing NPIs would be reviewed at the NCOC session to be held on October 28.

The forum stressed that the public should adopt the vaccination process as a national obligation.

Meanwhile, Federal Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Minister Asad Umar urged citizens in a tweet to get vaccinated.

Sharing the results of a survey conducted by Gallup Pakistan, he said: “According to the survey, 86 per cent people believe that the [country] could overcome the corona[virus] soon. We are thankful to the nation from the bottom of our heart for [showing] confidence [in us], but it would only be possible if people get vaccinated at the earliest. Otherwise, there is a risk of the spread of the corona[virus] picking up pace with the arrival of winter.”

According to the NCOC, a total of 1,086 Covid-19 cases and 27 deaths have been reported from across Pakistan over the past 24 hours.

Last week, the NCOC had permitted the resumption of on-campus classes for schools from October 11. news desk

more inside

PM launches Kisan Portal to ‘give voice to small farmers’ STORY ON BACK PAGE

doctor at the city’s central Mirwais hospital told AFP. “There are too many dead bodies and wounded people brought to our hospital. We are expecting more to come. We are in urgent need of blood. We have asked all the local media in Kandahar to ask people to come and donate blood.” eyewitnesses spoke of gunfire alongside the explosions, and a security guard assigned to protect the mosque said three of his comrades had been shot as the bombers fought their way in.

Sayed Rohullah told AFP: “It was the Friday prayer time, and when we were preparing I heard shots. Two people had

entered the mosque.

“They had opened fire on the guards and in response the guards had also opened fire on them. One of them committed a suicide blast inside the mosque.”

Two more attackers detonated their bombs in crowded areas outside the main building, he and other witnesses said.

“We are saddened to learn that an explosion took place in a mosque of the Shia brotherhood in the first district of Kandahar city in which a number of our compatriots were martyred and wounded,” tweeted Taliban interior ministry spokesman Qari Sayed Khosti.

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Russia to host Pakistan, US, China for Afghanistan talks on Oct 19: report STORY ON BACK PAGE

Reham Khan apologises to Zulfi Bukhari after losing defamation case STORY ON PAGE 02

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Saturday, 16 October, 2021 | ISLAMABAD

NEWS

Reham Khan apologises to Zulfi Bukhari after losing defamation case NewS DeSk Broadcaster Reham Khan on Friday apologised to Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader Zulfi Bukhari after losing a defamation case brought by the latter against her in the United Kingdom.

In December 2019, Reham had accused Bukhari of becoming part of a “corrupt plan with the Prime Minister Imran Khan to sell or acquire the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) owned Roosevelt Hotel in New York at a lesser value for his benefit.”

Soon after the accusation, Bukhari had sued Reham in a court in London.

During a hearing in London earlier this year, the judge had found that Reham’s words had amounted to a Chase Level 1 imputation. As determined by the judge, this had meant that the defamatory words would be understood by an “ordinary reasonable reader” as actual guilt on the part of Bukhari.

However, on Friday, Reham, in a statement posted to Twitter, apologised for a number of claims she had made regarding the PTI leader.

“On Dec 7, 2019, I retweeted a tweet and video by Syed Tauqeer Bukhari in which it was asserted that

Zulfi Bukhari was involved in fraud and nepotism by trying to sell a precious asset of the state of Pakistan, the Roosevelt Hotel, for a meagre amount of money,” she said.

These allegations were “false and untrue”, Reham said, adding that Bukhari was not involved in any corrupt plan, fraud, nepotism or attempt to sell the hotel.

“Zulfi Bukhari has built his wealth; such as it is, through hard work and not through any form of illegal conduct,” Reham wrote.

“I unconditionally apologise to Zulfi Bukhari for the significant distress, upset and embarrassment which these publications have caused him. I have agreed to pay Zulfi Bukhari substantial damages for libel and to pay his legal costs,” Reham said in her statement.

Zulfi Bukhari welcomed the development, saying that “truth always wins!”

“Upon court orders, Reham Khan publicly apologises and pays damages for her lies,” he tweeted.

Later in the day, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry tweeted, “Anyway Reham being a liar was proved once again. She is actually a habitual liar.”

PM directs for strict legislation against sugar hoarders, Profiteers ISLAMABAD

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RIME Minister Imran Khan on Friday directed the authorities concerned to make strict legislation against sugar hoarders and profiteers.

He was chairing a review meeting on sale price and hoarding of sugar wherein he also called for ensuring implementation of track and trace system of sugar mills to ascertain the production volume of the commodity.

“The state would take strict action against the profiteers who were the enemies of the poor masses,” he remarked.

Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar, PM’s Advisor on Accountability

Mirza Shahzad Akbar, Special Assistant to PM Dr Shahbaz Gill and senior officers attended the event. Punjab Industries Minister Mian Aslam Iqbal and Punjab Chief Secretary joined through video link.

The Punjab chief secretary told the meeting that all district administration had been directed to monitor the implementation of fixed sugar sale price.

“Moreover, the process of legislation against the hoarders and profiteers was also in progress,” he said.

Moreover, the CCTV cameras had also been installed at the sugar mills to examine the quantity of sugarcane and sugar production. Besides, the data would also be obtained from sugar mills on daily basis during the crushing season.

Nationwide public holiday to be observed on 12th Rabi ul Awwal NewS DeSk The government on Friday notified the 12th of Rabi Awal as a nationwide public holiday.

According to a notification issued by the Cabinet Division: “It is notified for general information that Tuesday, October 19, 2021, shall be a public holiday on the occasion of Eid Milad-un-Nabi (12th Rabi ul Awwal 1443 AH) throughout the country.”

Two days prior, the Sindh government had announced holiday throughout the province on the occasion.

The moon for the holy month of Rabi ul Awal was sighted in Pakistan on October 7.

On Monday, the government imposed a ban on pillion riding in Sindh as part of security arrangements on the occasion of Eid Milad un Nabi (PBUH).

According to a notification issued by the home department, a ban has been imposed on pillion riding in all cities on October 19.

“Against the backdrop of numerous threat alerts of disruption of law and order during various events of Rabi ul Awal, there is a need for imposing a ban under Section 144 Cr.PC on pillion riding for one day on 12th Rabi ul Awal 1443 Hijri i.e. October 19, 2021,” the notification read.

The home department added that the ban won’t apply to women, children below the age of 12 years, senior citizens,

personnel of law enforcement agencies/security agencies in uniform, employees of essential services, and journalists subject to showing their press card/service card.

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday inaugurated the official celebrations for the month of Rabi ul Awal at the Rehmatul-lil-Alameen Conference in Islamabad.

The conference was attended by government officials, civil

society members, journalists, and members of minority communities. Federal Minister for Science and Technology Shibli Faraz, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry, and Minister of Education and Professional Development Shafqat Mehmood were also in attendance.

PM Imran Khan also announced the establishment of a Rehmatul-lil-Alameen Authority in the country to ensure the

implementation of the teachings of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) in society.

The prime minister on Wednesday said that with the holding of ceremonies across the country, 12th Rabi ul Awal will be celebrated in a befitting manner with great fervor and zeal.

The ceremony, to be held in Islamabad, will be a “historic” event, PM Imran Khan said while presiding over a high-level meeting about the preparations.

Shaukat Tarin’s tenure as finance minister ends ISLAMABAD Staff RepoRt

The government on Friday decided to appoint Shaukat Tarin as the Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance, as his six-month tenure as financial adviser expired.

Local media reports claimed that Prime Minister Imran Khan is expected to give the approval regarding the change in Tarin’s designation soon.

The finance minister was supposed to get elected as a senator — a prerequisite to continue as finance minister — as the sixmonth time limit to elect him as a member of the Parliament is expired on October 15.

It may be recalled that Tarin had been appointed as finance minister by Prime Minister Imran Khan in a federal cabinet reshuffle, replacing Hammad Azhar — only a few weeks after he was given the portfolio.

As the finance minister’s six-month term

ends, as per law, Tarin will not be able to chair the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) and other cabinet committees.

However, he will get the finance ministry portfolio back after being elected as a senator.

On the last day of his tenure, Tarin also concluded policy talks between Pakistan and the IMF. Meanwhile, while addressing in a seminar on Pakistan’s Economy held at the Embassy of Pakistan Washington DC, October 15, Shaukat Tarin highlighted the economic priorities of the government, emphasising that Prime Minister Imran Khan is committed to inclusive and sustainable economic growth that benefits all segments of the society especially the poor.

He said that the Pakistani government has established 24 special economic zones (SEZs) under CPEC to attract foreign investment and also shared that prudent fiscal reforms have helped to improve tax to GDP ratio, bring down current account deficit and fiscal deficit

while improving revenue generation.

Earlier, Ambassador Dr Asad Khan gave a brief overview of the state of bilateral ties between Pakistan and the US. He referred to recent ministerial level exchanges between the two countries, with engagement on energy, trade, climate change and security.

Other panelists included IBA Executive Director Dr. S. Akbar Zaidi, who shared an academic perspective on the state of Pakistan’s economy. He said academic institutions such as IBA have produced many high-quality economists and even today, IBA was grooming professionals and business executives who will play a vital role in Pakistan’s economic future.

The seminar was followed by an interactive session in which the audience comprising prominent community members, professionals from IFIs, acedemics and students from DMV area asked questions which were answered by the finance minister.

Saturday, 16 October, 2021 | ISLAMABAD

NEWS

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PM bowing down to iMF dictateS: Shehbaz LAHore

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AMBASTING the government over skyrocketing inflation in the country, Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif has said that Prime Minister Imran Khan was not working for the people of Pakistan but for the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“The government does not realise that the people are unable to cope with inflation,” he said. “They [the government] have been misleading the nation for three years. Tax

inflation, rising debts, Imran Niazi is working for the IMF, not for the people of Pakistan,” Shehbaz claimed on Friday.

His remarks came a day after the government sought the federal cabinet’s approval to increase electricity tariff, reneging from a four-month-old stance to not further raise the rates in a bid to remain in the IMF programme.

The opposition leader claimed that what he had said in his budget speech proves to be true and the government proves to be false.

He added that such severe inflation is creating serious problems for the economic viability of the country, which is not a good

omen for the country.

“It has been proved that the government has deceived the people in the name of budget. If this government continues the economy will collapse,” he said. The PMLN leader further termed the imposition of 17 percent sales tax on tax-exempted items, increase in petrol and electricity prices as “terrorism” against the people and the economy.

“Inflation, unemployment and economic catastrophe are already at an alltime high,” he said. “The government has dropped a new bomb and Imran is sacrificing the economy and the nation on

the IMF’s altar.”

He said that a government that blindly acts on the terms of the IMF does not care about public interests. “Imran Niazi himself is taking steps that will increase inflation.

Then they complain to the nation that the people do not understand the reasons for the rise in it,” he said. “However, the people are well aware of what is happening to them and who is perpetrating this injustice every day.”

He further said that the problem is not understanding the nation but the corruption, lies and historical incompetence of the (current) rulers for which the people of Pakistan are being punished.

Technical education important to meet needs of industrial sector: Alvi IsLAMABAD APP

President Dr Arif Alvi on Friday stressed the need for promoting technical education and information technology so as to fulfil the requirements of the industrial sector and provide employment opportunities to the youth.

In his remarks during a briefing on Sir Syed Centre for Advanced Studies in Engineering (CASE) Institute of Technology here at Aiwan-e-Sadr, the president said technological and industrial development was directly linked with the quality of education.

The president said the higher education institutions needed to focus on research and development to put the country on the path of development.

Alvi said that universities must focus on developing analytical and logical thinking skills among its

students.

He added that the teachings of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan could enlighten and

guide the youth in future.

He asked the management of the Institute to increase the number of students as well as enhance the virtual ability of CASE. He also underlined the need for collaboration with public and private universities to increase productivity and uplift the education sector.

The president appreciated the role of CASE in promoting technological and IT education in the country.

CASE Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Shafaat Ahmed Bazaz briefed the president about the role of his institution in promotion of advanced studies on engineering and technology. He said institute was offering various programmes from bachelor to PhD levels in the fields of engineering, management, business and computing.

Supreme Court seeks report on non-restoration of Punjab local bodies News Desk The Supreme Court (SC) on Friday grilled the Punjab government officials over the government’s failure to restore local bodies across the province as it sought a report from the respective secretary over the matter by next week.

A top court bench headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed was hearing a contempt plea against the Punjab government over local government bodies’ failure to resume functions despite a SC order issued in March this year.

The petitioner told the apex court that the government didn’t restore local bodies despite the court orders.

At this, the Punjab local governments secretary was asked what measures were taken by the government to restore the local bodies. The secretary said he needed time to hire a lawyer.

The CJP expressed displeasure at this and said that despite being a local government secretary, the official didn’t know about the local bodies. “Have you come to the court to have fun,” the CJP

asked. “We will send you straight to jail from the court,” he warned.

The CJP said that the court restored local bodies in March, adding that the local bodies’ term will expire in December this year.

The CJP questioned the Lahore mayor, Mubashir Javed, during the hearing. He asked him what has the local representatives done so far?

“We met on the street as per the order of the court,” the mayor said, adding that the Punjab government didn’t facilitate the workings of local bodies.

The meeting and work of local body representatives have been covered in the media, the mayor said in response to the CJ’s question.

However, the CJP chided the mayor, saying the representative of the local bodies weren’t interested in working on their own.

“Go around the world and see how local bodies work. If you wanted to work, you would have done it while sitting on the streets,” he added.

“We cannot even afford a cleaner,”

the Lahore mayor informed the bench.

“If you don’t know the job description, you all can sit at home,” Justice Gulzar said, adding that the local government officials do not have “passion” to work.

