EpaperISB_21-08-7

Saturday, 7 August, 2021 I 27 Zil-Hajj, 1442 I Rs 15.00 I Vol XII No 38 I 12 Pages I Islamabad Edition

Supreme Court orderS immediate arreSt of temple attaCk CulpritS g

top court orDers immeDiAte restorAtion of the temple

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AmbAsting the punjab police for their inability to protect the hindu temple in rahim Yar khan, which was attacked by a mob two days ago, the supreme court on friday ordered the temple’s restoration and the immediate arrest of the culprits.

According to Dawn, a hindu temple in bhong area of rahim Yar khan was attacked by hundreds of people on wednesday. the mob vandalised the temple and blocked the sukkur-multan motorway (m-5) after a nine-year-old hindu boy — who allegedly urinated in a local seminary — was granted bail by a local court. on thursday, the apex court took suo motu notice of the incident after patron-inchief of the pakistan hindu council Dr ramesh kumar called on chief Justice of pakistan (cJp) gulzar Ahmed to draw his attention to the incident. the cJp had summoned punjab’s chief secretary and inspector general of police (igp) inam ghani to appear before the court along with a report on the incident. “the temple was attacked. what were

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During nA session, lAwmAkers Denounce AttAck

the administration and the police doing?” the chief justice questioned during today’s hearing. ghani replied that the assistant commissioner and assistant superintendent of police were present at the scene. “the administration’s priority was to protect 70 hindu homes around the temple,” ghani said. he also told the court that terrorism clauses had been added in the first information report. “if the commissioner, deputy commissioner and the Dpo can’t perform, then they should be removed,” the chief justice remarked. he said the incident had damaged pakistan’s reputation at an international level. “the police did nothing except [for] watching the spectacle,” Justice gulzar said. upon being told that no arrests were made in the case so far, Justice Qazi Amin said: “the police failed in fulfilling its responsibility.” Justice Amin added that even if arrests were made, the police would release the suspects on bail and try to make the parties reconcile. “three days have passed [since the inci-

dent] and not one person has been arrested,” the chief justice noted, adding that the police lacked “enthusiasm”. “the matter would have been resolved by now if there were professionals in the police force,” he said. “[A] hindu temple was demolished. think [about] what they must have felt. imagine what would have been the reaction of muslims, had a mosque been demolished,” the chief justice remarked.

Additional Attorney general sohail mahmood informed the bench that prime minister imran khan had taken notice of the incident. the cJp said the premier should continue with his work but the court would look into the legal aspects of the case. the court noted that the culprits at large could cause problems for the hindu community as it sought assurances that such incidents do not happen again. the court also expressed dissatisfaction at the rahim Yar khan commissioner’s performance and sought a progress report from the igp and the chief secretary within a week. it also instructed the formation of village committees for peace and religious harmony and adjourned the hearing till August 13. legislators friday condemned the desecration of a hindu temple by a mob in rahim Yar khan in strong words, calling on authorities to take action and arrest all culprits involved.

A frenzied mob attacked a hindu temple in the city’s bhong village a couple of days ago. Video clips of the incident went viral on social media, showing men armed with sticks vandalising the place of worship. prime minister imran khan took notice of the incident while chief Justice gulzar Ahmed took suo motu notice of the temple’s desecration and sought action against the culprits from authorities. separately, pakistani lawmakers also denounced the attack during a session of the national Assembly, calling into question the police’s role in the incident. News Desk

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ADB lends Pakistan $500 million for vaccine procurement the Asian Development bank on friday approved a $500 million loan for pakistan for the purchase of covid-19 vaccine.

ADb president masatsugu Asakawa, in a statement, said the loan for pakistan was sanctioned under the ADb’s $9 billion Asia pacific Vaccine Access facility launched in December 2020. he said the project will support pakistan’s national vaccination plan by enabling it to purchase an estimated 39.8m doses of covid-19 vaccines, safety boxes, and syringes. the ADb chief added that the programme was aimed at offering rapid and equitable vaccine-related support to its developing member countries.

“Vaccines help to reduce the spread and mortality of covid19, restore confidence among citizens, and are vital to the economic recovery,” he said. he underlined that the project would help protect vulnerable groups in pakistan, adding that it was an integral part of the development partner package, helping the government to mitigate the health, social and economic impacts of the pandemic. he said the ADb reaffirmed its full commitment to support

pakistan.

Asakawa underlined that the government was aiming to vaccinate the entire eligible population — around 119 million people comprising all those aged 18 years and above — while prioritising frontline health care workers, the elderly, marginalised groups including refugees and internally displaced persons, and people with comorbidities.

“ADb’s covid-19 vaccine support project will provide financing to vaccinate over 18m people from priority groups.” in may last year, the ADb had approved a $300 million emergency assistance for pakistan to strengthen its public health response to the coronavirus pandemic. similarly in June 2020, the Asian infrastructure investment bank (Aiib) had approved a $500 million loan to the country, co-funded by ADb, to support cash transfers to poor families adversely affected by coronavirus lockdowns and other government initiatives designed to alleviate the negative economic and social impacts of the pandemic. News Desk

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NAwAz ShARiF’S StAy iN UK lEgAl till immigRAtioN tRibUNAl DEciSioN: Pml-N LAHORE

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ML-N spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb has said that party supremo Nawaz Sharif through his lawyers has filed an appeal against the UK Home Office decision in the immigration tribunal.

Marriyum derided that the hired mouthpieces of the government were overjoyed after the rejection of Nawaz

Sharif’s request to extend his visit by the UK Home Office.

Addressing to a presser on Friday, Marriyum said that Nawaz Sharif submitted an application for the extension of his stay in the UK and it’s a usual practice. She flayed the mouthpieces of government, dubbing them a hired lot. She remarked that they kept on changing their loyalties.

She held that federal and provincial governments allowed Nawaz Sharif to get his treatment abroad. She declared that the

PML-N supremo’s stay in the UK was legal till the decision of the immigration tribunal adding that the UK Home Office order would remain ineffective till the verdict of the tribunal.

She rued that the government had framed fabricated cases of corruption against the PML-N leader but it had failed to prove any charge of corruption against him.

She said Nawaz Sharif came back to Pakistan from the UK along with his daughter Maryam Nawaz after the

Pakistani court convicted him. She was of the view that if the NAB-Niazi nexus wanted to further interrogate him, they could have done so while Nawaz was in jail. She questioned how many other prime ministers presented before the NAB along with their daughters.

She mocked that Nawaz who came back to Pakistan holding the hand of his daughter, his opponents were saying that he had fled the country. She said when the condition of Nawaz Sharif deteriorated, he was admitted

Condolence reference held for Arif Nizami LAHORE Shahab OmEr

A condolence reference for (late) Arif Nizami, who was a renowned journalist, analyst and anchorperson of the country, was held by the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE) at Aiwan-iIqbal on Friday.

Punjab Governor Chaudhry Sarwar, Pakistan Today Editor Yousaf Nizami (son of Arif Nizami), Asad Nizami, CPNE members, including eminent journalist Mujeeb-ur-Rehman Shami, Imtiaz Alam, Irshad Arif, Kazim Khan and Jameel Athar Qazi, and other journalists and social personalities participated in the reference.

Addressing the participants, Imtiaz Alam recalled his time with Arif Nizami and said that Nizami was a great journalist with a great personality.

“Arif had an identity of his own and he had built this identity on the basis of his ability. He was a progressive journalist as it can be gauged from the fact that when he was the editor of The Nation, the difference between the editorials of Nawaie-Waqt and The Nation had showed how progressive he was. Arif was a friend of many politicians, but he never stopped speaking the truth. He was a great reporter and never compromised on his dignity.

Arif had always opposed military dictatorship and talked about freedom of expression and the supremacy of democracy,” Alam said.

CPNE Vice President Kazim Khan said that he had a close relationship with Arif for some time and learnt a lot from him. “I had a very close relationship with him [Arif Nizami]

and his family for the last four or five years. When Arif was ill, former Punjab chief minister Shehbaz Sharif wanted to visit him. In this regard, he called me and told me that he wants to meet him, but when I asked Arif, he said he doesn’t want people to know that he is sick. Similarly, on the day of Arif ’s death, when I asked Babar Nizami [nephew of Arif Nizami] to take a picture before burial, Babar said that Arif wanted no such picture to be taken of him in which cotton have been given in his ears because people have always seen him in fresh look. Arif certainly disagreed with people but did not hate them. He never criticised the journalistic skills of his seniors. He was a very elegant man,” Khan said.

Politician and lawyer Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan in his speech said that the death

of Arif Nizami was a loss for the whole country and the nation, and it was a great shock to him. He added that the gap created by Arif ’s departure will hardly be filled. Ahsan also narrated an incident regarding media censorship during the Gen Zia-ul-Haq dictatorship, in which Nizami had set new trends.

“News stories, which were not liked by the dictators during Zia’s tenure, were not allowed to be published. In those days, newspapers had manual page making.

One day when a news story was taken down from Nawai-e-Waqt, Arif suggested to Majeed Nizami that instead of replacing the news, that part of the paper should be published blankly so that the people could know that the news in this blank part was dropped by the dictator.

When the newspaper was printed the next

day, Arif received phone calls from various military officers, asking him why he had left a blank space in the newspaper. To this, Arif replied that you people had just asked to take down the news and not to post another one. After that, the same practice started in all the newspapers,” he said.

Mujeeb-ur-Rehman Shami said that Nizami was the great son of a great father, but he had built his identity on the basis of his ability.

“He was an investigative reporter and his ideal was his father. He never let his likes and dislikes affect his journalism. He was an informed, knowledgeable and competent journalist and he was well known to face the effects of publishing news. The government should also give a medal to Arif Nizami in recognition of his services and a road should be named after him,” Shami suggested.

Speaking on the occasion, the son of Arif Nizami, Yousuf Nizami, said that he considers himself lucky to have worked with a professional journalist like Arif Nizami for some time.

“I learnt a lot from my father. I consider it my good fortune that I got the opportunity to work with Arif Nizami and I am sorry that I did not get the opportunity to work for long. He was as committed to his family life as he was to his professional life. He considered his friends as an asset of life and he taught us that we should be helpful to our friends in every way. His advice was correct because after his death, his friends and colleagues from all over the world called and expressed their grief over his death.

Foreign airline denies entry to over 70 Karachi people in Dubai-bound flight KARACHI INP

A foreign airline on Friday denied boarding passes to over 70 passengers who were set to fly to Dubai-bound flight because they did not have rapid antigen test results. The 70 plus passengers were denied entry into their flight EK601, as they were not given their boarding passes at the Jinnah International Airport. Separately from Islamabad, more than 300 flight passengers were barred entry from their flight of the same foreign airline and for the similar reason. The airport officials said the condition of this rapid antigen test was put up my the Uniter Arab Emirates. UAE to ease flight restrictions from six countries including Pakistan Earlier this week, the United Arab Emirates lifted the ban on transit passenger traffic from Pakistan, Nigeria and other countries from August 5, the National Emergency and Crisis Management Authority (NCEMA).

ISLAMABAD: A vendor sells national flags at Faisal Avenue ahead of Independence Day. ONLINE

CPEC’s m-14 has entered its final phase of completion: report ISLAMABAD INP

The Hakla-Dera Ismail Khan Motorway (M-14), a project under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), has entered its final phase of completion, says a report published by Gwadar Pro on Thursday.

M-14 is a 293 km long mega project under the Western Alignment of CPEC, connecting the southern parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province with the rest of the country that will lead to social and economic prosperity in the area.

In addition to connectivity, M-14 will play a major role in boosting agricultural development in southern KP, which has remained underdeveloped for a long time.

“The Motorway will help bring an

agricultural revolution in the southern parts of KP. Farmers will get access to the main market of the country,” said Shafiullah Khan, a farmer from the Gandi area of Lakki Marwat.

“M-14 has brought Mianwali (Punjab) and Lakki Marwat very close. Farmers of both areas could benefit from each other’s experience,” Mr. Khan said and added that farmers mainly look at each other and “grow what others grow”.

Some agricultural products from southern KP have already established themselves in the main Pakistani markets and even abroad. For example, dates grown in the Dhakki area of D.I. Khan are known worldwide for their large size and aroma.

The local date-growers anticipate that the Motorway will help them increase

cultivation, as they would easily transport products to their desired markets. Similarly, the sugarcane growers of D.I. Khan will get access to Punjab and beyond. However, with the connectivity via M-14, some other local agricultural products are expected to reach major markets of the country.

These quality products are grown on a small scale. If the growers start getting handsome financial returns, it will increase commercialization.

Amongst these products are mangoes from D.I. Khan, dates from Bannu, peanuts from Karak, chilgoza pine-nuts from Waziristan and many more such items. Honeybees are abundant among the flora of southern KP, and investors see great potential in honey farming. “Even in the recent past no one

could have imagined that these remote and inaccessible areas could be integrated. It has happened and now it’s time to reap the maximum benefits from this connectivity project under CPEC,” Jehandad Khan Marwat, an elder of Lakki Marwat, told Gwadar Pro. Some farmers from D.I. Khan and Lakki Marwat have got an access to their date farms along M-14. Passing through the motorway, once can see datepalms in the sandy soil between, Yarik, Abdul Khel and Chashma interchanges.

The soil of Lakki Marwat is conducive for chickpea crops. Mostly, the people grow chickpea -- locally known as chana - for domestic consumption; however, chickpeas could become one of the major cash crops for the locals.

to the Services Hospital where the number of his platelets were reduced.

Marriyum articulated that the accountability narrative of the government had been buried during the last three years.

She said that to ascertain the health condition of the PML-N supremo, Prime Minister Imran Khan had sent a team of Shaukhat Khanum Hospital doctors. She further stated that the officials of Intelligence Bureau had also kept a watch on him at the hospital.

She pronounced that all charges of the government were fake and fabricated.

Meanwhile, when a journalist asked Hussain Nawaz, son of Nawaz Sharif, to comment on the rejection of Nawaz’s visa request, he refused to talk about it. When the journalist further asked him whether Nawaz would appeal the decision, Hussain retorted that Marriyum’s statement could be taken as party’s statement in this regard.

Usman Dar launches Kamyab Jawan programme Portal NEWS DESK Special Assistant on Youth Affairs Usman Dar on Friday launched Kamyab Jawan Program Portal to provide people access to details of loans distributed under the programme. He launched the portal at a news conference here along with Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib. Usman Dar said the entire detail of the progress in the programme has been provided in the portal for everyone to know the facts. Giving details of the program, the Special Assistant said about twenty-two billion rupees have so far been distributed on merit among the deserving youth for small businesses. He said these business loans have also created over twenty-eight thousand jobs. The Special Assistant said Prime Minister Imran Khan allocated one hundred billion rupees for the programme with the aim to uplift the poor segment of the society. He said over 663,000 applications have so far been rejected mainly because of providing incorrect details of age and having no concrete business plans. He said about twentyfive thousand applications are received every month. Usman Dar said the government would launch a historic Kamyab Pakistan Program on Monday next under which interest free loans up to five hundred thousand rupees will be provided. He also said that there is no age limit for the mentioned loans.

Sharing details of the programme, he said skilled people would be given priority to uplift their living standards.

Speaking on the occasion, Farrukh Habib said a mechanism is being developed for the journalists to benefit from the program as well. Commenting on the rejection of Nawaz Sharif’s application for visa extension by the UK Home Office, the Minister of State said Nawaz Sharif should now return to the country and face the jail. He said being a former Premier of Pakistan he should now come back and face the courts.

NEPRA approves reduction in fuel adjustment charges for Aug 2021 NEWS DESK National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) on Friday announced to reduce fuel adjustment charges for the month of August 2021. According to a notification issued by the power regulatory body, Central Power Purchasing Agency (CPPA) sought a reduction in fuel adjustment charges by 19 paisas per unit. The NEPRA said that it held a public hearing on fuel charges adjustment (FCA) on 28 July 2021 and later approved a reduction in charges by 19 paisas per unit. The reduction will only be applicable for the month of August 2021. The power regulatory authority announced that the reduction in charges will not be applicable for K-Electric consumers and the industrial consumers who are already taking benefit from the Industrial Support Package.

