EpaperKHI_21-10-6

Wednesday, 6 October, 2021 I 29 Safar, 1443 I Rs 15.00 I Vol XII No 98 I 12 Pages I Karachi Edition

Govt set to promulGate ordinance for naB chief

islamabad staff report

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he Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government has decided to extend the tenure of the current National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chief. Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal was appointed during the tenure of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government; his tenure was supposed to end on October 8 this year.

According to sources, PM Imran Khan presided a high-level meeting today wherein this decision was made. Prime Minister Imran Khan also accepted the suggestion put forward by Attorney General of Pakistan (AGP) Khalid Jawed Khan regarding amendments in the National Accountability Ordinance 1999.

It has been decided that a new NAB chairperson will be appointed with the consultation of Shehbaz Sharif, the opposition leader in the National Assembly.

The PM has also agreed with the AGP’s suggestion that the power to remove the NAB chief should rest with the Supreme Judicial Council instead of the President.

In this regard, Information Minister Fawad

Chaudhry announced that an ordinance regarding amendments in the NAO will be promulgated tomorrow, on Wednesday. however, the current government will not bring amendments to NAO for structuring the NAB chairman’s power of arrest. earlier, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto had said that his party would “forcefully oppose” the “illegal extension” in the tenure of the NAB chief.

Bilawal maintained that the law specifies that the tenure may not be extended. he added that even if an extension was attempted for the incumbent NAB chairperson, it would prove his party’s position that NAB is “an extension” of the PTI government and “not impartial”.

Federal Minister for Law and Justice Barrister Farogh Naseem on Tuesday stated that the federal government has decided to consult Leader of the Opposition Shahbaz Sharif on the nomination of the next National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman.

“Government has decided to consult with Shehbaz Sharif over next NAB chief appointment as per the law,” said Naseem, adding that no contact has been made with the opposition leader so far over the NAB chairman appointment.

coronavirus in

pakistan

CONFIRMED CASES:

1,252,656

LAST UPDATED AT 9:53 AM ON OCTOBER 5, 2021

DAY'S DEATH TOLL:

NEW CASES:

54

1,308

RECOVERED:

DEATHS:

1,178,883 27,947 SINDH:

PUNJAB:

460,748

433,687

KPK:

BALOCHISTAN:

174,841 AJK/GB:

32,992 ISLAMABAD:

34,253/10,334

105,801

Farogh further said the law ministry has finalised the draft for National Accountability Bureau (amendment) ordinance on directions of PM Imran Khan, adding that the clause of consultation with Leader of the Opposition has been included in the newly amended NAB Ordinance-1999.

“The newly amended NAB ordinance has been prepared according to law,” he said, adding that “the terms [non-extendable] has been substituted with the word [extendable] in the section mentioned to give the NAB chairman an extension”.

“The sitting NAB chairman will continue to serve until the appointment of new anti-graft watchdog chief,” he added. earlier on Tuesday, Attorney General Khalid Jawed Khan also stated that the National Accountability Bureau (amendment) ordinance would be issued on Wednesday.

It is pertinent to note that the opposition is determined to boycott the extension.

Sources privy to this development stated that Law Minister Farogh Naseem was advised by the premier to prepare a draft for the presidential ordinance.

“The Final draft is with the PM Imran at the moment and will be presented to the President Arif Alvi in the coming days after receiving a go-ahead from the premier Imran Khan,” sources said.

The sources said that the summary (of the draft) sent to the premier had put all the relevant propositions before the PM Imran Khan and it not only confined itself to grant an extension but had also suggested a legal case against such a move.

They added that in case the premier reaches the final decision to extend Justice (Retd) Iqbal’s tenure, the ministry will prepare a draft to amend the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO) and send it to President Alvi for approval.

“As after the promulgation this would become a law, enabling the federal government to give an extension to accountability watchdog chief,” they said.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 03

At UN summit, PM Imran calls for return of stolen wealth to developing countries islamabad staff report

Prime Minister Imran Khan has called for prioritising return of stolen wealth to developing countries, vaccine equity, debt relief and climate finance as part of global economic recovery from the devastating effects of Covid-19 pandemic.

The prime minister said this while virtually addressing the World Leaders Summit Dialogue organised on Tuesday by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) during its ongoing 15th Quadrennial Meeting, hosted

by Barbados.

The prime minister reiterated his concern regarding the illicit flow of $1 trillion from developing countries to tax havens, stressing on the need to halt these outflows.

“According to the FACTI panel (UN high Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity) $7 trillion are parked in these tax havens and haven

Army huddle takes serious note of Indian army’s ‘malicious propaganda’, resolves to take measures The Pakistan Army’s top brass on Tuesday expressed the resolve to take necessary measures to safeguard Pakistan’s territorial integrity in the face of “malicious propaganda” by the Indian military, the army’s media wing said.

The resolution in this regard was expressed during the 244th Corps Commanders Conference chaired by Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa at the GhQ. The commanders undertook a comprehensive review of the evolving security situation in the region, with a particular focus on border management and internal security, according to an Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) statement.

The forum was apprised of the measures being taken to “thwart nefarious designs of inimical forces to destabilise Pakistan and spoil the hard-earned peace and stability”, the press release said.

While taking serious note of the “malicious propaganda by Indian military”, the meeting expressed the resolve to take all necessary measures to protect Pakistan’s territorial integrity.

“The baseless propaganda

destinations,” he said.

“This plunder is taking place because of the corrupt ruling elite of the developing world,” the premier added. he termed the challenge a “huge crisis”, which he predicted will “only get worse” in the coming years.

PM Imran Khan said the only way this will stop is if the recommendations made by the FACTI panel are implemented, while also acknowledging that “unfortunately the richer countries which can do something about it [have] no incentive to do anything”.

The premier said that the illicit outflows are “crushing” the people of the developing world, not just because the money is being siphoned off to the developed world — which could instead be spent on human development — but also because resultantly, when the money leaves the country, it affects the local currency which devalues, leading to inflation, and then more poverty.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 03

more inside

CM Jam Kamal given deadline

by BAP till today STORY ON BACK PAGE

PM Imran Khan’s stooges should keep their suggestions to themselves STORY ON BACK PAGE only reflects their frustration and an attempt to divert attention from their internal contradictions especially gross human rights violations being committed in [Indian-occupied Kashmir],” Gen Bajwa remarked.

The conference also expressed concern over the brewing humanitarian-cum-security situation in Afghanistan, concluding that “meaningful engagement and sustained support by the international community is

imperative for paving way for peace and stability in Afghanistan and the larger region,” according to the ISPR. In his comments, the army chief appreciated the operational preparedness of army formations and their focus on training, in addition to enhanced collaboration with foreign militaries and the conduct of joint exercises in the operational and counterterrorism domains. News Desk

PHC directs NAB to complete inquiries into Billion Tree Tsunami in two months STORY ON BACK PAGE

02

Wednesday, 6 October, 2021

NEWS

T20 World Cup: Pakistan team to depart for UAE on Oct 15 staff report The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Tuesday announced the schedule of national team’s departure to the United Arab Emirates for the upcoming T20 World Cup The national team will leave for the UAE on October 15 via a chartered flight. The players participating in the mega event will move from one bubble to another after the completion of the event.

The T20 World Cup will begin on October 17 while the final will be played on November 14. All members of the national team’s support staff will gather in Lahore on October 8 before being quarantined for seven days at a local hotel. The PCB has allowed all members of the national squad to take their families along with them to the UAE. However, it is yet to formally announce the names of the support staff members who will accompany the national team to the UAE. According to sources, the PCB cricke has decided to appoint former cricketer Saqlain Mushtaq as head of the support staff.

SHC extends Wassan’s interim bail in assets case KaraCHI INp

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Tuesday extended interim bail of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) senior leader Manzoor Wassan till November 4 in the assets case. The counsel of the PPP leader stated that in the last hearing of the case, the court was told that the graft-buster body is closing inquiry, but the matter is being dragged, he added. The SHC bench hearing the case asked the NAB prosecutor about the status of the inquiry against Wassan. The NAB prosecutor replied that the inquiry against Wassan is not being closed, investigation to continue against him in the assets case, he informed the SHC. The SHC while giving a month to the NAB to decide on the inquiry against Wassan, extended his interim bail until November 4.

The graft-buster body has been asked to submit a progress report in the case. According to the NAB, the PPP leader is accused of making assets beyond his known sources of income and owns benami properties too. The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has failed in filing references against the PPP stalwart despite the passage of two years.

Afghanistan to start issuing passports to its citizens again

KARACHI

UnivErSiTy in EvEry diSTriCT TO PrOvidE OPPOrTUniTiES TO STUdEnTS, SAyS CM BUzdAr LaHore

P

staff report

UNJAB Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar has directed the relevant authority to complete the process of filling up the vacant posts of college principals as soon as possible and said that merit should be ensured in the appointment of controllers and secretaries of education boards. He said this while presiding over a meeting which reviewed the matters related to the Higher Education department.

He said that a university in every district would provide better opportunities for higher education to the students especially the female students adding that establishment of Indus University in Rajanpur would fulfil the long standing demand of the people of the area.

Universities would also be established in Muzaffargarh, Layyah, Bhakkar, Hafizabad,

More videos in DG Khan academy sexual assault scandal surface Dera GHaZI KHaN staff report

The police has made latest revelations in the DG Khan academy’s sexual assault scandal involving numerous of girls on Tuesday. The police stated that one of the suspects succeeded in fleeing the country, whereas the other one has acquired bail.

Lahore High Court’s Multan bench granted bail to the suspect Mujahid Hussain until October 8.The decision came after the police stated that they have apprehended another suspect identified as Javed, who allegedly was responsible for running the academy from 2012 onwards.

KaBUL Following months of delays that hampered attempts by those trying to flee the country after the Taliban seized control in August, Afghanistan will start issuing passports to its citizens again, a senior official said on Tuesday. The process, which had slowed even before the Taliban return to power following the withdrawal of US forces, will provide applicants with documents physically identical to those issued by the previous government, the official said. Acting head of the passport office Alam Gul Haqqani told reporters in Kabul that between 5,000 and 6,000 passports were to be issued each day, with women being employed to process those meant for female citizens. Interior ministry spokesman Qari Sayeed Khosti told the briefing that 25,000 applicants had reached the final stage of payment for their passports, with roughly 100,000 applications in the earlier stages of the process pending. It is pertinent to mention here that the Taliban had entered Kabul on October 15 and President Ashraf Ghani left Afghanistan saying he wanted to avoid bloodshed, bringing the insurgents close to taking over the country two decades after they were overthrown by a US-led invasion.

The police further stated that another suspect in the case, Habib, has been successful in escaping the country, while the fourth accused Usama would be be arrested soon.

“So far 20 videos documenting the sexual assault incidents at the academy have been received,” the police stated.

Earlier on Monday, police apprehended a gang allegedly involved in sexual assault of girls at an academy in DG Khan, after the videos of the assault made rounds on social media.

According to the police, Akhter confessed that the institute was being used for illegal activities. “Officially, the varsity was closed because of the coronavirus pandemic but we have

been using the building’s ground floor,” he said. Akhter named three other men, Mujahid, Osama, and Habib, as his accomplices. They are presently on the run.

On October 2, DG Khan police spokesperson Mohammad Sami told SAMAA Digital that Regional Police Officer Faisal Rana has taken notice of the issue and ordered District Police Officer Omar Saeed Malik to take action against the accused and submit a report.

Regional Police Officer (RPO) of DG Khan Faisal Rana has stated that they had apprehended one of the suspects involved in the heinous crime, while three people have so far been identified for their involvement in the

crime.

“The arrested suspect used to blackmail the girls through the secretly filmed videos,” the DPO said adding that they were conducting a forensic analysis in the videos to verify their authenticity and credibility.

As per the initial investigation, the RPO stated that the police has been successful in identifying three areas in the academy where sexual assault of the girls was allegedly filmed using hidden cameras.

The educational institute is located in Block-7 in DG Khan city. People living in the neighborhood urged the police to crackdown against the suspects, according to local journalists.

Ashfaq group agrees to hold talks with normalisation committee staff report The Ashfaq Hussain Shah group, the occupant of the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) headquarters in Lahore, has finally expressed its willingness to talk with the FIFA appointed normalisation committee, according to a report published on Geo News.

As per the report, the talks will take

ageNcIes

Bahawalnagar, Sheikhupura, Kasur, Attock, Gujranwala and other districts, he added.

He said that University of Taunsa and Women University in DG Khan would remove the sense of deprivation among the people of the area.

CM was briefed about the progress of setting up of 15 new universities in the province. During the meeting the public-private partnership and joint venture in establishing new universities in Punjab were also discussed.

The meeting also decided to introduce the concept of Smart University in the province besides giving principle approval to make further recruitment of College Teacher Interns (CTIs) across the province.

Usman Buzdar was further informed that 197 higher education projects would be completed at a sum of Rs 15 billion across the province. The process of transfer of land for 21 new colleges out of 88 had been completed.

place for the first time since the group allegedly forcibly took over the PFF office from the normalisation committee.

The Ashfaq group, in a statement, announced that they have formed a fivemember committee headed by Malik Aamir Dogar to negotiate with the normalisation committee and the government to hold PFF elections.

The development comes after a top

government official directed the Ashfaq group to immediately vacate the PFF office and hand it over to the normalisation committee, the report said.

Sharafat Hussain Bukhari, a member of Ashfaq group’s consultation committee, told Geo News that they are willing to do everything for betterment of Pakistan football.

“We were willing for betterment and that’s why we had handed over the

affairs to NC in 2019. We are still ready to play our role in making things better,” the report quoted him as saying.

It further said that Federal Minister of Inter-provincial Coordination Fehmida Mirza is playing a key role in resolving the issue. She held an online meeting with officials of normalisation committee on Monday afternoon to discuss the election roadmap and PFF constitution, the report added.

IHC allows margin to Kulbhushan Jadhav, India assigns legal counsel staff report The Islamabad High Court (IHC) allowed extra time to the detained Indian spy, Kubhushan Jadhav, to appoint a legal counsel, on Tuesday.

The three-judge IHC bench under Justice Athar Minallah heard the case filed by the law ministry for designating a lawyer for the detained Indian spy.

Other judges on the bench included Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Miangul Aurangzeb.

It is pertinent to note that on May 5, the court allowed Jadhav to have more time to appoint a legal representative. Initially, India did not respond to this decision by the court. The attorney-general stated that he wanted a private consular access for Jadhav, but it is evident that it could not be granted, not by Pakistan only but by any country in such a case.

Meanwhile Jadhav was not allowed to meet India’s representatives in private because they could harm him.

“They can cause harm to him just by shaking hands with him”, he stated.

Pakistan wanted to implement the International

Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling, but India did not seem interested in it, he added.

He said that only the court could appoint a legal representative on behalf of Kulbhushan Jadhav, who could file an appeal on his behalf.

Justice Athar Minallah said that the court “wants to fully implement the ICJ ruling and this is possible only by way of effective proceedings. “We need to proceed in accordance with the Vienna Convention because his life depends on the outcome”, he said. He said that the court believed that India would not waste this opportunity and come forward.

Justice Aamer Farooq responded by saying under which law should the court proceed to appoint a legal cousel? Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb said that when India was not interested in filing an appeal on behalf of the prisoner, what could the court do?

Later, the hearing was adjourned indefinitely.

In April this year, Indian High Commission’s legal representative Barrister Shahnawaz Noon had excused himself from appearing in the case.

On October 6, 2020, veteran lawyers Makhdoom Ali Khan and Abid Hassan Minto had declined to appear in the court for their own reasons, respectively.