The CJP was informed that the local body representatives were locked out of their offices by the Punjab government

officials. “Name the people who locked the offices,” Justice Gulzar said, adding that the local bodies wanted money and staffers to resume work.

The SC also summoned former Punjab chief secretary Jawad Rafique Malik and incumbent Chief Secretary Kamran Afzal on the next hearing. The case was adjourned till Wednesday.

Camera traps show resurgence of leopards in Islamabad’s Margala Hills IsLAMABAD ReuteRs

A leopard pauses to take a cautious look around before continuing its way through the thick forest in the Margalla Hills overlooking Islamabad — once a rare sight, but now one recorded and tracked by software and cameras.

The cat, once found all over Pakistan but increasingly endangered as humans encroach on their habitat, has been recorded painstakingly by the 20 camera traps attached to trees throughout the forested hills that are also popular with hikers.

“They are being seen on our cameras every day,” said Asad Hyat, chief forest guard for the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board.

Software identifying the leopards’ distinctive

rosette patterns has shown seven of the big cats are in the area, which rangers say is a good sign after a significant decline in their numbers over the past few decades. “They are not so common anymore, because they are being killed mercilessly,” said IWMB Chair Rina Khan Satti.

“They were once found all over Pakistan, in almost all the provinces, and now the numbers are declining very fast because of loss of habitat, because of poaching, because of people hunting them for their skin, for their trophies.”

To help the cats, Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday ordered a leopard preservation zone with a roughly 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) radius be set up at Margalla Hills in an effort to protect the endangered species’ natural habitat.

In recent years there have been signs of a leopard

comeback in the park located just outside of Islamabad.

Conservationists say the animals likely drifted to the Margalla area — foothills of the Himalaya mountains — as it became heavily forested over the years. And they stayed on because they found prey, a stable environment and an eco-system that could support them.

Wildlife rangers check paw tracks on the forest soil daily to monitor the leopards’ movements and numbers carefully. They use the footage from their cameras to record their activity.

“This is just the beginning of our scientific study, it will take time,” said Satti.

News of the leopards has slowly spread and the IWMB says it is hoping to conduct tours to show the footprints and signs of the leopards in the wild to curious visitors.

Fawad urges media to provide solution to fake news News Desk Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry on Friday lashed out at YouTubers for operating with “impunity”. The federal minister, addressing at an event, said several YouTubers think they should be allowed to do whatever they want and no action should be taken against them. The minister urged the media to provide solutions to deal with the issue of fake news, as it had become a big challenge in the era of modern technology. Chaudhry emphasised training journalists in the realm of modern technology, enabling them to deal with modern warfare. He said the media should initiate a debate within itself to face the challenge of fake news. Moreover, the federal minister stressed the need for providing information with responsibility.

Talking about India, Chaudhry said the country had created 785 websites to disseminate fake news against Pakistan, which were linked with an Indian wire agency — and India’s leading news channels were giving credence to falsehood. He said on average 175 fake news are created on daily basis by Indian channels. Moreover, the minister pointed out that two incidents — harassment with a TikToker at Minar-e-Pakistan and Noor Mukadam’s murder — were used to malign Pakistan and give an impression that the country was unsafe for women.

Rupee makes minor gains against US dollar MoNItorINg report The rupee appreciated slightly against the US dollar in the inter-bank market on Friday, closing the day at Rs171.18. The local currency closed at an all-time low of Rs171.18 on Thursday as demand for the foreign currency stood higher compared to its supply.

Earlier in the day, speaking at the launch of the Kisan Portal, Prime Minister Imran Khan had said that the pressure on the Pakistani rupee is temporary and will be over soon. With a fresh increase of 0.01 per cent, the rupee depreciated 8.65pc or Rs13.64, since the start of the current fiscal year on July 1, 2021, data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) revealed. It is pertinent to mention here that the central bank has opted for a flexible exchange rate to let market forces decide the per dollar value of the rupee keeping in view the demand and supply of the foreign currency.

04 NEWS 16th October 2021 ISB_Layout 1 10/16/2021 12:35 AM Page 1

Saturday, 16 October, 2021 | ISLAMABAD

04 NEWS

HUnGARy ASSUReS PAkIStAn of SUPPoRt In GSP+ extenSIon LAHORE

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UnGARy has assured its complete support for Pakistan in GSP + status. This transpired during different meetings of Punjab Governor Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar with Hungarian ministers, Foreign Office officials, members of the European Parliament and representatives of the Austrian business community, who assured to support Pakistan in GSP Plus status, said a statement issued on Friday.

According to a spokesman of Governor House, the governor arrived Hungary on Friday during his visit to Europe where he was received at the airport by Hungarian government officials and Pakistani Ambassador Ejaz Ahmed. A large number of overseas Pakistanis were also present.

On his arrival in Hungary, Punjab Governor Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar also met with Secretary General of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry Tristan Azbej, member of European parliament for Hungary Erno Scheller Baross, Member of the European Parliament for Hungary, Gergely Gulyas and other ministers and the Austrian businessmen.

Meetings were also held with the business community to discuss the extension of GSP Plus status, Pakistan-Hungary and Austria relations, bilateral trade and other issues were discussed during the meeting. Pakistan and Hungary agreed to enhance ties in various fields including higher education.

Talking to the media after the meetings, the governor said that Pak-

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The Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) of Islamabad Police has arrested six members of a gang involved in looting people on gun point and recovered cash, stolen motorbike and weapons from their possession, a police spokesman said.

A CIA police team comprising ASI Jaffar Ali, ASI Bashrat Usman and other police officials while using modern technology and scientific methods of investigation traced the gangsters.

They were identified as Sohaib alias Shabi, resident of Azad Kashmir, Saif alias naqshe, resident of Rawalpindi, Bilal Zeeshan alias Shani, resident of Rawalpindi, Muhammad Hamza, resident of,

NEWS DESK Another flight of Pakistan International Airline (PIA), PK-610, flying from Gilgit to Lahore, narrowly escaped an accident due to bird-strike on Friday. Sources at the Allama Iqbal Airport said that a flock of birds appeared in front of PIA's ATR aircraft, moments before landing. However, the captain of the plane skilfully brought the plane to a safe landing, they added. Sources further stated that the flight captain had informed the control tower about the presence of birds near the runway, at which the control tower sent bird shooters to clear the runway. Earlier on Sunday last, a Karachi-bound aircraft of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) escaped an accident. The aircraft travelling from Sharjah to Karachi suffered a bird strike but the pilot of the plane managed to land it safely at Jinnah International Airport. The plane’s front part and right wing suffered damage as a result of the bird strike. The aircraft was grounded for repair. The incidents of bird strikes have increased of late as two PIA aircraft have been struck by birds in the past 24 hours while more than five planes reported bird strikes in a week’s time.

Ghee price increased

by Rs18 per kg at USC outlets NEWS DESK istan believes in strengthening its relations with Hungary. He said that Hungary's assurance of full cooperation to Pakistan for extension in GSP Plus status augurs well for the country. He said the Hungarian diplomatic team is also working hard to promote bilateral relations in Pakistan.

The governor stressed on the exchange of delegations between Pakistan and Hungary, adding that concrete steps will be taken for the exchange of delegations for the bringing the two countries closer. He said that minorities are safe in Pakistan and all measures are being taken to protect their lives and

property, adding that quotas have been allocated to minorities in all educational institutions of Pakistan.

He said that Kartarpur Corridor is a historic step of Pakistan, adding that during his visit to Europe, Pakistan's stance on the issue of extension in GSP Plus status was welcomed.

Gang involved in looting people busted ISLAMABAD

PIA plane narrowly escapes accident at Lahore airport

Aftab alias Aqib, resident Rawalpindi and Fayyaz Kayani, resident of Rawalpindi.

Four snatched 125CC motorbikes, six mobile phones, Rs50,000 cash and weapons were also recovered from their possession.

During the preliminary investigation, the accused confessed their involvement in numerous incidents of looting people in areas of twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

Separate cases were registered against the accused and further investigation is underway.

DIG (Operations) Afzaal Ahmed Kousar appreciated the performance of the police team and directed all police officials to ensure effective policing measures in their respective areas.

The Utility Stores Corporation (USC) has jacked up the prices of various food items including ghee and oil. According to a notification issued on Friday, the prices of various brands of ghee and oil have gone up. The price of oil has gone up by Rs15 per litre to Rs1,775 per five litres. The price of second class cooking oil has been increased by Rs15 and the price has been increased from Rs323 to Rs338 per litre. The notification further stated that the price of second grade ghee has gone up from Rs18 per kg to Rs338 per kg, while the prices of 500 grams of laundry washing powder and soap have been increased

by Rs5 and Rs3, respectively. The price of shoe polish has been increased by Rs10 to Rs110, while the price of a 1 litre pack of nail polish has gone up by Rs25 to Rs464.

Gold dips to Rs97,600 per 10gm ISLAMABAD TLTP

SBP makes digital payment facility mandatory for corporate clients KARACHI TLTP

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has made it mandatory for its regulated entities (REs) to provide digital means of payments to their corporate clients to enable businesses for sending and receiving their payments.

In a statement issued on Friday, the central bank said it is now mandatory for its regulated entities (REs) including banks, microfinance banks, payment system operators and payment system providers to provide digital means of payments to their corporate clients. The SBP, in its recent circular, has asked its regulated entities to facilitate their institutional clients including corporations, companies, and partnerships for making large value payments through digital channels. Regulated entities are now required to extend online portals/platforms for digital

CMYK

payments & receipts of corporates including online interbank fund transfer services, online bill/invoice sharing and payment services like over the Counter (OTC) digital payments services/facilities, card payments using Point of Sale (POS) terminals, QR codes, mobile devices, ATMs, Kiosk or any other digital payments enabled device. In order to monitor the progress of implementation of these instructions, SBP has advised banks to submit a roadmap of implementing these measures within 30 days.

The banks are also required to submit quarterly progress reports to SBP on the number of businesses facilitated for digitization of their payments and receipts. The SBP said it expects that these measures would increase documentation of value chains and help businesses manage their large value transactions more effectively.

Gold price went down by around 1.35 percent due to rebound in the US Treasury yields on Friday after remaining high for three consecutive days.

Gold in the international market was available at $1,771.90 per ounce after shedding $25.30 at 1235 hours GMT. Meanwhile, the price of 10 grams of yellow metal in Pakistan decreased to Rs97,600 after shedding Rs1,400. Gold in the local market was available at Rs99,000 per 10 grams on Thursday. According to experts, gold price is reversing from monthly highs just ahead of the $1,800 mark, as the US dollar rebounds in tandem with Treasury yields amid the upbeat market mood. Robust US corporate earnings douse fears over growing inflation risks, boosting the investors’ sentiment at the expense of the safe-haven gold. Meanwhile, failure to find a hold above the $1,800 mark pushes gold price lower, as traders await the US consumer-centric data for a decisive move in the bright metal. They said that from current levels, any subsequent decline is likely to find decent support near the $1,770. Sustained weakness below might prompt some technical selling and drag spot prices back towards the $1,750 static support. A convincing break below will shift the bias back in favour of bearish traders and turn gold vulnerable to retest September monthly swing lows, around the $1,722-21 zone. On the flip side, bulls are likely to wait for a sustained strength above the $1,800 mark before placing fresh bets.

Gold might then accelerate the momentum further towards the $1,816-18 intermediate hurdle before eventually darting towards the $1,832-34 heavy supply zone.

Saturday, 16 October, 2021 | ISLAMABAD

AT lEAST 41 dEAd, SCORES INjuREd IN KANdAhAR mOSquE ExplOSION ContInuED fRom pAgE 01 MANY WORSHIPPERS: Inside the mosque, after the blast, the walls were pockmarked with shrapnel and volunteers swept up debris in the ornately painted prayer hall. Rubble lay in an entrance corridor.

Last Friday, an Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) suicide bomber targeted a Shia mosque in Kunduz, killing scores of people.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan has directed local officials to avoid carrying out punishments in public unless the country’s top court issues the order for public execution.

In a tweet late on Thursday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that the Council of Ministers has decided that no punishment will be carried out publicly when there is no need to publicise the convict and till the court issues an order for a public punishment “Public executions and hanging of bodies should be avoided unless the supreme court issues an order for such an action,” he said while giving details of the cabinet meeting.

The Council of Ministers is the name given to the cabinet in the Islamic Emirate.

“If the offender is punished, the punishment must be explained so that the people know about the crime,” the Taliban spokesman said.

Senior Taliban leader Mullah Nooruddin Turabi told the Associated Press last month that the Taliban government will once again carry out executions or amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public.

However, several public executions were carried out after Turabi’s statement. Turabi had served as Minister of Justice during the previous Taliban government from 1996-2001.

Meanwhile, the Taliban government announced on Friday that Sheikh Abdul Hakim had been appointed the chief justice of the supreme court.

Hakim, an ethnic Pashtun cleric and a close confidant of the Taliban chief, earlier headed the Taliban negotiation team in Qatar. News Desk

afp

For Asma, spending a day on the beach with her partner was unthinkable until recently in Saudi Arabia.

Now, the 32-year-old is dancing with her partner on white sands fringing the Red Sea,

Govt announces Rs1.39 per unit hike in power tariff from Nov 1 ContInuED fRom pAgE 01 He said that it had been seen over the past years that the induction of imported gas into pipelines had caused a loss of Rs35-40 billion while the utilities couldn’t charge the consumers separately. The new pricing mechanism is called weighted average cost. Dispelling the reports of gas shortage due to insufficient procurement of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), Hammad Azhar said that enough LNG was in the system while currently, not only Pakistan the entire world is facing a gas crisis because the supply of gas has been affected due to Covid-19, while prices also surged. “Pakistan, however, did not face such an intense gas crisis,” the minister said, adding that the government is working on the North-South Gas Pipeline Project with Russia.