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cm’S AiDE RESigNS to Show SUPPoRt FoR JKt AWN CHAUDHRY SAYS HE WAS ASKED TO DISTANCE HIMSELF FROM TAREEN GROUP

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O show support for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Jahangir Khan Tareen, Awn Chaudhry, the special coordinator to Punjab chief minister on political affairs submitted his resignation on Friday.

Geo News reported that the CM’s

aide was asked to distance himself from the JKT-led faction.

The letter was shared with the media during prayer break, wherein Chaudhry said that he knew why he was called to meet CM Usman Buzdar. He expressed anger over the treatment meted out him by the party whom he said he had served selflessly. “I served PTI, wholeheartedly, completely ignoring my personal life and

family for a cause. Sadly I was 'rewarded' by being removed right before the oath-taking ceremony of the Prime Minister which I accepted with grace,” he stated.

“I was then made Advisor to the CM without any portfolio in Punjab and again I was removed unceremoniously and I even accepted that.”

Chaudhry said that he was asked

to distance himself from Jahangir Tareen but he prefers to submit his resignation instead.

“Everyone knows that Jahangir Khan Tareen is the person who played a pivotal role in the struggle of PTI and keeping in view his efforts for the success of PTI in 2018 Elections and formation of PTI Govt in the Centre and Punjab, my conscience does not allow me to abandon my association with the most loyal member of PTI who served selflessly as I have.”

Court sends four young girls recovered from Sahiwal to home LAHORE TLTP

After fulfilling legal requirements on Friday a judicial magistrate sent four young girls to their home who went missing from Lahore city and were recovered from Sahiwal on Wednesday last.

Appearing before the court of Judicial Magistrate Wasim Waris on Friday, the girls recorded their statements in the court. They said they had left their house for a walk and were abducted on the way. The suspects held them hostage at their house and then took them to Sahiwal.

“They wanted to marry us off,” the girls said. Their initial medical reports submitted in court revealed that the victims were not raped. The final reports will be

Nawaz to return to Pakistan when doctors permit: Shehbaz

presented at the next hearing.

In a media briefing on Thursday, Lahore DIG Shariq Jamal said the girls were moved to the Punjab Child Protection Bureau after they refused to go home.

The court, however, rejected the department’s request and sent them back to their parents.

The prime suspects, identified as Qasim, Kashif, Shehzad, Naeem, and Asif, and two women were presented in court as well. In a conversation with journalists, one of the suspects claimed the police tortured and assaulted them.

“I just informed them about the crime on the 15th.

I have nothing to do with this,” he said. On Thursday, the court remanded the prime suspects into police custody for four days. The women were, on the other hand, sent to jail on judicial remand.

Justice mazhar not remotely related to Justice alam: sC

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PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif has said that government statements based on political hatred are against the prestige of the country. In a statement issued here Friday he said statements given by government against the facts in order to take political mileage are deplorable. Playing politics on the life of Nawaz Sharif who remained prime minister for three times is inhuman, he remarked. He went on to say that government attitude on defaming an individual for the sake of politics is bringing bad name for the country. They should nail senses. Sending Nawaz Sharif to London for medical treatment was the decision of Imran Niazi government, he held. Treatment facilities for Nawaz Sharif were not available in Pakistan was also decision of a government board. He underscored that the decision for treatment and stay in respect of Nawaz Sharif in London would be taken as per doctors advice. Nawaz Sharif will return to Pakistan when the doctors permit.

Appeal has been filed to meet the legal formalities, he pointed out. Nawaz Sharif can stay in London till the decision of appeal, he added. On Thursday, the Home Office of United Kingdom has rejected PML-N supreme leader and three-time prime minister Nawaz's request for visa extension. "The UK Home Office has excused itself from further extending Muhammad Nawaz Sharif's visa," PML-N spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb said in a statement.

A day after the Pakistan Bar Council decided to oppose nomination of a junior judge of the Sindh High Court (SHC) Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar to top court, spokesperson of the Supreme Court dispelled an impression that the nominee is relative of a sitting senior judge of the Supreme Court.

Issuing a statement on Friday, the spokesperson of the top court said, “It has been reported in the media today (Friday) that during the convention meeting of the PBC held on Thursday, August 05, 2021 an

55pc Pakistanis still believe threat of coronavirus is exaggerated: gallup ISLAMABAD ONINE

Gallup has been tracking how people have been reacting to coronavirus in Pakistan. In the eleventh such survey of 1,066 people in July it found 55% Pakistanis still hold the opinion that the threat of coronavirus is exaggerated Willingness to get vaccinated has improved very slightly as compared to 65% in March; in July 2021, 66% are willing to get vaccinated, provided it is safe to use As of July 2021, there has been a significant improvement in the percentage of people’s family members receiving the Covid-19 vaccine, with almost 45% of Pakistanis claiming their family members have been vaccinated 76% of Pakistanis claiming that the government is controlling the Covid-19 situation well 60% of Pakistanis still do not know how to register through the government for Covid-19 vaccination, depicting a deficit of awareness amongst the masses.

According to the FIR, earlier this week, four girls, between the ages 8, 10, 11, and 14, left their houses for a Metro train ride and did not return. The police said on Wednesday that one of the girls was carrying a mobile phone with her. They traced the cellphone to a location in Sahiwal and alerted the police there. When they reached the location, the girls were found with a man, identified as Qasim. He called himself their relative and was a rickshaw driver by profession.

Lahore DIG claimed the girls were taken to Sahiwal for human trafficking. “The suspect sold one of them for Rs100,000.” The police are going through Qasim’s criminal record. “We found out that his wife recently travelled to Dubai multiple times. The police are trying to ascertain the purpose of those visits,” the officer added.

impression was case that Justice Mushir Alam, learned Senior Puisne Judge, participated in the proceedings of the Judicial Commission of Pakistan on July 28, 2021 to consider the nomination of Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar for elevation to the Supreme Court of Pakistan”.

He added, “Notwithstanding that the said nominee is a relative of his lordship. This is an absolutely false attribution and Justice Muhammad Ali Mazhar is not even remotely related to Justice Mushir Alam”.

“The impression conveyed by the said imputation is nothing but to malign the impeccable integrity of the judge which is regrettable”, the spokesperson concluded.

OiC urged to establish a humanitarian corridor for beleaguered iOK people MUZAFFARABAD INP

Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan on Friday called upon members’ states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to establish a humanitarian corridor to aid people of Indian Occupied Kashmir Kashmiri people, who are under siege and continue to face Indian state brutality.

The AJK President made the appeal while talking to a 12-member delegation of the OIC- Independent Human Rights Commission (IPHRC) in Aiwan-e- Sadr Muzaffarabad. The OIC- IPHRC delegation included diplomats and representatives from the United Arab Emirates, Uganda, Nigeria, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Gabon, Tunisia, Turkey and Morocco.

Marghoob Saleem Butt, Executive Director of the IPHRC, and prominent Pakistani diplomat Tasneem Aslam were also present on the occasion.

Sardar Masood thanked the OIC for its courageous and steadfast support for the right of the people of Jammu and Kashmir to self-determination. He also expressed his deep gratitude to the commission for publishing a comprehensive and seminal report in March 2017 on the human rights situation in the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Terming the IPHRC’s previous report as a precursor to the reports on the human rights situation in IOJK published by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, he said since the last report of the OIC Human Rights Commission, the situation in IOJK has undergone several significant changes that demand commission’s immediate attention.

The AJK President said that in the light of the recommendations made in the IPHRC’s previous report, the Muslim world, especially the member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation should raise

their voice against the worst human rights violations in occupied Jammu and Kashmir and consider Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against India.

He also demanded immediate steps by OIC to provide emergency assistance to the beleaguered Kashmiris who have been suffering for the past two years by establishing humanitarian corridors and provide scholarships to Kashmiri students studying in Occupied Kashmir, AJK, Pakistan and other countries of the world so that they could continue their education.

Referring to the refugees who took shelter in AJK to avert Indian atrocities, Sardar Masood said that at present there are a total of 42,000 refugees in the state, most of whom reside in Muzaffarabad. The government of Azad Kashmir provides assistance to these refugees in collaboration with Pakistani institutions, he added.

Urging the members of the delegation to expose India's false propaganda that its troops were fighting terrorism in occupied Kashmir, he said that Dil Bagh Singh, the Indian police chief in occupied Kashmir, had himself admitted that there were a total of 200 militants in the occupied territory against whom India had deployed 900,000 troops.

The state president said that India has deployed such a large army not to fight the militants but to kill unarmed and defenseless people of the occupied territory.

Informing the OIC delegation of the illegal and unilateral steps taken by the Indian government on and after August 2019, Masood said that after snatching symbolic special status of IOJK, bifurcating the occupied state into two parts and annexing it with the Indian Union, settling non-Kashmiri Hindu citizens in occupied Kashmir to convert the Muslim majority into a minority, Delhi is now actively engaged in gerrymandering to reduce Muslim representation in the state legislature of IOJK.

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mPA Asad Khokhar’s brother killed in firing in lahore NEWS DESK Some unknown gunmen opened fire during MPA Malik Asad Ali Khokhar’s son’s wedding in Lahore on Friday, leaving MPA’s brother Mubashir Khokhar dead. The assailants were arrested by Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar’s security team, but unfortunately, Malik Asad Ali Khokhar’s brother was killed in the incident, said Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Political Affairs Dr Shahbaz Gill, adding that the assailants had opened fire after coming close to the chief minister’s car, who was also present at the wedding ceremony. According to Dawn, a police spokesperson said that the attacker was arrested.

“Mubashir Khokar was taken to the hospital in a critically injured condition [but] he did not survive,” he added. Police said that evidence was being collected from the site of the incident and a case would be registered after a complaint was received.

Meanwhile, CM Buzdar took notice of the incident and directed the inspector general of police to submit a report in this regard. A statement issued by the Chief Minister’s Office said that Buzdar had ordered an inquiry into security arrangements for the wedding, directing that further action be taken after those responsible for the attack were determined. “Action should be taken against the arrested suspect in accordance with the law,” the statement quoted Buzdar as saying.

Fighter trainer aircraft of PAF crashes near Attock NEWS DESK A Pakistan Air Force (PAF) fighter trainer aircraft has crashed during a routine training mission near Attock, a spokesperson of the PAF said Friday. “Both pilots have ejected successfully. No loss of life or property has been reported so far on ground,” the official said.

The official said that a Board of Inquiry has been ordered to investigate the cause of the accident.

Pakistanis under 18 can get vaccinated for travelling abroad NEWS DESK Pakistanis between the ages 16 and 18 can now get vaccinated to travel abroad, Geo News reported on Friday. Quoting Dr Faisal Sultan, the prime minister’s special assistant on health, the media outlet reported that youngsters, who need to go abroad for education or other reasons, can get vaccinated by following the same process of registering via an SMS on the government helpline 1166, and wait for information about a health center. The country’s vaccination programme kicked off in February and so far, 7,239,268 people have been fully vaccinated during the inoculation drive, thus achieving 10.3 percent of the government’s target of vaccinating 70 million of the adult population.

mirza acquitted in police attack case after six years KARACHI TLTP

An anti-terrorism court in Karachi acquitted 28 persons including former Sindh home minister Zulfiqar Mirza in a 2015 police attack case. A criminal case was registered against them in May 2015 after viral videos showed Mirza storming into the Model police station and rioting. He reportedly had gone to the police station to register a case against former president Asif Ali Zardari and his sister Faryal Talpur. A video of the attack showed Mirza abusing a policeman and breaking his mobile phone. An angry Mirza also broke the glass table. His supporters were accused of shutting down markets and robbing shops during a protest. He had claimed that a fake case had been registered against him by his political rivals. On April 12, Mirza and 54 others were acquitted on the charges of rioting on the same day. “My allies and I had been trapped in this fake case for the last six years,” Mirza said while speaking to the media after the verdict. “I want to thank the people of Badin for their support.” We were punished for breaking windows. This case just added the problems faced by the people of Badin, he added.

The FIR was registered by SI Wali Mohammad Chang. He said that Mirza wanted to register a complaint against former president Asif Ali Zardari, his sister Faryal Talpur and former Sindh IG.

Saturday, 7 August, 2021

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PSX EXTEndS loSSES by ShEdding 151 PoinTS AMid ProfiT-TAking KARACHI

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HE Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) witnessed another rangebound session on Friday amid lack of positive economic triggers, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index shedding 150.93 points (-0.32 percent) to close at 47,489.95 points.

The market opened on a positive note but it switched between the green and red zones throughout the session and turned towards

south in the last one-and-a-half hours, as investors booked profit. The KSE-100 Index moved in a range of 327.7 points, showing an intraday high of 47,752.7 points and intraday low of 47,425 points. Among other indices, the KSE All Share Index shed 92 points (-0.28 percent) to close at 32,543.99 points, while All Share Islamic Index shed 61.45 points (0.26 percent) to close at 23,271.23 points.

A total of 376 companies traded shares in the stock exchange, out of them shares of 127 closed up, shares of 229 closed down while shares of 20 companies remained unchanged.

Out of the 97 companies which traded shares in the KSE-100 Index, shares of 30 closed up, 61 closed down, while shares of six companies remained unchanged.

The overall market volumes decreased by 47.08 million to 499.73 million shares.

Total volume traded for the index was 137.09 million shares. The number of total trades decreased by 5,625 to 143,684; while the value traded decreased by Rs1.72 billion to Rs13.66 billion. Likewise, the market capitalisation decreased by Rs23.58 billion.

Among scripts, PASL led the volumes with

66.9 million shares, followed by UNITY (35.5 million) and DSL (25.9 million). Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include PASL, UNITY, DSL, WTL and FFL, which formed 36 percent of total volumes.

Sector wise, the index was let down by technology & communication with 50 points, cement with 34 points, food & personal care products with 28 points, textile composite with 18 points and refinery with 17 points. The most points taken off the index were by TRG which stripped the index of 32 points followed by UNITY with 25

points, LUCK with 20 points, SYS with 13 points and HUBC with 12 points.

The sectors propping up the index were commercial banks with 28 points, glass & ceramics with 21 points, engineering with 11 points, real estate investment trust with 2 points and insurance with one point. The most points added to the index were by MEBL which contributed 21 points followed by GHGL with 21 points, BAFL with 11 points, MCB with 7 points and INIL with 7 points.

Analysts at Arif Habib Limited said that the market largely traded in a narrow range and lost a total of 216 points. They said that oil and gas marketing companies, cement, chemical, refinery and technology sectors continued seeing selling pressure from the previous couple of sessions. LUCK saw a significant drop in the closing half hour, which brought its price below LDCP by a large margin. They were of the view that the local bourse witnessed lacklustre trading as investors’ interest was subdued.

Envoy urges APTMA to explore avenues to enhance Pak-US trade NEWS DESK

LAHORE: Guards stand alert at Lahore Fort. ZUBAIR MEHFOOZ

Envoys for establishing Pakistan-Maldives B2B linkages to promote trade ISLAMABAD TLTP

Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry President Mian Nasser Hayat Maggo has said that FPCCI can play an active role in connecting Maldives with exporters in Pakistan to meet their import requirements.

He said this while addressing a virtual event organised by Pakistan Maldives Business Council of FPCCI in collaboration with State Trading Organisation (STO) of Maldives. The event was facilitated by the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) along with the High Commission of Pakistan in Male, Maldives.

The objective of the event was to highlight the untapped trade opportunities for Pakistani exporters by connecting them with Maldives importers.

Maggo highlighted the potential to enhance the volumes of bilateral trade in construction materials, pharmaceuticals, textiles and food items, among others. He said that FPCCI is ready to host a trade delegation from Maldives to Pakistan in order to facilitate the Maldivian importers to have first hand knowledge of Pakistani products from varied industries and sectors. He also offered his full support to establish B2B linkages.

Pakistan’s Ambassador Vice Admiral (retd) Ather Mukhtar shared his vision for the Pakistan-Maldives relations and encouraged both sides to make the most out of the potential business and trade opportunities.