It is to note that Kulbushan Jadhav was detained on March 3, 2016 when he reportedly entered Pakistan illegally.

Wednesday, 6 October, 2021

KARACHI

YDA BrINGs Protest to AN eND, hoLDs DeMoNstrAtIoNs At hosPItALs iSLamaBad

t

staff report

HE Young Doctors Association (YDA) on Tuesday brought their protest to an end, outside the Pakistan Medical Association (PMC) building against the National Licensing Exam (NLE). The decision of bringing the protest to an end came after a discussion with the Islamabad deputy commissioner.

“From tomorrow, everyone will protest in their respective hospitals,” the YDA president stated after 20 of their colleagues were apprehended by the police earlier in the day following clashes.

As per the authorities, the protesters damaged state property.

A statement by police suggests that the young doctors threw stones at them and the PMC building, which resulted in the police baton charging the demonstrators and besides firing tear gas shells. The police had to arrest the demonstrators eventually.

Later in the day, a 5-member delegation of the YDA held a meeting with the deputy commissioner of Islamabad. During the meeting the government official asked the demonstrators to clear the roads, as soon as possible, but the demonstrators insisted that they would do so, once the police let go of the detained medics.

It is pertinent to note that the YDA had earlier demanded the release of their detained colleagues, saying

that if the administration does not let them go, then the organization would hold protests across the country.

On the contrary, the YDA claimed that the protests

were peaceful. However, the police negated their claims, saying that use of force would not have been done if the protests were protests.

Govt approaches SC to restore Ishaq Dar’s senate membership

At UN summit, PM Imran calls for return of stolen wealth to developing countries

iSLamaBad staff report

continued from page 01 He said an unseen effect which even the developed world will see in the days to come is economic migrants, which are barely a “trickle” right now. “I urge you madam secretary general to do everything to raise awareness that this huge injustice which is being done to the people of the developing world, has to stop.”

Expressing concerns over vaccine inequity, the prime minister called for a more equitable distribution. Also, recalling his campaign for debt relief, the prime minister advocated for debt relief until the end of the pandemic.

Furthermore, he reaffirmed the urgent need for mobilisation of and contribution by richer countries to climate finance in view of the vulnerability and existential challenges faced

by Small Island Developing Countries (SIDS) and other developing countries, including Pakistan.

Recalling his campaign for debt relief, the prime minister advocated for debt relief until the end of the pandemic.

The prime minister was invited to the dialogue along with the presidents of Kenya, and Guyana, Secretary General UNCTAD and heads of other UN agencies, under the theme of “Building a more prosperous development path: Matching the scale of the moment”.

The conference is taking place in the backdrop of unprecedented economic, public health and social effects, induced and exacerbated by Covid-19 pandemic.

The federal government on Tuesday has called for the withdrawal of the Supreme Court’s order that suspended PML-N leader Ishaq Dar’s Senate membership.

An application by the government has been submitted, requesting the SC to allow it to file a petition challenging Dar’s election as a sen-

ator on a technocrat seat from Punjab in 2018.

According to sources, the application states that the Supreme Court suspended the directive of the PML-N leader’s election, which deprived the upper house of Parliament a public representative, as he cannot take oath.

The application includes that President Alvi has recently promulgated an ordinance which fixes a deadline of 60 days for elected rep-

resentatives to take oath.

An early hearing of the case has also been requested by the government, in a separate application.

It is pertinent to mention that in 2018, Ishaq Dar was elected as a senator on a technocrat seat from Punjab. He failed to take oath owing to to his stay in London.

The SC suspended his membership as he failed to appear in court on May 8, 2018.

Umer Sharif’s funeral to be held in Karachi tomorrow The body of veteran comedian Umer Sharif will reach Karachi on Wednesday morning through a Turkish airline’s flight.

Sharif’s widow Zareen Gazal will also reach the port city via the flight.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has made necessary arrangements at the airport’s cargo terminal. Upon arrival, the body will be shifted to a mortuary.

His funeral prayers will be held at Clifton park in the Wednesday afternoon and according to Sharif’s son Jawad, Maulana Bashir Farooqui will lead the prayers.

Later, he will be laid to rest at the Abdullah Shah Gazi graveyard.

Fans and followers have been visiting his residence in Gulshan-e-Iqbal to offer their condolences. Celebrities, politicians, and the late comedian’s fellow stage colleagues have expressed grief at his passing.

The veteran comedian had breathed his last in Germany on October 2. He was hospitalised with pneumonia

NEWS

03

Govt set to promulgate ordinance for NAB Chief continued from page 01 Sources added that the draft sent to the premier suggested that the term ‘non-extendable’ may be replaced with the term ‘extendable’ in the section 6 of the NAO to give extension to accountability watchdog. Interestingly, Law Minister Farogh Naseem had earlier rejected that his ministry did not prepare or finalise the draft for NAB Chief’s extension. “It was the premier prerogative to choose a person for the office of accountability watchdog chairman and I (Naseem) could only give my advice on the issue,” he said. He said that PM Imran will consider more than one name for the office of anticorruption watchdog chief and will choose whoever he deems fit for the job. Currently, according to the law under section 6b(i) of NAO, the NAB Chairman is appointed by the president in consultation with the leader of the house and the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly. But the PTI government is of the opinion that the extension is possible and for that consultation is not mandatory with the Opposition Leader in the National Assembly. Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Fawad Chauhdry, speaking on this issue said that the federal government will not consult Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif over the appointment of accountability watchdog’s new chief.

“If we consult Shehbaz it would be like asking a suspect who their interrogating officer should be,” Chaudhry said. Advisor to the Prime Minister on Parliamentary Affairs Babar Awan stated that law requires consultation with the opposition leader only when a new chairman is appointed and not in case of an extension because there is a difference between a new appointment and an extension. “The consultation with Opposition Leader Shehbaz Sharif is not possible because he was an accused in NAB cases,” he said.

While declaring the current NAB Chairman as the most controversial in the country’s history, Bilawal tweeted, “Even attempting an extension, for the most controversial chairman in history, would serve to prove our argument that NAB is an extension of IK’s government and not impartial.” Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Senior Vice President Maryam Nawaz was of the opinion that the government wants to keep the opposition out on NAB chief’s appointment issue as they will be indulging in nepotism in the matter, a reference to a recent appointment of federal information minister Fawad Chaudhry’s brother Faisal Chaudhry to a senior position in the prosecution wing of the accountability watchdog. Federal Minister for Information Fawad Chaudhry revealed on late Tuesday that the government has finalised the draft for the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman’s appointment, which will remove the “legal laguna” of consulting with the Opposition on picking a new chief or extending the incumbent’s tenure. The minister, addressing a post-cabinet press conference in Islamabad, said the new ordinance would empower the accountability courts, as the government wants to strengthen the systems, and not an individual. The information minister said it would have been better had the Opposition proposed a name, but unfortunately, they could not do so. He reiterated that the government would not hold talks with Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif, as he was a suspect in a NAB case. “Opposition should now start searching for a new Opposition leader,” Chaudhry concluded by adding that the matter related to the NAB chairman did not come under discussion during the federal cabinet’s meeting.

More than 17,000 dengue hotspots identified in Lahore in Nuremberg, where he had landed for a brief stopover to be later taken to the United States through an air ambulance for medical treatment. staff report

The Punjab Primary and Secondary Health Department on Tuesday revealed that dengue cases were massively increased in Lahore during the month of September. The total number of dengue cases in the city reached to 2,000 in September, out of which Defence reported 946 cases. staff report

Some girls return to high school in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province Girls have returned to some secondary schools in a northern province of Afghanistan, Taliban officials and teachers said on Tuesday, but they remain barred from classrooms in much of the country.

Dozens of girls in black, some wearing white headscarves and others with black face veils, sat in chairs waving Taliban flags, in a video posted by Taliban official Suhail Shaheen.

“Girls are going to high schools in Khan Abad, Kunduz Province,” tweeted Dohabased Shaheen, who has been nominated as the new Afghan government’s permanent representative to the United Nations.

But in Kabul, education ministry official Mohammad Abid said there had been no pol-

icy change from the Taliban’s interim central government, telling AFP on Tuesday: “High schools still remain closed for girls.”

The Taliban, notorious for their brutal and oppressive rule from 1996 to 2001, have faced international fury after effectively excluding women and girls from education and work across the country.

Seven weeks after seizing power and pledging a softer version of their previous regime, the Taliban have incrementally stripped away Afghans’ freedoms.

The Taliban permitted girls to attend primary school from the start, but have maintained that neither they nor their female teachers could return to secondary schools yet.

They have said girls can return to high

school once their security and strict gender segregation under sharia law can be ensured.

Last month, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a press conference that work was “continuing over the issues of education and work of women and girls”, saying schools will reopen “as soon as possible”, without providing a timeframe.

“More time is needed … instructions on how to deal with their work, their services and their education are needed because the system has changed and an Islamic system is in place.”

In the clip shared by Shaheen, a reporter for Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA) can be heard saying “schools are open for girls, and there are no restrictions”.

cmYK

A Taliban member is then interviewed on camera saying girls and boys from grades seven to 12 are at school in the district, adding “there are not any issues for anyone so far”.

A headteacher in Kunduz city, the provincial capital, told AFP that girls in a high school in the Imam Sahib district had gone back to classes.

Another teacher in Kunduz also said other high school girls had returned.

“Our principal informed the Directorate of Education at Kunduz and requested them for instructions,” the fourth-grade teacher told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“They replied that the ban on school

girls is only applicable to other provinces, and not Kunduz.”

The Taliban have also restricted women’s access to work.

The group imposed harsh laws during their last period of rule and this time round have said progress in women’s rights will be respected “within the framework of Islamic law”.

The revelation that some Afghan girls were returning to secondary school came on World Teachers’ Day Tuesday.

“For girls’ education, female teachers play an even more important role in Afghanistan,” the UN children’s agency’s country office tweeted, calling for the help, encouragement and protection of female teachers. agencies

Wednesday, 6 October, 2021

04 NEWS

KARACHI

In a fIrst, federal capItal to employ securIty drones ISLAMABAD

I

APP

SLAMABAD will get an air security unit this week with 12 drones to provide a faultless security system to citizens, Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed announced.

He said that to ensure foolproof security and control the crime rate, 1,000 additional personnel were being inducted to the Islamabad police and two locators were being purchased. But he did not elaborate further on the air security unit.

The minister said the government had decided to start a crackdown on those involved in issuing fake vaccination certificates or other illegal documents as there was a zerotolerance policy against these elements.

He said that with the renovation of the existing Food Park, a new food park was

being launched in Melody Market, while another food street will be opened at the Art and Craft Village in Shakarparian.

He said the ministry had fixed a fee of Rs10,000 for a one-day emergency passport service which would be issued within a day for those who were in need, while the ordinary fee will be Rs5,000 to Rs8,000.

He added that now citizens can get passports on an immediate basis within 24 hours.

Ahmed said there were several complaints about fake national identity cards on which the government was taking action and 136 officials involved in this matter had been suspended, while 90 inquiries and around 300 charge sheets were being issued.

He said a new amnesty scheme had been sent to the cabinet for approval for those having more than one passport or CNIC. He said the online visa system for Afghanistan replacing on-arrival visas will be started

within three weeks while there was also a plan to waive off $8 fees to facilitate people.

He added that since August 15 to date, around 20,000 people had entered Pakistan from Afghanistan while 6,000 people went to Afghanistan from Pakistan. The minister said around 10,000 people were foreigners who reached their countries from Afghanistan.

He said the government had started for the first time in the history of Pakistan the International Border Management System (IBMS) with 16 terminals at the Chaman border, while a further five terminals will be added.

He said Nadra mobile vans had been parked at the Torkham and Chaman areas to facilitate people at checkpoints. He said the government had been working on a policy to extend CNIC facilities for far-flung areas of Skardu.

First-ever joint Pakistan, China anti-terror drill under SCO concludes MONItORING REPORt The first-ever anti-terror exercise conducted in Pakistan under the ambit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS) con-

cluded on Monday with the participation of troops from Pakistan and China sharing their experiences to counter evolving threats.

The closing ceremony of the Joint Anti-Terrorist Exercise (JATE), 2021 was held at National Counter Terror-

plane escaped crash after bird strike at lahore airport LAHORE INP

A plane of a foreign airline was damaged after apparently being hit by a bird while taking off from Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore on Tuesday morning. Turkish Airlines TK-715 was on its way to Istanbul when the incident occurred. 359 passengers were on board. The pilot succeeded in landing the plane back at the airport safely. All the passengers were shifted to the international departure lounge. Later, the flight was deferred indefinitely and the passengers were told to go home, sources said. But the passengers refused to return and staged a protest in the lounge demanding the airline to accommodate them to hotels. The Airport Security Force called in reinforcements to stop the passengers from continuing the protest.

sacrifices of martyrs won’t go to waste: Gen Bajwa RAWALPINDI StAff RePoRt

Chief of the Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa said the sacrifices of the martyrs will not go to waste, the Inter-Services Public Relations said Tuesday. According to the military’s media wing, the army chief said this while conferring military awards to military men for their acts of gallantry during operations and meritorious services rendered to the nation during a ceremony held at General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. As many as 47 officers were awarded Sitara-i-Imtiaz (Military), while six officers, seven Junior Commissioned Officers (JCOs) and 12 soldiers, were awarded the Tamgha-iBasalat. Medals of Shuhada were received by their family members, said the ISPR. Paying rich tribute to the martyrs and Ghazis, the COAS said: “We owe [the] peace and stability of our country to the selfless devotion and sacrifices of these officers and soldiers who are our real heroes.” He said that there is no cause nobler than laying one’s life for the defence of their motherland and that sacrifices of the martyrs will not go in vain.

ism Centre in Pabbi tehsil of Nowshera district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the army said in a statement.

“The exercise focused on enhancing cooperation and cohesiveness in combating international terrorism,” the statement said.

Troops from China and Pakistan participated in the exercise and shared their experiences of capacity building and innovative approaches on emerging technologies being used to counter the evolving threats.

The two-week exercise had started on September 21, which was its second phase. In the first stage, the training part of the exercise was conducted in respective SCO member countries from July 26-31.

“During the two-week-long training, participating troops from China and Pakistan extensively practised various drills as part of the Joint Counter-Terrorism Operations from planning to conduct,” the army said.

The exercise included cordon and search, compound clearance, close quarter battle, rappelling from a helicopter, explosive handling and medical evacuation.

RATS, headquartered in Tashkent, is a permanent organ of the SCO which serves to promote the cooperation of member states against terrorism, separatism and extremism. The SCO is an economic and security bloc in which Pakistan and India were admitted as full members in 2017.

Qureshi, Kenya counterpart discuss afghanistan, region ISLAMABAD INP

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Tuesday discussed Afghanistan situation with his Kenya counterpart, Raychelle Awuor Omamo. In a telephonic conversation, both diplomats deliberated upon other matters of mutual interest. On the occasion, Qureshi said that Pakistan gives importance to its friendly ties with Kenya. Pakistan also wants to boost economic, trade and defence relations with Kenya, he added. The foreign minister has also requested Omamo to facilitate Pakistanis present in Nairobi to travel to Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan urges UN rights body to boost efforts to halt Islamophobia GENEVA APP

Pakistan has called for redoubling efforts to halt and reverse the rising tide of Islamophobia and all forms of discrimination, emphasising that “meaningful accountability of the perpetrators” must be ensured.

“Islamophobia is a dangerous form of contemporary racism, nurtured by decades of public rhetoric and policies against as well as stereotyping of Muslim communities and minorities,” Ambassador Khalil Hashmi, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, told the agency’s Human Rights Council.