‘Steel policy to be rolled out soon’

IESCO announces power suspension schedule

iban claims of holding control on the country. If the Taliban can’t protect Kandahar from an IS-K attack, how could it protect the rest of the country?”

The UN mission in Afghanistan tweeted: “The UN condemns latest atrocity targeting a religious institution and worshippers. Those responsible need to be held to account.”

The Taliban, which seized control of Afghanistan in mid-August after overthrowing the US-backed govern-

KARACHI app

Federal Minister for Industries and Production Makhdum Khusro Bakhtiar on Friday said that a comprehensive steel policy would soon be rolled out with the consultation of stakeholders of steel sector for which a two-member team had been nominated from Pakistan Association of Large Steel Producers (PALSP).

The federal minister was chairing a consultative meeting on the country’s steel policy with leading steel industry players at the office of Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC). He was accompanied by the PIDC CEO Rizwan Bhatti.

Bakhtiar said that once policy was finalised, it would help the government resolve all issues being faced by stakeholders of the steel industry and asked them to extend all kinds of support in drafting the policy so that suggestions of all stakeholders could be incorporated.

The minister further informed

steel industrialists that the federal government was planning to develop approximately 7,500 acres of land in steel mills’ area as cluster-based Special Economic Zones (SEZs) through PIDC. He asked the sector to explore options to set up a captive power plant to meet power needs at a lower cost.

The first phase of the upcoming project on 1,500 acres, for which government has allocated Rs7 billion PSDP funding, will allow the government land to be allotted on a low upfront cost for the industries with remaining payments to be made in 5-7 years easy installments on a pay-as-you-earn model, he said.

The meeting was told that with the current economic growth trajectory, Pakistan will need 30 million tonnes of long and flat steel products in the next 5 years. Besides, various aspects of tariff structure, land cost, and energy requirements of the sector came under discussion in the meeting.

Representing PALSP, Chairman Amreli Steels Abbas Akbar Ali emphasised the need for at least a 10-

year policy so that the sector could make investments with confidence.

The minister said that the government took notice of the slow pace of colonisation of SEZs in the country and discovered that most of the developers were unable to cater to the energy needs of the industry, which has been stifling the growth of industrialization in their zones for decades.

“The PTI government, for the first time, intervened to provide PSDP funding for the energy supply projects of the SEZs and has allocated Rs22 billion for the SEZ energy projects since 2019,” he informed.

Speaking on the occasion, PIDC CEO Rizwan Bhatti said that since the release of government funding for the grid, NIP had received numerous allotment applications.

He shared that in the last week alone, the SEZ committee has made allotments to 14 applicants for 70 acres land with Rs13 billion expected investment and 3,700 new job opportunities.

He also added that in line with SME Policy, in order to accommodate smaller enterprises, 100 acres land at BQIP has been allocated for plots having a size of 1 Kanal and upwards.

Later, Khusro Bakhtyar was joined by Sindh Governor Imran Ismail at PIDC in a virtual ground breaking ceremony of a federal government funded 132KV grid at a cost of Rs1.5 billion for Bin Qasim Industrial Park (BQIP) – an SEZ developed by National Parks Development and Management Company (NIP), which is a subsidiary company of PIDC.

Saudi couples free to enjoy sun, sea and music as kingdom slowly loosens up

JEDDAH

05

ment, has its own history of persecuting Shias.

But the new Taliban-led administration has vowed to stabilise the country, and in the wake of the Kunduz attack promised to protect the Shia minority now living under its rule.

Shias are estimated to make up roughly 10 per cent of the Afghan population. Many of them are Hazara, an ethnic group that has been persecuted in Afghanistan for decades.

The group, a bitter rival of the Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attacks against Shia worshippers, whom it regards as heretics.

UK-based conflict analysis firm ExTrac said that if claimed by IS-K, Friday’s assault would be the first by the group in Kandahar, and the fourth mass casualty massacre since the Taliban took Kabul.

ExTrac researcher Abdul Sayed told AFP the attack was “challenging the Tal-

Taliban ask officials not to carry out public executions

NEWS

to music thumping from loudspeakers.

It’s a small reminder of the changes underway in the kingdom, which is attempting to ease some of its tight social strictures in a modernisation drive.

Music was banned in public places until 2017, a measure enforced by the religious police, and women were only allowed to drive

a year later. Beaches are still usually segregated between men and women.

But for 300 Saudi riyals ($80) each, Asma and her partner can enter Pure Beach near Jeddah, with its music, dancing and inflatable water park spelling “Saudi Arabia” in English when viewed from above.

“I am happy that I can now come to a nearby beach to enjoy my time,” she said.

“It is the epitome of fun… it was our dream to come here and spend a beautiful weekend.”

As the sun sets, performers dance to music on a lit stage.

Pure Beach is at King Abdullah Economic City, about 125 kilometres (about 80 miles) north of Jeddah’s city centre.

“I was raised here, and a few years ago we weren’t even allowed to listen to music,” said Egyptian Hadeel Omar.

The Gulf kingdom’s social reforms are spurred by a desire to diversify its oil-reliant economy, including by stimulating tourism and domestic spending.

Only business travellers and Muslim pilgrims could visit until 2019, when Saudi Arabia began offering tourist visas.

Bilal Saudi, head of events at King Abdullah Economic City, said the beach was targeting “both local visitors and (foreign) tourists”.

“I feel that I no longer have to travel (abroad) to have a good time… because everything is here,” said Dima, a young Saudi businesswoman.

CmYK

IslAmAbAD pR

According to the Islamabad Electric Supply Company (IESCO) spokesman, power supply of some areas will be temporary suspended due to system maintenance and development work. POWER SUSPENSION SCHEDULE: The feeders of Muslimabad, Gulzar Shaheed, Pirudhai, Bagh Sardaran, Basharat, CS Shah, Jund Awan, Dawlatullah, Adi, Gulshanabad, Major Masood, Bibi Shaheed, Rata, Race Course, Mangtal, Fazal Ahmad Shaheed, and Chawah Khalsa will remain suspended from 09:00 am to 02:00 pm on October 16. Maritime and Bather feeders will remain suspended from 08:00 am to 04:00 pm while NCI, Ahmedabad, and Lillah Town feeders from 08:00 am to 01:00 pm. Similarly, Fawara Chowk, SDW, Attock Rural, SDW Colony, GBHP-2, and Shakardara feeders will remain suspended from 10:00 am 4:00 pm. From 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, Bhekri, Millat Chowk, Jamalwal, Megan, Line Park, and Ara Bazar feeders, from 08:30 am to 2:00 pm, Zaraj, New Rawat, and Dhok Awan feeders, and from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm, Gharyal feeder will remain suspended. On October 17, from 08:00 am to 01:00 pm, Mindi Bhalwal feeder, from 08:00 am to 04:00 pm, Maritime and Bather feeders, from 08:00 am to 05:00 pm, Kohistan Enclave feeder, from 09:00 am to 04:00 pm, 132 KV NDC and Consumer Grid Station.

06-07 Comments - 16th October 2021_Layout 1 10/16/2021 12:26 AM Page 1

Saturday, 16 October, 2021

06 COMMENT

Islam, Sharia Laws and Modern Life

After attempts to control mainstream media It’s the turn of social media now

The sharia covers the whole ambit of human activity

i

T is an irony that Prime Minister imran Khan, who attributed his party’s rise and success to social media, is now out to make social media platforms fall in line. after coming to power, the PTi continued to deploy its social media trolls to demonize major opposition leaders and mainstream media critics by spreading false news about them and taking recourse to foul language. however, as the opposition parties, particularly the PML(N), set up their own media teams which paid back the PTi in the same coin, there was talk in government circles about putting shackles on social media. as a number of independent vlogs gained popularity by criticizing government policies, the PTi decided to devise a mechanism to block this source of criticism and exposure. Last year the government introduced “removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content (Procedure, Oversight and Safeguards) rules 2020,” which contained a set of draconian internet rules. These were duly rejected by stakeholders, including internet service providers, tech giants and digital rights activists, who termed them a violation of freedom of speech as well as the country’s cyber laws.

The government is now in a hurry. The new version of the social media rules has been prepared without consultation with the stakeholders. Once again Parliament has been bypassed. The new rules would add yet another layer to the government's social media management. Both the social media companies and service providers would be required to deploy mechanisms to ensure immediate blocking of the live streaming of content falling in the categories of terrorism, hate speech, pornography, incitement to violence and matter detrimental to national security on receiving intimation from the PTa. Deciding whether any content is censorable has been left to the Pakistan Telecommunication authority’s judgment at a time when perceptions regarding what constitutes hate speech, pornography or a threat to national security, widely differ.

The PTa chairman hopes that social media giants would agree to conditions rather than withdraw from Pakistan because the country is among top 10 markets of the world. The social media giants however know that Pakistan cannot afford their departure as iT services they provide are not only indispensable for the country’s business, industry and education, but reliance on Twitter and other social media has become a compulsion for politicians.

Dr rajkumar Singh

S

haria laws are traditional islamic laws to lead a life based on the Quran and the hadith derived from the sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad, and Sharia literally means “the way” or “path” in arabic from where most of the Muslims get their moral direction about their conduct, prayer and treatment of others including the family members. While some countries of the world follow the Sharia rules of traditional islam in toto, others use their modern interpretations done by religious scholars, jurists and modern courts influenced by Western thoughts and practices of jurisprudence. in today’s life it is very difficult and sometimes inhuman to obey the rules of traditional faith, made for the society which remained, if not thousands, hundreds of years ago when all parameters of life have been changed in essence. The classical Sharia is a whole set and deals with aspects of public and private life including religious rituals, family life, business, crimes, and warfare and while some laws of Sharia can be accepted as usual, others are better understood as rules for living life in accordance with God’s will. in most Muslim countries only a small part of the Sharia laws has been implemented as a token and other practices of their law are influenced by Western views of jurisprudence which respect human rights, gender equality, and freedom of speech, but in general, they all have a poor opinion about the women, specially for those who were captured in wars and considered as war lootings. Most of the Muslim coun-

The double visit The PML(N) split is being dragged into the open

khaDija BiLaL ShEikh

P

rOPEr education and edification can stir up change in concepts and behaviours of certain individuals, and such change of notion and conception can help initiate a desirable and effective society as well as a nation. Educated minds help enlighten new pathways and options for a better and bolder society. Furthermore, education induces rational thought, consistency, independence and self-determination in the personality of an individual. Doubtlessly education plays a pivotal role in societal changes, but to strengthen and secure our community we need to educate our women.

Therefore we must impel our society to put an end to barriers faced by females, struggling for their education and learning. a society with better-educated females thrives more than the one with illiterate and lowbrow females. When 10 percent of girls go to school, the GDP of the country rises by an average of three percent whereas not educating girls costs millions to a country. Educated females with higher education tend to get a well-paid job, have better employment choices, more working privileges. Consequently, they reinvest more in their families and communities, which shatters the poverty chain. whereas uneducated and illiterate females do not benefit from such beneficial factors and continue to face poverty and misery.

Education gives power and also enhances selfconfidence in females. They have a better understanding of their rights, roles and healthy living. an educated female ultimately knows how she can effectively utilize her freedom beneficially and constructively by attaining her full capabilities.

Education helps females unearth some of their lead-

Arif Nizami (Late) Founding Editor

Yousaf Nizami Umar Aziz

Joint Editor

Joint Editor

Executive Editor

Lahore – Ph: 042-36300938, 042-36375965

greater than any other. an educated mother can edify the minds of the next generations. ing qualities and skills. Educated females are more They can provide more confidence and support aware of their surrounding to their children, making conditions and sufferings them more aware of the and are more likely to take world and their surrounda step towards improving ings. Educated mothers and enhancing them.

Every woman is far stronger and are more likely to proThrough education femote the education of more capable than she thinks. A their males prefer to speak out children, can better for themselves alone, can nurture their children, woman with power and put forward solid eviparticipate more in decieducation cannot only flourish dence for the decisions sion-making in their they made and can opbut can also conquer the world households and have a pose, resist and raise better plan and underwith her abilities. By supporting standing voices against domestic for the future violence and sexual abuse each other we can help someone consequences. But when and are less likely to be it comes to uneducated prosper. If Pakistan ends the subjected to such viomothers they have a gender gap in education and lence. Whereas uneduhigher rate of dying durcated females are more ing pregnancy, give birth manages to achieve the goal of exposed to such violence to ailing children, usueducating and empowering the ally, give birth to more and can barely raise their voices against abuses and than three children, do women of Pakistan, then are less aware of coping not have any awareness together as a nation we can and responding to such about health and treatviolence. ments, while their babies harness our countries failures Educated females usuare less likely to get a full and weaknesses, but we also ally marry four years later course of vaccination and than their estimated age of need to change ourselves first, are malnutrition due to marriage and have fewer which they do not surby getting rid of stringent children, which somehow vive for a longer period. reduces the rapid populain the last four decades mindsets and rituals and by tion growth. Such females the global increase in promoting women's education are less likely to die during women’s education has pregnancy, give birth to and giving each woman her right prevented more than four healthy children and are million child deaths. Unto an education more concerned about the educated women barely health of their families such ponde the idea of the edas their nutrition and immuucation and the future of nisation, so their children their children. are less likely to die from any preventable diseases or malnutrition.