Ali Rilwan, Acting High Commissioner of Maldives in Pakistan, also shared his remarks and encouraged both sides to work together to explore business opportunities. Imran Khalil Naseer, Chairman PakMaldives Business Council of FPCCI, apprised the au-

dience of the enormous potential to enhance bilateral trade and economic cooperation. He said that Pakistan and Maldives should explore investment and joint venture opportunities through regular B2B contacts.

Asma Kamal, Pakistan’s Trade and Investment Attache in Maldives, shared a detailed presentation on existing trade figures between the two countries. She also highlighted potential industries and sectors for Maldives to source goods from Pakistan.

Altaf Hashwani, Director Pak Maldives Business Council, inquired about the potential of STO Maldives to enhance imports of textiles and hosiery products from Pakistan.

Participants raised their queries with STO on product registration requirements and procedures in Maldives and the appetite to import Pakistan’s world famous fruits like mangoes and oranges.

The US Commercial Counsellor John Coronado has said that there is a strong potential for surging up bilateral trade between Pakistan and the US through Business-to-Business matchmaking. He expressed these views while talking to the APTMA leadership during his visit to the office of All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) along with the team of officials of US Embassy, said a press statement issued on Friday. The APTMA delegation headed by Central Chairman Adil Bashir included Hamid Zaman, central vice chairman, Abdul Rahim Nasir, chairman northern zone, Aamir Sheikh, senior vice chairman, Kamran Arshad, vice chairman, and Mohammad Raza Baqir, executive director. The US commercial counsellor said that there is a huge potential of mutual economic cooperation between the business communities of both the countries in the fields of textile, in particular, and other areas like agriculture, energy and information technology, etc, in general. He urged APTMA members to explore the avenues to enhance bilateral trade between Pakistan and the US and offered full assistance and cooperation of the US Embassy in exploring the potential partners and harnessing the business opportunities in the shortest possible time. He expressed the hope that despite the economic meltdown in wake of covid 19, the vibrant textile industry of Pakistan can exploit the economic vacuum created due to lockdown in the regional countries. In response to a query regarding inordinate delays in the issuance of US Visas, he informed that the visa facility is presently restricted to humanitarian, education and medical needs due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, he assured APTMA members that the commercial section of the embassy would make best efforts to facilitate APTMA members in availing business visas for travelling to the US for business purposes. Earlier, Chairman APTMA Adil Bashir made a detailed presentation on the textile sector of Pakistan. He said Pakistan has set an ambitious export target of $39 billion dollars for the current year as against the actual exports of $25.30 billion during 2020-21. He added that the target for the export of textiles is aimed at $20-21 for the year which is about 30% higher than the textile exports of the preceding year. He requested the visiting dignitary to use his best offices in extending duty-free access to Pakistan in the US market on the pattern of GSP Plus of the European Union. Chairman APTMA Punjab Abdul Rahim Nasir also spoke on the occasion and hoped that bilateral exchange of business delegations and close coordination between the Commercial Section of the US Embassy and APTMA would help to identify trade and investment opportunities for entrepreneurs of both the countries.

Consumers with over Rs25,000 bills to pay 7.5pc tax: K-Electric KARACHI TLTP

K-Electric, the sole power distributor in Karachi, has announced to charge 7.5 percent advanced income tax on monthly electricity bills of over Rs25,000 from July 01 from customers who are not on the active taxpayer list (ATL) of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).

In a tweet on Friday, the K-Electric spokesperson said that the decision was taken as per the Pakistan Finance Act 2021, applicable across Pakistan. He asked the consumers to update their computerised na-

tional identity cards (CNICs) against their current account number to avail the tax exemption if they are tax filers and their names are present on the active taxpayer list.

Meanwhile, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has notified fuel cost adjustment (FCA) in K-Electric’s consumer tariff for six months, starting January to June 2021, which would increase the electricity rates by a net Rs3.65/kWh, the regulatory authority noted in its determination.

However, to facilitate consumers the authority has advised the power utility to collect the amount in three months. The Nepra has allowed K-Electric to collect an addi-

tional Rs1.25/kWh on the bills of January, which would be collected with the August bills; however, the net effect in August would be Rs1.1, as a negative FCA of 15 paisas for June will also be adjusted in the August bills.

The net addition in September bills would be Rs1.55 as a positive FCA of Rs2.09/kWh on the bills of February, and a negative adjustment of Rs0.549/kWh would be collected with the September bills. Similarly, a net of Re1 will be added in the October bills.

These adjustments are applicable to all the consumer categories except lifeline

CMYK

and domestic consumers, consuming up to 300 units and the agriculture consumers of K-Electric.

It is, hereby, clarified that the negative adjustment on account of monthly FCA is also applicable to the domestic consumers having Time of Use (ToU) meters irrespective of their consumption level. “[The] authority is also cognisant of the fact that the period for which the FCAs are being allowed, i.e., January 2021 to June 2021, had already lapsed and variations on account of fuel cost have not yet been recovered/passed on to the consumers.

The authority believes that any such

variations need to be passed on to the consumers in a timely manner to ensure financial viability of the company, which otherwise would result in piling up of the legitimate costs and may impact the financial viability of the company.

However, at the same time, the authority, in the interest of the consumers, needs to ensure that the consumers’ are not overburdened by passing on the allowed costs in one go,” Nepra noted in its determination.

The authority has also assessed a decrease of Rs0.193/kwh in the applicable tariff for XW-DISCOs on account of variations in the fuel charges for June 2021.

Saturday, 7 August, 2021

ISLAMABAD

WEEkly inFlAtion goES uP By 0.12PC

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HE Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) based weekly inflation for the week ended on August 5, 2021 for the combined consumption group witnessed an increase of 0.12 percent as compared to the previous week while it went 12.40 percent up on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.

According to data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday, the combined index was at 150.88 on August 05, 2021 as compared to 150.70 on July 29, 2021 while the index was recorded at 134.23 a year ago on August 6, 2020.

The SPI is computed on a weekly basis to assess the price movements of essential commodities at a shorter interval of time so as to review the price situation in the country. The SPI comprises 51 essential items and the prices are being collected from 50 markets in 17 cities of the country.

During the week, out of 51 items, prices of 17

(33.33%) items increased, 11 (21.56%) items decreased and prices of 23 (45.1%) items remained constant.

The SPI for the week ended on August 5, 2021 recorded an increase of 0.12% with most of the items increased mainly garlic (4.19%), LPG (3.67%) and petrol (1.44%) with joint impact of (0.18%) into the overall SPI for combined group of (0.12%).

On the other hand decrease in the prices of tomatoes (18.00%), bananas (8.13%), chicken (3.86%), eggs (3.53%), pulse Moong (2.11%), onions (1.37%), potatoes (0.37%), pulse Mash (0.24%), rice IRRI (0.16%), wheat flour bag (0.10%) and sugar (0.05%) was observed.

According to the PBS data, the year-on-year trend depicts increase of 12.40% with most of the items increased, mainly, electricity for Q1 (60.81%), LPG (57.99%), mustard oil (35.89%), chillies powder (35.71%), vegetable ghee 1-kg (33.89%), gents

FBR seals unit in Mardan for illegal production activities PESHAWAR: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has sealed a cigarette manufacturing unit in district Mardan over interference in official operation and suspicion that it was involved in the production of counterfeit cigarettes, officials said on Friday. The FBR has also registered FIR against the directors and three other persons including Ayaz Hoti, Abbas Hoti and Bilal Hoti. On the special directives of Commissioner Corporate Zone, Regional Tax Office (RTO) FBR Peshawar, Mohammad Tariq Jamal Khattak, Deputy Commissioner (Tobacco), Abdul Baseer Khattak and his team sealed the Indus Tobacco (Private) Limited, Anwar Kalley Mardan. For further legal proceedings, the case has been sent to the court of Special Judge (Customs, Taxation & Anti-Smuggling) Peshawar. When contacted, Deputy Commissioner (Tobacco), Abdul Baseer Khattak said the main accused in the case was at large and the factory would remain sealed till the time the management would not allow the FBR monitors inside to check the cigarettes manufacturing process. Khattak said the FBR had taken action after the official monitors were evicted from the unit forcefully, adding that there were complaints of counterfeit cigarette manufacturing in the factory. He said the legal process will be followed to monitor cigarette manufacturing in the factory and nobody would be allowed production and sale of counterfeit cigarettes. The FBR is committed to prosecuting all those involved in this illegal business. According to FIR, a Tobacco Monitoring Squad of FBR headed by Inspector Said Ali was on official duty in the cigarette manufacturing factory wherein he was attacked by three persons, was stopped from working, and then kicked out of the production hall.

During that period, the management of the factory allegedly shifted illegal stock of cigarettes from the spot.

Three directors of the company were also backing the accused. The three persons have been nominated as main accused while the directors as co-accused in the case while the factory has been sealed. The FBR authorities have made clear that the violators of the law would be dealt with an iron hand and tax evaders will get no leniency. Staff RepoRt

Rupee falls by 22 paisas against dollar Pakistan rupee snapped the winning streak against the US dollar after two straight sessions on Friday and depreciated

by Rs0.22 (-0.13 percent) in the interbank. According to the State Bank of Pakistan, the US dollar opened at Rs163.23 and closed at Rs163.45. Within the open market, the rupee was traded at Rs163.50/164.20 per dollar. Overall, Pakistani rupee has shed Rs1.02 against the US dollar during this week, while depreciation during the fiscal year 2021-22 has been Rs6.09. The local unit has shed Rs3.26 against the US dollar in the current year 2021. The currency experts said that demand for dollars remained high in the day due to upcoming weekly holidays. They said that importers purchased dollars in advance in the wake of holidays. They further said that scheduled payment of external debt also put pressure on the local currency. They said that the rupee is likely to make gains in the coming days due to expected inflows of $2.8 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during this month. NeWS DeSK

Cryptos turn bullish with Bitcoin reaches $40,597 The cryptocurrency market turned bullish on Friday, with the market cap increasing 5.7 percent to $1.72 trillion as of 1130 hours GMT. The price of Bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency, increased to $40,597 by gaining 6.34 percent. With this increase in price, the market capitalisation of the BTC has reached $762.3 billion. Likewise, ethereum (ETH) price turned towards north and gained 4.17 percent to reach $2,744. With this increase in price, the market capitalisation of ETH has reached $321 billion. On the other hand, XRP gained 2.27 percent to reach $0.730. The market capitalisation of XRP stands at $72.9 billion after this increase. Similarly, Cardano (ADA) price reached $1.37 with a 0.64 percent increase in its price. NeWS DeSK

sandal (33.37%), vegetable ghee 2.5kg (32.45%), cooking oil 5-liter (32.26%), gents sponge chappal (25.13%) and match box (21.51%), while a major decrease was observed in the prices of potatoes (23.42%), pulse Moong (20.73%), tomatoes (4.19%) and chicken (2.13%).

The weekly SPI percentage change by income groups showed that SPI across all quantiles ranged between -0.10 percent and 0.20 percent. The lowest income group witnessed a weekly decrease of -0.10 percent while the highest income group recorded an increase of 0.20 percent.

On a yearly basis, analysis of SPI change across different income segments showed that SPI increased across all quantiles ranging between 11.56 percent and 15.79 percent. Yearly SPI for the lowest income group increased by 15.70 percent while the highest income group recorded an increase of 11.87 percent. NeWS DeSK

Govt vows to leverage e-commerce for economic empowerment of youth Parliamentary Secretary for Commerce Aliya Hamza Malik has said that the federal government is creating a conducive environment for e commerce start-ups to develop and flourish in the country through the National E Commerce Policy.

Addressing the opening ceremony of one-day virtual E-Commerce Youth Conference, organised by the Ministry of Commerce in collaboration with Kamyab Jawan Programme and USAID PREIA (Pakistan—Regional Economic Integration Activity) on Friday, Malik underlined that the government’s priority is to facilitate young entrepreneurs by improving the regulatory environment, giving them access to finance and digital skills trainings, rationalising taxation structures, ensuring consumer protection, and improving the ICT and telecom infrastructure.

Speaking on the occasion, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Youth Affairs Usman Dar said the initiatives under the Kamyab Jawan Programme, such as Youth Entrepreneurship Scheme (YES) and Hunarmand Pakistan Programme, would be used to promote e-commerce businesses and improve access to digital skills training.

He said the objective of organising the conference was to give Pakistani youth a platform to share their recommendations that can eventually assist the government in improving the implementation of the National E-Commerce Policy with a view to achieve its objective of youth empowerment through e-commerce.

It is pertinent to mention here that the National E-Commerce Policy and the Kamyab Jawan Programme were both launched by the Prime Minister Imran Khan in October 2019 with the aim to leverage the digital economy for the empowerment of youth. The National E Commerce Policy under its pillar “Empowering Youth and SMEs through ECommerce” aims to collaborate with governmentrun special initiatives such as the Kamyab Jawan Programme to achieve its policy goal of extending access to finance and digital skills to Pakistani youth, start-ups and SMEs. The opening ceremony was followed by presentations on Kamyab Jawan Programme, National E Commerce Policy, Bank of Punjab loan application process, and Agritech Ecosystem in Pakistan. The presentations apprised the participants of the latest e-commerce related developments in the country.

In the second session, focused group discussions were held on six key areas of the National E Commerce Policy, including access to finance, access to IT and internet, access to digital skills training, ac-

cess to conducive startup ecosystem, empowerment of rural youth and global connectivity.

In his closing remarks, Secretary Commerce Muhammad Sualeh Ahmad Faruqui said that the recommendations provided by the private sector during the conference would assist the National E-Commerce Council in its implementation of the National E-Commerce Policy. He also acknowledged the conference organizers, presenters, moderators and participants for their efforts to generate recommendations that can improve the e-commerce ecosystem for young entrepreneurs in Pakistan.

It is pertinent to note that currently 64 percent of Pakistanis are younger than 30 while 29 percent are between 15 to 29 years of age. Therefore, the government's focus on promoting e-commerce for job creation in the country not only offers inestimable economic opportunities, but it is also timely in view of the current national as well as global economic situation hit adversely by the Covid-19 pandemic spread.

According to the State Bank of Pakistan estimates, a 47 percent increase has been recorded in Pakistan's IT-related exports during fiscal year 2020-21, which stood at $1.9 billion as compared to $126 million during the same period previous year. However, Pakistan is still far behind its regional competitor, India, which recorded its IT-related exports at $129 billion during 2019-20.

Moreover, the global IT market that is expected to reach $1,124 billion by 2025, offers huge growth potential to countries like Pakistan. NeWS DeSK

Xiaomi leaves Samsung, Apple behind in June sales: report Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi grabbed a 17.1 percent share of the total number of smartphones sold globally in June, with sales surging by 26 percent, a research firm Counterpoint reported on Friday. According to the data, the shares of Samsung and Apple smartphones sold globally were 15.7 percent and 14.3 percent respectively. Xiaomi was also the second-largest smartphone maker by shipment in the second quarter of 2021, after Samsung. The report pointed out, however, that Xiaomi’s sales’ rise – and Samsung’s decrease – could be a temporary trend, as Samsung’s production was disrupted last month due to a surge in Covid-19 cases and the resulting lockdown in Vietnam, which supplies parts for the South Korean smartphone maker. In its second-quarter earnings call, Samsung said it expects production levels to return to normal in the near future.

Xiaomi mostly aims its devices at the mass market by making more affordable smartphones.