In a separate speech on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Ambassador Hashmi rejected any effort to legislate discriminatory and targeted measures against Muslim individuals and communities under the garb of countering terrorism in certain Western and other countries.

The envoy made those speeches in the 47-member Council’s general debate on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance.

Speaking for Pakistan, Ambassador Hashmi said the most visible and

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consequential examples of Islamophobia were evident through the steady rise of extremist far-right Hindutva ideology in India that has targeted Muslims, Christians and Dalits, among others, through communal violence, deprivation of citizenship, attacks on religious sites, forced conversions, and prohibition of religious practices.

Violent attacks have resulted in the loss of life and economic damages, he said, voicing concern that many of the perpetrators of these crimes enjoy state patronage and protection, reinforcing a growing culture

of impunity.

Pointing out that the people under foreign occupation are most vulnerable to multiple forms of discrimination, Ambassador Hashmi said: “These disturbing trends are most vivid in occupied Jammu and Kashmir where the neo-colonialist regime is changing the demographic structure by converting Muslim majority into a minority and effacing their distinct cultural and religious identity, in clear violation and defiance of international law.”

Speaking on behalf of OIC, Ambassador Hashmi said the failure to

combat racial discrimination, xenophobia and religious intolerance not only threatens societies but also undermines aspirations for peaceful global coexistence.

“We strongly condemn and call for ending incitement to violence through denigration of revered religious personalities and symbols by way of caricature competitions of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), destruction of mosques; and ban on construction of minarets,” he said.

The OIC deplored defamation of any religion, saying using Islamophobia as a tool to boost political or media ratings, as evident in some socalled democracies, represents cumulatively a new form of institutionalized discrimination and deserves unqualified condemnation.

“The OIC registers its deep concerns over the ban on facial veils in some European countries,” Ambassador Hashmi said the recent European Court ruling that allows companies in the EU to legally bar female Muslim employees from wearing a headscarf is tantamount to normalising antiMuslim hatred and Islamophobia.

“These steps are further marginalizing Muslim women and depriving them of their fundamental rights and basic freedoms,” the OIC said.

Wednesday, 6 October, 2021

KARACHI

Pandora PaPerS: MInISterS Should reSIGn If Burden of Proof lIeS wIth theM: alI

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STAff RepORT

INISTER of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan on Tuesday said that the ministers and government officials named in the Pandora Papers should resign if the burden of proof lies with them. Talking to a news outlet, Ali said that the ministers could perform their duties until fixation of their responsibilities.

“Currently, the Pandora Papers are at the stage of initial investigations. If the burden of proof lies with the ministers, they cannot keep their portfolios morally,” he said. The minister said that Prime Minister Imran Khan has directed the FBR, FIA and NAB to investigate revelations made in the Pandora Papers.

He said that the NAB is an autonomous body and the government has referred the case to the anti-graft watchdog, adding that now it is up to the NAB to take up the case or not.

“We had no idea whose names are mentioned in the Pandora Papers,” the minister said, adding that most of the people named in the expose have already declared their assets and the ministers will not face any problem from the papers.

Ali said that the prime minister has formed a special commission to probe the assets and money trail of those named in the Pandora Papers.

To a question about the Panama Papers, he said that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif had not declared his London flats in his documents submitted to the government.

Situationer: Displaced Afghans face harsh challenges, eager to leave makeshifts KABUL Xinhua

Although the 20-year war in Afghanistan has ended, the pain has just begun for many displaced Afghans who are eager to return home with harsh challenges lying ahead.

“We were forcibly displaced by bloody fighting and clashes to get away from deaths. We escaped from a province famous for its wonderful sceneries and beautiful views and we lost homes and all our belongings. How can we return now?

We have no cash and we have no home appliances. We lost everything,” Mirza Mohammad, a displaced man from the northern Takhar province, told Xinhua.

“We are struggling to return home after three months of living on an open ground in the Shahr-e-Naw Park, but we are facing harsh economic woes and severe challenges,” he said.

“Our home is destroyed. We have no savings and cash to rebuild our home. If we are assisted to rebuild our house in Takhar, we will not stay in Kabul anymore,” said Mohammad, the only breadwinner of his nine-member household.

The security situation remained generally calm across Afghanistan since the Taliban’s takeover in mid-August.

However, the Islamic State-affiliated militants have staged a spate of bomb attacks in the capital Kabul and Jalalabad city, the capital of eastern Nangarhar

province in recent weeks.

Mohammad said Taliban authorities have announced that “the war is over,” but security was not enough, as the war and drought-affected all Afghans while they need work and employment, financial support and permanent shelter as well.

Mohammad said displaced families are still in fear of possible fighting between Taliban members and antiTaliban forces consisting of local fighters and security forces from the former government.

Mohammad, after his house was hit by mortar and destroyed in the northern Takhar province, fled war along with his family and experienced hard days facing food and clothing shortage for more than three months in Kabul.

In late September, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said that it has started the distribution of nonfood items and emergency shelter kits to assist hundreds of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in a number of Afghan provinces.

Aminullah, a displaced man from the Nejrab district of the eastern Kapisa province, said he received less from the aids. He said refugee affairs officials from the former administration repeatedly conducted surveys in IDP camps in Kabul, but some relief items disappeared before reaching the camps.

“If it was 1,000 afghani donations, we receive only 100 afghani of it. The remaining are distributed between

those in the head,” he said, pointing to the aid distributors who were cutting the aids for themselves.

The displaced families also include those Taliban bereaved families who were killed during the recent clashes and the war.

Binazir, the widow of a slain Taliban member in Takhar province, said she had fled war and drought along with 10 family members to Kabul to find shelter and food.

“My husband was a Taliban foot soldier who was killed during conflicts. I demand international organizations to help displaced people return to our province and rebuild our house,” she said.

The Ministry of Refugee Affairs of the Taliban caretaker government, together with a number of aid agencies have started the relocation of thousands of internally displaced families, mostly from makeshift shelters in Kabul to their native provinces.

More than 1,000 IDP families have reportedly returned to their homes from the Kabul Shahr-e-Naw park under the cooperation between various aid agencies recently.

“The return is voluntary. Each certain family returning to their province is given 10,000 afghani, about 110 US dollars,” Abdul Matin Rahimzai from the Ministry of Refugee Affairs recently told local media.

“The Ministry of Refugee Affairs in collaboration with international aid

agencies and UN organizations are working to support all IDPs to return from provincial capitals to their villages and home, as the security is fine and there are no clashes or fighting in rural areas across Afghanistan,” he said.

Since the start of the year, over 634,000 people have been forcibly displaced by conflict. About 5.5 million people have been displaced since 2012, according to official figures.

On Sunday, in the northern Badakhshan province, about 600 displaced Afghans returned to their villages from an Afghanistan-Tajikistan border area, according to provincial Governor Maulvi Amanuddin Mansoor.

The returnees had been displaced during clashes prior to the Taliban’s takeover in mid-August, Mansoor told reporters.

“They were living in a dire situation on open ground. They returned after provincial officials ensured their security,” he said.

Efforts are underway to help all displaced people return to their villages at an early date in the mountainous region as winter is approaching, the governor said.

According to United Nations officials, the UN would assist the Taliban administration on paving the way for international aid delivery and upholding the rights of Afghan women and girls at the time as basic services are lacking and food and other life-saving aid is about to run out.

Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine effectiveness drops after 6 months, study shows WASHINGTON ReuteRs

The effectiveness of the PfizerBioNTech SE vaccine in preventing infection by the coronavirus dropped to 47 percent from 88 percent six months after the second dose, according to data published on Monday that US health agencies considered when deciding on the need for booster shots.

The data, which was published in the Lancet medical journal, had been previously released in August ahead of peer review.

The analysis showed that the vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing hospitalization and death remained high at 90 percent for at least six months, even against the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus.

The data suggests that the drop is due to waning efficacy, rather than more contagious variants, researchers said.

Researchers from Pfizer and Kaiser Permanente studied electronic health records of roughly 3.4 million people who were members of Kaiser Permanente Southern California between

December 2020 — when the vaccine first became available — and August of 2021.

“Our variant-specific analysis clearly shows that the (Pfizer/BioNTech) vaccine is effective against all current variants of concern, including Delta,” said Luis Jodar, senior vice president and chief medical officer at Pfizer vaccines.

A potential limitation of the study was a lack of data on adherence to masking guidelines and occupations in the study population, which could have affected the frequency of testing and the likelihood of exposure to the virus.

Vaccine effectiveness against the Delta variant was 93 percent after the first month, declining to 53 percent after four months. Against other coronavirus variants, efficacy declined to 67 percent from 97 percent.

“To us, that suggests Delta is not an escape variant that is completely evading vaccine protection,” said study leader Sara Tartof with Kaiser Permanente Southern California’s Department of Research & Evaluation.

“If it was, we would probably not have seen high protection after

vaccination, because vaccination would not be working in that case. It would start low, and stay low.”

Testing for variants is more likely to fail in vaccinated individuals, which could lead to overestimation of variantspecific effectiveness in the study, the authors cautioned.

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The US Food and Drug Administration has authorized the use of a booster dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for older adults and some Americans at high risk of getting infected. Scientists have called for more data on whether boosters should be recommended for all.

NEWS

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Social media abuzz with birthday wishes for PM Imran STAff RepORT Scores of people on Tuesday wished Prime Minister Imran Khan on social media for his 69th birthday.

Social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, were abuzz with wishes for the prime minister as HappyBirthdayPMIK quickly became one of the top trends in the country. The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) wished Imran by terming him as a match-winning all-rounder and a world cup-winning captain. The PCB also shared a post to recall the records broken by the PM during his days as a cricketer. It wrote on Twitter, “3,807 runs and 362 wickets in Tests, 3,709 runs and 182 wickets in ODIs, the third leading wicket-taker for Pakistan in Tests.”

Many social media users shared messages of good health, happiness and long life of the incumbent premier, who is followed by millions of fans across all social media accounts. Born on October 5, 1952 in Lahore, Imran secured his education from prestigious educational institutions such as the Aitchison College, the Royal Grammar School and the Oxford University. He made his first-class cricket debut at the age of 16 in Lahore. He spearheaded the Pakistani fast-bowling attack in the 1980s. The greatest triumph of his life came in 1992, when he won the One-Day International Cricket World Cup for Pakistan in Australia. He launched his own political party, PTI, in the 1990s, which came second in the 2013 general elections and won most seats in the 2018 general elections.

Saudi naval chief, Gen Bajwa discuss cooperation, region

RAWALpINDI staff RepoRt

Vice Admiral Fahd bin Abdullah Al-Ghufaili, the commander of the Royal Saudi Naval Forces, called on Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa at GHQ Tuesday. During the meeting, matters of mutual interest, regional security situation and cooperation in military and maritime domains were discussed, an Inter-Services Public Relations statement said. Gen Bajwa reiterated that both countries share a history of cordial relations and a deep-rooted spirit of brotherhood which has transformed into an enduring partnership. The security situation in Afghanistan and its bearing on regional peace and stability also came under discussion. Al-Ghufaili appreciated Pakistan’s role in the Afghanistan situation, especially the assistance in successful evacuation operations and pledged to continue working with Pakistan for regional peace. Both sides assured to further expand Pakistan-Saudi defence and security cooperation.

MEETING WITH PAKISTAN COUNTERPART: Al-Ghufaili also called on his Pakistan counterpart, Admiral Amjad Khan Niazi, at Naval Headquarters. He was received by Niazi upon arrival at the premises, said a Pakistan Navy media statement. A smart contingent of the Pakistan Navy presented a guard of honour to Al-Ghufaili.

He was then introduced to Principal Staff Officers at NHQ. In his meeting with Niazi at his office, AlGhufaili discussed professional matters and bilateral naval collaborations. Various avenues of cooperation between the two armies were focused on in the meeting. A briefing on the role and capabilities of the Pakistan Navy was also given to the visiting dignitary. Niazi also highlighted the Pakistan Navy’s commitment and efforts for ensuring maritime security and stability in the region including its initiative of Regional Maritime Security Patrols (RMSP). Al-Ghufaili appreciated and acknowledged the Pakistan Navy’s efforts and commitments in support of collaborative maritime security in the region. Both the dignitaries agreed to further enhance mutual interaction in diverse fields of training, mutual visits and defence collaboration. The visit is expected to strengthen the bilateral collaboration between the two navies.

Wednesday, 6 October, 2021

06 COMMENT

Imperialist ways of the USA

Amnesty for good Taliban Making policy behind closed doors

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EsPitE the announcement of a 20 day-ceasefire on Friday by one of the terrorist groups in north waziristan, Pakistan army personnel continue to be under attack in the district. as if cocking a snook at the announcement, five security personnel were martyred soon after the proclamation when their vehicle was attacked in north waziristan. on wednesday another soldier lost his life when terrorists attacked a checkpost manned by security forces in another part of the tribal district. this raises questions about the soundness of the decision to give an amnesty. the Prime Minister has heartlessly referred to recent killings as “just a spate of attacks”. interestingly, interior Minister sh Rashid, who is supposed to play a key role in talks of the sort, has expressed ignorance of any dialogue with the ttP. according to him decisions on such matters were being taken “at the highest level” by the prime minister. since its appearance in 2007, the ttP has on its hands the blood of thousands of innocent Pakistanis. it has attacked mosques, mausoleums, imambargahs, courts, schools and bazars. it has killed children, old men and women. it has shot lawyers, politicians, soldiers and high ranking military officers. it would be an injustice to the martyrs if a handful of people were to decide on their own to offer amnesty to a gang of killers. it is ironical to do this in the presence of the national action Plan, the national Counter terrorism authority (naCta), antiterrorism laws and anti-terrorist courts. what is more, it will send a message to violent groups with sectarian, linguistic or ethnic agendas that they too can get amnesty by holding the state hostage. the offer of amnesty is an admission that the militants are now in a position of strength, forcing the state to enter into talks with them. this will also encourage extremist networks that want to impose their narrow and arbitrary interpretation of religion on the majority of Pakistanis who follow a moderate interpretation of islam. the least one expects from the government is to take the issue for debate in Parliament instead of formulating a policy on a highly sensitive issue rife with serious implications behind closed doors.