The witer is Research Officer, Baluchistan Think The role of an educated female as a mother is no Tank Network (BTTN)

It is not about women alone, but the whole nation

Dedicated to the legacy of late Hameed Nizami

M. A. Niazi

The writer is head of the political science department and dean of the Social Sciences faculty of the B.N.Mandal University, Madhepura, Bihar, India. He can be reached at rajkumarsinghpg@gmail.com

Social transformation through women's education

it took US Chargḥé D’affaires angela aggeler to bring into the open what had become an open secret, by holding separate meetings with PML(N) President Shehbaz and PML(N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz on Thursday. Both meetings took place in Lahore, thus making clear Ms aggeler’s need to hear from them separately.

Diplomats from all countries, including the USa, interact with politicians of all stripes so as to report back home information that will allow their home governments to formulate policy effectively. Because their time is limited, usually they prefer to meet one representative of the party who can give them the position of their party. The need to meet a Vice-President of the party (one of 16) after she had got the opportunity of meeting the party President, is unusual. it was also to be noted that Ms Nawaz was accompanied by senior party leaders, including two, Senior Vice-President Shahid Khaqan abbasi and Secretary General ahsan iqbal, who technically outranked her. however, the party considers her in the light of the representative of her father, Mian Nawaz Sharif, who is still the Quaid of the party, and still its primary vote-getter. The PML(N) is not speaking with one voice at the moment, though there is much that it has to say about such issues as the afghanistan issue, that will be of interest abroad, including to the USa, which has its own interests in how the situation develops there.

The split within the party is not formal, but it been made clear by Ms aggeler that it is no longer possible to pretend about the difference between Mr Shehbaz Sharif, on the one hand, who is following a soft line on the role of the military in politics, while Ms Nawaz and her father want to name names and take a hard line. The best symbol of this has been Mian Shehbaz’s silence over the DG iSi controversy itself, as well as Ms Nawaz’s remarks,where she seems to be waning to take credit.

Editor Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad

tries went far away from Sharia because they wanted to be more powerful and hence took European state models along with other traits of modernity. in many cases where Muslim states were colonized by the Europeans, they forced them to abandon several parts of Sharia laws and follow European laws instead for a long time.

Originally, Sharia in islam is considered as the revealed law of God which cannot be altered at any cost, and rests on four sources; a. Qur’an, which Muslims believe to be revealed by the almighty to the holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon him), b. the actions and words of Muhammad (PBUh), which are called Sunnah and preserved in collections called hadith, c. on consensus, when all legal experts agree, and d. a legal reasoning by analogy.

The whole set of Sharia laws have been classified in various parts from the viewpoints of their significance; a. actions that one must perform, b. recommended actions, c. actions that are allowed, d. action that is despised, and e. action that is prohibited. Of these all the acts have been divided in two branchesacts of worship and human interaction. Of them, worship is viewed as compulsory and are also called the pillars of islam which include; a. affirmation, the concept that there is no God except allah and Muhammad is his messenger, b. prayer, five times a day, c. fasting during ramadan, d. charity or Zakat, and e. pilgrimage to Mecca or hajj. alike these there are laws of dietary, sacrifice, family life, and crime and punishment. in crime and punishment there are offences which find a place in the Quran and are considered as violating ‘claims of God’ and have fixed punishments. in the second category are offences which are against persons, such murder and wounding and which call for a punishment in proportion to the crime or payment of compensation, while punishment in other forbidden behaviour are fixed by the Muslim judge using his discretion. although, there are differences among scholars and jurists about the crimes which come under the hudud category, yet they normally include theft, highway robbery, Zina or sex with forbidden partners, falsely accusing someone of Zina, and drinking alcohol. The prescribed punishment for these crimes ranges from 80 lashes to death. as per hudud, these crimes require other difficult formalities and as such often people ignore their implementation but historically, the system of Qisas remained in practice which include the punishment with ‘counter-action’, meaning a life for life, an eye for an eye along with consideration of one’s social status.

The initial phase of Sharia laws that prevailed in the world was not so harsh and commonly considered

as moderate for non-Muslims living under the rule where the criminal cases were handled in mazalim courts, controlled by the ruler’s council. at the time mazalim courts were hoped to follow ‘the spirit of Sharia’ where the qazis and muftis were also present to ensure the implementation of Sharia. in particular, the mazalim courts also handled the complaints against government officials which were not decided by qazi courts in a proper way, while local crimes or low-level crimes were settled by local police and market inspectors according to local customs, without any concern for Sharia. Such rules were good also for non-Muslims who lived under the regime because they were allowed to follow their own laws until or unless there was any dispute between two religious communities and while hearing those cases preference was given to non-Muslims, supposing that the Sharia is the reflection of the divine who desires to defend the weak against the powerful. The further developments of Sharia were registered in the 20th and 21st centuries because of demographic changes that took place in nations’ life.

With the passage of time several Muslim countries adopted Western ways in their legal systems and many people regarded their action as oppressive, corrupt, and ineffective, leading to a general disappointment in Muslim countries across the globe. as this thinking went on increasing, the nations began to rethink their strategy and finally decided in favour of Sharia laws where they could find a solution for all problems. On the other hand, a large group of conservative peoples wanted to use the traditional methods in handling the crimes with the help of hudud punishment. in the light of recent trends, several countries including iran and Sudan adopted the hudud system of punishment but the Supreme Courts of the countries rarely approve harsher punishments, while in Pakistan and Nigeria, the apex court never accepts Sharia laws in delivering the crime judgements. in the whole Muslim world, Saudi arabia is the single Muslim country which has applied Sharia laws in different spheres and never codified its separate laws. its court judges always follow Sharia laws while delivering crime judgements, but apply only the classical principle which says that hudud punishments should be avoided. The Taliban, the present rulers of afghanistan, who captured power by force, have also avowed to follow the Sharia rules and the region South asia is fearful about its nefarious motives and designs.

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06-07 Comments - 16th October 2021_Layout 1 10/16/2021 12:26 AM Page 2

Saturday, 16 October, 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

My City aFTEr all the struggle and voices, the Tharushah to Nusharo Froze link road is now under construction. The long-standing dilapidated condition of the road claimed many lives, caused several injuries and procrastinated emergency cases from addressing them. The shabby road would also impede speedy traveling taking more than half an hour for an 8-minute drive. Discussing delay in construction or other things which had occurred in the past would be nothing but a never-ending debate that, of course, is a waste of time. The best way forward is to appreciate the speedy construction of the road.

This is the fruitful result of those who raised their voices, held protests or made a bulk of complaints for its immediate construction and more praises to those who lead them.

Sarfraz ali Soomro Tharu Shah

Full-time Culture Minister needed

De-problematized academic matters How schools can be reformed

m. iLyaS kaLhoro

E

DUCaTiONaL decline is one of the most-talked-about issues . The discourse about the sector highlights the hindrances towards educational advancement . To remove these, every so often certain measures are taken at governmental level . Such measures, for example, include increasing budgetary funds, establishing new schools, providing basic facilities in schools, efforts for bringing outof-school children into schools, employing biometric attendance to ensure presence of teachers and so on. These steps may be beneficial in one way or the other. however, there are some educational predicaments, which if not problematised, may hinder the materialisation of qualitative education.

One such predicament is the prevalent high student-teacher ratio in schools. The student-teacher ratio is a crucial indicator of the learning environment in classrooms.

The lower the ratio the more conducive he learning environment. Most classrooms in public schools, especially in Sindh province, are over- crowded, having more than 100 students enrolled.

To reduce the number of out-of-school children ,those at the helm , without taking simultaneous correlative measures for alleviation of the probable accompanying effects, have adopted the policy of enrolling more and more children. Thus classrooms have become jam-packed. Such classes have their own issues: teachers find themselves unable to attain the set Standard Learning Objectives (SLO); more of teachers' time is consumed in maintaining discipline, leaving less for academic work; four to five students are made to sit on a three-seat bench, making it difficult to concentrate on learning; teachers fail to identify each individual’s strengths and weaknesses, and tailor teaching according to their needs ,also they do not find enough time to provide feedback or give time to students needing extra help. On the whole, quantitative classrooms create hindrances for qualitative education . Without

problematising the issue and subsequently taking measures for reducing the students' enrolment to an appropriate level, no appreciable expected change can be brought about. another academic matter subjected to less significance is the role of parental involvement in learning. Parental involvement ,as has been proved by many studies, produces positive effects on learning of children and helps in improving their academic grades. here teachers are thought to be solely responsible for academic performance of students, whereas responsibilities of parents in this context are somehow overlooked.

Being an educator , i have witnessed that the relatives of just five to ten students ,in a classroom of 100-plus students , come to inquire about the academic performance of their children .

Others do not even bother to visit the school and meet their children’s teachers.

Their disinterest influences the learning of their children . if promoted, the involvement of parents in education can be helpful in diverse ways ; (1) the attendance of students in classrooms will improve when the parents will accompany their children towards school (2) learning outcomes in classrooms will improve when students come to know that their parents are in interaction with their teachers as to inquiring their performance (3) behaviour of students will get reformed when they know that their habits and attitude at school and at home are being monitored by their teachers and parents through interaction between each other (4) the performance of teachers and school administrations will likely improve as they will have to satisfy visiting parents on matters relating to the learning of children. in an attempt to foster learning , one of the most helpful factors is the promotion of the trend of parental involvement in education that is significantly missing. an important matter also requiring problematization is focusing on prompting educators to try to influence the mentality and disposition of young learners. The learners' perception of study and education, particular type of habits, indulgence in certain peer groups, and the degree of trust in their own capabilities, are all factors that determine the inclination level of students towards learning. here, teachers can play a crucial role, that is by trying to reinforce learners' inclination towards study through moral education and motivation . Educators should consume considerable time in trying to reform the behaviour of students. Teaching students what is right and wrong for them enables them to prevent themselves from becoming prey to such habits or activities that may make them disinclined to study.

Motivating students also forms an important part of the responsibilities of teachers in classrooms. Motivation drives one towards study. The extent of motivation that a learner has, decides how likely he is to embrace learning . it also enables learners to bounce

back from poor academic performance.

Teachers should recognise their role as motivators. The need is to instil in students the idea that 'they can'. Those believing that they have the potential and ability to improve their academic record, and have the realization that through hard work they can attain this, will exert more effort than those believing in the role of intelligence in academic success. Unfortunately in our educational setting, such a role of teachers, as calls for working on the minds of learners to transform their attitude towards education, is deemed less significant. More focus is on teaching academic subjects, but the important responsibility of influencing the thinking faculty of students is less valued and practised . assessment is also an invaluable aspect of education requiring prioritised focus.

Sadly, it has not been given that importance, particularly in public schools. Teachers remain obsessed with completing the course material, overlooking the level of understanding and learning of students. Their focus remains on pleasing the school administration, by covering more and more topics of the assigned syllabus . The administration on its part, in order to escape the fury of any visiting officer, tries to ensure that in every classroom enough course material remains covered and with this end in view pressurises teachers . in all this , what is lost is the very much needed focus on evaluating the understanding and learning of students.

For students and teachers, education becomes the name of keeping completed the fair notebooks of different subjects and nothing more. Unless the appraisal and assessment of the learning of students in classrooms is sufficiently valued and pursued, the true aim of education, that is enhancing knowledge and skills, cannot be attained. Teachers will be better able to impart knowledge if they are aware of the weaknesses and strengths of their students. and this can be ascertained through conducting assessment activities in classrooms. remaining focussed on completing the syllabus is a good thing, but at the cost of the time of assessment it is certainly not.

The efforts for educational advancement will derive intended results only when all relevant issues and problems are pinpointed and managed. Most of the time, measures taken for reforming education do not take into account important factors, as some mentioned above, that may despoil the usefulness of such measures. The need is to problematize such issues and take steps for mitigation of their effects. Lowering the teacher-student ratio, enhancing parental involvement in education , working on children's mind and psychology, and increasing assessment activities in classrooms will surely help in begetting the standardized system of learning.

The writer is an educationist and an independent academic researcher , based in Larkana, and can be reached at m.ilyas.kalhoro.mi@gmail.com

BESiDES economic sector revival and development of other priority sectors, there is also dire need for promotion of art and culture in the country in furtherance of projection of soft, positive and progressive image of Pakistan and its peace loving people within the country and also in foreign countries.

This is to request Prime Minister imran Khan to induct a whole time Culture Minister in his cabinet with immediate effect to ensure promotion of art and culture of Pakistan within the country and abroad.

Pakistan National Council of the arts (PNCa) and other public sector art and culture related bodies are currently being looked after by the Federal Education Minister who is holding additional charge of the National history and Literary heritage Division under whose control PNCa falls.

Because of his heavy commitments as the Education Minister,he is not finding enough time to visit the PNCa regularly to set its house in order and also ensure promotion of art and culture. it is also submitted for the kind information of the Prime Minister that the interest of the minister holding additional charge can very well be judged by the bitter fact that on his express directions the organizers of first-ever international islamabad art Festival held last month had paid money to PNCa for use of its space while all other facilities and places were provided free .

This just one instance in the larger interest to ensure promotion of art and culture should be enough to convince the worthy prime minister that the country direly needs a full time culture minister at the earliest possible lest the PNCa and other public sector cultural bodies start crumbling due to lack of interest at the appropriate higher levels.

Thanks. muhammaD murTaza lahorE

Urban flooding in Karachi haViNG ruled for twelve years in Sindh,Karachi’s serious problems are not fixed yet by PPP.Provincial and local governments are at conflict with each other.Deliverable municipality in Karachi seems to be far cry.The current monsoon spell ‘Sagaar’ has brought heavy rains in Karachi.Lowlying areas have turned into rivers. additionally,main roads and highways are terribly flooded.Three to four feet accumulated-water can be seen most parts of metropolian city,Karachi. residents face difficulty in reaching their destination.heavy rains are multiplying their worries and in some areas rain-water has entered residential areas which carried away their utensils and other things which were kept at their homes.Government has disappeared from the scene and seems unwilling to pay heed to people’s grievances.Declaring rain emergency is not the solution to deep-rooted problems but fixing the problems is.