However, earlier this year it launched two premium-segment smartphones, apparently aiming to rival market heavyweights Samsung and Apple. NeWS DeSK

NEWS

05

Supreme Court orders immediate arrest of temple attack culprits continued from page 01 “No arrests have been made yet neither did any government officials arrive at the place,” said PML-N MNA Khael Das Kohistani. “We want the interior minister and the prime minister to tell us why no has been arrested yet.” PTI MNA Jai Prakash said the temple was desecrated due to the police’s negligence, adding that the incident had taken place three days ago and notice had been taken against it immediately. “Prime Minister Imran Khan took immediate notice of the incident,” he added. PTI MNA Shunila Ruth said after the Bhong temple incident took place, she spoke to the DPO Punjab and IG Punjab. “This is a conspiracy, the PTI government stands with the Hindu minority,” she said, adding that the state does not support such extremist actions. Another MNA, Lal Chand Malhi, said these incidents were “backed by a plan”, adding that the main objective of such episodes is to defame Pakistan. “An FIR has been registered, I hope the culprits will be arrested as well,” he said. PPP MNA Mahesh Kumar Malani urged legislators of other political parties, namely the PML-N, JUI-F and others to speak on the issue as well. “Everyone in the assembly will speak about this incident,” responded Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri. MYC REfuSES to CondEMn dESECRAtion of tEMPlE: Meanwhile, the leaders of the Milli Yakjehti Council (MYC) refused to condemn the incident and said they were unaware of the details, according to Dawn. During a media briefing in Islamabad following the elections for top positions in the Supreme Council of the MYC,, an alliance of 22 religious and political parties and organisations, when reporters asked about the position of the MYC on the temple attack, the newly elected president, Sahibzada Abul Khair Zubair, started talking about an incident in Hyderabad instead. “There is a Muslim family living in front of a temple in Hyderabad. The area also housed some Hindu families and they filed a complaint to the authorities that sacrificing [a] cow in front of the temple should not be allowed,” Zubair said. “The majority too has rights,” he added. The MYC president further said that the rights of the religious minorities have been safeguarded under the Constitution and Sharia. ”We do not deny the rights given to the minority communities in Islamic laws and the laws of the country, but denying the rights to the majority community too was not fair,” he added. The journalists questioned the top leaders of the mainstream religious parties in the country why they were failing to condemn the mob attack at the temple. In response, the MYC president said that they cannot comment as they were not aware of the ground realities and details of the incident. Secretary General Liaquat Baloch added that the MYC will respond when the facts are available to them. “The minority community in the country has complete freedom,” he said.

ADB lends Pakistan $500 million for vaccine procurement continued from page 01 The government of Norway had also contributed $5.28m in grant proceeds for Pakistan’s Covid-19 response last year, which was administered by the ADB. In the fiscal budget 2021, the Finance Ministry allocated Rs25.3 billion to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) for the purchase of coronavirus vaccines. But the actual spending was a meagre Rs16.6 billion. The Health Ministry forwarded a summary to the federal cabinet for the approval of Rs63.5 billion supplementary budget to procure vaccines for the months of August and September.

But the Finance Ministry refused to provide funds citing pressure on exchange rate and wanting transparency in deals. It also advised the Health Ministry to arrange foreign loans for this purpose.

Crude prices make gains for second day amid ME tension Oil futures headed higher for the second straight day on Friday due to tension in the Middle East despite handwringing around the spread of the coronavirus delta variant and its potential impact on energy demand. At 1215 hours GMT, Brent, the international benchmark for two-thirds of the world's oil, gained $0.85 (+1.19 percent) to reach $72.14 a barrel. Similarly, the US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) reached $69.88, up by $0.79 (+1.14 percent). The price for Opec Basket was recorded at $71.83 a barrel with 1.21 percent decrease, Arab Light was available at $72.67 a barrel with 2.63 percent increase. NeWS DeSK

Space trip ticket available at $450,000 Virgin Galactic Holdings, an American space flight company, is resuming ticket sales for trips to space at a new price of $450,000 a ride.

Sales are restarting immediately and available tickets range from individual seats to a “full-flight buyout”, chief executive Michael Colglazier said as

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the company reported financial results. Virgin Galactic had charged $250,000 for each ticket, before halting sales while it continued work on its spacecraft.

The Las Cruces, New Mexico-based company is looking to build a space tourism business after a successful test flight last month with founder Richard

Branson and five Virgin Galactic employees aboard.

The suborbital trip lasted about an hour.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Tesla founder Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies are also working on tourism offerings of their own. NeWS DeSK

Saturday, 7 August, 2021

06 COMMENT

Privilege gone horribly wrong

Extension in stay and civilian supremacy Nawaz Sharif to fight on two fronts

The Islamabad atrocity anatomised

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S the British Home Office rejected former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s stay extension plea, PTI leaders gave the decision a spin to malign the PML(N) supremo and spread dismay in party’s ranks. The verdict was misinterpreted as a cancellation of the visa.

Sheikh Rashid used the Home Office’s decision to remind that Mr Sharif’s passport had expired in February and he is “no longer a citizen of Pakistan” and cannot travel abroad.

Fawad Chaudhry maintained that the UK had rejected the PML(N) leader’s request for extension in medical visa and if he appealed for extension on medical grounds, he would be sent to jail in Britain The PMLN spokespersons contradicted the misinformation by clarifying that Mr Sharif’s visa had not been cancelled and while turning down his request for extension in stay, the Home Office had conceded that Nawaz Sharif could appeal to the Immigration Tribunal against the decision which had already been done by his counsel.

Meanwhile major PML(N) leaders including Shahbaz Sharif advised him to stay in the UK till his doctors decide that it was absolutely safe for him to travel back to Pakistan.

Mr Sharif can continue stay in Britain as long as his appeal remains undecided. This may take from a number of months to a little over a year. Sooner or later Mr Sharif has to return to Pakistan if he wants to remain relevant in politics. As his lawyers fight his case, he would do well to concentrate on resolving the differences within the party between those who support conciliation and those who want to confront the establishment. Shahbaz Sharif strongly advocates conciliation, arguing that this alone can lead to electoral victory. Many PML(N) lawmakers who are unwilling to spend another five years in opposition, support the policy. Maryam Nawaz on the other hand maintains that the goal of civilian supremacy cannot be achieved without struggle. As things stand Shahbaz Sharif’s conciliatory politics has achieved little beyond the exit of Nawaz Sharif from Pakistan and bails for Shahbaz and Hamza. Maryam’s call for struggle has attracted large crowds but failed to give the PML(N) victory in GilgitBaltistan, AJK and PP-38 in Sialkot Unless a line that ensures party unity is devised within next few months, the PML(N) might neither win the elections nor ensure civilian supremacy.

Raja MuhaMMad ali

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gruesome murder in the capital of an ambassador’s daughter. The murderer, a son of another extremely privileged individual.

The murderer was so used to impunity that his first response to the arresting authorities was a reminder that he was an American national and these pesky Pakistani laws didn’t apply to him.

This murder was an undeniable proof of the consequences of the laws of nature being violated. One of the key laws is survival of the fittest. This law enables nature to weed out weaker individuals and improve the health of the overall species. When humans play God, they try to circumvent this law by placing figurative vigos around the weaker of their species.

For every shortcoming of their child, the human gods would always find a scapegoat. The sacrifice wouldn’t be of a less able human specimen, but of a less privileged one.

The weak son ran someone over in their new Range Rover they got for his 16th birthday? No problem, they will have a driver take up the blame. The weak son killed a prostitute he visits to assuage his flailing ego; not an issue, they will make sure that dead body disappears along with any trace of that particular creation of God. The weakling can’t hold a job and fend for himself? Not a problem, the privilege of human gods will place him above even the strongest of individuals on the food chain. There is no problem for these human gods until they mess with another human god. Children of lesser gods are free game, for the weaklings of human gods to practice their barbarity on.

Not much is expected of these weaklings. They are cut a lot of slack. The victims around them keep giving them leverage in exchange for their proximity.

The system is so rotten that everyone needs a weakling to survive, and fitness is no longer a criterion.

This dependence on weaklings justifies all their wrongdoings, gets them a discount on all bad behaviour. “He hits you?” The father asks. “But he brought you that huge diamond ring as an apology, shouldn’t you forgive him? “Your father never even apologised” adds the enslaved mother with a slighted glance, as she waves goodbye to the daughter who

Behind the temple destruction

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HE destruction of a Hindu temple in the town of Bhong in Rahim Yar Khan district in Punjab is full of commentary about the country, none of it complimentary. For a start, it highlighted the low credibility of the courts. It was a mob’s reaction to a lower court’s granting bail to a Hindu boy accused of urinating in a seminary. That shows that no one felt that the court’s decision was to be respected, even if one did not feel it was justified. There was due notice taken by Prime Minister Imran Khan, who tweeted being upset and disclosed his orders to the IGP Punjab to arrest those responsible, and the same IGP was summoned by the Chief Justice of Pakistan to report on the matter.

However, this official activity should not disguise the fact that the incident was not some one-off occurrence, but reflected a deeper malaise within society, that of intolerance generally, and specifically towards minorities.

While it is true that mistaken religious beliefs are taught at certain seminaries, and may have played a role in the protesters taking this step. After the APS massacre, a shocked nation’s public representatives laid down a National Action Plan, which included firm action against hate speech, but it was slowly diluted to nothing. It needs to be dusted off and implemented to prevent repetition. It should not be forgotten that while such incidents are rare, they are not unknown. The current climate of religious violence may seem to be a sort of inchoate response to the anti-Muslim sentiment spread by the current BJP government, but it should not hide the fact that two wrongs never make a right.

However, the incident may also be traced to the growing intolerance in society, which is reflected in the rising of political tempers and the use of extremist rhetoric.

When a society’s leaders use such intemperate language, is it likely that their followers will not follow suit in all aspects of their life? All parties must dial back their rhetoric, otherwise fellow citizens from minority religions or even minority sects of Islam, may end up paying dearly.

The corporation still dominates

Wajeeha Bilal

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UR historical timeline seems to suggest that colonial and empirical wars might be a thing of the past. While the human population has improved with an inclination towards democracy and a better civilization, we tend to believe more in peace and diplomacy.

But with all the ongoing conflicts, it is hard to imagine that we have achieved peace.

Most of these conflicts are mostly civil wars as a result of cold wars or political instability. We may be directed towards peace with the establishment of peace-oriented organizations and defined international borders, but we are a long way from achieving true peace. Apparently free from colonialism or communist dictatorship nowadays, civil and local wars are the primary cause of global conflicts.

In his book, The Anarchy, a notable British historian William Dalrymple had examined East India Company’s contribution to the decline and crippling of the Mughal Empire between 1756 and 1803, as “the supreme act of corporate violence in world history”. Anarchy is related to the Subcontinent’s condition following the death of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1707. The Company’s story that left a permanent mark in the history of the Subcontinent, is a dreadful warning about the possibility for the abuse of corporate power and the corruption by which the influence of the investors is manifested. “… if history shows anything, it is that in the intimate dance be-

Dedicated to the legacy of late Hameed Nizami

Arif Nizami (Late) Founding Editor

Yousaf Nizami M. A. Niazi

Umar Aziz

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privileged weaklings around that one would forget basic human decency and allow your friend to paint their hands red while we pretend we are looking at the star in the opposite direction? Is it so important to know “somebody” that we become false witnesses to their life, their murky mirrors, where we enable them to see whatever image they want to see? Where we paint them victims, to assuage them, to be closer to them, to have just a few more scraps from their table, just a few more words of kindness out of them? Have we really become that weak?

Have we really started worshiping them? Have they become our beacons? Have we fallen that low?

This was not a murder alone. This was a public service message. Much like the one that shows us the dangers of driving without a seat belt. This public service message brought to us by nature, is to warn us all of the dangers of protecting such weaklings. The crime isn’t new, it happens everyday.

Many humans die at these weaklings’ hands everyday, directly or indirectly.

Even in a much more gruesome manner, but we are so desensitised that we think it will never happen to us, until it does. Those who placed those vigos around this particular weakling to ensure his place in the food chain, did it at the cost of many. This should have been a wake-up call, at least for them, even if not a public service message.

Alas, the irony is, the communique would slide right off the parents of the weakling while they find themselves behind bars for placing the vigos around their weakling. Even after this they would do everything within their power to protect their weakling.

From blood money to the US embassy, they will leave no stone unturned to protect the weakling of a human god.

This was not a murder alone.

This was a public service message. Much like the one that shows us the dangers of driving without a seat belt.

This public service message brought to us by nature, is to warn us all of the dangers of protecting such weaklings.

The crime isn’t new, it happens everyday. Many humans die at these weaklings’ hands everyday, directly or indirectly

The writer is a freelance columnist

Anarchic means for peace

Sadiqabad temple destruction part of a series

Editor Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad

was told abuse is just an expression of love.

This murder should be an eye opener for all. It should make us all question. Question the times we sweep under the rug the behaviour of these weaklings because we don’t want to confront them as we don’t want to lose the privilege of being their friends. Question the times when we ignore the sins of weaklings because they are related to us. Question the times when we find problems with the victims to validate our weakling. Question the times when we go to war against justice because justice would mean correction of the law of nature, and we can’t really have the fittest survive, we would much rather have our Einstein’s come up with Creative ways to sell “vada pao” instead of challenging our weakling’s position in the food chain. We discard our Stephen Hawkings as gifts from unwanted relatives, tucked in a corner of the house, in the shadows where our shame belongs.

How can our fragile egos accept we created something less than perfect?

We should question when we doll up our seemingly okay weakling and provide him with feathers from heaven to prance in front of future victims, but after all he needs to appear perfect, he is related to us.

Perfection is an unattainable pedestal we have set ourselves on. We see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. We cover our mistakes, we run away from our flaws, until we can run no more. Until no surgeon can make that heart beat again, until no lawyer can buy the freedom, until no driver can take the blame. We should question when we find ourselves putting our fragile egos up on that pedestal.

We should question when we give a character certificate to our weaklings to get in their good books.

We should question when we passively enable these weaklings by ignoring their toxicity as long as we don’t become a victim of it. Is it so important to have

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tween the power of the state and that of the corporation, while the latter can be regulated, the corporation will use all the resources in its power to resist.”

The corporate rule could be the main demon, but the fact is that violence, exploitation, and corruption were not merely the corporation’s debt but continue to mark the timeline of human existence. The influence of multinational corporations or foreign takeovers in Third World countries could be as harmful as colonialism. Violence and exploitation, and the absurd atrocities still continue, which only makes us more depressed.

In the recent decades, American invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq have revealed that our world is far from being free of colonialism or powerful manipulation. The superpowers or empires act as global powers that use marketing strategies, multinational and global campaigns with the accumulation of new surveillance-capitalism. The corporate influence is enhanced with military conquests and economic sovereignty. The use of force and economic power are the main manipulating weapons in this war of exploitation, hiding behind the curtains of diplomacy. Though the means and tools might seem different, yet manipulation of the masses continues both at the national and the international level.

With the ongoing electoral battles in our local politics as well, the manipulation of the public continues in a spiteful manner through mendacious propaganda. At a time when the powerful campaigns need to justify the standing of the high commands, a dirty game of mud splashing continues.

Amidst the chaos and corruption, a superior exploitation once again takes advantage of weak and poor. It was heart wrenching to see the major stress of the electoral campaigns being shifted from a platform of democracy to one of manipulation and anarchy. There was more focus on aggressive attacks than on the issues faced by the public or the land itself.

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Though the election commission had given directives to ensure decency in their conversations and avoid use of improper language, as the campaign for elections in Azad Kashmir warmed up, political rivals fired all kinds of accusations at each other that proved to be a mere insult to the right cause.

Electoral campaigns needed to align with the just cause of the Kashmir issue rather than be based on shameful allegations that could adversely affect Pakistan’s stance on the Kashmir dispute in the international community.

And the elections that came after weeks of heated and disruptive campaigns, from the three mainstream parties — the PTI, PPP and PML(N) throwing spiteful allegations at each other, were bound to be chaotic in practice. According to reports, this year the pre-poll campaign had surpassed the previous records of hostility towards their rivals and as a consequence of the violence, voting in some polling stations was temporarily suspended; several people were reportedly injured, and a number of political activists were also detained.

People may buy into the malicious propagandas for peace but only because the powerful have been trained to believe that they have an advantage. But when the means and campaigns are anarchic, so will be the results. Chaos and anarchy will only follow when the focus of peaceful solutions for a dispute are undermined by spitting poison at the opposite parties.

Democratization and globalization may have helped humans understand the idea, but true peace can never be attained unless the powerful learn to embody the true spirit of these words. When the technical tools and means of marketing campaigns are used to value the people they tend to serve, only then can humanity progress on a massive scale.