Trying to shift the blame for its own failures

Malik MuhaMMad ashraf

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otwithstanding the fact that Pakistan, as an ally of the Usa in the war on terror, sacrificed nearly 80,000 lives and sustained a loss of $150 billion to its economy; played a facilitating role in signing a peace deal between the Usa and the taliban as well as nudging the commencement of intra-afghan dialogue which unfortunately remained inconclusive due to the turn of events in afghanistan spurred by the un-imagined pull-out of Us and nato forces, the Usa has been blaming, and continues to blame, Pakistan for duplicitous behaviour. From the vibes emanating from the Usa in the aftermath of the taliban takeover of afghanistan it is abundantly evident that attempts are being made to hold Pakistan responsible for Us failure in that country. a Bill has been moved in the Us senate by some Republican senators seeking assessments and imposition of sanctions on taliban, the state and non-state actors, including the government of Pakistan, which during 2001-2020 provided sanctuaries to the former, extended financial support, intelligence support, logistic and medical support, training, equipment and tactical support, operational or strategic directions as well as facilitating the 2021 offensive of the taliban that toppled the afghan government and the taliban offensive in Panjshir Valley in september 2021. the tone and tenor of the draft explicitly suggests that the movers of the Bill entertain the belief that the Us defeat in afghanistan and its humiliating exit from that country was a consequence of the afore-

Economic woes Nightmarish doubling of the trade deficit

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EsPitE exports growing 28 percent year-onyear in september, Pakistan’s trade deficit remains worryingly wide and is expected to increase exponentially as imports continue to outpace exports. with exports standing at $6.96 billion against imports of $18.63 billion this past quarter, the gap is significant. the trade deficit having doubled in the first quarter for FY 2021-22 over last year is a horrifying statistic that should worry the country’s economic managers. the current account deficit too has experienced a similar increase, 85 percent in august over the previous month, which has made it near impossible for the state Bank of Pakistan (sBP) to stay within its predicted range of 2 to 3 percent of gdP. the rupee has lost close to Rs 20 since May, with no indication of reversal in the near future. an exponential increase in dollar demand by importers and speculative investors, smuggling of cash dollars to afghanistan of around $15 million daily and sBP reluctance to fully intervene in the market, have all contributed to the rupee’s fall. this, coupled with rising international commodity prices, has made energy imports too expensive. with negotiations to restart the iMF’s suspended $6 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) around the corner, petrol prices were hiked by Rs 4 a litre last week, while the power tariff went up Rs 1.65 per unit on onday. Expectedly, inflation has skyrocketed to 9 percent in september, much of which is imported. the sBP had been implementing an expansionary monetary policy to generate economic activity, overheating the economy, forcing monetary policy tightening. the discount rate was increased by 25 basis points last month and reportedly the sBP had no choice but to intervene in the interbank market to calm the rupee when it first started testing the 170 level. apart from making credit more expensive, a revised car leasing policy has been introduced to reduce the volume of imported vehicles. Recovery from here on out will be slow and long. the Pti government has simply been reacting to economic events and problems as and when they arise for the past three years rather than implementing tough structural reforms that would address underlying problems in the economy. going forward, unless such a strategy is formulated and followed through properly, any economic growth will be difficult to achieve and maintain for too long as its foundations will be fundamentally flawed and weak.

Washington Watch dr JaMes J Zogby

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quarter century ago, when the two-state solution was still possible and we were optimistic that there was a path to get there, i was co-chairing Builders for Peace (BfP), a post-oslo project launched by then Vice President al gore. it was created to support the ongoing peace process by promoting economic development and employment in the occupied Palestinian lands. as we repeatedly made clear, our goal was not to substitute economic progress for peace, but to create the prosperity and hope needed to sustain the process until the “final status negotiations” that were to occur at the end of a five-year transitional period. after frequent trips to the region in those early years after oslo, i became deeply concerned that things were not going well. new hardships were being created for Palestinians by the closures and expanded checkpoints israel put in place after a Jewish extremist massacred Palestinians at al-ibrahim Mosque. the brutal and demeaning behaviour exhibited by israeli soldiers at checkpoints and in hebron were deepening animosity. Us businesses that had initially expressed interest in investing in gaza or the west Bank gave up after realizing that israelis

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Yousaf Nizami M. A. Niazi

Umar Aziz

Joint Editor

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The dilemma is that Pakistan cannot afford a rupture in relations with a superpower like the USA. In the conduct of foreign relations, engagement is the name of the game.

Malik Muhammad Ashraf is an academic. He can be contacted at: ashpak10@gmail.com.

Neglect, Cynicism, and Nice But Too Late

Dedicated to the legacy of late Hameed Nizami

Editor Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad

mentioned support extended to the taliban during the 20 years war, and therefore it was imperative to clamp sanctions on them, including Pakistan, for the alleged role that they played in orchestrating Us failure in afghanistan. it undoubtedly reflects the ways of an imperialist power and an unfriendly ally. though the bill has not yet become a law it has surely triggered a debate on the same lines. the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign affairs, rejecting the reference to Pakistan in the proposed Bill, rightly pointed out “the legislation includes references to Pakistan which are completely unwarranted and inconsistent with the spirit of Pakistan-Us cooperation on afghanistan since 2001, including facilitation of the afghan peace process and during the recent evacuations of american and other nationals from afghanistan. Pakistan has consistently maintained that there was no military solution to the conflict in afghanistan. similarly, a coercive approach will not work and the only way to achieve long term sustainable peace in afghanistan is through engagement and dialogue. Moreover, sustained security cooperation between Pakistan and the United states would remain critical in dealing with any future terrorist threat in the region. such proposed legislative measures are, therefore, uncalled for and counterproductive.” the outcome of the 20-year war in afghanistan has vindicated Pakistan’s viewpoint that there was no military solution to the afghan conflict and dialogue was the only way forward. Pakistan is also right in saying that even in the aftermath of taliban gaining control of afghanistan, the Us and world community need to engage with and support them in fulfilling the promises that they have made. in regards to preventing threats from the terrorist entities in the future, as contended by the spokesman of the Foreign office Usa and Pakistan will need to maintain sustained security cooperation. the Usa came to afghanistan with the explicit objective of eliminating the scourge of terrorism. now that an opportunity has emerged to complete that task which can be accomplished with the cooperation of taliban and Pakistan, thinking in terms of punishing them with sanctions would destroy all hopes of peace and stability in the region

and create a congenial atmosphere for the terrorist entities to re-emerge and regroup. the americans are surely running a great risk by employing coercive methods, a ploy which stems from their bruised ego from the military defeat in afghanistan. they must act prudently and rationally, though history suggests otherwise. as far as relations between the Usa and Pakistan are concerned they never reflected the bonds that exist between allies. although Pakistan joined sEato and CEnto in the early 1950s, the Usa did not help its ally when it was attacked by india in 1965 and instead stopped supply of military hardware to her. it imperiled Pakistan’s security through the U2 incident. it helped india start its nuclear programme but tried everything within its power to stop Pakistan from going nuclear to address its security concerns viz-a-viz india. after the withdrawal of soviet forces from afghanistan, it pulled out immediately leaving Pakistan to face the consequences. it signed a Civil nuclear agreement with india in contravention of nPt rules and protocols of the nsg, paying no heed to Pakistan’s security concerns. it is also leading a campaign to make india permanent member of the Un security Council which can have far reaching consequences for the south asian region, particularly in undermining Pakistan’s security interests and jeopardizing settlement of the Kashmir issue in conformity with Un resolutions. it is also trying to sabotage CPEC in collaboration with india; a project of tremendous transformational dimensions in economic terms for Pakistan and the region. and now after enjoying unqualified support from Pakistan in the war on terror and its facilitating role in the peace deal, it is trying to make Pakistan a scapegoat for its failures in afghanistan. the dilemma is that Pakistan cannot afford a rupture in relations with a superpower like the Usa. in the conduct of foreign relations, engagement is the name of the game. Pakistan however needs to recalibrate its relations with the Usa keeping in view its long-term strategic, economic and geopolitical interests. the guiding principle in this regard should be that we belong to this region and our strategic, economic and security interests are inextricably linked to it.

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weren’t interested in allowing Palestinians to freely import raw materials or export finished products. nor were the israelis allowing Palestinians access to resources in the territories. Meanwhile, settlement expansion was continuing at a rapid pace. at one point, i met President Clinton and he asked me how Builders was progressing. i told him that honestly we weren’t doing well at all. after relaying my observations and concerns to him, i said, “since oslo, Palestinians have become poorer, less employed, less free, and have lost more land to settlements. they aren’t experiencing the benefits of peace and are losing hope.” what troubled me most, i told the President, was that his negotiators were ignoring our entreaties to take seriously these israeli-imposed impediments to Palestinian prosperity and freedom. they saw our work as a nuisance and a distraction from their “important peace negotiations.” if this mindset of ignoring Palestinian rights and the impediments being created by the israelis continued, i warned Clinton, Palestinians would lose trust in us, the process, and the hope that they would ever be free of the occupation. President Clinton was upset by my report and asked me to write him a detailed memo— which i did. nothing, however, was done to correct this downward spiraling trajectory— which has continued until the present day. i have been prompted to write these reflections because of two recent developments. the first is a discussion taking place in israel following the meeting between israel’s defense Minister Benny gantz and Pa President Mahmoud abbas, followed by reports of Prime Minister naftali Bennett’s plan to “shrink the conflict” by offering economic palliatives to improve life for Palestinians under occupation. instead of the oslo formula of “land for peace” the “new” idea (actually, it’s an old idea) is to exchange “economic benefits for security.” this turns the initial logic of the peace process upside down. instead of ending the occupation, the Bennett/gantz proposition is to make life easier for Palestinians so they will accept its continuation. “shrinking the occupation” is merely a cynical ploy to mask israel’s consolidating control over the lands occupied in 1967. the second development that prompted me to re-

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call what the Usa failed to do in the post-oslo period is a bil — the “two-state solution act” (tssa)— being introduced by a number progressive members of Congress. it is difficult to find fault with much of what’s in tssa, other than the fact that what it proposes is 25 years too late to make a difference. it calls for conditioning Us aid to israel in order to stop settlement expansion (which tssa affirms are illegal) and violations of Palestinian human rights. these are all well-intentioned gestures, but as the saying goes, proposing them now is like “closing the barn door after the horses have all escaped.” tssa ignores the ugly realities that have been created by decades of Us neglect that have allowed israel to run roughshod over the occupied lands resulting in what human Rights watch calls an apartheid regime. there are well over 650,000 israelis living in strategically located west Bank settlements. they are connected by Jewish-only highways and protected by checkpoints that carve the territory into pieces. the tssa may make its sponsors feel good that they’ve taken a principled stand for human rights, and i salute their courage — since i know pro-israeli groups will make every effort to punish them. at the same time, i must also acknowledge the sad truth that a viable twostate solution is no longer possible given the immense settler presence in the occupied lands— placed in locations specifically designated to make it impossible to allow for an independent viable Palestinian state. given that reality, it’s pointless to try to give a transfusion to a cadaver that’s been eaten up by cancer. and so, 25 years after i wrote my memo to Clinton, we have arrived at this sorry state of affairs. israel, acting with impunity born of the neglect of Palestinian rights and the enabling hand of successive Us Presidents and Congresses, is cynically proposing to make Palestinian life better as it consolidates its hold over the occupied lands. Meanwhile, some members of Congress, thinking they are doing the right thing, are proposing a bill (that will never pass) that tries to save the two-state solution (that is beyond saving). it’s all both sad and maddening — because it didn’t have to be this way.

The writer is President of the Arab American Institute

Email: editorial@pakistantoday.com.pk

Wednesday, 6 October, 2021

COMMENT 07 Editor’s mail Send your letters to: Letters to Editor, Pakistan today, 4-Shaarey Fatima Jinnah, Lahore, Pakistan.

E-mail: letters@pakistantoday.com.pk Letters should be addressed to Pakistan today exclusively

Misunderstanding Islam not a single religion on the planet supports brutality, bad form and contempt against the presence of various cultures and human advancement. thus, islam is one of the quick scattering religion which consistently confers the lessons of affection and harmony. islam is the main religion that elevates the norm of humankind and guarantees correspondence. sadly, the current world delineates the helpless picture of islam. From pre 9/11 to post 9/11 islam has been accused for obliteration and springing up dread mentality on the planet. Be that as it may, the truth of the matter is that fear based oppression knows no religion. as of late, islam announced outrageous religion for stopping the development of hindu sanctuary in islamabad. Pakistan was made as islamic state and it is impermissible in islamic state to fabricate a sanctuary by the costs of Muslims. now from over the world, turkey president, tayyab Erdogon is being censured for remodeling hagia sophia as a mosque inside his domain. islam isn’t as inflexible as world consider. spreading love, guaranteeing harmony and controling prejudice are the welcoming standards of islam.

HAYA FATIMA KARACHI

Pakistan: The handy Afghan scapegoat?

Resurrecting the nuclear skeleton

aMJed Jaaved

T

hE portents are that the Usa has once again found a convenient scapegoat to blame for the afghan debacle. wow, the Us generals have said. “we need to fully examine the role of Pakistan sanctuary.” they emphasised “the need to probe how the taliban withstood Us military pressure for 20 years”. Claiming that the taliban was and remains a terrorist organisation, top Us general gen Mark Milley said: “it remains to be seen whether or not the taliban can consolidate power or if the country will further fracture into civil war.” general Milley told the senate armed services Committee, “we estimated an accelerated withdrawal would increase risks of regional instability, the security of Pakistan and its nuclear arsenals”. he declined to discuss more on concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and the potential that they could fall into the hands of terrorists. he emphasised the need to probe how the taliban withstood Us military pressure for 20 years. they implied that it was Pakistan’s legerdemain that helped the taliban carry the day. the Pakistan bashing is an outcome of india’s pressure which wants quid pro quo for participation in the QUad. the Usa wants to return to the good old days when Pakistan provided vital air corridors to bomb afghanistan. the Pakistan bashing has a familiar pattern. after a lull, they take out the old skeleton of nuclear proliferation and whip it into the international media. india is always in the forefront of this orchestrated campaign.

For instance, Press trust of india on 10 January 2006 reported “Pakistan continues to be the hub of nuclear black-market involved in trading surplus goods to other countries despite the uncovering of the proliferation network of disgraced former top scientist a Q Khan two years ago, a report said today citing European intelligence sources. the Khan network may not have been completely put out of action, an unnamed administration official has been quoted as saying by the Washington Times.). …”Khan has been pushed aside, but other, younger people have taken over,” david albright, a nuclear analyst tracking the a.Q. Khan network at the institute of science and international security told the daily. European intelligence agencies have come to the conclusion that Pakistan continues to pro-

cure, including from Europe, far beyond its needs”. it is believed that there are as many as 20 Pakistani government offices, laboratories, companies and trading organisations that are actively involved in the procurement effort with the end users being front companies of Pakistan atomic Energy Commission or the trading firms that are active on behalf of islamabad. “in developing its nuclear installations, Pakistan depended on deliveries of equipment from abroad, particularly from Europe,” according to an intelligence assessment of July 2005, which noted that there have been attempts since 2004 at procurement with the range of materials bought going ‘clearly beyond’ Pakistani requirement for spare parts.” it is unfortunate that Pakistan is unduly chastised in media. all countries procure dual-use equipment through secret means. india for instance: sidney Emery Jr, chief executive of the Us company, Mts systems Corp, confirmed that his company, along with five other companies, was investigated by Us government agencies for possible violation of federal export laws. the charge against the Mts Corporation and five other companies was that they illegally sold high-tech material-testing equipment to Bhabha atomic Research Centre and indira gandhi Centre for atomic Research. the equipment, employing hydraulic pressure, was designed for nuclear weapons research. in several other cases indians have been arrested and punished in the Usa for attempting to procure dual-use equipment for export to india. international institute of strategic studies (iiss) published a ‘research’ dossier titled Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan, A. Q. Khan and the Rise of Proliferation Networks. the information in the dossier is largely old wine in new bottles. still, there are silver linings in the dossier. the title of the dossier suggests that it is exclusively focused on dr Qadeer. however, it throws light on bomb espionage activities of several other countries, including india. the dossier is accompanied with a prefatory statement by dr Johan Chipman, director general of the iiss. this statement gives a fair opinion of Pakistan’s motivation to go nuclear. dr Chipman points out, ‘Pakistan’s motivation to acquire nuclear weapons was sparked in large part by competition with india. .. the major boost [to Pakistan’s weapons programme] came in december 1971 after Pakistan’s traumatic defeat by india. Embitterment over the loss of East Pakistan also provided a psychological motivation to dr a.Q. Khan offers his services to his home country by stealing enrichment technology from his workplace in the netherlands. with that boost, it took Pakistan only ten years to reach the point where it could produce a nuclear weapon, despite the withdrawal of nuclear assistance from western countries’. despite its pro-india bias, the dossier admits ‘Khan may have acted largely on his own volition, for his own profit’. ‘Khan’s nuclear activities were largely unsupervised by Pakistani governmental authorities and his orders of many more components, than Pakistan’s own enrichment programme required, apparently went undetected’. ‘Most of Khan’s dealings were carried on his own initiative’ (dg, iiss, press statement dated may 2, 2007). the dossier reflects well on Pakistan’s ef-

forts to tighten its nuclear security and safety controls _ the dossier mentions ‘Many of Pakistan’s internal reforms since 2001, and then following Khan’s confession and confinement to house arrest in 2004, have been transparent and appear to have worked well. a robust commandand-control system is now in place to protect Pakistan’s nuclear assets from diversion, theft and accidental misuse. a.Q. Khan and his known cohorts are out of business’. the dossier also notes that ‘a new defence policy was adopted in March 2004. this policy reportedly intended to “further strengthen institutionalization of control of strategic assets”, and “turn all policies and decisions from an invisible secrecy into solid documentary form following the recent proliferation scandal”. the dossier realises dangerous implications of the 123 agreement (revised version on anvil) for Pakistan. Extract: ‘Fears that the india-Us nuclear cooperation agreement will free up indian domestic uranium for additional weapons purposes gives Pakistan an additional motivation to continue to produce weapons-grade fissile material of its own. Pakistan has resisted any nonproliferation regimes that it believes would give a ‘perpetual edge’ to india. this is one reason Pakistan has been the country most resistant to negotiating a fissile material cut-off treaty’. aside from its Pakistan-bashing title, the dossier observes ‘Pakistan was not the only country to evade nuclear export controls to further a covert nuclear weapons programme (page 7). ‘almost all of the countries that have pursued nuclear weapons programmes obtained at least some of the necessary technologies, tools and materials from suppliers in other countries. Even the Usa (which detonated the first nuclear weapon in 1945) utilised refugees and other European scientists for the Manhattan Project and the subsequent development of its nascent nuclear arsenal. the UssR (which first tested an atomic bomb in 1949) acquired its technological foundations through espionage. the UK (1952) received a technological boost through its involvement in the Manhattan Project. France (1960) discovered the secret solvent for plutonium reprocessing by combing through opensource Us literature. China (1964) received extensive technical assistance from the UssR’.