QaSim Jan TurbaT

Beggars on road aS traffic increases by the day, it is necessary to manage it safely. One important task to achieving this is to curb the presence of beggars at every signal. They create major traffic hazards, endangering their lives and those of others. in Pakistan, begging has become a profession. almost at every traffic stop, one is greeted by beggars. They gather around a car as soon as it stops at a signal. The most awful thing is that they encourage their children to also beg and most of them are physically fit to work. They can do manual labour if they so desire. instead, women carry their babies and beg while making emotionally blackmailing statements as if they are well trained in the art. healthy beggars should be made to work and the disabled should be maintained at state expense. The authorities should take steps and save the people from this nuisance, not to mention the hazards at traffic signals. aaShir SalEEm Karachi

Senseless education system a trend has begin that the private sectors demanded for the fees after reopening the institutions. as there were lockdown due to Covid-19 it took about 7 months to take off everything. So, isn’t it a foolish question that parents should submit the fees of the off-days, as there wasn’t anything to learn? Then why demanding the fees? Don’t you know that Balochistan, being the poor province, that there people can’t even afford three times fOod well, but the greedy principals demand what their need is, they are blind to see the parents who were not able to pay the fees before as being in their workshops then how they can submit even through there wasn’t any job or work during Covid-19. it’s not only my request, it’s the humble request of all the parents who seriously want PSa Jar KECh to take an action to the greedy institutions that they shOuld stop the new trend of taking fees. zahra baiG hoTh TurbaT

Saturday, 16 October, 2021

08 WORLD VIEW

HOw GOOGle, FacebOOk & TwiTTer riGGed 2020 elecTiOn EXCERPTED FROM “RIGGED” BY MOLLIE HEMINGWAY EPSTEIN WOULD TELL THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE THAT SEARCH ENGINE MANIPULATION IS “ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL FORMS OF INFLUENCE EVER DISCOVERED IN THE BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCES”

New york Post

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MOLLiE HEMingwAy

N her new book, “rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our elections,” Mollie Hemingway reveals how social-media companies like Twitter and Facebook responded to the 2016 election of Donald Trump to go from freespeech advocates to censors — including blocking The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden. Here is an exclusive excerpt:Donald Trump’s 2016 victory was a shock to much of the country, but Silicon valley took it especially hard.

The progressive bastion of San Francisco had turned tech companies from libertarian idealists into liberal crusaders.

The industry as a whole felt complicit in Donald Trump’s rise and was intent on doing everything in its power to suppress his voice and those of his supporters.

In one meeting, Google founder Sergey Brin suggested that “Jigsaw,” a project Google had developed to combat Islamic terror propaganda, could be used to shape the opinions of Trump voters. By the time Trump was inaugurated, a former Google engineer had told Breitbart reporter AllumBokhari that activists within the company had formed a working group to brainstorm ways to use Google’s resources to undermine the Trump administration.

Another Google engineer wanted to sabotage Trump’s phone, which ran on Google’s Android operating system, as well as ban the Gmail accounts of senior Trump administration officials. An employee in Google’s advertising department personally referred purchasers of Google ads to the Web site of Sleeping Giants, an activist group that encourages boycotts of conservative news outlets.It wasn’t any better over at Facebook, where some employees literally took a week off to grieve.

Soon after the election, BuzzFeed was reporting, “Facebook employees have formed an unofficial task force to question the role their company played in promoting fake news in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s victory in the US election last week.”The group was operating in open defiance of CeO Mark Zuckerberg, who said the idea that Facebook had unfairly tilted the election in Trump’s favor was “crazy.”

By December 2016, Zuckerberg had caved. Facebook adopted a new policy of trying to combat the alleged “fake news” that troubled Facebook’s left-wing employees. The tech giant would start paying media outlets to “fact-check” news on the site. With media revenue steadily declining — in no small part because Facebook had radically disrupted the traditional journalistic business models — once reputable news organizations signed up to participate in the fact-checking program.

Media outlets that were supposed to be objectively covering Facebook were now on Facebook’s payroll, given the power to determine all the news that was fit to

print. Whether or not the tech companies wanted to admit it, much of Silicon valley’s anger over Trump’s victory was about their inability to control American opinion.In the past two elections, the tech industry had loudly and publicly taken credit for helping Obama’s two victorious campaigns.

For years, the dreamers that built Silicon valley had prided themselves on the potential of the Internet to become a digital libertarian oasis that offered people a way of opting out of the institutions that had historically sought to control what they thought and did. This was always a bit of a pipe dream, but when a Twitter executive famously referred to the social media platform as the “free speech wing of the free speech party” in 2012, Americans still largely believed the Internet was a force for good.

But Silicon valley’s Orwellian reaction to 2016 proved once and for all that the visionaries at America’s tech companies were oppressors, not liberators. In 2018, a whistleblower at Google leaked a document titled “The Good Censor,” and it summed up Google’s role in mediating America’s discourse this way:In January 2018, Project veritas, a journalism outlet that specializes in undercover investigations, released a video of a former “content review agent” at Twitter (CeO Jack Dorsey).

The agent admitted that the platform was biased against conservatives, while Twitter employees reviewing questionable content “let a lot of the left-leaning or liberal stuff go through unchecked.” veritas’s investigation also featured a former software engineer at Twitter who admitted that the company “shadow banned” users — a term for when social-media companies employ algorithms to decrease the visibility of certain users without telling them.

Numerous prominent conservatives had seen sudden decreases in engagement on social media and had long suspected that this was happening. In January 2020, Twitter updated its terms of service to formally assert the right to “limit distribution or visibility of any content on the service.”

And Twitter was hardly an outlier. In December 2018, Google CeO SundarPichai testified under oath before Congress that the company doesn’t “manually intervene” in search results.

The next month, a Google employee leaked internal discussions to Breitbart showing that the company did, in fact, interfere with search results. Google-owned YouTube, the world’s second most popular search engine after Google itself, had a “blacklist” — Google’s term — related to a number of political topics. If you searched YouTube for abortion, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, gun control activist David Hogg, or other political topics, Google was rigging the results.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg. “We have tons of white- and blacklists that humans manually curate,” said one Google employee. “Hopefully this isn’t surprising or particularly controversial.”

Another employee noted that the YouTube intervention on abortion search results happened shortly after left-wing publication Slate asked Google to comment on the prominence of pro-life videos on the platform.

HOW GOVERNMENTS ACTUALLY CAN —

AND SHOULD — TAME FACEBOOK: Google also appears to have intentionally reduced the search engine rankings and visibility of conservative media.

A September 2020 report in realClearPolitics by Maxim Lott sifted through the data of the consulting firm Sistrix, which tracks data related to search engine optimization. The data clearly show that, starting in 2017, “conservative news sites including Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and the Federalist have seen their Google search listings dramatically reduced.” And Google was making it absurdly difficult to find specific information on conservative outlets.

The decision to blackball conservative websites was almost certainly intentional. In 2018, The Daily Caller obtained more leaked internal communications showing that Google workers had debated burying conservative news sites. An employee described Breitbart and The Daily Caller specifically as “opinion blogs” that should not be elevated next to corporate media in search results, even though both websites do vital reporting and regularly break major political news, while major corporate media outlets have become hyper-partisan and routinely push fake news.

It’s undeniable Google is rigging results on politically sensitive topics, and that the results of this are politically disadvantageous to conservatives. The effect of this on elections appears to be far more significant than most realize. Starting in 2012, psychologist robert epstein, the former editor in chief of Psychology Today, conducted a series of experiments to ascertain the degree to which biased search engine results can shape political opinion.

Most people wrongly view search engine results as the product of mechanical neutrality, merely the ranking and ordering of results, and are easily influenced by them. epstein, a politically liberal Harvard Ph.D., would later report that during 2016 “all 10 positions on the first page of [Google] search results in both blue states and red states” were biased toward Hillary Clinton.Based on conclusions from his previous experiments, epstein estimated that Google alone may have swayed 2.6 million Americans to vote for Hillary Clinton.In 2019, epstein would tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that search engine manipulation is “one of the most powerful forms of influence ever discovered in the behavioral sciences.”

In 2020, epstein monitored Google results using over seven hundred volunteers in three swing states and concluded, “Google search results were strongly biased in favor of liberals and Democrats. This was not true on Bing or Yahoo. . . . The bottom line at the moment is that these manipulations, the ones that we’ve so far quantified, could easily have shifted at least six million votes in just one direction.”

Further, epstein observed what he claimed was overt manipulation by Google. “We also found what seems to be a smoking gun. That is, we found a period of days when the vote reminder on Google’s homepage was being sent only to liberals — not one of our conservative field agents received a vote reminder during those days,” he said.

As the 2020 election drew near, social media companies — driven by internal pressure from employees

as well as external pressure from liberal activists — started targeting Trump directly.For most of the rest of election year, Twitter would regularly block or otherwise censor the president’s tweets. The censorship exposed egregious double standards. At a hearing before the Israeli Knesset in July, a representative of Twitter was asked why the company was censoring Trump but had done nothing about Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, who had repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and Jewish genocide. Just over a week before Trump’s censored tweet about looting from the George Floyd riots, Khamenei had tweeted, “The only remedy until the removal of the Zionist regime is firm, armed resistance,” and Twitter did nothing.

The response from Twitter to the Knesset was disingenuous, to put it mildly. Khamenei got a free pass because “comments on political issues of the day, or foreign policy saber-rattling on economic or military issues are generally not in violation of our Twitter rules.”Again, the more likely explanation is that Twitter, much like the executives at all the other tech companies, despised Trump and his politics.

Facebook once touted its ability to shut off 80 percent of the Internet traffic to any link it deems misleading. When deciding whom to censor, Facebook relied on media “fact-checkers” who consider themselves the opposition party. Biased journalists were given the power to scrub their rivals from the Internet, thanks more to the legacy of their places of employment than their own work.

This process of erroneous or slanted liberal media reports informing Facebook “fact checks” played out through Trump’s entire presidency and reelection effort.

It suppressed dozens of news stories in the public interest and helped get Biden over the finish line.“At Facebook, we took our responsibility to protect the integrity of this election very seriously . . . We’ve built sophisticated systems to protect against election interference,” CeO Mark Zuckerberg told ABC News shortly after the election.

He highlighted his censorship work, which he described as a fight against “misinformation.”

What should a $100 billion Japanese military look like?

19fortyfive.com

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DR JAMES HOLMES

ver at reuters, Tim Kelly and Jumin Park tender the feel-good story for the week: Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) intends to double defence spending from 1 to 2 percent of GDP, which would equate to roughly $100 billion. Since World War II the island state has maintained an informal cap on defense budgets to soothe worries among neighbors fearful that Tokyo might again march Asia over the precipice into regional or world war.

The cap made sense during the immediate postwar decades. Memories run long, and so do fears. By now, though, Japan has

recouped its good name many times over. It menaces no one. Plus, the rise of an increasingly domineering China that covets neighbors’ territory and natural resources, seeks to subvert if not overthrow the regional order, and routinely threatens to use force to take what it wants makes misgivings about Japanese militarism feel quaint.

Now, it’s one thing for party chieftains to make a bold pledge, quite another to coax a people with a strong pacifist streak into supporting it. We will learn something about the character of the Japanese government and society—and thus Japan’s fitness for great sea power—as the LDP tries to put promises into action. One wishes the party well as it strives to rally popular backing for a more muscular Japan Self-Defence Force (JSDF).

After all, a more balanced partnership with the United States within the longstanding security alliance would be a healthy development for the allies and the region. So would a more even balance of power between Japan and China.

How should Tokyo spend its new largesse if the LDP defence program does come to pass? The natural tendency would be to just throw money at the existing force, increasing purchases of what the JSDF is already procuring—especially marquee platforms such as stealth fighters and major surface warships. Given my druthers, I would like to see Tokyo take a more strategically minded approach. Political leaders

should ask big questions about what Japan wants to accomplish in the region and the world and design a force able to help accomplish it.

That force might look quite different from a supersized version of the current JSDF. It should be a force built around the principle of access, meaning the ability to preserve or deny access to landmasses, waters, and skies important to Japanese and allied strategy. How could a redesigned JSDF pull this off? By embracing a few principles.

A $100 BILLION JAPANESE MILITARY: FOUR IDEAS First, Japanese forces need to be mobile, adept at vaulting from island to island to hold embattled ground such as the Senkaku Islands and the ryukyus chain. Manpower and platforms that let JSDF defenders reach contested islands first and hold them against a Chinese onslaught—light amphibious transports, for instance—are imperative. According to the greats of martial affairs, after all, tactical defence is the strongest form of warfare.

Japanese strategic directives talk about recovering islands lost to an aggressor. enough with the defeatism. rather than surrender its geographic advantages, Japanese officialdom must field a force that preserves and widens them.

Second, a bulked-up JSDF needs to be what U.S. Navy wonks call a “distributed” armed force. A multitude of platforms scattered about on the map constitutes a distrib-

uted force. The logic behind distributed operations is straightforward. Chinese air and missile forces can reach out from the mainland and strike at allied forces along the first island chain. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will have some success. Allied forces made up of a few capable but pricey platforms—ships, warplanes, and so forth—concentrate a hefty percentage of their combat power in each platform. Losing one of those assets to an aerial assault deducts that share of a fighting force’s overall strength.

But if force designers and constructors decompose the force into plentiful smaller, cheaper platforms, they reduce the percentage of battle power concentrated in each one.