Democratization and globalization may have helped humans understand the idea, but true peace can never be attained unless the powerful learn to embody the true spirit of these words. When the technical tools and means of marketing campaigns are used to value the people they tend to serve, only then can humanity progress on a massive scale

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The writer is a published author. Her work includes “The Conscious Ego” and “The Beautiful Present”

Email: editorial@pakistantoday.com.pk

Saturday, 7 August, 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

Rain washes away government claims in Karachi FOR the fourth time in around a month, Karachi lay in chaos in the aftermath of another spell of monsoon rains on Thursday. Flooded roads, power breakdowns, toppled trees, roads choked with traffic, damaged structures and authorities’ negligence and hollow promises – nothing was out of the ordinary for the city’s residents as heavy downpours lashed the metropolis.

For the earlier part of the day, the city sizzled as temperature soared past 39 degrees celsius and sea breezes remained suspended. With humidity levels rising from 79 per cent to 89 per cent later in the day, the port city’s residents languished, anticipating that the predicted rainfall would add to their misery. Multiple roads, including Sharae Faisal - the city’s main artery - were soon flooded by rainwater, which disrupted traffic on thoroughfares in the apparent absence of preemptive measures. Besides Sharae Faisal and areas in its vicinity, other localities worst affected on Thursday included Nursery, Soldier Bazaar, Garden, Saddar, Burnes Road, North Karachi, New Karachi, Mehmoodabad, Gulshan-e-Iqbal and others.

Shafiq Ur rEhman Karachi

Pakistan’s environmental challenge

The Online student Students have used the pandemic to avoid work

aBid hussain RatheR

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HE world-wide coronavirus pandemic has coerced us to adopt new ways and techniques to cope with its adversities.

Every human soul is trying his best to minimize its adverse impacts on diverse aspects of human society by creating new ways of living and performing daily routine activities which otherwise would have come to standstill due to the ongoing pandemic.

As it has been said that necessity is the mother of all inventions, obviously we would have not been introduced to new tactics and approaches to life in the absence of this pandemic.

But it is a commonly known fact that no new invention comes without its side effects in the absence of its proper management and utilization, and this was also the case with new methods and ways of living formulated during this period.

Like other departments, our education department shifted to new methods of teaching, in the learning process and besides making the common masses and traditional students aware about the new mobile teaching apps, they were introduced to many new terms of online teaching. Now our traditional classroom teaching has changed to online teaching and accordingly our average student has transitioned to an ‘online student’.

Our ‘new online student’ is vastly different from ‘old common student’ in many respects, as he is using modern scientific technology in his learning process by attending online classes through various mobile teaching applications, appearing in online examinations and finally achieving the goal of promotion from one class to another, though he hasn’t entered the school premises due to closure of educational institutions for the last two and half years. This new worldwide group of students tries to attain knowledge from their teachers through electric signals flowing into their smartphones through multiple teaching applications instead of attending real classrooms.

The standards of intelligence and punctuality for online students are different from those of traditional students. Among traditional students, the intelligent, punctual, bright and regular students attend their classrooms daily without any failure. They remain alert in the classroom and listen to their teachers attentively and note the important points of the lecture. Further they give satisfactory answers to the questions asked

by their teachers. But these parameters have changed for online students. Now cunningness is preferred over intelligence. Those students who remain virtually present in online classes instead of being absent in reality are marked as punctual and brighter.

Now glowing of green signal before their name on the mobile application is marked as their presence though they may be enjoying some other activities like online gaming, online chatting or video watching. Weak internet signal or malfunctioning of teaching applications is made an excuse for not being able to answer the questions and miscommunication between student and the teacher. The duty of remaining alert in the online classes is shared between the online classmates in different subjects so that other fellows may enjoy secondary activities or enjoy an unconscious slumber without any disturbance.

The old traditional students were well aware about moral values and used to maintain discipline in the classroom but our new online students have forgotten the lessons of morality and try their utmost to create chaos in the online classrooms. They are totally incontinent for the teacher as the teaching learning process is virtual.

Few weeks ago a video had gone viral on the social media where a group of male students was seen making strange voices in an online classroom as soon as the teacher was trying to start the lecture while a group of female students was seen singing Kashmiri folk songs in an online classroom. Despite repeated attempts by the teacher, the students were totally uncontrollable by the teacher and finally he had to end the class. Such videos are vivid examples of modern online students creating indiscipline in the online classrooms.

When we look at the homework performance of the online students, the scene is totally different from that of traditional students. Traditional students used to complete their homework individually and prepare their notes secretly so that no other student could compete with them.

But our new online students are friendly with each other in this matter and just one hardworking student completes his homework and shares its images with his other mates. To the surprise of teachers, every student appears in the next online class with his readymade homework which totally lacks individuality and originality. Finally our traditional students had to work hard to ap-

pear in the annual examinations. They had to study all 24 hours of the day to secure high marks, but securing marks in the online examinations is the easiest thing for modern online students. As soon as the teacher sends the link for a question paper to the online students, they swiftly search for the answers in Google and their textbooks and send back their answer scripts before the allotted time. At this stage, some online students find themselves lucky enough as their family members are very cooperative with them in this connection and help them in searching the answers on the internet and later feel proud for their collaborative success. Online copying in the examination and sharing photocopies of their answer scripts through various media is a friendly gesture of online students towards their colleagues.

As we all are well aware, the pandemic has not ended yet and it will take a long time for the return of educational institutions to normal. So currently there is no scope for real teaching learning processes and we have to go with virtual methods. Our traditional students have to remain in the absentia mode for the time being due to the pandemic and we have to go with the online students. But the question arises, how long will our online students make fun of the online teaching learning process and when will they become serious about it? How long will they go through life with their easy earned success? They need to take this process seriously and inculcate and redevelop their moral values. Discipline and mutual interaction in online classes is a must for smooth and fruitful online teaching learning process, otherwise it is all going in vain.

Students have to awaken their consciences and be honest with their online studies. They must bear in mind that they are cheating themselves in the long run and ruining their career by cheating in online classes and examinations. Our online students must remember that the future examinations of their lives are not as easy as their online examinations; rather they have to work hard to be successful in their lives as they are living in a world where competition is on the lips of everyone.

Students have to awaken their consciences and be honest with their online studies. They must bear in mind that they are cheating themselves in the long run and ruining their career by cheating in online classes and examinations. Our online students must remember that the future examinations of their lives are not as easy as their online examinations; rather they have to work hard to be successful in their lives as they are living in a world where competition is on the lips of everyone

The author is a columnist and teaches Geography at GDC, Kulgam, Indian Occupied Kashmir, and can be reached at rather1294@gmail.com

THE majority of Pakistan industrial sectors for example fishing and agriculture , which count for more than one for of the output and two fifth of employment in Pakistan are highly dependent on country natural resources. Hence in order to sustain economic growth there is a high demand on already scarce resources. However it is ironic that what the country depends on for growth is also what threats the future welfare and success of the country. The World Bank report in 2013 started in Pakistan top environmental issues air pollutions inadequate supply of uncontaminated drinking water noise pollution and the health detritions of urban and rural populations due to pollutions.

These environmental concems not only harm Pakistani citizens but also pose a serious threat to the country economy. The report also state that the increase in industrialization, urbanizations and motorization will inevitably worsen this problem. Pakistan is classified as a water stressed nation by the world bank there are seven main river that enter Pakistan from upper riparian states including the Kabul River that enters from Afghanistan and the Indus river, Jhelum river, Chenab river and Sutlej river that enter from India. Among these Ravi and Sutlej and diverted in upstream India, for which consumptive use was awarded to India under the Indus water treaty.

The magnetic of Pakistan such as Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi face the issue of noise pollutions. The main source of this pollution is the traffic noise caused by busses, cars, trucks, rickshaws and water tankers. A study showed that on one Karachi main roads the average noise level around 90 dB and was capable of reaching about 110dB. This high level of noise pollution can cause auditory and nonauditory health issues. Auditory issue include the loss of auditory sensory cell, non-auditory health issues include sleep disturbance noise and cardiovascular disease.

ShEhzadi haSan ali Karachi

Monsoon destruction THE term moonsoon is used to refer the rainy phase of a seasonally changing pattern . It’s effects are visible in such a way that it causes wet and dry season throughout the year . Monsoon is likely to be start on July to September vanishing most important parts of country with the adequate rainfall. It has been active in most parts of Karachi now seeing the roads flooded and causes of unhiegenic environment . It is to be consider a fact that every find rain destruction is hitting Pakistan very hardly especially the monsoon heavy rain and urban flooding.

Karachi was the most affected city of Pakistan receiving monsoon ràin and the problems of sewerage hurts the residents very much. There is seen the mixture of rain water and sewerage making the situation harsh. Now we are taught to be alert by a monsoon warning and tropical storm in majority parts of Sindh and areas of Balochistan.Consequentl the rain situation has created bundle of issues. From the 1st of July weather system is likely to interact with monsoon . The meteorological department has issued an alert for thunderstorms in more than a dozen . So therefore government should maintain the preparations of monsoon this time and the problem of citizens too.

BarKatUllah tUrBat

Karachi’s sewage THROUGH the column of your well-known newspaper, I would like to draw attention towards the bad condition of the sewage system in our city .

I’m a citizen of Karachi .Majority of the city’s roads and streets are filled with sewage water. It has damaged the infrastructure and continues to cause a traffic gridlock on almost all the main arteries of the city.

There are two main reasons for accumulation of sewerage water on the roads: a deteriorated sewerage infrastructure and blockage of sewerage lines by cloth, bags of sand and solid bricks placed by some “unidentified” elements. The blockage of the sewerage system is becoming a sensitive issue with every passing day with the responsible parties – Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, DMCs and KMC – doing little over nothing to remedy the problem.

Whenever a rain spell hits Karachi, water accumulates for hours on the roads and streets. Due to the absence of a proper drainage system . mir mEharUllah mEnGal Karachi

Saturday, 7 August, 2021

08 WORLD VIEW

Why governmenT hAS A conSTiTUTionAl dUTy To SAve The neWS indUSTry VOTERS AND GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS — ANYONE DEVOTED TO THE CONSTITUTION — SHOULD NOT BE WILLING TO WATCH THE NEWS INDUSTRY COLLAPSE. PRESERVING DEMOCRACY CALLS FOR MEASURES TO REVITALIZE THE CREATION, PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF NEWS Los angELEs tImEs

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MArThA MinoW And neWTon MinoW

NLY one private institution is mentioned in the Constitution: the press. Our nation’s founders recognized that a press free to criticize those in power and spread information across society is essential in democracy. But what does that mean today when we see newspapers disappearing every month? Is our government failing to meet its duty to protect and strengthen the press?

The 1st Amendment assumes the existence and durability of a private news industry. This suggests the Constitution not only allows but requires the government to take steps to keep the press viable. And in fact, the government has done this since the beginning of the republic.

The current press landscape demands new action.

Journalism jobs over the past two decades have declined by 60%. As newspapers close and local broadcasting and cable news reduce investment in reporting, digital platforms have diverted ad revenues and enabled the spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation. especially notable is the loss of reporting in smaller towns, suburbs and rural areas, leaving thousands of American communities with no local coverage. This decline may even be tied to fewer candidates for office in local elections.

The idea of government intervention in the news media is not new. Throughout our nation’s history, the federal government has directly and indirectly contributed to

the cultivation and growth of the news industry.

Deliberate government actions map neatly to the history of news in America. The Postal Act of 1792 generously subsidized the delivery of all newspapers.

Other policies include investments in the telegraph, regulation of broadcasting and cable, even the financing of research behind the internet. And the government created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS and National Public Radio and developed public television and radio stations, providing critical vehicles for further innovation.

More recently, existing tax benefits for individuals and foundations are helping to strengthen the burgeoning field of nonprofit journalism. The Internal Revenue Service’s 2019 ruling that allowed the 150-year-old Salt Lake Tribune to turn itself into a nonprofit enterprise creates a new model for other newspapers interested in finding a way forward that includes philanthropy.

There are many other ways the government can strengthen the failing news industry while steering clear of censorship or control of media content.

For example, the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, a bill that has bipartisan support in Congress, creates tax incentives to encourage people to subscribe and donate to their local news organizations. It would relieve local news organizations of paying payroll taxes for journalists. And it would also provide tax incentives to businesses that advertise in local news organizations. This

US dictates foreign policy to Australia but won’t give it excess vaccines

ConsortIum nEws

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Joe LAuriA

he United States has rejected a plea from Australia for Pfizer vaccines as Sydney remains in lockdown with an expanding Delta variant outbreak, desperate for vaccine doses after a disastrous domestic rollout.

The Australian newspaper reported on Friday, “Australia has ‘made representations’ over the course of several weeks for access to America’s excess Pfizer vaccines.

All of Australia’s requests have so far been unsuccessful.” Meanwhile, The New York Times reported this week that a million vaccine doses have gone to waste in the U.S. Australia’s largest city has been locked down since June 16 after a major outbreak of the Delta variant that caught Australia unprepared. The country had been relatively virus free for more than a year before the sudden outbreak. That contributed to a lack of urgency by the federal government in Canberra to garner necessary vaccine supplies for a country of just 25 million people.

From the end of the Second World War, Australia has been an extremely loyal U.S. ally to the point where critics say it hurts its own self-interests in following Washington’s dictates. When Prime Minister Gough Whitlam stood up to the U.S. in the Vietnam War era he was removed from office in 1975 in what has been called a coup engineered by the CIA in conjunction with Buckingham Palace.

Since then no Australian prime minister has dared stray too far outside the lines laid down by Washington, even if detrimental to Australia’s interests. The most recent example has been the conservative government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison damaging

relations with its leading trade partner, China, by ramping up U.S.-directed tensions with Beijing.

The Murdoch-owned Australian quoted Republican members of Congress who acknowledge Australia’s loyalty and back sending U.S. supplies of Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines in the midst of Sydney’s Covid-19 crisis.

“Australia is not only an ally but a Five eyes ally,” the paper quoted Rep. Michael McCaul as saying. “I’ve been pressuring this administration through the Covax program to give more of these vaccines that are just sitting in warehouses in the U.S. They will expire if we don’t get them out the door.” The Five eyes is an alliance of the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand that shares electronic intelligence.

The co-chairman of the Friends of Australia congressional caucus, Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher, said: “The United States has vaccine doses set to expire at the same time our Australian mates need extra doses. The Biden administration should be doing everything in its power to get these doses to Australia.”

The newspaper said the Biden administration is sensitive to criticism that it would be helping a rich country while it has made commitments to send vaccines to developing nations. The U.S. might also be holding on to excess supplies as the Delta variant makes its way through the U.S. population, the paper said.

Australia’s mess was of its own making, with Morrison early on betting alone on the Astra Zeneca shots, which have become unpopular in Australia after reports of it causing rare blood clots. Several Australians have denied of such clots after taking the AZ vaccine.

While for months Australia stood at around 30,000 cases during the entire duration of the pandemic — while the U.S. had more than 300,000 cases in a single day — there have been more than 3,000 infections in New South Wales in just the past six weeks. Three hundred Australian Defense Force soldiers are in Sydney to help with enforcing the lockdown.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former UN correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers.

could help restore some of the revenue lost in the shift of billions of dollars in advertising to Facebook and Google and other online platforms — none of which has its own newsgathering operation.

Legislation has also been proposed that would address the harms caused by social media platforms in fueling the spread of misinformation and increasing political polarization through algorithms. More people today get their news from social media than from organizations that report and produce the news.

Through antitrust investigations and litigation, government could curb online platforms that abuse concentrated economic power and fail to pay for material generated by news organizations. Congress could end protections granted to those platforms against liability for consumer protection, fraud and defamation — which give them a huge advantage over conventional publishers and media organizations. Federal and state governments could further increase public subsidies for nonprofit and public media and even exempt local news organizations from sales and property taxes.

Such efforts are compatible with the 1st Amendment because they increase, rather than abridge, freedom of speech and press, and because they echo government actions long underway. The amendment’s meanings have also unfolded in response to new challenges. Over the course of the 20th century, its enforcement by the courts came to reflect social changes and demands. Freedom of

speech now is a basic, enforceable right, and includes the rights of listeners.

Finally, the large degree of existing government involvement in media, in combination with media’s importance to democracy, lends constitutional support for new policies. Since the 1930s, the federal government has required disclosure by broadcasters of the actual sponsors of materials, because “listeners are entitled to know by whom they are being persuaded.” It has long enforced rules against broadcasters spreading hoaxes.