From the dossier, one gets to know that asher Karni, an israeli businessman, and alfred hempel, an ex-nazi who died in 1989, are cofathers of india’s ‘indigenous’ bombs. hempel, a german nuclear entrepreneur, helped india overcome difficulties of heavy-water shortage by organising illicit delivery of a consignment of over 250 tonnes of heavy water to india’s Madras-i reactor, via China, norway and the UssR. the duo also arranged transfers to india of sensitive nuclear components. one unmistakable conclusion from the dossier is that Pakistan’s motivation to go nuclear was well founded. in view of restrictions on nuclear exports, Pakistan did what other countries did to make its bomb.

Yet, Pakistan should prepare for a long period of nuclear bashing.

The writer is a freelance journalist, has served in the Pakistan government for 39 years and holds degrees in economics, business administration, and law. He can be reached at amjedjaaved@gmail.com

Private schools fees thE private sectors are going to demand for the fees after reopening the institutions. owing to Covid-19 there was lockdown and it almost took about 7 months to take off everything smoothly and slowly. in turbat, there were not even online classes due to lack of internet. But, private sectors will still ask for fees as now after 7 months of closure they can face bankruptcy. despite being the richest province in Pakistan, Balochistan is quite poor and people over here face a lot of hardships due to poverty. Parents work day in day out, so there children can get education but demanding for couple of months fees together despite of teaching nothing can push them to drop-out their children. henceforth, i request the private sectors to lessen their fees as everyone is already in lose due to closure of every business.

ZAHRA BAIG HOTH TURBAT

Extinction of wildlife thE increasing rate of extinction of wildlife is a matter of worry for us. as animals have been very useful to human for ages. they balance our environment and are the beauties of nature. its really dissapointing that humen are hunting them for fun or money. according to in defense of animals, over 200 million animals are reported killed by hunters every year. approximately 30,000 species per year about three per hour are being driven to extinction. over 90 species of animals facing extinction in Pakistan: including 50 mammals, 27 birds and 17 reptiles. we need to raise awareness about endangered species.

Pakistan is a member of the world organisation on animal health she must enforce laws relating to animal welfare. the government must also formulate a national policy on animal protection and welfare.

AFROZ MJ TURBAT

Corona tests for teachers PUnJaB school Education Minister dr. Muraad in his latest press Conference which was held at QaEd said , “ it is mandatory for all school teachers to conduct Corona test before joining the schools which will reopen on 15th september.”

Minister must be acknowledged that govt. school teachers are the most vulnerable community of civil servants. their salaries are very low. they cannot afford huge fee of Corona test. govt has already denied to increase salaries of its employees in budget 2020-2021 and has been deducting conveyance allowance from teachers salaries since march 2020. the entire teacher community is worried on latest announcement of Minister. did all others govt. employees joine their respective offices after conducting Corona test? if it is necessary to curb the spread of this deadly virus then govt should pay the fee of this test or sanction “ corona test fee allowance “ in upcoming pay so the teachers can conduct their tests before joining the school again.

Minister should review his decision.

MAHTAB AlI KHAn BAHAwAlnAGAR

Keeping informed nEwsPaPER which was firstly introduced in 16 century,in China,has become a supreme part in every individual’s life in the present age. however, it is not wrong to say that newspaper is a store house of knowledge. it provides current newses related the country and the world. Further, it gives information about the governmental programs and it’s works for the country. newspaper reading informs one about the latest science discoveries and technological changes about many industries. Besides, now-a-days there are some pages in newspapers which are particularly printed for students. it not only acquaints them with all important happenings , but also supplies various knowledge about different subjects. newspapers have removed the global distance between the countries. in fact, one part of the world has been linked up with another through newspapers. in the modern world newspapers are the part of civilization and a product to facilitate human beings. so,we must accept the habit of reading newspaper regularly.

FARAHnAZ FAROOq AHMEd TURBAT

Wednesday, 6 October, 2021

08 WORLD VIEW

History HasN’t eNded FUKUYAMA, IN SHORT, WAS A TRUE QUACK: HE COULDN’T DIAGNOSE; PRESCRIBED FALSE REMEDIES, AND EVEN HELPED MAKE THE WELL SICK

CrItIC MaGazInE

‘‘t

david StarkEy

He ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

J. M. Keynes’s celebrated words have been ringing through my head as, like everybody else, I’ve followed the astonishing events in Afghanistan. For our defeat is much more than a military failure. It also represents a complete failure of policy and, above all, the failure — likewise complete and absolute — of the body of ideas which have driven Western policy for the last 30 years. The epitome of all of this is Tony Blair: he of the staring eyes and messianic self-belief. Which is why, post the fall of Kabul, he’s popping up everywhere to insist, like a political edith Piaf, that he regrets nothing: not Iraq, not Afghanistan, not immigration, not anything, for he knew that he was “on the right side of History” and to think anything else is “imbecilic”.

Which brings us back to Keynes: “Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some aca-

demic scribbler of a few years back.” In Blair’s case, the “frenzy” is all his own; the “academic scribbler” is Francis Fukuyama; and the “few years back” the summer of 1989 when, in the wake of glasnost and the impending collapse of Soviet Communism, Fukuyama published his celebrated essay The end of History?

The phrase is taken from the German Idealist philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. For Hegel, history was a battle of ideas/ideals (as, rather more ironically, it was for Keynes). This meant, Hegel declared, that history had ended in the real battle at Jena in 1806, with the victory of napoleon, “The World Spirit on Horseback”, the defeat of the Prussian absolute monarchy and the triumph of the French revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality.

But Hegel, who was neither a liberal nor a democrat, wasn’t talking about political freedom but rather the realisation of the spiritual freedom first adumbrated by Christ in the phrase “whose service is perfect freedom”. The man who brought all this down to earth, as it were, was Hegel’s disciple, the twentieth-century Franco-russian intellectual, Alexandre Kojève. Kojève offered a straightforward political reading of Hegel.

The goal of history now became the realisation not of spiritual but political freedom.

And it was this, Kojève claimed, which had been achieved by the American and French revolutions and cemented by the battle of Jena.

The result was what Kojève called the “universal homogenous state”. This, in

Fukuyama’s summary, “is liberal insofar as it recognises and protects through a system of law man’s universal right to freedom, and democratic in so far as it exists only with the consent of the governed”. It also, since it is invariably associated with free-market capitalism, satisfies all human wants.

The result is everything — and nothing.

Since every want is satisfied, there is nothing to fight about, either within states or between them. There is no history since it is finished and no philosophy either since everything is understood. The only activity is economic and that is handled by experts.

It sounds like a somewhat idealised picture of the eU (or Common Market, as it then was). Which indeed Kojève saw as the ultimate human community. Unlike most intellectuals, he practised what he preached, ceasing to teach and becoming a Brussels bureaucrat until his death in 1968.

Fukuyama’s only substantial addition to Kojève was to declare that history had ended (again) in 1989 with glasnost and the impending collapse of communism, the only serious ideological rival to the “universal homogenous state”, aka liberal democracy.

This means of course that history has ended — err — twice.

Here it’s worth recalling the verdict of John Lingard, Hegel’s contemporary and the author of the first history of england to be written from original sources. Philosophers of history, Lingard declared, were neither philosophers nor historians. Instead they were mere “literary empirics”. In other words, they were charlatans.

This is too severe. The best “philosophic” historians are thinkers of the calibre of Hume, Gibbon and Hegel himself. Their works are like good lectures. They make you think about history in new ways. But then of course, to be of any use, these new ideas need to be subjected to Lingard’s methods and tested against the evidence.

Fukuyama and Kojève, on the other hand, are mere epigones. They fail the “lecture” test because they close down ideas rather than open them up; they cannot survive the slightest contact with the evidence and, above all, they are wilfully unhistorical.

The end of History? is history without history. And history — “the whirligig of time” — has had “its revenges”.

These have come both from within liberal democracy and without. For the “universal homogenous state” has turned out to be much less universal than Fukuyama and Kojève predicted and far less homogenous too.

Far from satisfying all human needs, it has proved only that Christ was right when he said “man shall not live by bread alone”.

God may be dead but the religious reflex isn’t and extinction rebellion, with its proclamation that “The end of the World is nigh”, is flagellant millenarianism in environmental fancy dress. even sillier, it transpires, was the claim that the liberal democratic state was uniquely stable and impervious to change since its “basic principles … could not be improved upon”. on the contrary, liberalism is a revolutionary doctrine and, like all revolutions,

Hunter Biden and the art of corruption IT IS GENIUS-LEVEL CORRUPTION, AN ETHICAL NIGHTMARE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE, AND A MASTERPIECE OF CONGRESSIONAL AND MEDIA DERELICTION OF DUTY GatEstonE InstItutE

P

PEtEr SchwEizEr

reSIdenT Joe Biden's son, Hunter, has now plunged into the world of international art, with a new York gallery owner brokering art sales for the rare, emerging talent. Apparently, Hunter's paintings might sell for as much as $500,000 to various anonymous aficionados, according to Hunter's new art dealer, Georges Bergès.

It is the latest in a string of scams Hunter Biden has undertaken. First, it was his being named, with no expertise whatsoever in either Ukraine or the oil and gas business, to the board of directors of Burisma, a Ukrainian oil and gas company under investigation for fraud. Then it was the deluxe payday in 2012 for his rosemont-Seneca real estate investment partnership, which was bankrolled to the tune of more than $1.5 billion by Chinese investors with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Hunter had little or no experience in private equity, either, but he had just arrived in Beijing aboard Air Force Two with his father the Vice President, just two weeks before that enormous deal was announced. And now, once again with no real experience or any formal training in art, Hunter has become an artiste, whose dabblings with collages and mixed-media creations might command top-dollar from international collectors. one might wonder: Is he any good?

Chris Cilizza of Cnn asked that of Sebastian Smee, the Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic, who likened what he saw to "a cafe painter." "By which I mean, you see a certain kind of art in coffee shops, and some of it is oK and a lot of it is bad, and sometimes it's sur-

prisingly good. But you wouldn't, unless you were related to the artist, spend more than $1,000 on it." The new York Times gently described Hunter's work as "leaning toward the surreal." Smee explained, "People sometimes say 'surreal' when they mean 'random.'"

But there's nothing "random" here. It is just yet one more blatant scam by Joe Biden's son. It is geniuslevel corruption, an ethical nightmare for the White House, and a masterpiece of congressional and media dereliction of duty.

The obvious problem is that even though the White House has said the identities of the purchasers of Hunter's art will be anonymous, there is no way to know. Walter Shaub, the former head of the U.S. office of Government ethics, said in July: "There's no mechanism for monitoring, no mechanism for notifying the public if confidentiality is broken, no mechanism for tracking if buyers get access to [the government]."

My investigative team at the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) has the 30,000 emails contained on Hunter Biden's laptop, and the corroborating email records that establish their authenticity. We have been going through these emails by hand and have identified concrete examples of Hunter Biden paying bills for his father while the latter was Vice President. As I said on Maria Bartiromo's Fox news program recently, that is illegal.

We at GAI have seen this kind of thing before. The story of the Clinton Foundation that we broke in 2015 was full of this kind of "bank-shot" influence-peddling and corruption.

Companies seeking to influence Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State under President Barack obama were, inexplicably, suddenly donating enormous sums of money to her family's charity. We were able to identify the donors and their real interests through tax and corporate records, even as the Clinton Founda-

tion itself would not reveal all of its donors. We could, as investigative journalists, corroborate the coincidences through public records with a lot of digging. no such thing will be possible when Hunter Biden's artwork is peddled by Bergès through his private gallery, especially if the purchasers are foreign interests from countries where tax laws are not so rigorous.

Bergès himself has said he is eager to expand his business into the Chinese market. Who will know if China's art-loving billionaires, all connected deeply to the Communist Party and in some cases to the Chinese military, are Hunter's benefactors? Are we really supposed to believe that the anonymity of the buyers will remain a tight secret, and that Chinese government-connected buyers will not somehow let the Bidens know they are Hunter's newest and biggest fans?

They have done it before, as we have demonstrated. even if the key figure of this ridiculously obvious ploy for cash payments were not the son of the U.S. president, this story shines the spotlight on the other problem with international art sales – its exemption from the kinds of disclosure laws and money-laundering preventatives that financial institutions such as banks must follow.

Money-laundering in the art market is nothing new. A Senate Homeland Security and Government oversight committee report last year identified the art market as the "largest legal, unregulated market in the United States" and a significant weakness in the nation's sanctions and anti-money laundering regimes.

Simply put, art transactions are not covered under what's known as the Bank Secrecy Act, which require financial institutions to maintain antimoney laundering and anti-terrorism financing controls. The large auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's do this voluntarily, but smaller, private sellers are under no

obligation to do so.

Private art sales, which accounted for 58% of the U.S. art market by value in 2019, are unregulated. one private dealer with 30 years of experience in the art market explained to the committee that she relied on the advice of lawyers, an awareness of potential "red flags" and her "gut" to self-regulate. our investigation uncovered a text message from Hunter Biden to his daughter, in which he complained about paying the bills for the rest of the Biden family. We know, for example, Hunter's businesses were paying contractors at Joe Biden's delaware home and also paying $300 per month phone bills for private phones used by the Vice President. Is there any reason to doubt that the proceeds from Hunter's artistic payday will somehow once again find their way into the Biden family estate?

Why is this not being scrutinized? The ranking member of the House oversight Committee, rep.

James Comer, (r-KY), has sent letters to Bergès demanding the complete documentation of transactions involving Hunter's art sales. Comer is unlikely to get it: only the democrat majority on the committee can authorize subpoenas to compel those records. As the Wall Street Journal noted in a recent editorial, the committee's chairwoman, rep. Carolyn Maloney (d-nY), seems uninterested in doing so. Why are they failing to scrutinize what is so obviously a back-door scheme to funnel money to the president's son from foreign sources? every American who cares about transparency in government should be outraged.