A ship or plane can be incapacitated; the force as a whole fights on. Which is the point of operations and strategy.

Third, Japanese strategists should base their deliberations on regulating access to the waters and skies around the islands as well as the islands themselves. The JSDF can help contain the PLA, bottling up Chinese aggressors within the first island chain and simplifying a host of operational problems for the allies. Weaponry that can assail shipping and aircraft in tight nautical passages will be at a premium. The good news is that distributed forces excel at island-chain defence. Manned and unmanned submarines, aircraft, and surface patrol craft can work with the combined fleet while marines on the islands loft missiles the PLA’s way. In so

doing the force can stymie access to the Western Pacific and Japanese soil to boot.

And fourth, a more lavishly funded JSDF needs to be resilient. Distributed operations help out in this regard. So does improving base infrastructure up and down the island chain. In all likelihood PLA rocketeers and airmen will bombard major allied bases such as Yokosuka, Sasebo, and Kadena at the outset of a shooting war. The allies need to harden and disperse their basing posture, including through passive measures such as emplacing materiel underground and active measures such as installing anti-air and anti-missile defences. Tokyo should also invest in secondary bases, as well as equipment and procedures for creating temporary bases in times of extreme need.

So Japan’s defencebuildup need not exude glamour. An airfield or building may prove as important to Japanese success as an Aegis destroyer or aircraft carrier. Tokyo must refuse to succumb to the allure of prestige platforms. Controlling access to the first island chain will safeguard Japanese territory while helping deter or, if necessary, defeat China. Tokyo should make access its north star when charting budgets and force acquisitions.Haste.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and a Nonresident Fellow at the Brute KrulakCenter for Innovation & Future Warfighting, Marine Corps University.

Saturday, 16 October, 2021 | ISLAMABAD

NEWS

corporate corner ffc awarded largest tax payer for manufacturing sector

Oil prices climb On pOwer bOOst, set fOr multi-week gains MELBOURNE

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KARACHI: Fauji Fertilizer Company (FFC) Limited has been awarded as “Largest Tax Payer from Manufacturing Sector (Nationwide)” in “First Taxpayer Recognition Awards” organized by Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce & Industry (RCCI) in collaboration with Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR). Representatives from the various multinationals and corporate blue chip companies participated in the event. Syed Imran Rizvi, Manager Corporate Affairs & Shares represented FFC and received the award. The ceremony was held at the Presidency and President of Pakistan Arif Alvi was the chief guest. The president in his address emphasized on women empowerment and enhancement of disable quota in the industrial sector. Pr

nestlé pakistan commemorates international Day of rural women LAHORE: Nestlé Pakistan commemorated International Day of Rural Women by pledging to be a force for good, towards upliftment of rural women through its Nestlé BISP Rural Women Sales Program, which till date has enrolled over 1800 rural women as sales agents. Nestlé Pakistan in partnership with Benazir Income Support Program (BISP), as part of government’s Ehsaas initiative, had started the Nestlé-BISP Rural Women Sales Program in 2017 to provide livelihood opportunities to BISP beneficiaries. Launched in 2008, BISP is Pakistan’s unconditional cash transfer program which provides a quarterly stipend of approximately PKR 6000 to its beneficiaries. The main premise of Nestlé BISP Rural Women Sales Program was to work for the upliftment of the rural women of Pakistan and put them on the path to prosperity in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of 3, 5, 8 and 17. Talking about the program, Waqar Ahmad, Head of Corporate Affairs & Sustainability, Nestlé Pakistan & Afghanistan said, “There is no ‘magic bullet’ to women empowerment and central to this tenet, is the acknowledgment that long-term prosperity is only possible when women are provided a level playing field to achieve their potential.” Nestlé Pakistan also partnered with Akhuwat Pakistan (the largest interestfree microfinance program) since 2019 whereby micro-loans worth Rs2 million were disbursed to these women, improving their access to finance. Pr

mpcl signs petroleum concession agreements, exploration licenses of nareli and north Dhurnal blocks KARACHI: Petroleum Concession Agreements (PCAs) and Exploration Licenses (ELs) of Nareli and North Dhurnal Blocks were signed on 13th October, among the president of Pakistan through the Ministry of Energy, Provincial Representatives and the Exploration and Production Companies, Mari Petroleum Company Limited (MPCL), Pakistan Oilfields Limited (POL) and Spud Energy PTY Limited (SPUD). Secretary Petroleum Division (Dr. Arshad Mehmood), Managing Director/CEO MPCL (Mr. Faheem Haider) and senior level authorized representatives of POL and SPUD signed the agreements. Mr. Hammad Azhar, Minister of Energy, also graced the occasion with his presence. The representatives of Balochistan and Punjab also signed the agreements as witnesses. The government had provisionally awarded Nareli Block (3068-9) to MPCL as Operator with 39% working interest, POL with 32% and SPUD with 29% as joint venture partners on January 15, 2021. While North Dhurnal Block (3372-27) was awarded to POL as Operator with 60% working interest and MPCL as the joint venture partner with 40% working interest. Provincial Holding Companies (Balochistan Energy Company Limited for Nareli Block and Punjab Energy Holding Company for North Dhurnal) would have an option for participation in the aforementioned Blocks at a 2.5% carried working interest. Moreover, Government Holdings (Private) Limited, may opt to have 2.5% working interest on a full participation basis. Pr

09

agencies

IL prices climbed on Friday, heading for gains of more than 2% for the week, on increasing signs of robust demand and tighter supplies over the next few months as rocketing gas and coal prices stoke a switch to oil products.

Brent crude futures rose 62 cents, or 0.7%, to $84.62 a barrel at 0622 GMT, after picking up 82 cents in the previous session. Front-month prices are set to rise for the sixth straight week, up 2.7% this week.

US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose 56 cents, or 0.7%, to $81.87 a barrel, adding to an 87 cent jump on Thursday. The contract is heading for a 3.2% gain on the week, up for the eighth consecutive week.

Analysts pointed to a sharp drop in OECD oil stockpiles, to their lowest level since 2015. Demand has picked up with recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, with a further boost coming from industry turning away from expensive gas and coal to fuel oil and diesel for power.

“The fact that Asian markets are content to chase prices higher at weekly highs, instead of lurking on price dips, is a strong signal that energy demand remains robust,” OANDA senior analyst Jeffrey Halley said in a note.

The International Energy Agency on Thursday said the energy crunch is expected to boost oil demand by 500,000 barrels per day (bpd).

That would result in a supply gap of around 700,000 bpd through the end of this year, until the Organization of the Petroleum Countries and allies,

together called OPEC+, add more supply, as planned in January.

“This energy crisis, particularly in coal and gas, has really pushed up the energy complex higher and oil has benefited as a result,” said Commonwealth Bank commodities analyst Vivek Dhar.

“You’re looking at a narrow window where things can tighten considerably, but it’s going to be very weather-dependent,” Dhar said.

RBC Capital Markets analysts said the global oil market is shaping up for a strong bull cycle, led by supply tightening and demand strengthening at the

same time.

“We maintain the view that we have held all year – that the oil market remains in the early days of a multi-year, structurally strong cycle,” RBC analyst Michael Tran said in a note. Investors shrugged off a higher than expected gain in US crude stocks last week as refinery crude runs fell.

Crude inventories rose by 6.1 million barrels in the week to Oct. 8 to 427 million barrels, compared with analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a 702,000-barrel rise, the Energy Information Administration said on Thursday.

China looks to lock in US LNG as energy crunch raises concerns SINGAPORE/NEW YORK agencies

Major Chinese energy companies are in advanced talks with US exporters to secure long-term liquefied natural gas (LNG)supplies, as soaring gas prices and domestic power shortages heighten concerns about the country’s fuel security, several sources said.

At least five Chinese firms, including state major Sinopec Corp and China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) and local government-backed energy distributors like Zhejiang Energy, are in discussions with US exporters, mainly Cheniere Energy and Venture Global, the sources told Reuters.

The discussions could lead to deals worth tens of billions of dollars that would mark a surge in China’s LNG imports from the United States. At the height of Sino-US trade war in 2019, gas trade briefly came to a standstill.

Talks with US suppliers began early this year but speeded up in recent months amid one of the biggest powergenerating, heating fuel crunch in decades. Natural gas prices in Asia have jumped more than fivefold this year, sparking fears of power shortages in the winter.

“Companies faced a supply gap (for winter) and surging prices. Talks really picked up since August when spot prices touched $15/mmbtu”, said a Beijing-based senior industry source briefed on the talks.

Another Beijing-based source said: “After experiencing the recent massive market volatility, some buyers were regretting that they didn’t sign enough long-term supplies.”

Sources expected fresh deals to be announced over the coming few months, after privately controlled ENN Natural Gas Co, , headed by the exLNG chief of China’s largest buyer, CNOOC, announced a 13-year deal with Cheniere on Monday.

It was the first major US-China LNG deal since 2018.

The new purchases will also cement China’s position as the world’s top LNG buyer, taking over from Japan this year.

“As state-owned enterprises, companies are all under pressure to keep security of supply and the recent price trend has deeply changed the image of longterm supplies in the mind of leadership,” said the first Beijing-based trader.

“People may have taken the spot (market) as the key in the past, but are now realizing that long-term cargoes are the backbone.”

Cheaper us gas: The sources declined to be named as the negotiations are private.

Sinopec declined comment.

CNOOC and Zhejiang Energy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Venture Global declined comment.

Cheniere did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We expect more deals to be signed before year-end. It’s primarily driven by the global energy crunch and prices we’re seeing now… US supplies now stand out as attractive,” said a third Beijing source briefed on the talks.

US cargoes used to be expensive versus oil-linked supplies from Qatar and Australia for example, but are cheaper now.

A deal at $2.50 + 115% of Henry Hub futures, similar to ENN’s deal according to traders, would be roughly about $9-$10 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) on a delivered basis into Northeast Asia. This includes an average shipping cost of $2 per mmBtu for the US-China route.

Jason Feer, global head of business intelligence with consultancy Poten & Partners said Chinese companies are heavily exposed to Brent-related pricing for LNG and the US purchases give some diversity to the pricing.

Asian spot gas prices are now at a near record at over $30 per mmBtu. Long-term LNG deals linked to oil prices work out to about $10-11 per mmBtu, though both calculations vary according to liquefaction costs, premiums and assumption of forward oil and gas prices.

Chinese buyers are scouting for both near-term shipments to cover demand this winter and long-term imports as demand for gas, seen by Beijing a key bridge fuel before reaching its 2060 carbon-neutral goal, is set

for steady growth through 2035.

It’s hard to estimate a total volume of the deals being discussed, sources said, but Sinopec alone could be eyeing 4 million tonnes annually as the company is most exposed to the spot market versus domestic rivals PetroChina and CNOOC, said a third source.

Traders said Sinopec is in final talks with 3 to 4 companies to buy 1 million tonnes a year for 10 years, starting from 2023, and is looking for US volumes as part of the requirement.

North American LNG exporters have been adding to capacity because of demand in major Asian economies.

Cheniere, the largest exporter out of the United States, said in late September it expects to announce “a number of other transactions” that will support their going forward with the Corpus Stage 3 expansion next year.

Venture Global is building or developing over 50 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of LNG production capacity in Louisiana, including the 10MTPA Calcasieu, which is expected to cost around $4.5 billion and start producing LNG in test mode in late 2021.

However, some buyers remained cautious.

“There is a lot of hype in the market and nobody knows for sure how long this supply crunch would last.

For companies that do not have fresh demand in the next year or two, it’s better to wait,” said a separate Chinese importer.

Bitcoin nears $60,000 as investors eye first US ETFs NEW YORK agencies

Bitcoin hit a six-month high on Friday, approaching the record hit in April, as traders became increasingly confident that US regulators would approve the launch of an exchange-traded fund based on its futures contracts.

The world’s biggest cryptocurrency rose nearly 4 per cent to as high as $59,664, its highest since midApril. It has doubled in value this year and is near April’s record high of $64,895.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is poised to allow the first US bitcoin futures Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) to begin trading next week, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing

people familiar with the matter.

Ben Caselin, head of research and strategy at Asia-based cryptocurrency exchange AAX, said bitcoin’s spike above $59,000 wasn’t arbitrary and longterm investors had been accumulating it for a while.

“It is widely expected that Q4 will see significant progress around a bitcoin ETF in the US,” he said.

Friday’s moves were also spurred by a tweet from the SEC’s investor education office, he said.

“Before investing in a fund that holds Bitcoin futures contracts, make sure you carefully weigh the potential risks and benefits,” the SEC tweet stated.

Cryptocurrency investors have been waiting for news of the approval of the country’s first bitcoin ETF, and some of bitcoin’s rally in recent months has been in anticipation of that move and how it could

speed up its mainstream adoption and trading.

Several fund managers, including the VanEck Bitcoin Trust, ProShares, Invesco, Valkyrie and Galaxy Digital Funds have applied to launch bitcoin ETFs in the United States. Cryptocurrency ETFs have been launched this year in Canada and Europe.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler has previously said the crypto market involves many tokens which may be unregistered securities and leaves prices open to manipulation and millions of investors vulnerable to risks.

The Bloomberg report said that the proposals by ProShares and Invesco are based on futures contracts and were filed under mutual fund rules that Gensler has said provide “significant investor protections”.

The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Saturday, 16 October, 2021 | ISLAMABAD

10 FOreIGN NewS

UK lawmaKer dies after Being staBBed dUring meeting with ConstitUents

C

AFP

ONSERVATIVE British lawmaker David Amess was killed on Friday after being stabbed “multiple times” during an event in his local constituency in southeast England, in the second death of a UK politician while meeting voters since 2016.