And in 1994, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law requiring cable networks to carry local and public educational stations in service of competition, information dissemination and programming variety.

Voters and government officials — anyone devoted to the Constitution — should not be willing to watch the news industry collapse. Preserving democracy calls for measures to revitalize the creation, production and distribution of news. Any contrary view of what the Constitution permits in this field imperils the very system of government it establishes.

Martha Minow, a professor and former dean of Harvard Law School, is the author of “Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of Speech.” Newton Minow served as chair of the Federal Communications Commission under President Kennedy.

‘A for aggressive, B for bully’ IndIan ExprEss ApoorvAnAnd And GAuhAr rAzA

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he withdrawal of Dr hari Singh Gour University in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, from an international seminar on “Cultural and Linguistic hurdles in the Achievement of Scientific Temper” due to bullying by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the local police must not be treated lightly.

The university had approved the topic, the collaboration and the speakers, but started wavering after the ABVP threatened it with disruption and legal action since there were names in the list of speakers it did not like. According to the student wing of the RSS, these speakers were “anti nationals” it could not tolerate.

The university succumbed finally after the local police shot off a letter to it at the behest of the ABVP stating that it had “references to the past history, anti-national mentality and caste-related statements of the speakers attending the webinar”. It warned the university that it might face action under Section 505 of the Indian Penal Code if something went wrong as the webinar was being “perceived as targeting a particular caste or community”. The pressure was apparently too much for the university and it buckled at the last moment. A victory for the ABVP. It is yet another one and only the latest in the list of disruptions of academic programmes by the ABVP, the fraternal organisation of the BJP. Only two months ago, Gilbert Sebastian, an assistant professor of the Central University of Kerala, was suspended by the university because the ABVP reportedly took offence to his class on fascism. From Kerala to haryana, there are numerous stories of disrupted and aborted seminars, film screenings and classrooms and censoring of syllabi, either directly by the ABVP or at their behest by the authorities.

The ABVP routinely takes offence to the content of the programme or the people involved in it. either the subject matter of the academic programme is “anti hindu”, “anti Indian” or “anti national” or the speakers or participants are. In the case of the Sagar University incident, the speakers, Gauhar Raza and Apoorvanand, were declared to be anti-national. how can they be hosted by a government-funded university?

One needs to point out, though, that the organisers at the Anthropology Department of Sagar University refused to be browbeaten. They refused to disinvite us and re-

solved to continue with the preparation for the seminar. At this stage, the desperate ABVP went to a willing police for help.

The university authorities have so many more things to look after. One seminar cannot be allowed to jeopardise the material interests of the authorities and the university, especially when the threat comes from the superintendent of police. So, they asked the department to back off.

Defame, delegitimise and disrupt. This is how the ABVP and its fraternal organisations work in destroying the academic culture in India. A very effective method. Because once you make some names controversial, people would like to keep away from them. We have numerous stories of invitations rescinded, seminars and talks cancelled, as the names involved had been made controversial.

People are not the only targets. Institutions like the JNU have been systematically defamed. So much so that any affiliation with JNU has become a disqualification for admission, appointment and invitation in several places. Such defamation can have other consequences as well. After having been defamed as “anti-national”, people like Umar Khalid became vulnerable to physical attacks. There are genuine nationalist fanatics in this country who can threaten your life since they have been told that you are an “anti-national”. So, when the ABVP and the organisations of its cohort do it, it goes beyond a particular event, a particular person.

It sends a signal to all the institutions and its affiliates as well. It turns into a national malady. Looking for books and persons to defame becomes a national sport.

Similarly, issues, concerns or topics are turned illegitimate for teaching or research.

We have seen books, chapters removed, dropped from the reading list, because either their authors were “illegitimate” or the subject matter they dealt with was “not right”.

If one scans the list of the topics approved for grants or fellowships by the ICSSR and IChR, and those discarded, one will get a sense of the direction in which things are being pushed. Without an attack on scientific temper, how can the IITs and IIM be forced to do pseudo science?

Disruption comes after or with defamation and delegitimisation. Seminars, film screenings, theatre performances are vandalised and disrupted. The ABVP seldom engages in arguments. The easy way out is to invoke pseudo-nationalism, religious insecurity or questions of caste, and pretend that feelings are hurt. They make a noise, physically attack and disrupt. Very economical!

A national spokesperson of the organisation, when asked that if they find a book problematic why cannot they respond by an essay if not a book, replied: “It takes time”.

It does not take time to put a matchstick to a book, it takes only five shouting people to go on a rampage in a classroom or seminar. They know very well that academicians are not trained in shouting, abusing, accusing or fist fighting. even a small disruption and abusive slogan-shouting is very effective. Because no department or centre wants its chairs, glass panes broken. What they do after one such incident is to disallow future events.

This is how most colleges in Delhi University stopped having drama events or seminars after the ABVP attacked an event in Ramjas College or selected only convenient and “right” themes and people.

All you have to do is to give a wink and the message reaches where it should. Three years back, an editor and an MP reached the conference hall of the University of Delhi to release the journal published by the Students’ Union (DUSU), a first of its kind, only to find the hall locked. We were told that the ABVP did not want it to happen and the authorities had obliged.

Readers might feel that we are writing this article as we were targeted. We do not deny that. One must not accept abuse and humiliation. It should not become a norm.

We should not think that since we were not physically harmed nor arrested, we should ignore this. That would be normalising a bully culture in universities.

We need to tell the Sagar police that it not only failed in its constitutional duty, it violated it by working at the behest of a bully who was clearly in the wrong. Should we only pity the Sagar University administration and not tell them that safeguarding the freedom of a department was its duty and that it miserably failed? It went back on its word. That is not leadership.

The Sagar University episode makes it clear that doublespeak has become the habit of the Indian government. While its policy document speaks for institutional autonomy, the ruling party’s student body and other affiliates and its law and order apparatus see to it that the institutions toe their ideological and organisational line and punish them if they deviate. It is for us to record all such violations and keep speaking as long as we still have our tongues intact.

Apoorvanand teaches at Delhi University and Raza is an Urdu poet.

saturday, 7 August, 2021

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US job Growth SoLid in jULy; UnempLoyment rate faLLS to 5.4pc WASHINGTON

U

Global investors chase safer money market, bond funds on virus woes: Lipper Global investors took shelter in safer money market and bond funds in the week to Aug. 4, as the rapidly spreading Delta variant of COVID-19 dampened hopes for a faster recovery from the pandemic, with some economic data already showing signs of a slowdown. Data from Lipper showed global money market funds attracted inflows of $36.68 billion, the most in 10 weeks. Global bond funds received $14.6 billion in the week, twice the inflows in the previous week. Bond prices rallied across the world, with the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield touching a six-month low this week. Data released during the week showed U.S. manufacturing growth slowed for the second straight month in July, while, U.S. private payrolls increased less than expected. read more European bond funds attracted $7.4 billion, while U.S. bond funds received $6.7 billion. Asian bond funds also attracted small inflows. On the other hand, global equity funds received $9.04 billion, helped by some optimism over strong earnings posted by a majority of U.S. firms in the second quarter. However, virus concerns capped equity inflows, as the purchases were 47% lower compared with the previous week. Chinese equity funds saw inflows for the first time in seven weeks, as concerns over China's efforts to impose tighter regulations on its publicly traded companies abated slightly. Across sectors, tech funds secured a net $1.46 billion, while consumer discretionary and health care funds lured over $500 million each. Among commodity funds, precious metal funds attracted investments worth $617 million, their first inflow in four weeks. Energy funds saw outflows for a second successive week. An analysis of 23,738 emerging market funds showed investors bought a net $2.8 billion in equity funds, their biggest purchase in over four months, and sold $190 million in bond funds in the week. REUTERS

REUTERS

.S. job growth rose solidly in July amid demand for workers in the labor-intensive services industry, suggesting the economy maintained its strong momentum at the start of the second half.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 943,000 jobs last month after rising 938,000 in June, the Labor Department said in its closely watched employment report on Friday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast payrolls increasing by 870,000 jobs.

Job gains were, however, flattered by shifts in seasonal employment at schools caused by the COVID19 pandemic. Estimates ranged from as low as 350,000 to as high 1.6 million.

The unemployment rate fell to 5.4% from 5.9% in June.

"Labor market conditions appear to be healthy at the start of third quarter as labor-intensive service businesses continue to hire given strong pent-up demand," said Sam Bullard, a senior economist at Wells Fargo in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Prior to the pandemic, education employment normally declined by about 1 million jobs in July as schools closed, but this year many students are in sum-

mer school catching up after disruptions caused by the coronavirus. This likely threw off the model or seasonal factors that the government uses to strip out seasonal fluctuations from the data, giving payrolls a boost.

"Combined with the expansion of summer school programs in several large school districts across the country, the seasonal adjustment process provided another large boost to July education payrolls," said Bullard.

The strong employment report followed on the heels of news last week that the economy fully recovered in the second quarter the sharp loss in output suffered during the very brief pandemic recession.

Economic growth this year is seen around 7%, which would be the fastest since 1984.

The labor market's health will weigh heavily on the Federal Reserve's next monetary policy steps.

"Strong readings over the next couple of months seem likely to give the green light for a pre-announcement of tapering at the Fed's September meeting," said James McCann, deputy chief economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments in Boston.

But surging COVID-19 infections, driven by the Delta variant of the coronavirus pose a risk. While major disruptions to economic activity are not expected, with nearly half of the population fully vaccinated, spiraling cases could keep workers at home and

hamper hiring.

A shortage of workers has left employers unable to fill a record 9.2 million job openings. Lack of affordable child care and fears of contracting the coronavirus have been blamed for keeping workers, mostly women, at home. There have also been pandemic-related retirements as well as career changes.

Republicans and business groups have blamed enhanced unemployment benefits, including a $300 weekly check from the federal government, for the labor crunch. Though more than 20 states led by Republican governors have ended these federal benefits before their Sept. 6 expiration, there has been little evidence that the terminations boosted hiring.

The worker shortage is expected to ease in the fall when schools reopen for in-person learning, but some economists are less optimistic, arguing that the economy was creating many low skilled jobs and there were not enough people to take them.

"One of the biggest problem we have right now is roughly two-thirds of our job openings are in the kind of jobs that do not require any type of a college degree," said Ron Hetrick, senior labor economist with Emsi Burning Glass in Moscow, Idaho. "We have about 6 million job openings that are not requiring a college degree, but we only have 3.4 million who are unemployed that don't have a college degree."

Insurers worry about Covid-19 discrimination claims as workers return to desks LONDON REUTERS

Liability insurers on both sides of the Atlantic are scaling back the cover they offer companies ahead of an expected wave of discrimination claims as employers call staff back to their desks after 18 months of pandemic-induced home working.

There have been around 2,950 COVID-19-related employment lawsuits in the United States since the start of the pandemic, ranging from disputes over remote working to workplace safety and discrimination, law firm Fisher Phillips says.

Now industry sources say companies are starting to trigger policies which protect them against the cost of defending discrimination lawsuits and compensation awards, so-called employment practices liability insurance (EPLI).

That is making underwriters nervous.

Adrian Cox, chief executive of Beazley (BEZG.L), a large Lloyd's of London insurer, calls this a "high exposure area", particularly in North America.

"How you don't discriminate, how you deal with vaccination and testing –

those are all difficult things for employers to work through," he told Reuters.

Karen Cargill, management liability specialist at insurance broker Marsh in London, said a fifth of notifications by its insurer clients of possible EPLI claims in Britain have been COVID-related in the past six months.

JABS FOR JOBS: Insurers, employers and lawyers see mandatory vaccinations as a small but growing area of contention.

Tech giants such as Alphabet Inc's Google (GOOGL.O) and Facebook Inc (FB.O) are among firms who have told all U.S. employees to be inoculated against COVID-19 before stepping into offices or onto campuses to help protect the health and safety of colleagues. read more U.S. vaccination-related claims amount to less than 5% of total COVID19 suits - or fewer than 150 - said Kevin Troutman, partner and co-chair of Fisher Phillips' Healthcare Industry Team. But that is expected to rise.

"The vaccine mandates conundrum is just the next version of COVID claims that we're going to see," said Kelly Thoerig, who oversees Marsh's U.S. EPLI practice.

According to the preliminary results of an ongoing pulse survey of more than

200 American employers launched on July 19 by consultants Mercer, 14% now require staff to be vaccinated in order to work at a company site.

A number of U.S. employers with such policies have already faced court hearings. Workers at a Texas hospital alleged the vaccinations are experimental and that staff are being used as "human guinea pigs".

The case was dismissed in June and some lawyers say this type of case is unlikely to be viable.

But workers could have protection if they are unable to be vaccinated for medical or religious reasons - unless this would pose an "undue hardship" on the business, the U.S. Insurance Information Institute says.

Vulnerable workers could also sue employers because a lack of a mandatory vaccination policy puts them at risk.

However, even if cases are thrown out, defence costs would fall to the employers - and their insurers.

Employment lawyers in Britain have seen fewer discrimination lawsuits so far.

In one case in Scotland, a chef won his unfair dismissal claim after being fired without notice having raised con-

cerns about a lack of personal protective equipment and the risk of passing on the coronavirus to his vulnerable father.

On vaccination, lawyers say that "no jab, no job" contracts - such as those offered by London-based Pimlico Plumbers - risk discriminating against younger staff, who may not yet have been offered their second vaccine, or pregnant women, who might prefer to be vaccinated after childbirth.

"If an employee has decided to refuse the vaccine through personal choice...it would be possible to exclude them from the premises on the grounds of health and safety," said Jo Keddie, a lawyer at Winckworth Sherwood. "(But) if an employee refuses to have the vaccination because of a health condition or a religious belief, they could argue that a mandatory vaccination policy is disability or religious discrimination."

PRICED OUT? Many insurers are cutting their exposure by adding restrictions to new or renewed policies, requiring employers to bear more of the costs, and increasing premium rates, according to Jason Binette, EPLI product manager at AmTrust Exec in Windsor, Connecticut.

Analysis: CEOs and central bankers talk past each other on inflation FRANKFURT/LONDON REUTERS

The bosses of top multinationals are fretting about rising inflation but the very people responsible for keeping price growth in check - central bankers - seem unfazed.

Even as policymakers at the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and elsewhere diverge on how quickly to wind down massive pandemic stimulus programmes, they agree on one thing: the recent surge in inflation is not a major concern.

Yet the latest set of corporate earnings calls are replete with mentions of the word "inflation", with the tally up 1,000% on the year for S&P 500 U.S.-listed companies and 400% in Europe for Stoxx 600 companies, according to Bank of America research.

The fact is that when CEOs and central bankers talk about inflation, they are mostly talking about different things. The following piece explains where they differ - and under what circumstances their interpretations could start to converge.

CEOs SEND INFLATION 'ALARM' "Inflation" is the buzzword of the second-quarter earnings season as companies of all shapes and sizes grapple with price pressures stemming from pandemic-related hits to supply chains struggling to keep up with postlockdown surges in demand.

Industrial conglomerate General Electric

(GE.N), bike-maker Harley-Davidson (HOG.N), consumer conglomerate Unilever Plc (ULVR.L), car-maker Renault (RENA.PA) and pharma group Bayer (BAYGn.DE) have all been at pains to tell investors what they are doing about substantial rises in their input costs.

BUT CENTRAL BANKERS ARE MORE RELAXED: Among big central banks, the hot inflation issue has been most pronounced for the Federal Reserve. Its preferred measure of price pressures is well above its target at 3.5%, the highest in three decades. Headline consumer inflation hit 4.5% in June.

But while some policymakers are starting to acknowledge that price pressures are stickier than they first thought, the Fed as a whole is sticking to the line that this is transitory.

Chair Jerome Powell said last month that the factors driving prices higher now - a 45% surge for used cars from last year or a 25% bump-up for airline tickets - are unlikely to be repeated in perpetuity. "We’re anxious like everybody else to see that inflation pass through," Powell said.

Same message at the European Central Bank. "Inflation has picked up, although this increase is expected to be mostly temporary.

The outlook for inflation over the medium term remains subdued," ECB President Christine Lagarde said on July 22.