Peter Schweizer, President of the Governmental Accountability Institute, is a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow and author of the best-selling books Profiles in Corruption, Secret Empires and Clinton Cash, among others.

consumes itself. The liberalism of the French revolution ended in the Terror; the liberalism of the Sixties is ending in identity politics, the destruction of the western canon and the denial of objective reality. The last has been one of the pillars of the astonishing progress of the last five hundred years; the other was freedom of expression. This too is under grave threat from the new Puritanism of “cancellation”. externally we fare no better. Far from following the “universal” path of liberal democracy, post-communist russia has reverted to the repression and military adventurism of its Tsarist past while, even more destructively for Fukuyama’s thesis, Xi’s China shows that it is possible to separate economic freedom, which it permits, from political freedom, which it denies. If it manages to show that innovation can be separated from political freedom as well, we are lost and history, or at least the history of the West, will end indeed.

Meanwhile, beyond the end of history, there is the eU. But, far from being Fukuyama’s culmination of history, it looks like a strange appendix. And, far from resolving the contradictions of european history, it looks as though — again like a diseased appendix — it will burst apart under their strain.

Probably much of this would have happened whether Fukuyama had written or not.

But the hubris he induced in western policymakers and elites has left them acutely offguard and unprepared. It has also encouraged in every field — immigration, the eU referendum campaign, foreign policy — the adoption of measures that were the opposite of what was required.

Fukuyama, in short, was a true quack: he couldn’t diagnose; prescribed false remedies, and even helped make the well sick.

David Starkey, Honorary Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and Honorary Professor of History at the University of Buckingham, is one of Britain’s leading historians.

Facebook whistleblower’s revelations point to a contradiction between social media’s business model and public good THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN THE TECHNOLOGY AND PROFITABILITY OF SOCIAL MEDIA, AND PUBLIC GOOD CAN BE ADDRESSED, TO SOME DEGREE, BY ROBUST REGULATORY MECHANISMS IndIan ExprEss

N

Editorial

o one at Facebook is malevolent, but the incentives are misaligned.” Frances Haugen — the Facebook whistleblower who provided documents to The Wall Street Journal as well as US government agencies about the degree to which the social media giant is aware of, and consciously exploits, the harm its applications cause — hasn’t revealed anything that most people aren’t already aware of. But her interview to 60 Minutes underlines the challenge: There appears to be a fundamental contradiction between how social media is designed and the public good.

The documents leaked by Haugen, and her recent interview, indicate that Facebook’s much-touted “safeguards” against hate speech, incitement to violence as well as content harmful to the mental well-being of young people are, at best, window dressing. For example, under political pressure, the company tweaked its algorithm and gave lower priority to polarising political content ahead of the 2020 US presidential election. But, as soon as the polls were over, it removed these safeguards, an action Haugen believes was at least partially responsible for the riots at the Capitol in Washington on January 6. The company also seems aware of the role it has played in inciting ethnic violence in certain parts of the world. There are documents detailing how Instagram, one of its most prolific products, increases notions of shame around the body and depression among teenage girls. But, according to Haugen, since teenagers suffering from these issues tend to fall deeper into social media, little is done to address them. As the whistleblower has pointed out, the issue is not one of malice on the part of Facebook’s leadership. AI-based algorithms are designed, in essence, to keep people on the site/app as long as possible, and it is this time and the data so collected that is eventually monetised. The fact is that content that elicits an emotional response — outrage and anger is usually the path of least resistance in this regard — “engages” people more. For all its talk of connecting people and building communities, the company appears to be agnostic when it comes to content and social impact. According to Haugen, in every conflict between profit and the public good, her erstwhile employers chose the former. The contradiction between the technology and profitability of social media, and public good can be addressed, to some degree, by robust regulatory mechanisms. In the longer run, however, the technology behind the apps will need an ethical upgrade.

Wednesday, 6 October, 2021

BUSINESS 09

KARACHI corporate corner NESPAK undertaken motorway project wins global award LAHORE: NESPAK has overcome tough challenges and played a key role in the completion of Karakoram Highway Phase-II (Havelian-Thakot), a major connecting project under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), it was stated by Dr Tahir Masood, Managing Director NESPAK. NESPAK is proud to be associated with the project as Project Consultant [AER – Assistant to Employer’s Representative] as a joint venture partner of leading Turkish Consultancy firm M/S Dolsar. The consultancy scope included detailed design review, quality assurance, project monitoring and contract management. Lately, the project has won the best bridge/tunnel award at the 9th annual Engineering News-Record (ENR)’s Global Best Projects competition for its outstanding design and quality construction. The 120 kilometer KKH Phase II (Havelian – Thakot Section) is a flagship endeavor/undertaking carried out as an early harvest project under CPEC Framework. It was successfully completed as per original date on February 2020 at a cost of Rs. 134 billion. It is recognized as a symbol and real example of Pakistan and China’s all-weather, long-lasting, brotherly and strong relationship. PRESS RElEaSE

SNGPL declares 20pc cash dividend by posting net profit of Rs6bn, historically high profit for 3QFY21 KARACHI: SNGPL has earned profit after tax of Rs5, 917 million and EPS of Rs9.33 for the period ended December 31, 2020 as compared to profit after tax of Rs4, 696 million and EPS of Rs7.40 during the corresponding period of last year. Based on the declared profit, the Company has proposed an interim cash dividend of 20% i.e. Rs2 per share for period ended December 31, 2020.

Moreover, SNGPL has been able to earn historically high net profit amounting to Rs8, 939 million for the period ended March 31, 2021 as against profit of Rs5, 779 million during the corresponding period of last year. The earnings per share for the period under review is Rs14.09 as against earnings per share of Rs9.11 for the same period last year. Despite all odds, including prevailing Covid-19 situation the company has been able to reduce the UFG losses during the periods under review, both in volumetric and %age terms from 20,893 MMCF (10.39%age) (Jul-Dec-19) to 15,011 MMCF (7.56%age) (Jul-Dec-20) which has resulted into saving of Rs 2,819 million to the company which accumulated to Rs4,137 million by March 31, 2021 as a result of reduction of UFG losses from 33,935 MMCF (11.15%age) (Jul-Mar-20) to 24,755 MMCF (8.45%age) (Jul-Mar-21).

The above substantial reduction in UFG losses was made possible due to joint concerted efforts of the board and management alike. The company is continuously striving to maintain the momentum achieved and is confident that performance of the Company will further enhance in the years ahead. PRESS RElEaSE

SHC invites suggestions to regulate cryptocurrency The Sindh High Court on Monday summoned officials of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), Ministry of Finance and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), asking them to come up with comments and suggestions as to how cryptocurrency can be allowed and regulated in Pakistan. According to a report by Dawn, the two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha was of the view that Pakistan should also move with times and regulate cryptocurrency. It observed that since the SBP and SECP were not allowing cryptocurrency business transactions, this mode of trade was being driven underground and thus, prima facie, causing such trade and transactions in black market which was completely unregulated and can lead to illegal activities, such as money laundering and terror financing. Globally cryptocurrency is becoming an accepted mode of transaction and in many countries. MONITORING REPORT

ECC LiKELY to imPoSE bAN oN ExPoRt oF vEGEtAbLES ISLAMABAD

t

STaff REPORT

HE Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the federal cabinet is likely to impose a ban on the export of certain food items.

Sources said that the ECC meeting would be held under the chair of Minister for Finance and Revenue Shaukat Tarin on Wednesday in which eight agenda items would be discussed, including the ban on the export of the two food items proposed by the Min-

istry of Commerce.

On the other hand, the All Pakistan Fruits and Vegetable Exporters, Importers and Merchants Association (APFVIMA), in a letter to the Adviser for Commerce and Investment Abdul Razak Dawood, has expressed concern over the ban.

The association claimed that it has not been consulted for the ban despite being an important stakeholder.

It said tomatoes were not exported at all and also criticised banning the export of onions. It said that there was relatively a big gap in harvesting of

onion in Sindh and Balochistan last year due to unfavorable climatic conditions leading to an imbalance in demand and supply phenomena, thus resulting in shortage and sharp escalation in price affecting people.

Sources said that the finance minister has asked MoC to send a summary with regard to export of vegetables.

The ECC would also consider a summary with regard to the National Remittance Loyalty Programme.

Similarly, the forum would also likely give approval of exemption of

Cabinet approves seasonal electricity package The federal Cabinet on Tuesday approved the seasonal electricity package for domestic and commercial consumers in a bid to encourage power consumption during off-peak months during winter season and reducing capacity payments.

Making the announcement on his Twitter handle in this regard,Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar said, “Any additional electricity consumed by domestic and commercial consumers during Nov-Feb period compared to same time previous year will have a discount of Rs5 to Rs7 per each unit.”

Earlier in September, Azhar had said that the success of the Industrial Energy Package

demonstrates that such incentives provide relief and absorb part of surplus capacity.

It is pertinent to mention here that the government, during off-peak months, is facing the problem of low power demand while it has to pay high capacity payments for unutilised electricity. On the other hand, consumers will be facing severe gas shortages due to high demand of gas.

As per details, the demand for electricity during November to February drops to less than 10000 MW against the installed capacity of 33000MW, creating the issue of capacity payments to idle power plants.

Earlier in the winter of fiscal

year 2019-20 (FY20), the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had introduced flat tariff regime at Rs11.97 per unit for electricity consumers of domestic, commercial and industrial sectors using Time of Day (ToD) meters from November 1, 2019 to end February, 2020.

Last year, the PTI government had announced a major relief package of electricity tariff for general, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to encourage higher power consumption and manufacturing.

The package is for three years and as per government claims, it has considerably increased the electricity consumption in the country. NEWS DESK

President stresses skilled manpower for industrialisation Skilled manpower is important to meet the needs of the industrial sector and put the country on the path of socioeconomic development, President Dr Arif Alvi has said.

Chairing a meeting of the advisory council of National Skills University (NSU) here on Tuesday, the president said that provision of skills by universities and training institutes could significantly help in generating employment opportunities across the country.

He termed the linkages between NSU and the industrial sector critical for imparting marketable skills and creating job opportunities for the youth.

Pointing out that the industries were facing a shortage of skilled workforce, he urged the technical training institutes to produce graduates in line with market requirements.

Moreover, the president emphasised on raising awareness about training and skill development programmes being offered by NSU. Speaking on the occasion, NSU Vice Chancellor Muhammad Mukhtar briefed the particpants about the role of the university in imparting skillbased and technical education. He agreed with Alvi’s recommendation and stated that the advisory council would ensure that courses were linked to the industry demands.

Meeting with QCCI On a separate occasion, Alvi stated that the government was making all-out efforts to provide a conducive business environment in the country in a bid to attract foreign investment.

Talking to a delegation of the Quetta Chamber of Commerce and Industry (QCCI), the president said that reforms initiated by the government to improve ease of doing business had delivered fruitful results and Pakistan’s ranking improved from 136th place to 108th.

“The government is aiming to facilitate and strengthen the businesses,” he said reiterating that the leadership had provided maximum relief to the business community during Covid-19. NEWS DESK

Oil prices rise after OPEC+ holds firm on supply restraint TOKYO aGENCIES

Oil prices climbed on Tuesday, hitting their highest levels in at least three years, extending gains triggered during the previous session after the world’s major oil producers announced they had decided to keep a cap on crude supplies.

Brent crude was up by 40 cents or 0.5% at $81.66 a barrel by 0341 GMT, having rising 2.5% on Monday. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil rose 30 cents or 0.4% to $77.92, after gaining

2.3% the previous session.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies including Russia, collectively known as OPEC+, said on Monday it would maintain an agreement to increase oil production only gradually, ignoring calls from the United States and India to boost output as the world economy recovers, if patchily, from the coronavirus pandemic.

Oil prices have already surged more than 50% this year, a rise that has added to inflationary pressures that crude-con-

suming nations are concerned will derail recovery from the pandemic.

Despite the pressure to ramp up output, OPEC+ was concerned that a fourth global wave of COVID-19 infections could hit the demand recovery, a source told Reuters a little before the vote.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said after the talks he believed the market is now balanced.

“We expect a gradual normalisation in demand growth and a rebound in supply will start to weigh on oil prices from the fourth quarter,” Capital Eco-

nomics said.

“This year, growth in demand has outpaced supply, helping prices to hit multi-year highs, but we expect this dynamic to reverse as OPEC+ ramps up production,” Capital said in a note.

Meanwhile US crude oil and distillate inventories are likely to have fallen last week, according to a preliminary Reuters poll.

Five analysts surveyed by Reuters estimated on average that crude inventories declined by about 300,000 barrels in the week to Oct. 1.

duties and taxes on COVID-19 rapid test local manufacturing and assembling facility.

Furthermore, the ECC would also consider the Ministry of Food’s proposal with regard to wheat requirement for USC, the cotton price review committee’s report for the months of August and September and provision of wheat to AJ&K for the current year.

Approval of the EOBI budget and standard security arrangements for small hydro power projects under power generation policy 2015 would also be discussed in the meeting.

US trade chief seeks talks with China WASHINGTON aGENCIES

Top US trade negotiator Katherine Tai on Monday pledged to exclude some Chinese imports from tariffs imposed by former president Donald Trump while pressing Beijing in frank talks over its failure to keep promises made in Trump’s trade deal and end harmful industrial policies. Tai said the United States would keep all options open as it continues to push China to stop pouring billions of dollars of state subsidies into its semiconductor, steel and other industries that Washington says harm US companies.

Unveiling the results of a months-long “top-tobottom” review of China trade policy, Tai said she will seek a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He in coming days to review China’s failure to comply with the Phase-1 trade deal launched in February 2020, including a shortfall of promised US goods purchases.

“Above all else, we must defend – to the hilt – our economic interests,” Tai told an event hosted by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank. “That means taking all steps necessary to protect ourselves against the waves of damage inflicted over the years through unfair competition.” Washington was “prepared to deploy all tools and explore the development of new ones, including through collaboration with other economies and countries” as it charted a new course to change the trajectory of the USChina trade dynamic, she said. Tai’s remarks were broadly welcomed by US trade groups, although they criticised the lack of a clear roadmap for ending tariffs on US goods that have hit US companies and consumers, and expanding trade opportunities for US companies.

“Our worry is that these tariffs will remain in place permanently and it will have a negative effect on the US economy,” said Doug Barry, spokesman for the US-China Business Council, which speaks for 200 firms doing business in China. Tariff relief Tai also said she would revive a targeted process of approving exclusions for certain Chinese imports from punitive US tariffs, offering a measure of relief to the US industry, with additional exclusion processes possible in the future. Most previous tariff exclusions had expired at the end of 2020.

However, she did not rule out starting fresh investigations under the Section 301 trade law, which could result in new tariffs, saying that would depend on China’s actions. “We have a lot of work to do,” Tai said. “For too long, China’s lack of adherence to global trading norms has undercut the prosperity of Americans and others around the world.”

Dollar unchanged at Rs170.8 against rupee The United States (US) dollar ended unchanged at Rs170.80 against the Pakistani rupee in the inter-bank currency market on Tuesday.