Local police did not name Amess but said a man had been arrested “on suspicion (of) murder” after another man had been stabbed and died in Leigh-on-Sea. “We are not looking for anyone else in connection with this incident,” said Essex police, adding that the man in custody was aged 25, and a knife was recovered.

The force said officers had earlier responded to “reports of a stabbing” shortly after 12:05pm (1105 GMT).

British media, including Sky News and the BBC, identified the victim as the 69year-old politician from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ruling Conservative Party.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps called Amess “a dedicated, thoughtful man and a true parliamentarian, who lost his life while serving the constituents who he worked relentlessly for throughout his career”.

Amess is the latest British MPs to have been attacked at his weekly constituency “surgery” with voters, which are typically held on Fridays when parliament is not sitting.

Pro-EU lawmaker Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by in 2016 in the run-up to the Brexit referendum.

The Jo Cox Foundation, which was set up in her memory, tweeted that it was “horrified to hear the news of the attack” on

Amess. “We are thinking of him, his family and loved ones at this distressing time,” it added.

Cox’s widower Brendan described the stabbing of Amess was “as cowardly as it gets”. “Attacking our elected representatives is an attack on democracy itself. There is no excuse, no justification.”

Another Labour MP, Stephen Timms, was stabbed multiple times during an event in 2010, but recovered from “potentially lifethreatening injuries” and is still an MP. Timms said he was “appalled” at the latest attack.

In January 2000, Liberal Democrat MP Nigel Jones was injured and his assistant killed by a man wielding a ceremonial sword at a constituency surgery in Cheltenham, western England.

Security concernS: Former Con-

servative leader Iain Duncan Smith expressed concern about the security risk of the local MP “surgeries”.

“When you’re not in your office, and you’re in a public place […] that means essentially, that the levels of security that sometimes you’re advised to take can’t be taken,” he said.

Amess, a lawmaker since 1983, had advertised his upcoming surgery at the Belfairs Methodist Church in the small town of Leigh-on-Sea. Paul Gardiner, 41, a barber at One Barbers Leigh-On-Sea, told AFP that “armed police and an ambulance” were on the scene.

“There’s a couple of choppers around the place,” he said.

There was no immediate comment from Johnson, who was leading an away-day for senior ministers in the west of England.

But his wife Carrie, a former Conservative head of communications, tweeted: “Absolutely devastating news about Sir David Amess. He was hugely kind and good. An enormous animal lover and a true gent.

“This is so completely unjust. Thoughts are with his wife and their children.”

An eye-witness, identified only as Anthony, told radio station LBC that the scene was “completely and utterly swamped by police, ambulance, armed police.

“I saw someone get taken out the building, put into the back of a police car. Apparently he was stabbed quite a few times.“

Fully vaccinated foreign visitors can enter US from Nov 8: official WASHINGTON AFP

Bill Clinton hospitalised with non-Covid infection WASHINGTON ReuteRs

Former President Bill Clinton, 75, was admitted two days ago to an Irvine, California, hospital where he is being treated for a non-COVID-19 infection, a spokesman said on Thursday. Clinton, 75, was admitted on Tuesday evening to the UCI Medical Center in Irvine “for a nonCOVID-19 infection,” Clinton spokesperson Angel Urena. “He is on the mend, in good spirits, and incredibly thankful to the doctors, nurses and staff providing him with excellent care.” The former president went to the hospital after feeling fatigued and was diagnosed with sepsis, an infection of the bloodstream, which doctors believe started as a urinary tract infection, CNN reported, citing his doctors. Clinton’s physicians, Alpesh Amin and Lisa Bardack, said in a statement that he was “admitted to the hospital for close monitoring and administered IV antibiotics and fluids.” “He remains at the hospital for continuous monitoring,” they said. “After two days of treatment, his white blood cell count is trending down and he is responding to antibiotics well.” They added: “We hope to have him go home soon.” Clinton, a Democrat who was president from 1993-2001, has had past health issues, including a 2004 quadruple bypass surgery and a 2010 procedure to open a blocked artery in his heart with two stents. CNN reported that Clinton’s current hospital stay is not related to his heart issues. CNN also reported that the former president was in the intensive care unit, primarily to give him privacy, and he was not on a breathing machine, according to doctors treating the former president at University of California Irvine Medical Center, California. The former Arkansas governor came to the White House by defeating an incumbent president, Republican George H.W. Bush, and served during a period of acute partisanship in Washington, a harbinger of the current bitter political state. Clinton won reelection in 1996 against longtime Republican Senator Bob Dole. Clinton endured bruising political battles with Republicans. He was impeached in 1998 by the Republican-led House of Representatives over his sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky but remained in office when the Senate acquitted him in 1999. He is known for a remarkable talent for connecting with people and an exceptional understanding of policy issues, making him an able politician and leader.

The United States announced Friday that it will allow entry to foreign travellers who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, by both land and air, starting November 8.

“This policy is guided by public health, stringent, and consistent,” tweeted White House assistant press secretary Kevin Munoz in announcing the news.

In an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, US borders were closed after March 2020 to travellers from much of the globe, including the European Union, Britain and China, India and Brazil. Overland visitors from Mexico and Canada were also banned.

The months of restrictions led to both personal and economic suffering.

Under the new policy that was outlined last month, vaccinated air passengers will need to be tested within three days before travel, and airlines will be required to put in place a contact tracing system.

Earlier this week, a White House source said the land border opening would happen in two phases.

Initially, vaccines will be required for “non-essential” trips — such as visiting family or tourism — though unvaccinated travellers will still be allowed into the country for “essential” trips as they have been for the last year and a half. A second phase beginning in early January 2022 will require all visitors to be fully vaccinated to enter the United States by land, no matter the reason for their trip.

Three German parties reach preliminary deal to form next govt BERLIN AFP

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz took a step closer to succeeding Angela Merkel as chancellor, as his Social Democrats, the ecologist Greens and liberal FDP on Friday announced a preliminary deal to form a new government.

The three parties have been holding talks since Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) won the general elections on September 26 with Merkel’s conservatives in second place as she prepares to leave politics.

“Overall, we can sense here that a new beginning is possible, brought about by the three parties that have come together here,” Scholz told reporters.

“We have agreed on a text from the exploratory talks,” he said, adding that this “is a very good result that clearly shows that a government that aims to ensure we achieve progress can be formed in Germany.”

Greens co-leader Annalena Baerbock said the initial agreement heralds a “coalition of progress” to “really use the next decade as a decade of renewal”.

The agreement that will form the basis of formal coalition talks all but means that Merkel’s CDU-CSU alliance is headed for the opposition benches after scoring their worst post-war election result.

CDU leader and chancellor hopeful Armin Laschet had recently said his party remains open to forming a governing coalition, but even his own job is hanging on a thread.

Facing their worst crisis in decades, the conservatives are planning a clean sweep of their leadership, with a congress by December to elect their new bosses.

Scholz, who is also Merkel’s vice

chancellor, this week voiced confidence that the three-way talks involving his party will produce Germany’s next government before Christmas.

A coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP — known as “traffic-light” after the three parties’ red, green and yellow colours — has found favour with Germans, with 62 percent approving the constellation as the next federal government, according to a poll published Friday.

Scholz’s approval rating was even higher, as three in four say it was “good” for him to become chancellor.

‘More difficult?’

The imminent shift in Germany’s leadership to the centre-left comes as Europe’s biggest economy is grappling with the complex challenge of securing the country’s post-pandemic recovery.

Serious shortages in raw materials and components are already crimping growth, with factories of Germany’s vital automotive industry idled because of the

supply issues.

While industry is urging state support to continue, a planned zero-emissions target by 2045 will require huge investments including building more sustainable energy capacity and greener transport options.

Through the formal negotiations, the Greens and the pro-business FDP will have to see if they can bridge their differences on issues including climate protection, taxation and public spending.

But both parties have said they want to “build bridges” in order to govern.

All sides are eager to avoid a repeat of the 2017 election aftermath, when the FDP dramatically walked out of coalition talks with the conservatives and the Greens and it took months for a new government to take shape.

Analysts believe that as compromises are found between the parties, Germany is unlikely to see a sharp lurch to the left.

Scholz has after all been Merkel’s finance minister and has repeatedly said he adheres to Germany’s no-new-debt rule.

Berenberg Bank’s analyst Holger Schmieding said it may in fact be “more difficult under Scholz” than under a CDU-led coalition to obtain potential changes in German and European rules or additional German fiscal commitments in Europe.

“As finance minister since March 2018, Scholz has already shaped the German fiscal stance and its position in EU negotiations to a significant extent.

Do not expect a sea change from his potential move into the chancellor’s office,” wrote Schmieding.

Rather, Germany will likely continue on its “gradual shift towards a flexible interpretation of rules, more spending at home and in Europe and more investment into the green and digital transformation, infrastructure and health care.”

Saturday, 16 October, 2021 | ISLAMABAD

SPORTS 11

Norrie Crushes sChWarTzmaN, DimiTrov holDs off hurkaCz INDIAN WELLS

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AFP

REAT Britain's Cameron Norrie used a precise service game to overpower Diego Schwartzman 6-0, 6-2 to reach the semi-finals of the ATP Indian Wells Masters on Thursday.

Norrie, the 21st seed, needed just 73 minutes to dispatch the Argentinian and has now won three of four career matches against Schwartzman, who was undone by a string of unforced errors in the California desert.

"Everything went my way today," Norrie

said. "Right from the beginning I was timing the ball well. I thought I was in for a long match because the previous times we have played have been so long and so physical.

"I hit a lot of lines in the first set and stayed tough in the second and served well when I needed to. I am so happy to be through, it is such a big win for me."

Norrie, appearing in his first Indian Wells quarter-final, next faces Grigor Dimitrov who outlasted eighth seeded Hubert Hurkacz in three sets, 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7/2).

Dimitrov eliminated top-seeded Russian Daniil Medvedev, the newly crowned US Open champion, in a hard-fought fourth round match on Wednesday.

T20 World Cup: Pakistan cricket players reach Dubai NEWS DESK The national T20 World Cup squad on Friday reached Dubai for the mega cricket event, a news outlet reported. According to the report, the national cricket team squad flew from Lahore’s Allama Iqbal International Airport for the UAE in a chartered plane. The team members will have to stay in quarantine for a day in the UAE till their coronavirus test results arrive. Pakistan is scheduled to play two warm-up matches against West Indies and South Africa on October 18 and 20, respectively. Pakistan will begin their bid for the trophy with a high-octane clash against arch-rival India on October 24 at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium.

Grant Bradburn resigns as Pakistan's high-performance coaching head NEWS DESK Grant Bradburn has stepped down as the head of coaching at PCB's high-performance centre (HPC) 18 months before his contract was due to get over "to pursue further coaching opportunities", the PCB said on Friday, according to ESPNcricinfo. "It has been an honour and privilege to serve Pakistan, providing challenge and support, to drive the players, coaches and teams forward," Bradburn said in a statement. "I will leave PCB grateful for the wonderful opportunities and the experiences I have gained. As a foreigner, I felt welcomed and valued by my present and former PCB colleagues, players, officials and the Pakistan public. I have always felt safe here, loved exploring this wonderful country and made many lifetime friends. "My wife Maree and three children have also sacrificed a lot in allowing me to serve Pakistan cricket. Covid-19 regulations made it challenging for them to visit Pakistan and feel the warmth, love and friendship this country offers. It is now time for me to prioritise family and move forward to the next coaching challenge." Bradburn, the former New Zealand allrounder, had been working in Pakistan for the last three years, first as the national men's side's fielding coach, since September 2018, before taking over the new role at the HPC in May 2020 when the National Cricket Academy was revamped. Bradburn became the fourth high-profile individual in the coaching set-up to resign since Ramiz Raja took over as the chairman of the board. Misbah-ul-Haq and Waqar Younis were the first ones to step down from their respective roles as head coach and bowling coach of the men's national team, which was followed by the exit of PCB CEO Wasim Khan. The HPC took shape after Wasim brought in David Parsons, a former director of the ECB's high-performance centre, in 2019 to look at the system and suggest recommendations. The report was filed in 2020, and after that, the PCB's department for domestic cricket and the national cricket academy were merged to form a new set-up, the HPC, which takes care of many things, including regulating the domestic circuit and developing cricketers for the highest level. The PCB's medical department, which worked independently earlier, was also integrated with the HPC. The setup was also changed in a big way at the same time, with a new batch of employees brought in and prominent names such as Mudassar Nazar, Haroon Rasheed and Ali Zia released. Bradburn was joined by Saqlain Mushtaq, as head of international player development, and Nadeem Khan as director. Former internationals Mohammad Yousuf (batting), Mohammad Zahid (bowling) and Atiq-uz-Zaman (fielding and wicketkeeping) were also included as coaches.

The 26-year-old Norrie, who will supplant Daniel Evans as the British No 1 when the new rankings come out on Monday, is enjoying a career best season.

"I have been pretty consistent this year," said Norrie, who was born in South Africa and grew up in New Zealand. "I think I am really doing the fundamentals well on serve and return and playing the big points better.

"I have been a little more aggressive and feel I am learning more as I go along and becoming more experienced."

Norrie, who has represented Britain since 2013, had no aces but no double faults either. He cruised through the opening set in 32 minutes, losing just one point on his first

serve. He won 72 percent of his first serve points overall and won 58 total points compared to just 30 for Schwartzman.

Earlier this year, Norrie captured his first ATP title in Los Cabos. He also delivered a run to the championship match of a grass court tournament in London.

Norrie said he watched Dimitrov comefrom-behind to beat the tournament's top seed Medvedev on Wednesday and was impressed with his staying power.

"The level that Grigor played yesterday.