And inflationary pressures are still nowhere to be seen as far as the Bank of

Japan is concerned. It points to factors like weak household spending to predict inflation will fall short of its 2% target at least until the year ending in March 2024.

SO WHY THE DISCONNECT? For starters, CEOs are focused on their own sector while central bankers worry about the economy at large. The difference is significant: tech firms, for example, account for nearly 30% of the capitalization of the MSCI USA equity index but make up just 10% of U.S. GDP, the Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates.

And, contrary to popular belief, stock markets are a poor proxy for their domestic economy, particularly in Europe. Listed companies in Europe generate more than half of their sales outside their home region, compared to 30% for U.S. equities.

Moreover, central bankers are inclined to take complaints of large, listed companies about price pressures with a pinch of salt; they know that, unlike the smaller companies that make up the backbone of the economy, the bigger ones have the power to influence and hedge price developments in their supply chain.

More fundamentally, central bankers in the United States and the euro zone are wary of repeating mistakes of the past decade, where they tightened policy at the earliest signs of growing price pressures that never fully materialised in the end.

And they have even talked about the

merits of "running the economy hot" - that is, letting inflation overshoot their target for a while to give the labour market time to get back into shape.

PASS-THROUGH: Producer prices have been rising by 5%-10% in developed economies. But to what extent companies are willing and able to pass on higher costs to consumers is less clear. Certainly, this is happening in the United States: firms from Procter & Gamble Co to Starbucks Corp have done so or are planning to. read more Yet while two-thirds of Japanese firms are doing the same, according to a Reuters poll, a slim majority still did not expect that to increase the final price tag of their products in the second half of the year.

Similar picture in the euro zone: most industrial companies contacted by the ECB expected some pass-through of higher input costs but firms in the services sector saw stable prices ahead.

WAGES: For central bankers, the litmus test of whether price rises will be sustained is whether they start to push wages higher. Here the picture differs across the main regions.

Wages in the euro zone were up a modest 1.5% in the first quarter. Cash earnings in Japan are stuck below pre-pandemic level and recent increases in Britain and Australia are expected to fizzle out. read more Even in the United States, where wages and salaries have been increasing throughout the pandemic and

they were up 3.2% year-on-year in the second quarter, the Fed remains sanguine.

"I think we're some way away from having had substantial further progress...toward the maximum employment goal," Fed chair Jerome Powell said on July 28.

CORE INFLATION: Oil prices, which briefly turned negative last year, have rebounded to push up headline inflation around the world, making the year-on-year percentage change look huge, though they have only returned to more normal levels.

Central bankers like to filter out such volatility, since it comes and goes, and focus on so-called core inflation that strips out energy and food prices. On this measure, prices rose by just 0.9% in the euro zone last month and fell by 0.2% in Japan in June.

U.S. core consumer prices, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation measure, have been growing by more than 3% year-overyear but even this has been blamed on supply disruptions, with containers still stuck in long queues in Asian ports.

Arguably even American consumers, whose views on inflation are typically guided by things like swings in gasoline prices, buy into this logic.

A regular University of Michigan survey shows that while they expect price increases over the next year of roughly 4.7%, that drops to just 2.8% over a five-year horizon squarely in the range of the past two decades.

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Thousands flee in Greece as wildfires sweep ThrouGh MediTerranean atHENS

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REUTERS

OLICE went door to door on Friday urging people to leave their homes north of Athens and emergency crews struggled to stop wildfires from spreading to more towns as scorching winds fuelled blazes across Greece for the fourth day.

Greece, like much of the rest of Europe, has been grappling with extreme weather this summer. A week-long heatwave - its worst in 30 years - has sparked simultaneous wildfires in many parts of the country, burning homes and killing animals as flames tear through thousands of acres of land.

At least 56 active fronts burned across the country on Friday, from the Peloponnese in the west to the island of Evia near Athens, where hundreds of people had to be evacuated by boat as flames burned through forestland to the shore.

"The fire in Attica is dangerous. It's unpredictable," the head of Greece's firefighters federation, Dimitris Stathopoulos, told Skai TV, referring to the wider region which includes the Greek capital.

Thousands of people have fled their homes since wildfires on the foothills of Mount Parnitha just north of Athens burst back into life late on Thursday, and authorities ordered the evacuation

of several suburbs.

"We might have to spend the night in the car if we don't find a friend to host us," said Yorgos, 26, who had to leave his home in the suburb of Polydendri.

The fire, which broke out on Tuesday, burned around the main highway linking

Israeli troops shoot dead Palestinian in West Bank clash WESt BaNk REUTERS

Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian and injured others on Friday during clashes at a protest against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry and medics said. The Israeli military said that 700 Palestinians had gathered in the area, south of the Palestinian city of Nablus, burning tyres and throwing rocks and petrol bombs towards troops and border police. Israeli forces "responded with riot dispersal means", the military said in a statement. "We are aware of reports that a Palestinian was killed and a number of Palestinians were injured." The man who died had been rushed to a Nablus hospital, later succumbing to his injuries, the Palestinian health ministry said. He was 38 years old, it said. The Palestine Red Crescent ambulance service said that 21 other Palestinians had been shot by Israeli troops, most of them with rubbertipped bullets. Others were treated for tear gas inhalation, it said in a statement. The West Bank is among territories where Palestinians seek statehood. Violence has simmered there since US-sponsored talks between the Palestinians and Israel broke down in 2014.

Palestinians have staged near-daily protests in Beita, south of Nablus, to voice anger at a nearby Israeli settler outpost, often leading to violent clashes with Israeli troops. The settlers agreed to leave the outpost in July under an agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, following weeks of demonstrations by Palestinians lighting fires that often engulfed the outpost in smoke. But some of the outpost's buildings remained, locked and under military guard. Palestinians, who claim the land the outpost is on, have vowed to continue their demonstrations.

Athens to northern Greece and hundreds of firefighters with water-bombing aircraft battled to contain it.

"Conditions are extremely dangerous," Deputy Civil Protection Minister Nikos Hardalias said.

A 38-year-old man was killed on Fri-

day by a falling electricity pylon in a suburb north of Athens, the hospital where he was treated said.

In neighbouring Turkey, authorities are battling the country's worst-ever wildfires, and flames sweeping through its southwestern coastal regions forced the evacuation of

Seven residents of Belgian nursing home die after outbreak of B.1.621 lineage of Covid-19 BRUSSELS REUTERS

Seven residents of a nursing home in Belgium have died after being infected with a lineage of the coronavirus first detected in Colombia despite being fully vaccinated, the virology team that conducted tests said on Friday.

The virology team said the residents had been infected with the B.1.621 lineage of Covid-19 that originated in Colombia and has been detected in recent weeks in the United States but cases in Europe have been rare.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has listed the B1.621 lineage as part of the Kappa variant of the coronavirus, but not as a variant itself.

The seven people who died at the nursing home in the Belgian town of Zaventem, near Brussels, were all in their 80s or 90s, and some of them were already in a poor physical condition, said Marc Van Ranst, a virologist at the University of Leuven which conducted tests on the virus found at the nursing home.

"It is worrisome," Van Ranst said, commenting on the fact that the residents died despite being fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

So far, scientists do not know if the B.1.621 lineage is more transmissible than other lineages or variants of the coronavirus, he said. In Belgium, B.1.621 currently accounts for less than 1 percent of known cases of Covid-19, he said, compared to 2 percent of cases in the United States and more than that in Florida.

At the nursing home in Zaventem, 21 residents were infected

with the variant along with several members of staff, Van Ranst told Reuters. The infected staff experienced only mild symptoms.

Van Ranst said the dominant coronavirus variant in Belgium with around 95 percent of infections is the Delta, first discovered in India, followed by the Alpha that was previously dominant in Britain. Additional tests will be run on Friday to rule out any possibility that the nursing home residents died from a different variant of the virus or a different respiratory disease, Van Ranst said.

"It is unlikely but not impossible," he said.

Delta spreads in Sydney as Australia widens Covid-19 restrictions SYDNEY REUTERS

Australian officials warned Sydney residents on Friday to brace for a surge in Covid-19 cases after the country's largest city logged record infections for the second straight day despite a weeks-long lockdown to stamp out an outbreak of Delta variant.

"Just based on the trend in the last few days and where things are going, I am expecting higher case numbers in the next few days and I just want everyone to be prepared for that," New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney, the state capital.

Sydney reported a record 279 locally acquired cases of Covid-19 over the past 24 hours, up from the previous high of 259 the day before. New South Wales reported a record 291 cases, up from 262. One more person has died, raising the state total to 22 during the latest outbreak, all in Sydney.

The dead person was an unvaccinated woman in her 60s who died in a Sydney hospital after contracting the coronavirus from a healthcare worker. There are 304 cases in hospitals in New South Wales, with 50 people in intensive care, 22 of whom require ventilation.

Of particular concern is the growing number of people positive with the highly infectious Delta strain moving around in the community, particularly in Sydney's southwestern suburbs. Around one-fifth of Friday's cases have spent time outside while infectious.

Officials in the neighbouring state of Victoria, which on Thursday night entered its sixth lockdown since the pandemic began, warned the state was "in a precarious position" as officials try to trace the source of several unlinked new cases.

"We have many lines of inquiry actively underway as to where these new cases have been and any further exposure sites," state

tens of thousands of people. In Italy, hot winds fanned flames on the island of Sicily this week.

'A CATASTROPHE': Temperatures have been over 40 degrees Celsius (107 Fahrenheit) all week and no let up came on Friday with high winds spreading the flames further.

The Athens power grid operator announced staggered power cuts in the surrounding region to ensure there were no major outages in mainland Greece.

In Gytheio in the southern Peloponnese, a coast guard vessel rescued 10 people from a beach on Friday as a blaze there flared. Locals made desperate calls for firefighting aircraft.

In the Peloponnese, where firefighters saved Ancient Olympia, the site of the first Olympic Games, from a fire this week, the flames left behind scorched earth and dead animals.

"A catastrophe," said farmer MarinosAnastopoulos. "The fire came around midday with swirling winds and homes were burned, a lot of animals burned to death.

Rabbits, sheep, dogs, everything."

On Evia near Athens, coastguard vessels assisted by tourist boats have picked up 631 people since late Thursday from three beaches on the island, where the flames have burned through a vast area of pine forest since Tuesday and reached the sea.

Health Minister Martin Foley said in a media conference. Faced with another lockdown within weeks, an anti-lockdown protest erupted in state capital Melbourne on Thursday night.

Victoria reported six locally acquired

Covid-19 cases on Friday, down from eight a day earlier, with all linked but not in quarantine during their infectious period.

In Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland, the authorities reported 10 new cases, down from 16 the day before, and added that

they were hopeful a lockdown would be lifted as planned on Sunday since all but two cases were isolated before testing positive.

LOCKDOWN WOES: More than 60 percent of Australia's 25 million citizens are in hard lockdowns on Friday to try to contain latest surge, including the country's three largest cities - Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Snap lockdowns, strict border controls and swift contact tracing have helped Australia keep its coronavirus numbers relatively low, with just over 35,600 cases and 933 deaths. But recent stop-and-start lockdowns amid a sluggish vaccination rollout, with only about 21 percent of people above 16 fully vaccinated, have frustrated residents. Australia has also enacted tough border controls requiring residents to apply for exemptions to leave and incoming overseas travellers, capped at around 3,000 a week, must go through a two-week mandatory quarantine.

The rules will further tighten from August 11 by removing an automatic exemption for citizens and permanent residents living outside of Australia to leave, a government statement tabled in the parliament on Thursday showed. The change would require all citizens and permanent residents living outside the country to apply for permission to exit.

saturday, 7 August, 2021

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Sun bakeS volleyball SandS aS belaruS feelS IoC heat toKYo

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REUTERS

OLLEyBALL players got scorched on the sands of Tokyo Bay and Olympic walkers sweated through their dawn race in Japan's supposedly cooler north on Friday, while two Belarusian officials were expelled after sprinter KrystsinaTsimanouskaya defected.

As they came close to wilting in the heat, be it actual or metaphorical, Filippo Tortu simply took the breath away with a stunning anchor leg in the men's 4x100 metres relay to bring Italy an unprecedented fifth Olympic track and field gold.

Team USA claimed the women's beach volleyball gold for the birthplace of the sport, as did Japan for karate, and Laura Kenny became the most decorated female Olympic cyclist in history with a fifth gold, destroying the field in the first women's madison event at an Olympics.

Away from the track and the tatami mat, Belarus's athletics head coach yuri Moisevich and team official ArturShumak were told to leave the Olympic village, days after ordering Tsimanouskaya to go to the airport against her will.

In a saga reminiscent of Cold War sporting defections, Tsimanouskaya refused to board the Sunday flight home and sought police protection before fleeing to Poland, where she was offered a humanitarian visa and was reunited with her husband on Thursday. She told Reuters the two officials had said the order to send her home came from "high up" in Belarus.

The 24-year-old's case threatens to further isolate Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is under Western sanctions after a crackdown on opponents since last

year and whose son heads the country's Olympic Committee.

Back in Tokyo, Tortu beat Britain's Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake across the line by a whisker to cap an unforgettable few days for Italy, while Kenya's Faith Kipyegon retained her women's 1,500 metre title, destroying Dutchwoman Sifan Hassan's bid for

an unprecedented Olympic treble.

Men's 5,000 metres world record holder Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda added gold in that event to last week's 10,000m silver, while Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas retained her 400m title.

In the boxing ring, gold went to a dominant Cuba as Julio la Cruz outclassed Russ-

ian world heavyweight champion Muslim Gadzhimagomedov to win his second Olympic title and his country's third gold of the five awarded so far.

45°C AND NO SHADE: Outdoor athletes continued to suffer under Japan's punishing summer weather.

Sapporo in the far north was chosen for

sports 11 the 50km race walk for some respite from the heat of the capital, but DawidTomala of Poland had to fight Tokyo-level temperatures to take gold with a dominant second half. Tomala, 31, switched this year from the 20km because he was "bored and needed new challenges", he said. "It's the second 50 in my life and a gold medal is crazy, right?"

More on the walkers' minds than heat, perhaps, was anger that the event may have been its last - it has been dropped from the Paris 2024 Games because there is no equivalent race for women.

Enduring temperatures of up to 45°C (113°F) on the shadeless sand at Shiokaze Park, April Ross and AlixKlineman from the United States won the women's beach volleyball. They regained the gold for the sport's birthplace for the first time in nine years.

President Joe Biden congratulated Team USA, offering to host "all of you at the White House when you get home."

A native of karate's birthplace, Ryo Kiyuna from Japan's Okinawa, grabbed the gold in his sport, after his air-splitting punch, sharpness and precision on the tatami drew gasps in the kata event at Tokyo's Nippon Budokan, the spiritual home of Japanese traditional martial arts.

MENTAL HEALTH AND DIVERSITY: In addition to international politics, the Olympics that end on Sunday have highlighted mental health, transgender rights and equality - including even the clothes that women athletes wear, from mandated skimpy bikinis for beach handball players to gymnasts being allowed to wear what they choose.

The Olympics were supposed to showcase Japan's growing ethnic diversity, but the Games have dragged into the international spotlight a domestic debate about whether the country can be both multicultural and Japanese.

Judo gold medallist Aaron Wolf, NBA basketballer RuiHachimura and tennis superstar Naomi Osaka - with fathers from the United States, Benin and Haiti, respectively - are playing for their mother country in a team that would have been unthinkably diverse a few decades ago.

But like many countries, Japan still has much to do.

Bangladesh seal first series win over Australia NEWS DESK Bangladesh marched home to their first series win - 3-0 - against Australia across formats by defending 128 in a close finish during the third T20I in Dhaka, ESPNcricinfo reported.