According to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the greenback closed at Rs170.80 against the local unit. Earlier on the first trading day of the week i.e. Monday, the dollar appreciated 32 paisas to finish at Rs170.80. On Sept 29, the US dollar had surged to a historic high in Pakistan’s open market as it traded above the Rs172 mark after gaining Rs0.20 over the bleeding rupee. It is pertinent to mention here that the dollar’s value has jumped Rs18 in the past four months. On May 7, it stood at Rs152.28. MONITORING REPORT

Wednesday, 6 October, 2021

10 FOREIGN NEWS

KARACHI

G20 mUST Send TAlIbAn cleAr meSSAGe on prIce oF recoGnITIon: emmAnUel mAcron PARIS

T

Agencies

HE forthcoming G20 summit must send a clear message to the Taliban regarding the conditions for international recognition, said France’s President Emmanuel Macron.

In an interview with France Inter radio station broadcast on Tuesday, Macron said those conditions must include equality for

women, access to foreign humanitarian operations, and non-cooperation with Daesh.

“I believe international recognition should have a price, and the dignity of Afghan women, equality between men and women, should be one of the points on which we insist, and should be a condition for us,” Macron said.

Referring to the G20 summit due to take place in Rome later this month, Macron said: “We will talk about Afghanistan.”

Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram return after worldwide outage SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms are back online after a massive global outage plunged the services and the businesses and people who rely on them into chaos for hours. Facebook said late Monday that “the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change” and that there is “no evidence that user data was compromised as a result” of the outage. The company apologized and said it is working to understand more about the cause, which began around 11:40 am Eastern Monday. Facebook was already in the throes of a separate major crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, provided the Wall Street Journal with internal documents that exposed the company’s awareness of harms caused by its products and decisions.

Haugen went public on CBS‘s “60 Minutes” program Sunday and is scheduled to testify before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday. Haugen had also anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement alleging Facebook’s own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation and leads to increased polarization. It also showed that the company was aware that Instagram can harm teenage girls’ mental health. The Journal’s stories, called “The Facebook Files,” painted a picture of a company focused on growth and its own interests over the public good. Facebook has tried to play down their impact. Nick Clegg, the company’s vice president of policy and public affairs, wrote to Facebook employees in a memo Friday that “social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out.” The outage didn’t exactly bolster Facebook’s argument that its size and clout provide important benefits for the world. London-based internet monitoring firm Netblocks noted that the company’s plans to integrate the technology behind its platforms — announced in 2019 — had raised concerns about the risks of such a move. While such centralization “gives the company a unified view of users’ internet usage habits,” Netblocks said, it also makes the services vulnerable to single points of failure. “This is epic,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik Inc, a network monitoring and intelligence company. The last major internet outage, which knocked many of the world’s top websites offline in June, lasted less than an hour. The stricken content-delivery company in that case, Fastly, blamed a software bug triggered by a customer who changed a setting. For hours, Facebook’s only public comment was a tweet in which it acknowledged that “some people are having trouble accessing (the) Facebook app” and said it was working on restoring access. Regarding the internal failures, Instagram head Adam Mosseri tweeted that it feels like a “snow day.” Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s outgoing chief technology officer, later tweeted “sincere apologies.” The AssociATed Press

Top US envoy brought up Khashoggi in talks with Saudis: official WASHINGTON: A US delegation led by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan brought up the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in talks with leading Saudi Arabian officials last week, a senior US official said on Monday. Sullivan, Middle East envoy Brett McGurk and other US officials met in Riyadh on September 28 with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other top Saudi officials. The main point of the talks was to discuss the conflict in Yemen and ways to arrange a ceasefire. But a senior Biden administration official who briefed reporters about the visit to Washington this week of Israel’s national security adviser, Eyal Hulata, said the US delegation also brought up the case of Khashoggi specifically and human rights in general. Khashoggi, a Saudi-born US resident who wrote opinion columns for the Washington Post critical of bin Salman, was killed and dismembered by a team of operatives linked to the prince in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

The Saudi government has denied any involvement by the crown prince, but a US intelligence report concluded in February that bin Salman had approved of an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi. reuTers

“We absolutely must, that is to say us, the Europeans, the Americans, China, Russia, the big powers of Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America all together, we must have a very clear message that we will set conditions for recognition of the Taliban,” he asserted.

Earlier, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi had said an extraordinary meeting of the Group of 20 major economies to discuss Afghanistan will take place on October 12.

Italy holds the rotating G20 presidency this year and Draghi had discussed Afghanistan with other world leaders — including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping — in an effort to organise a special meeting to lay down strategies to confront the crisis.

“We have to see whether there are shared objectives among the G20 nations… we have reached a point where we only need to worry about saving lives,” Draghi

had told a news conference.

The international community must also lay down a strategy to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a haven for militants, he had said.

The extraordinary G20 meeting will take place a few weeks before the summit of the leaders scheduled in Rome for October 30-31. Draghi had said Qatar, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United Nations will also participate.

Physics Nobel rewards work on complex systems, like climate STOCKHOLM The AssociATed Press

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday for work that found order in seeming disorder, helping to explain and predict complex forces of nature, including expanding our understanding of climate change.

Syukuro Manabe, originally from Japan, and Klaus Hasselmann of Germany were cited for their work in “the physical modeling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming.”

The second half of the prize was awarded to Giorgio Parisi of Italy for “the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”

All three work on what are known as “complex systems,” of which climate is just one example.

The judges said Manabe, 90, and Hasselmann, 89, “laid the foundation of our knowledge of the Earth’s climate and how human actions influence it.

Starting in the 1960s, Manabe demonstrated how increases in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would raise global surface temperatures, laying the foundations for current

climate models.

About a decade later, Hasselmann created a model that helped explain why climate models can be reliable despite the seemingly chaotic nature of the weather. He also developed ways to look for specific signs of human influence on the climate.

Parisi “built a deep physical and mathematical model” that made it possible to understand complex systems in fields as different as mathematics, biology, neuroscience and machine learning.

His work originally focused on socalled spin glass, a type of metal alloy in which the atoms are arranged in a way that changes the material’s magnetic properties in apparently random ways that baffled scientists. Parisi, 73, was able to discover hidden patterns that explained this behavior, theories that could be applied to other fields of research, too.

In their work, the physicists used complex mathematics to explain and predict what seemed like chaotic forces of nature in computer simulations, called modeling. That modeling has given scientists such a solid understanding of those forces that they can accurately predict weather a week out and warn about the climate decades in advance.

Some non-scientists have attacked

and ridiculed modeling, but it has been key to the way the world tackles one of its biggest problems: climate change.

“Physics-based climate models made it possible to predict the amount and pace of global warming, including some of the consequences like risings seas, increased extreme rainfall events and stronger hurricanes, decades before they could be observed. Klaus Hasselmann and Suki Manabe were pioneers in this area and personal role models for me,” said German climate scientist and modeler Stefan Rahmstorf.

“We now witnessing how their early predictions are coming true one after the other,” Rahmstorf said.

When climate scientists and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, some non-scientists who deny global warming dismissed it as a political prize. Perhaps anticipating controversy, officials who spoke at the announcement emphasized that Tuesday’s was a science prize.

“It’s a physics prize. What we are saying is that the modeling of climate is solidly based on physical theory and well known physics,” said Swedish physicist Thors Hans Hansson at the announcement. While Parisi’s work was not focused on climate, he spoke to the

pressing problems facing the Earth after the announcement.

“It’s very urgent that we take very strong decisions and move at a very strong pace” in tackling global warming, he said. “It’s clear for future generations that we have to act now.”

Asked whether he expected to get the prize, Parisi said: “I knew there was a non-negligible possibility.”

COVID-19 restrictions in Italy meant “we cannot have a very big celebration,” he said. “I think we will do something but we are not really decided.” It is common for several scientists who work in related fields to share the prize. The prestigious award comes with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1.14 million).

The prize money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.

On Monday, the Nobel Committee awarded the prize in physiology or medicine to Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries into how the human body perceives temperature and touch.

Over the coming days prizes will also be awarded for outstanding work in the fields of chemistry, literature, peace and economics.

Taliban unlawfully killed 13 ethnic Hazaras: rights group CAIRO The AssociATed Press

Taliban forces unlawfully killed 13 ethnic Hazaras, most of them Afghan soldiers who had surrendered to the insurgents, a prominent rights group said Tuesday.

The killings took place in the village of Kahor in Daykundi province in central Afghanistan on August 30, according to an investigation by Amnesty International. 11 of the victims were members of the Afghan national security forces and two were civilians, among them a 17-year-old girl.

The reported killings took place about two weeks after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in a blitz campaign, culminating in their takeover of

Kabul. At the time, Taliban leaders sought to reassure Afghans that they had changed from their previous harsh rule of the country in the late 1990s.

The world has been watching whether the Taliban would live up to their initial promises of tolerance and inclusiveness toward women and ethnic minorities, among them the Shiite Hazaras. However, Taliban actions so far, such as renewed restrictions on women and the appointment of an all-male government, have been met with dismay by the international community.

Hazaras make up around 9 percent of Afghanistan’s 36 million people. They are often targeted because they are Shiite Muslims in a Sunni-majority country.

Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard, said that “these cold-blooded executions (of the Hazaras) are further proof that the Taliban are committing the same horrific abuses they were notorious for during their previous rule of Afghanistan.” Taliban spokespersons Zabihullah Mujahid and Bilal Karimi did not respond to calls from The Associated Press seeking comment. The rights group said Sadiqullah Abed, the Taliban-appointed chief of police for Daykundi, denied any killings had happened and only said that a member of the Taliban had been wounded in an attack in the province.

The Taliban took control of Daykundi province on August 14, according to the Amnesty report, and an es-

timated 34 former soldiers sought safety in the Khidir district. The soldiers, who had government military equipment and weaponry with them, agreed to surrender to the Taliban. Mohammad Azim Sedaqat, who led the group’s surrender, arranged to decommission the weapons in the presence of Taliban members.

On August 30, an estimated 300 Taliban fighters arrived in a convoy close to Dahani Qul village, where the security forces members were staying, some with family members, according to Amnesty’s report. As the security forces attempted to leave the area with their families, Taliban fighters caught up with them and opened fire on the crowd, killing a 17-year-old girl named Masuma.

French clergy sexually abused over 200,000 children since 1950, probe finds PARIS reuTers

French clergy have sexually abused more than 200,000 children over the past 70 years, a major investigation released on Tuesday found, and its authors accused the Catholic Church of turning a blind eye for too long. The church had shown “deep, total and even cruel indifference for years,” protecting itself rather than the victims of what was systemic abuse, said Jean-Marc Sauve, head of the commission that compiled the report.

Most of the victims were boys, he said, many of them aged between 10 and 13.

The church not only did not take the necessary measures to prevent abuse but also failed to report it and sometimes knowingly put children in touch with predators, he said.

The head of the French conference of bishops, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, said the Church was shamed. He asked for forgiveness and promised to act.

The revelations in France are the latest to rock the

Roman Catholic Church, after a series of sexual abuse scandals around the world, often involving children.

The commission was established by Catholic bishops in France at the end of 2018 to shed light on abuses and restore public confidence in the church at a time of dwindling congregations. It has worked independently from the Church.

Sauve said the problem was still there. He added that the church had until the 2000s shown complete indifference to victims and that it only started to really change its attitude in 2015-2016.

CHURCH URGED TO REFORM: The Catholic Church’s teaching on subjects such as sexuality, obedience and the sanctity of the priesthood helped create blind spots which allowed sexual abuse by clergy to happen, Sauve said, adding that the church needed to reform the way it approached those issues to rebuild trust with society.

The Church must take responsibility for what happened, the commission said, and ensure reports of abuse are transmitted to judicial authorities.

It must also provide victims with adequate financial compensation, “which, despite not being sufficient (to address the trauma from sexual abuse), is nonetheless indispensable as it completes the recognition process.”

It added a list of recommendations that included systematically checking the criminal record of any person assigned by the Church to be in regular contact with children or vulnerable people, and providing priests with adequate training.

Sauve said the commission itself had identified around 2,700 victims through a call for testimony, and thousands more had been found in archives.

But a wide-ranging study by research and polling groups estimated that there had been around 216,000 victims, and the number could rise to 330,000 when including abuse by lay members. Sauve said the scale was unprecedented, with most other investigations of the Catholic Church’s sexual abuses focusing on victims identified individually. There have been around 2,9003,200 suspected paedophiles in the French church over the last 70 years, he added.

Wednesday, 6 October, 2021

KARACHI

PAkiStAn cAnnOt rEly On icc funding AlOnE: rAmiz rAjA P StAff REPORt

AKISTAN cricket is relying primarily on International Cricket Council’s funding and will suffer if it it stops, Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Ramiz Raja stated.

While speaking to Karachi’s business community at the Pakistan Stock Exchange on Tuesday, Ramiz stated that the business community’s contribution is vital for Pakistan becoming a superpower in the field of cricket, globally.

“Our cricket is relying on ICC’s funding right now and when I see the books, I get very scared because the contribution of local enterpreneaurs is minimal,” stated the PCB chief.

Considering the unstable economic conditions across the globe, owing to COVID19, it is dangerous to totally rely on world’s cricket governing body, Ramiz elaborated.

“Whenever ICC is in a mood to give us Rs10 instead of Rs100, say, due to the Covid, then our situation will worsen from a financial point of view,” he stated.

The PCB chief opines that it is a tricky

situation for Pakistan and would hinder its progress in becoming a strong entity pertaining to cricket. “Then we won’t be able to invest in the nurseries, the cricketers won’t get paid enough,” he said.

“So its important that we and you are on the same page, its about the national spirit,” he added.

While comparing Pakistan with its neighbours in this regard, Ramiz believes Pakistan to be standing at a weak position.

“The pie of our cricket from the financial point of view is just 5% percent as compared to our neighbouring countries where interest is massive and due to investments there teams have surpassed us,” he stated.

While talking about the abrupt withdrawal of the New Zealand cricket team from their tour of Pakistan and England’s apologetic refusal to visit for two scheduled Twenty-20 Internationals, he stated that “What I realised after New Zealand and England’s pull-out is that there are two ways such countries can be stopped from taking such a step again. First is if your team is the world’s best, no one will have the audacity to use you and throw you in the bin. Where

as the second is if your cricket economy is strong then their interest will remain. The Pakistan Super League does help us with that, but on an individual level, but to sustain it at a collective level, its very important that we’ve money, our team is the best in the world and our cricket grounds are better.”

Ramiz acknowledged that without money, the sport in the country cannot grow.

“If Pakistan wants to produce great tal-

ent, it can’t happen until we resolve our issues,” he said. “Money is needed everywhere, we’ll provide the direction and the business community will pump in its resources,” he stated.

“Business community has stayed confused on how they can get involved and avail the opportunities. We’ll tell you about them, we’ll tell you about our properties,” stated Ramiz.

Afghan women’s team unsure about future, says skipper Mobarez KABUL ReuteRs

The Afghanistan women’s soccer team are uncertain about their future after evacuating to Australia following the Taliban takeover in August, captain Shabnam Mobarez said on Tuesday.

Australian evacuated more than 50 Afghan women soccer players, athletes and their dependents after the Taliban seized control of the capital, Kabul, on August 15.

Mobarez, who lives in the United States, said the evacuated Afghan players were receiving good care in Australia, but were still confused about their future.

“It is very unsure, the situation they are in right now,” Mobarez told Sky Sports. “It was a traumatising experience getting out. Now they are trying to get used to this whole normal new life.

“I am sure they are very confused and in shock, because they left family and friends behind.”

During their previous period of rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban severely curtailed women’s rights, including banning them from education and work.

Last month, a senior Taliban official told Australia’s SBS News women would not be allowed to play cricket, a popular sport in Afghanistan — or possibly any other — as it was “not necessary” and their bodies might be exposed.

Mobarez said the Taliban takeover had put the future of women’s soccer at risk.

“The team has been through so many terrifying experiences in the past as well,” she said. “It has never been easy for an Afghan female to be an athlete in Afghanistan. It’s just a fact.