For him to come back from a set and a break down against probably the second-best player in the world, it's impressive stuff," said Norrie.

Dimitrov withstood 14 aces from Hurkacz as their first career meeting turned into a marathon contest lasting two hours and 37 minutes. The Bulgarian used a steady game and a more consistent serve to shake off a first-set loss and then closed it out in a third set tiebreaker. Dimitrov won the final three points of the tiebreaker, clinching it when Hurkacz hit the final shot into the net.

"I am so glad I have a day off tomorrow," said Dimitrov. "I never played Hubert before. He has all the weapons.

"At the beginning his serve was too good. After the first set I tried to regroup and tried to turn things around. I still felt I had something left in me but I wasn't sure how much I had. "I stayed in there and dug deep.

The only way he could have done it is if he took it away from me. The last few points was the difference." Hurkacz hit more aces and made fewer double faults (4-1) but had his serve broken three times. The combined WTA and ATP Masters event is normally held in March, but returned this fall after a two-and-a-half-year hiatus due to the global coronavirus pandemic.

NHA’s annual cricket tournament concluded ISLAMABAD PR

The Annual Tape Ball Cricket Tournament organised by the National Highway Authority (NHA) has come to an end. Regular cricket tournament competitions were held at G-9 cricket ground in Islamabad. The teams – Admin, Audit, Revenue, Champion XI, RAMD XI, P&CA XI, CP Fund, Falcon and Accounts – participated in the tournament.

The final match was held between Admin Star and Multan Stallions, which was won by Admin Star.

The Man of the Match award was given to Shehzad.

NHA General Manager Umar Ali Shah Banori presented the

trophy to the winning team while prizes and certificates were also distributed among the other best performers. The tournament aims to keep the NHA employees healthy and alert, and promote healthy sports and positive activities among

them. It is pertinent to mention that a special committee has been constituted in the National Highway Authority for the promotion of sports. In this regard, Assistant Director CP Fund Maleeha Siddiqui has rendered invaluable services.

What to expect from China's Winter Olympics BEIJING AFP

Beijing, which will host the 2022 Winter Olympics, is staging a series of test events -- giving a strong taste of what the Games will look like and what coronavirus measures will be in place. AFP Sport takes a look at what athletes and spectators -- only people living in mainland China are allowed to attend -- can expect when the real thing happens on February 4-20 next year: China plans to host the Games under what could be the strictest Covid-19 safety rules at a mass sporting event since the pandemic began, even compared to the summer's mostly crowd-free Tokyo Olympics. Chinese officials say participants will stay in a "closed loop" -- a strict bubble insulating them from spectators and the outside world for the whole Games. Athletes will have to be fully vaccinated or undergo a 21-day quarantine on arrival in the Chinese capital. Athletes did not have to be vaccinated in Tokyo.

Everyone in the closed loop will have to take daily virus tests. Like in Tokyo, athletes will have to wear masks pretty much all of the time, except when they are competing and for a quick photo on the podium if they win a medal. China

has largely sealed its borders since the virus emerged there towards the end of 2019, but about 2,000 overseas athletes, coaches and team officials were expected to be involved in the test events. State media showed overseas participants landing in Beijing met by police in hazmat suits.

The ongoing test events, which are a chance for organisers to fine-tune preparations, last until the end of the year and include domestic and international competitions in everything from ice hockey to luge and speed skating.

Athletes currently in Beijing appear resigned to the rules. "The pandemic prevention management of this competition provides athletes with great protection," speed skater Sophie Kraaijeveld of the Netherlands, told Chinese state media. Dutch speed skater and Youth Winter Olympics champion Isabel Grevelt said the measures "make me feel safe", Xinhua reported.

Chinese snowboarder Cai Xuetong said that the main disruption has been in the build-up to the Games -- China's sports authorities have prevented athletes from competing overseas because of the virus. "We always travel to different countries and do lots of competitions, but last season, it was totally off," Cai recently told AFP in Shanghai.

Unlike Tokyo's mostly empty stadiums, the Beijing

Games will take place in front of crowds, albeit tickets will only be sold to people living in China.

There have been no crowds yet at the test events, but others, such as AFP reporters, had to prove they tested negative for the virus in the previous 48 hours and show their recent travel history. Once inside, they had to wear N95 masks -- a higher-spec alternative to surgical masks -- and interview athletes via video only.

That is different from Tokyo, where reporters were able to interview athletes face to face, albeit at a distance. Such rules could yet change for the real thing in February.

Large signs at Beijing venues remind everyone to maintain social distancing, wash hands and refrain from eating.

Organisers argue that the measures will give Beijing the best chance to hold a safe, smooth Games.

But they also admit they face "great pressure in epidemic prevention and control". If any athletes test positive for the virus they will be taken in negative-pressure ambulances to designated medical centres for treatment, said Zhao Chengfang, deputy director for Covid-19 prevention at the Capital Indoor Stadium. A small army of about 100 emergency-response personnel is on standby to enter the stadium if needed, Zhao added.

Saturday, 16 October, 2021

PRayeR timings

NEWS

FAJR SUNRISE

ZUHR

ASR MAGHRIB ISHA

4:49

11:55

3:10

6:10

5:38

7:01

PM launches Kisan Portal to ‘give voice to sMall farMers’

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RIMe Minister Imran Khan on Friday launched the Kisan Portal — a special category for farmers in the Pakistan Citizen Portal — saying it would give a voice to small farmers who were “voiceless” in front of powerful people.

Addressing the launch ceremony in Islamabad, the premier noted that 90 percent of farmers had small landholdings but their problems never reached those in power. “He works hard and has no voice in front of the powerful. If a corrupt policeman comes in the area, the farmer suffers the most.”

Talking about the situation of farmers in the country, Imran said that all research pointed to how small farmers paid the highest prices when buying something from the market but sold their crop for the lowest price compared to bigger farmers.

“The farmer used to work hard and take his sugarcane to sugar mills. He would be defeated from both sides — first they (sugar mills) made farmers wait in long lines. When I travelled in winter, trucks used to be queued outside sugar mills and they would get low prices,” he recalled.

The premier said he wanted to continuously help farmers and had decided to get them the full price for their crop when he came into power. As a result of the government’s efforts, productivity had increased after farmers got the money they deserved, he noted, adding that the government needed to help farmers a lot more.

The premier rued that Pakistan had reduced its research spending in the past, pointing out that countries that had invested in research saw increased agricultural productivity. “As long as you don’t do research, participate in seed development, how will your productivity in-

crease?” he questioned.

“I am most unhappy that we have so many cows but we have to import dry milk. And we have never tried […] it is very easy to increase the yield of our cows. Milk production of cows in europe is six times more than ours.”

Prime Minister Imran also lamented that the country did not work on building reservoirs and dams in the past, which could have helped farmers get more water, adding that there was a lot of uncultivated land in Pakistan which could be utilised.

“We have a lot of land [lying free].

But because we didn’t have water and never thought of it […] big dams are being built after 50 years. We are building dams and you will see we will give more [water] to farmers. It can also stop the destruction from floods.”

Detailing the steps the government was taking to help farmers, he said the government had introduced the Kisan

Card to provide direct subsidy to farmers.

Now a small farmer would get money directly through the Kisan Card, he shared.

“If we want to subsidise urea or pesticides or to help if some disaster comes — money will come directly through the card.”

Farmers also needed insurance, he pointed out, saying that banks would be more willing to give loans if the farmers’ crops were insured.

The Sehat Insaf Card, through which every family would be able to get treatment of up to Rs1 million at any hospital, would also help farmers, the premier said.

Imported InflatIon: “Our effort is to increase our productivity and [cultivated] areas,” the prime minister said. “Our import bill increased 53 percent in one year. The pressure on the rupee increased because we imported 4m tonnes of wheat, we imported sugar and pulses and the [price of imported] palm

oil nearly doubled.”

The government was focusing on growing these products in Pakistan to counter inflation through import, he said.

“The cultivation of olives is also a revolution in Pakistan. especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, so many olive trees have been planted that Pakistan will export them in the future. God has given this country everything. We just have to use our minds, do research, get new techniques for farmers,” he said, adding that the government was working on a programme for training farmers.

Prime Minister Imran said that the agriculture sector was also made a part of the China-Pakistan economic Corridor (CPeC) and Pakistan was taking help from China to increase agricultural productivity.

“We have been continuing the same practices in Pakistan that existed in Mohenjo-Daro,” he regretted.

“The most expensive and nutritious vegetable, Avocado, is being sold for Rs600-700 per piece here. Its tree starts giving fruit in 4-5 years. We have a lot of land for [planting avocado trees]. We have to [grow] new things as our population increases.” elaborating on how the Kisan Portal will work, the prime minister said that calls from farmers will go directly to the chief secretary’s office.

According to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), 123 dashboards have been set up in the relevant institutions at the federal and provincial level.

“We will ensure through this portal that small farmers are not oppressed in any form,” the prime minister stressed.

He urged farmers to “think that this government is yours. We will get you full price and will help you in every way.”

“When we help our farmers, we will help Pakistan,” he added. news desk

Russia to host Pakistan, US, China for Afghanistan talks on Oct 19: report MOSCOW

which Moscow views as its southern defensive buffer.

Since the Taliban takeover, Moscow has held mili-

agencies

tary exercises in Tajikistan and bolstered hardware at its military base there.

Moscow will host the United States, China and Pakistan next week for talks on Afghanistan, the Kremlin’s envoy to the country told Russian news agencies on Friday.

News agencies cited Zamir Kabulov as saying the meeting would take place on Tuesday and that the countries “will try to work out a common position on the changing situation in Afghanistan”.

Kabulov said representatives of the Taliban have confirmed they will take part in the talks in Moscow next week. However, they have not yet announced the members of their delegation.

According to Reuters, the Moscow talks also involve India and Iran alongside China and Pakistan.

Moscow hosted an international conference on Afghanistan in March at which Russia, the United States, China and Pakistan released a joint statement calling on the then-warring Afghan sides to reach a peace deal and curb violence. Since then, the United States and its allies have withdrawn their troops after 20 years on the ground, the Taliban have seized power and the previous government has collapsed.

Russia is now worried about the potential for fallout in the wider region and the possibility of Islamist militants infiltrating the former Soviet republics of Central Asia,

abdul hakim haqqani appointed afghanistan’s chief justice The Afghan interim cabinet on Friday approved the name of Maulvi Abdul Hakim Haqqani for the slot of the chief justice of Afghanistan while appointing Maulvi Muhammad Qasim Turkman and Maulvi Abdul Malik as his aides. The names were announced through a notification by the government, after approval from the Rehbari-eShura (council of guidance) and by the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah. Maulvi Abdul Hakim Haqqani’s name has been finalised for Chief Justice of the Islamic Central Court while Sheikh Maulvi Muhammad Qasim Turkman and Sheikh Maulvi Abdul Malik will be his aides. Haqqani was a close aide and confidante of the deceased founder of the movement, Mullah Muhammad Umar. He was also a consultant to Mullah Omar on various affairs and currently serves the Rehbari Shura as its member. When the news of the death of Mullah Akhtar Mansoor broke, who was killed in a US drone strike in Balochistan, he was consulted by the local shura (consultative body) regarding making the news public, he opted to reveal it as he stated that the US knew the identity of the deceased. The Taliban did as he directed them to do so. He was also part and parcel of naming Mullah Haibatullah as the chief of the movement and the same was followed by the group. Haqqani also served as the head of negotiations in Afghanistan during the tenure of former president Ashraf Ghani, post withdrawal US-Taliban talks in Doha and as the acting chief of Taliban affairs in the shadow government of the Taliban. He is well versed in fiqh, the Holy Qur’an and the Islamic justice system and has had scores of books published on various subjects and translated into multiple languages. His recent work was also translated into Bengali.

Haqqani’s aide Maulvi Qasim Turkman hails from the Turkan tribe and is respected amongst his tribe as a well-known member of the Rehbari Shura. He has also served on various positions within the movement, including being a part of the selfaccountability process in the previous shadow government. Turkman has also served as a member of the Qatar office and was part of talks with the US, China and Russia. The second aide, Abdul Malik, hails from Kandahar province and is in his late 40s.

He was not known as a prominent member amongst the Taliban ranks earlier but was elevated to chief of the eastern region when the Taliban divided the country into three administrative units. Malik is well-versed in the Holy Qur’an, fiqh and Islamic justice. news desk

Saudi Arabia to ease coronavirus curbs from Sunday RIYADH ReuteRs

Saudi Arabia will ease Covid-19 curbs from October 17, the interior ministry said on Friday, in response to a sharp drop in daily infections and a considerable development in vaccinations.

The government will lift social distancing measures and will allow full-capacity attendance at the country’s two Holy Mosques in Makkah and Madina for those who have taken

the full dose of vaccines, the ministry added.

The authorities also cancelled curbs on fully vaccinated people at closed venues, gatherings, transportation, restaurants and cinemas.

Masks are no longer mandatory at public open places while still imposed at closed venues, it added.

On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation issued a circular, stating that work visa and residential permit holders can directly visit the country under the new guidelines.

“All airlines must ensure the proof of confirmed booking at one of the airlines’ approved passenger quarantine facilities,” read the circular issued to all airlines. It added that passengers must show the QR Code before boarding the plane.

As per the notification, it is necessary for all airlines to verify the registration of passengers on the arrival platform. “Such passengers will be exempted from institutional quarantine, while legal action will be taken against the violators,” it read.

Published by Arif Nizami at Plot # 7, Al-Baber Centre, F/8 Markaz, Islamabad, for PT Print (Pvt) Limited. Ph: 051-2204545. Email: newsroom@pakistantoday.com.pk