While Mahmudullah led from the front by scoring 52 and batting deep to ensure the hosts had some firepower left late in the innings, Mustafizur Rahman, BANGLADESH Shakib Al Hasan 127 FOR 9 and Nasum Ahmed com(MAHMUDULLAH 52, ELLIS 3bined to apply 34, HAZLEWOOD 2-16) BEAT the brakes on AUSTRALIA 117 FOR 4 (MARSH Australia's run chase. Debutant 51, MCDERMOTT 35, SHORIFUL continued his fine form and Nathan Ellis' hatcontributed 51, while Josh Ha2-29) BY TEN RUNS trick went in vain zlewood and Adam Zampa for the visitors, for chipped in with the ball. whom Mitchell Marsh Mahmudullah promoted himself

up to No. 4, but was forced to start off cautiously after Bangladesh lost two early wickets on a slow pitch. He was on 11 off 17 balls - seven of those had come off singles - when he decided to go big. When

Marsh pitched one in the slot on off, he swung to find the gap between long-on and deep midwicket for his first boundary, which was in the eighth over of the innings. Mahmudullah chose to play anchor and bat deep, with all of Shakib, Afif Hossain and Nurul Hossain departing after playing cameos.

He was still not striking at a run-aball when he lofted Ellis over cover for four, after which only two overs of the Bangladesh innings remained. But with time running out, Mahmudullah chose to go after Hazlewood, whose short-of-alength ball he scooped in the 19th over to try and push the scoring. He then brought up his fifty off 52 deliveries in the final over when he swung one down to deep square leg, before falling to Ellis next ball.

Ellis started by conceding eight in his first over, although a boundary came off a top edge from Shakib's bat. Wade then re-

placed him, but Ellis returned with Bangladesh at 60 for 3 after the first half of the innings. He was taken off yet again after conceding 11, with Afif pulling him for a boundary this time. Three overs were left - both Zampa and Agar were bowled out and Hazlewood had only one to go as Ellis' captain trusted him to deliver at the death. But an over-and-a-half later, Mahmudullah had lofted and pulled him for two fours.

That is when it all turned around for the debutant. First, he hit back with a very full ball on off, as the Bangladesh captain missed his leg-side heave and the ball crashed into the stumps. Next ball, the tailenderMustafizur founds Marsh at deep midwicket.

Ellis had the hat-trick ball against another lower-order batter in Mahedi Hasan, who pulled straight to deep square leg, as he suddenly finished with 3 for 34 after going wicketless until the last three balls of the Bangladesh innings.

rafael Nadal loses to 50th-ranked lloyd Harris in Washington WaShiNgtoN AP

If Rafael Nadal was hoping to ease his painful left foot back into action after nearly two months off tour, that's hardly what happened in his Citi Open debut, which ended after just two matches.

A night after needing three sets and more than three hours to get by, Nadal was eliminated 6-4, 1-6, 6-4 by 50th-ranked Lloyd Harris of South Africa under the lights on Thursday at the hard-court tournament.

Harris hit 16 aces and took advantage of Nadal's admittedly problematic serve.

The match ended when Nadal got broken for the second time, with Harris dropping his racket in disbelief after delivering a lob winner.

“I played this last game really bad,” said Nadal, a 20-time Grand Slam champion who was seeded No. 1 in Washington. “My serve was not working the proper way.”

This was less of a physical tug-of-war between a pair of heavy hitters than Nadal's victory over 192nd-ranked Jack Sock on Wednesday.

The one bit of good news for Nadal on Thursday was that he said his injured foot

felt better.

About 3 1/2 hours before entering the US Open tuneup's main stadium to face Harris, Nadal had made his way to tiny Court 5 for a training session.

As fans shouted “Vamos, Rafa!” and snapped photos and video with their phones from the stands at an adjacent court, Nadal didn't do much running, mostly staying in place while hitting groundstrokes and practicing volleys, serves and returns for 45 minutes with Emilio Gomez, a 29-year-old from Ecuador who is ranked 165th and lost in the Citi Open's first round.

Not at all taxing by Nadal's usual exacting and exhausting standards.

And against Harris, when the points mattered, it took Nadal a bit to get going. It wasn't really until the second set, that he really seemed into it, as did the fans, many of whom rose to salute when Nadal broke to lead 3-1 with a forehand passing winner.

But down the stretch in the third set, it was Nadal, surprisingly, who faltered.

Earlier, Jannik Sinner beat Sebastian Korda 7-6 (3), 7-6 (3) in a matchup between two youngsters considered possible future stars of men's tennis who also happen to be doubles partners this week.

Sinner is a 19-year-old from Italy who reached the quarterfinals at the French Open last year and the fourth round there this year before losing to 13-time champion Nadal each time.

Korda is a 21-year-old from the US who is only the third man in the last 50 years to reach the fourth round in his debuts at both Roland Garros, which he did in 2020, and Wimbledon, which he did last month.

The two have gotten to know each other on tour and Sinner said Korda texted him about joining up in doubles at the hard-court tournament in Washington. After facing each other on a breezy, 90-degree afternoon, they reached the doubles semifinals by teaming up at night to defeat Nick Kyrgios and Frances Tiafoe. In a contest between a couple of other members of the sport's youth movement, Jenson Brooksby of Sacramento, California, eliminated No. 2 seed Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada 6-3, 6-4. Both are 20; Auger-Aliassime turns 21 on Sunday.

“He's going to be dangerous in the future,” said Auger-Aliassime, a Wimbledon quarterfinalist last month.

Korda and Sinner never had played against each other — or even practiced together — until this week.

“Very similar game style,” Sinner said of the duo. He trailed 5-2 in the second set before coming back.

“He was playing better. ... I tried to find a solution as soon as possible,” Sinner said.

Korda's father won the 1992 Australian Open, his mother was ranked in the top 30 and his two sisters are golf stars,

including No. 1-ranked Nelly, who shot a 62 on Thursday to take the lead in that sport at the Tokyo Olympics. In the Washington quarterfinals, the fifth-seeded Sinner will face Steve Johnson of the US. Others advancing Thursday included No. 11 John Millman, who plays Brooksby next, and Denis Kudla.

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SACM Dr FIrDoUS ASHIq AwAN reSIgNS FroM Her PoST C ITING “unavoidable personal grounds”, Dr. Firdous Ashiq Awan, the special assistant to Punjab chief minister, resigned from her post on Friday.

In her resignation letter, she thanked Prime Minister Imran Khan for “posing confidence in me to undertake the herculean task” of highlighting the “outstanding and remarkable performance of the Government of Punjab”.

She also expressed her gratitude to Buzdar for his “scrupulous support … from time to time which kept me motivated and steadfast in accomplishing the professional goals set for me by my party”.

Firdous said she was “proud” of undertaking the “sensitive” duties as SACM and “putt[ing] in my efforts with utmost dedication to signify the unparalleled and historical achievements by the Punjab government”.

She further said she was “delighted” to have served the interests of the Punjab government. However, “due to certain unavoidable personal grounds, I am unable to continue with my present assignment, in the Government of Punjab,” she said, while resigning from the position with immediate effect.

A notification issued by the Chief Minister’s Office stated that her resigna-

tion had been accepted by Buzdar.

Last month, she had submitted her resignation in order to run the PTI’s byelection campaign in Sialkot but had later withdrawn it on the instructions of the prime minister.

“The premier has stopped me from resigning from my office and asked me to continue work to highlight the achievements of the Punjab government,” she had told a news conference.

Sources in the chief minister’s house, however, claimed that CM Usman Buzdar wanted Firdous to resign as he was

not comfortable with his aide on information. They alleged that Firdous was even bypassing the chief minister in making announcements, which Buzdar himself wanted to announce.

Firdous, who previously served as the special assistant to the prime minister on information and broadcasting, was appointed as special assistant on information to the Punjab chief minister in November 2020.

Firdous, who was a PPP stalwart before she joined the PTI in May 2017, was named the special assistant to Prime Min-

ister Imran Khan on information and broadcasting as part of a major cabinet reshuffle in April 2019, eight months after the PTI chief took office.

However, the charge was taken away from her in April last year, and she was replaced as the SAPM by retired Lt Gen Asim Saleem Bajwa. Bajwa himself resigned from the post in October 2020.

During her time as SACM, Firdous was involved in a number of controversial incidents, including a “spat” with then Sialkot assistant commissioner Sonia Sadaf, getting into a physical altercation with PPP MNA Qadir Khan Mandokhail on the set of a TV show and making disparaging comments about the people of Sindh.

Meanwhile, CM Buzdar also de-notified Mohammad Awn Chaudhry as the special coordinator to the chief minister on political affairs with immediate effect.

According to a press release issued by the Chief Minister’s Office, Buzdar met MPA Malik Asad Ali Khokhar on Friday and decided to appoint him as a provincial minister. Khokhar will take oath of office tomorrow, according to the release. However, it did not mention what portfolio would be given to Khokhar, who was previously the minister for wildlife and fisheries before he was asked to resign in July last year. News desk

Taliban close in on two provincial Afghan capitals as US forces exit country KABUL ReuteRs

Taliban fighters on Friday intensified clashes with Afghan forces and targeted militias allied with the government, officials said, stretching their dominance of border towns and closing in on two provincial capitals as foreign forces leave. At least 10 Afghan soldiers and a commander of armed members belonging to the Abdul Rashid Dostum militia group in the northern province of Jowzjan were killed.

“The Taliban launched violent attacks on the outskirts of (provincial capital) Sheberghan this week and during heavy clashes, a pro-government militia forces’ commander loyal to Dustom was killed,” said Abdul Qader Malia, the deputy governor of Jowzjan province. The Taliban, fighting to reimpose strict Islamic law after their 2001 ouster by US-led forces, have stepped up their campaign to defeat the US-backed government as foreign forces complete their withdrawal after 20 years of war.

Another provincial council member said nine of the 10 districts of Jowzjan were now controlled by the Taliban and the contest to control Sheberghan was underway.

In southern Helmand province, damage to civilian property aggravated the humanitarian crisis as shops caught fire in a week-long battle to control the capital of Lashkar Gah. The United Nations this week said it was deeply concerned about the safety of tens of thousands of people trapped in the city.

“Violence has only escalated and there is no way to assess the damage in Lashkar Gah as both sides are locked in an intense ground battle… it is hard to even

recover bodies by aid agencies,” a senior Western security official said in Kabul. The Lashkar Gah office of aid group Action Against Hunger was hit by a bomb during fighting in the area on Thursday. “Civilians find themselves in between warring parties. They are being displaced from their homes and are often the first victims

of the conflict,” said Mike Bonke, Action Against Hunger’s Country Director in Afghanistan “Humanitarian organisations like Action Against Hunger try their best to support people’s needs, but we need safety guarantees from all parties to be able to operate,” he said in a statement.

Taliban assassinate Afghan govt spokesperson KABUL: Taliban militants on Friday assassinated the Afghan government’s top media officer in Kabul, dealing a high-profile blow to the Western-backed administration following battlefield gains by the insurgent group as foreign forces leave. The killing of Dawa Khan Menapal, head of the Government Media and Information Centre, was the latest in a series aimed at weakening President Ashraf Ghani’s democratically elected government. In a tweet, US Charge d’Affaires Ross Wilson said he was saddened and disgusted by the death of Menapal, whom he called a friend who provided truthful information to all Afghans. “These murders are an affront to Afghans’ human rights & freedom of speech,” he said. Scores of social activists, journalists, bureaucrats, judges and public figures fighting to sustain a liberal administration have been assassinated by Taliban fighters in a bid to silence voices of dissent in the war-torn country. The Taliban have stepped up their campaign to defeat the US-backed government as foreign forces complete their withdrawal after 20 years of war.

An official in the federal interior ministry said “the savage terrorists killed” Menapal during Friday prayers. “He (Menapal) was a young man who stood like a mountain in the face of enemy propaganda, and who was always a major supporter of the (Afghan) regime,” said Mirwais Stanikzai, a spokesperson of the interior ministry.

FIGHTING SPREADS: Elsewhere Taliban fighters intensified clashes with Afghan forces and attacked militias allied with the government, officials said, stretching their dominance of border towns and closing in on two provincial capitals. At least 10 Afghan soldiers and a commander of armed members belonging to the Abdul Rashid Dostum militia group in the northern province of Jowzjan were killed. “The Taliban launched violent attacks on the outskirts of (provincial capital) Sheberghan this week and during heavy clashes a progovernment militia forces’ commander loyal to Dustom was killed,” said Abdul Qader Malia, the deputy governor of Jowzjan province. Another provincial council member said nine of the 10 districts of Jowzjan were now controlled by the Taliban and the contest to control Sheberghan was under way. ReuteRs

Pak-US relations moving in right direction: NSA WASHINGTON INP

National Security Adviser (NSA) Moeed Yusuf has said that Pak-US relations are heading in the right direction. Yusuf through his official Twitter handle said that he has concluded a constructive US visit and held important meetings with his US counterpart Jake Sullivan and other officials. The NSA said that the ties between both Pakistan and the United States are moving in the right direction and the focus of both sides is on the outcomes now. In his presser in Washington, NSA Moeed Yusuf had said that this time there are no secret arrangements with the US like in the past. Yusuf had said Pakistan is looking forward to the leadership role of the US in Afghanistan and noted the only way forward in the developing situation there is a political settlement. He had clarified that Pakistan is not extending its bases to the US and shunned the theories of any secret US-Pak accords.

IHC directs PTA to justify ban on videosharing app TikTok ISLAMABAD INP

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday directed Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to justify ban on the video-sharing app TikTok. The case was heard by IHC Chief Justice Justice Athar Minhallah. During the hearing, he asked PTA counsel that why TikTok has been banned? If banning TikTok is the only solution, then Google should also be banned, he remarked. The PTA counsel replied: “The Sindh High Court and the Peshawar High Court had directed to ban the app and develop a mechanism to stop inappropriate content on the app.” To, this the IHC CJ asked the lawyer to read the verdicts of both the high courts and asked where the SHC and PHC have said to ban TiKTok across the country? “Both the high courts have asked to develop a mechanism to stop inappropriate content,” he remarked and added that both the decisions were wrongly implemented. Justice Minhallah asked such inappropriate videos are also available on YouTube, so why the PTA has not blocked it? The IHC issued notice to the secretary IT and asked the PTA to convince the court over the complete ban on TikTok. The court also directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority for consultation with the federal government for developing a mechanism. The hearing of the case was later adjourned until August 23.

Taliban close Spin Boldak border crossing, call for visa-free travel for Afghans The Taliban closed a key border crossing with Pakistan on Friday, saying no one would be allowed through until Islamabad dropped or relaxed its visa requirements for Afghans.

The Taliban, wresting control of Afghanistan in the wake of a withdrawal of US and other foreign troops, last month captured the southeast Chaman-Spin Boldak border crossing from Afghan forces.

Pakistan initially closed its side of the crossing, landlocked Afghanistan’s second busiest entry point and main commercial artery to the sea, before reopening it last week.

In a statement on Friday, the Taliban statement called on Pakistan to scrap all visa requirements for Afghans. “(The crossing) will remain closed for all types of commuting, including transit and trade, for both sides, and pedestrians, until the Pakistani side leaves the gate open, morning to evening, for Afghans holding [Pakistani issued] migration cards or

[Afghan] ID cards,” the insurgent group’s shadow governor for Kandahar province said in the statement. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the group’s leadership had endorsed the move, and on Friday the border had been closed.

Since US-led foreign troops began leaving Afghanistan earlier this year, fighting between the Taliban and Afghan forces has escalated significantly. In recent weeks, the Taliban have advanced rapidly on provincial capitals and targeted top government officials inside Kabul.

The Taliban have also taken control of several border crossings, including with Iran and Central Asian countries, but the crossing with Pakistan provides a significant customs revenue.

Ensuring it is open for visa-free travel would not only curry favour with ordinary Afghans, but also shore up a route to parts of Pakistan that have historically housed the insur-

gent group’s fighters and part of its leadership.

Afghan government data indicates the route was used by 900 trucks a day before the Taliban seized it.

The closure could impact import of medicines and other essential goods as violence has sharply escalated in Afghanistan amidst a pandemic, with the United Nations saying hundreds of thousands have been displaced internally.

Spokespersons for Pakistan’s Foreign and Interior ministries did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

Pakistani border officials at Chaman told Reuters the Taliban had placed concrete barriers to block the road on their side of the Friendship Gate, the crossing point between the two countries. Many Afghans living in Pakistan have been issued migration cards

by Islamabad allowing them to stay, but those who want to enter Pakistan today need to obtain a visa. ReuteRs

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