“It just breaks my heart that they were fighting through so many small battles, now it’s almost like the game is over. Even if they get out of their houses, it is going to be dangerous and they can potentially get killed.”

SPORTS 11

“We also want to take direction from you on how a sporting organisation can rise to match the likes of the establishments. I’d like to see you inject into our cricket economy.

“If you ask for help we will help and we are open to listen to you as well. At the end, it needs to be a collective effort.” he added.

While talking about the national team’s preparation for the upcoming ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, Ramiz revealed that “We’re preparing for the World Cup and trying our best that we finalise the best team for it,” said the former Test opener. “The national team is a product of your grassroots cricket and unfortunately not much work has been done on that.”

He went on to add that “Our school cricket is also reviving, entrepreneurs and financial houses are needed in that. Our club cricket has been left behind, there’s a lack of ground, the pitches are not good enough.

Drop in pitches are needed since pitches make the base of your cricket” “When our team does well, only then we can expect investments. It will take some time, but once we are on the track, we’ll reap the benefits.” he concluded.

Ex-South African pacer Vernon Philander to arrive in Pakistan on October 7 NEwS DESK For the upcoming ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, Pakistan bowling consultant, ex-South African pacer Vernon Philander, will reach Pakistan on Thursday. Batting consultant for the upcoming ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, Australian Matthew Hayden will join the national team squad in the United Arab Emirates after its departure on October 15. It is pertinent to note that Hayden and Philander were appointed as Pakistan’s consultant coaches for the T20 World Cup last month. It is to note that the Pakistan squad members will shift from one Covid ‘bubble’ to another after the ongoing National T20 Cup’s final on October 13. According to sources, the team’s support staff will gather in Lahore and will quarantine for seven days at a local hotel. The T20 World Cup kicks off on October 17. Pakistan start their campaign with a much anticipated encounter against India in their Super-12 Group ‘2’ match in Dubai on October 24. The Babar Azam-led side will take on Afghanistan and New Zealand in their other Super-12 stage matches.

Asian Tour set to resume Facebook outage leaves players after 18 months twiddling their thumbs SINGAPORE ReuteRs

The Asian Tour is set to return from an 18-month hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic after the golf circuit said on Tuesday it will stage two tournaments in Thailand before the end of the year.

The Tour, which stopped play in March 2020, will hold the Blue Canyon Championship from November 25-28 and the Laguna Phuket Championship from December 2-5. It said it is also planning two more tournaments in Singapore in January, which will mark the end of the 2020-21 schedule. Results from those four events, as well as four tournaments played in early 2020, will make up the 2020-21 schedule and determine the Order of Merit winner. “After a difficult 18 months the Asian Tour is thrilled to announce that it is able to restart in Q4 of 2021,” said Cho Minn Thant, commissioner and chief executive officer of the Tour.

“The Asian Tour have been working around the clock to resume competition and crown the Merit list champion — a challenge made more difficult by our reach across many countries and each of their Covid-related protocols.

“We are confident of being able to complete our season despite several remaining challenges created by the pandemic.” All players will have to be fully vaccinated to compete at the events, which will be played in tournament bubbles and adhere to local government standard operating procedures. Australian Wade Ormsby leads the Order of Merit after winning the Hong Kong Open in January 2020.

LONDON ReuteRs

Tottenham Hotspur’s Lucas Moura joked that Monday’s near six-hour social media outage meant he finally had a chance to connect with his wife, while Everton’s Richarlison saw a fresh opening for carrier pigeons, as soccer players saw the funny side of the blackout.

Facebook Inc blamed a “faulty configuration change” for the interruption that prevented the company’s 3.5 billion users from accessing its social media and messaging services such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.

Players have increasingly harnessed the reach of social media to engage with fans and build their brands, so the outage left many of them twiddling their thumbs.

Posting on the unaffected Twitter, Moura said: “With the fall of WhatsApp and Instagram I was able to talk a little with my wife.”

Richarlison, who has more than 660,000 followers on Twitter, posted images of carrier pigeons with the caption: “Now you guys want my services right?”

Chelsea’s Antonio Rudiger tweeted a short video of himself celebrating with the caption:

“When you realize your SMS flat-rate finally makes sense again #whatsappdown.”

When normal service was resumed Preston

North End forward Connor Wickham was delighted. “Buzzin’ my WhatsApp is back,” he told his more than 108,000 Twitter followers.

Wednesday, 6 October, 2021

prAyer timings

NEWS

MAryAM seeKs ANNulMeNT of AveNfield verdiCT ISLAMABAD

P

stAff report

AKISTAN Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) vice president Maryam Nawaz on Tuesday approached the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to annul the verdict against her in a properties reference.

In July 2018, an accountability court ruled that deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his family laundered money in the 1990s to pay for four luxury apartments in Park Lane, central London, drawing on allegations that resurfaced in the 2016 Panama Papers.

Accountability Court judge Mohammad Bashir sentenced Nawaz to seven years’ imprisonment, fined the family £10m and ordered the seizure of the Avenfield properties. She also received an additional one-year sentence for presenting forged documents in court.

PHC directs NAB to complete inquiries into BoK, Billion Tree Tsunami within 2 months PESHAWAR Aziz Buneri

The Peshawar High Court (PHC) granted two months respite to National Accountability Bureau to filed detailed reports in the Bank of Khyber and Billion Tree Tsunami scandals. A two-member bench of the Peshawar High Court comprising Justice Rohul Amin and Justice Syed Atiq Shah granted two months to the NAB to file a detailed report on the writ petitions related to the Billion Tsunami Tree Bank of Khyber and Malam Jabba scandals.

The bench issues direction while hearing a petition filed by a citizen petitioner Adil Zarif.

During the hearing, the petitioner lawyer Ali Gohar Durrani argued that NAB had started its inquiries into the BoK and Billion Tree Tsunami scam but the investigation was shut down due to the involvement of influential people. He said that it was illegal to stop the inquiries so necessary orders should be issued to restart the investigation into both scams.

During the hearing, Additional Prosecutor General NAB Azeem Dad and Senior Prosecutor NAB Muhammad Ali told the court that the inquiry into the Billion Tree projects’ of DI Khan section has been complete and references would soon be submitted in this regard soon. He said that the investigations in other regions is still ongoing and report would be submitted after completing the process.

During the hearing, the protesters also told the court that the inquiry into Bank of Khyber has been completed and sent to the headquarters.

He added that now the headquarters will take its decision to file reference. The court directed the authorities to complete the investigation -‘s adjourned the case till 8 December.

The family has long struggled to explain how the Avenfield flats came into their possession. Family members initially told different stories. During the National Accountability Bureau trial, Sharif’s defence claimed that a Qatari investment fund gave the expensive properties to the family to repay a debt owed to Sharif’s father, Mian Muhammad Sharif.

Commentators in 2017 mocked a letter from a Qatari prince apparently testifying to that deal as a rabbit pulled out of a hat.

Sharif and members of his family have denied any wrongdoing, and supporters claim the charges against them are politically motivated.

The three had filed appeals in the IHC against their convictions. The court in September the same year suspended their sentences and released them on bail.

The NAB is now seeking expeditious disposal of the appeals in 30 days.

In her petition, Maryam said the entire proceedings

in the reference were a “classic example of outright violations of law and political engineering hitherto unheard of in the history of Pakistan”.

She also referred to the speech made by a former IHC judge, Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui, on July 21 that year, claiming the spy agencies were influencing high-profile judicial proceedings.

“The ISI is fully involved in trying to manipulate the judicial proceedings,” Siddiqui had said in a speech to lawyers, adding the agency had told the court not to release Sharif and his daughter until after the elections.

“The ISI officials had approached the chief justice asking him to make sure Nawaz and his daughter should not be bailed before the elections,” read the petition, quoting an excerpt from the speech.

Siddiqui was dismissed in October 2018 following a dismissal recommendation by a panel of judges headed by the chief justice, which called Siddiqui’s remarks “conduct unbecoming of a judge of a high court”.

CM Jam Kamal given deadline

by BAP till today Balochistan Awami Party’s (BAP) members and some from its coalition partners in the Balochistan government gave Chief Minister Jam Kamal a deadline of 6pm tomorrow to step down from his post.

The reason behind this disagreement between both parties comes days after Alyani stepped down as the party’s president. Soon after, Jam Kamal had been facing opposition from some ministers and lawmakers in the party who had demanded that he step down as the CM. On Tuesday, Balochistan Finance Minister Zahoor Buledi stated during a presser that 14 to 15 BAP members and some from other parties in the province’s coalition government had expressed a lack of confidence in the chief minister. “The reason for this lack of confidence is the growing unrest in the province,” he added.

Buledi said Alyani had earlier been given two weeks to submit resignation as the chief minister, “but instead of resigning, he tried to give an impression in his social media posts that there were differences among us.”

He was referring to tweets by Alyani, wherein he had said: “[The] BAP is our party and inshallah we shall resolve our matters ourselves. I would again say, this is the most democratic party in Pakistan. Differences come, we discuss them, debate on them and Alhamdulillah solve them too.”

Alyani had added that till October 3, he had met nearly six of the BAP’s lawmakers “in a very good atmosphere and inshallah [we will] solve all [the issues]”.

“Some individuals wanted to create more differences and wanted us to react on each other, but Alhamdulillah we all have shown great responsibility and respect to each other.”

Balochistan Social Welfare Minister Mir Asadullah Baloch further stated that Alyani had failed to fulfil the commitments made to the allies in the provincial government, and his resignation had been demanded in the “wider interest of the province”.

“Jam Kamal will be given time till 6pm tomorrow. If he does not resign by tomorrow, we will consider other options, including [a] no-confidence motion.”

According to sources, Alyani was also facing opposition from within his own party over some issues, especially ministers’ powers of posting and transfers and allocation of development funds. On Friday, Alyani announced that he was resigning as the BAP’s president.

Balochistan Finance Minister Zahoor Buledi from among the disgruntled members said during a conference that 11 BAP members and some from other parties in the province s coalition government had expressed a lack of confidence in the chief minister. “The reason for this lack of confidence is the growing unrest in the province,” he added.

Buledi said CM Jam Kamal had earlier been given two weeks to resign as the chief minister, “but instead of resigning, he tried to give an impression in his social media posts that there were differences among us.

Now the chief minister should end his stubbornness and resign from his post not wasting any more time.”

Balochistan MPA Naseebullah Murree also reiterated the demand for Alyani s resignation. “The chief minister is requested to have mercy on the party and the province and resign,” he said. news desk

FAJR SUNRISE

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WhatsApp, facebook, instagram outage due to faulty configuration change, says company Facebook Inc blamed a “faulty configuration change” for the nearly six-hour outage on Monday that prevented the company’s 3.5 billion users from accessing its social media and messaging services WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. The company in a late Monday blog post did not specify who executed the configuration change and whether it was planned. Several Facebook employees who declined to be named had told Reuters earlier that they believed that the outage was caused by an internal mistake in how internet traffic is routed to its systems. The failures of internal communication tools and other resources that depend on that same network in order to work compounded the error, the employees said. Security experts have said an inadvertent mistake or sabotage by an insider were both plausible. “We want to make clear at this time we believe the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change,” Facebook said in the blog. The Facebook outage is the largest ever tracked by web monitoring group Downdetector. The outage was the second blow to the social media giant in as many days after a whistleblower on Sunday accused the company of repeatedly prioritizing profit over clamping down on hate speech and misinformation. As the world flocked to competing apps such as Twitter and TikTok, shares of Facebook fell 4.9%, their biggest daily drop since last November, amid a broader selloff in technology stocks on Monday.

Shares rose about 0.5% in after-hours trade following the resumption of service. “To every small and large business, family, and individual who depends on us, I’m sorry,” Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer tweeted, adding that it “may take some time to get to 100%.” “Facebook basically locked its keys in its car,” tweeted Jonathan Zittrain, director of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Twitter on Monday reported higher-than-normal usage, which led to some issues in people accessing posts and direct messages. In one of the day’s most popular tweets, video streaming company Netflix shared a meme from its new hit show “Squid Game” captioned “When Instagram & Facebook are down,” that showed a person labelled “Twitter” holding up a character on the verge of falling labelled “everyone.” Inside a Facebook group for ad buyers, one member wisecracked after service returned that “lots of people searched today ‘how to run google ads for clients.'” Facebook, which is the world’s largest seller of online ads after Google, was losing about $545,000 in U.S. ad revenue per hour during the outage, according to estimates from ad measurement firm Standard Media Index. Past downtime at internet companies has had little long-term affect on their revenue growth, however. Facebook’s services, including consumer apps such as Instagram, workplace tools it sells to businesses and internal programs, went dark at noon Eastern time (1600 GMT). Access started to return around 5:45 pm ET. Soon after the outage started, Facebook acknowledged users were having trouble accessing its apps but did not provide any specifics about the nature of the problem or say how many users were affected. The error message on Facebook’s webpage suggested an error in the Domain Name System (DNS), which allows web addresses to take users to their destinations. A similar outage at cloud company Akamai Technologies Inc took down multiple websites in July. On Sunday, Frances Haugen, who worked as a product manager on the civic misinformation team at Facebook, revealed that she was the whistleblower who provided documents underpinning a recent Wall Street Journal investigation and a U.S. Senate hearing last week on Instagram’s harm to teen girls. Haugen was due to urge the same Senate subcommittee on Tuesday to regulate the company, which she plans to liken to tobacco companies that for decades denied that smoking damaged health, according to prepared testimony seen by Reuters. Agencies

PM Imran Khan’s stooges should keep their suggestions to themselves: Marriyum LAHORE stAff report

PML-N’s spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb slammed Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry on Tuesday for suggesting that the Opposition should start searching for a new leader.

In a statement, the PML-N spokesperson said: “Fawad Chaudhry should keep his suggestions to himself.”

Aurangzeb reminded the federal minister that the “procedure of appointing the chairman of [National Accountability Bureau] is mentioned in the Constitution”.

“This is not a matter of extending the tenure of the NAB chairman but a way for thieves of flour, sugar, electricity, gas, and medicines to seek a National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) from Imran Khan,” she said.

The PML-N spokesperson went on to say that the decision to extend the tenure of the NAB chairman is a “way to protect thief

Imran Khan and his mafia”.

“Through this decision, Imran Khan will be able to safeguard his projects, including the billion-tree tsunami, the helicopter case, and the Peshawar BRT (bus rapid transit),” she said.

The spokesperson added that the PTI-led government, through the decision to extend the tenure of the NAB chairman, has violated the country’s Constitution.

Aurengzeb reminded the government that as per the Constitution of Pakistan, it was a mandatory requirement for it to consult the Opposition before taking such a decision.

“Extending the tenure of the NAB chairman without taking the Opposition on board is unconstitutional and illegal,” she said, adding that Imran Khan and his stooges should keep their statements regarding the matter to themselves.

Govt to bring ordinance for NAB chairman’s appointment sans consultation with Opposition

Earlier in the day, Fawad Chaudhry had said the government has finalised the draft for the NAB chairman’s appointment, which will remove the “legal laguna” of consulting with the Opposition on picking a new chief or extending the incumbent’s tenure.

The minister, addressing a post-cabinet press conference in Islamabad, said the new ordinance would empower the accountability courts, as the government wants to strengthen the systems and not an individual.

The information minister said it would have been better had the Opposition proposed a name, but unfortunately, they could not do so. He reiterated that the government would not hold talks with Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif, as he was a suspect in a NAB case.

“Opposition should now start searching for a new Opposition leader,” Chaudhry said, adding that the matter related to the NAB chairman did not come under discussion during the federal cabinet’s meeting.

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