After the richest man in the world served a whistleblower with a subpoena demanding information on how Twitter checks spam accounts, Elon Musk delivered a second letter of deal termination to the social media platform.
In July, Musk withdrew from a $44 billion bid for Twitter, claiming that the firm had lied to him and authorities about the actual amount of spam or bot accounts on the microblogging service.
Musk has reportedly asked Peiter Zatko, a blower and the former head of Twitter’s security, for information, mostly regarding how the microblogging site determines which accounts are spam, according to a court document filed on Monday.
Seminar says President Xi Jinping’s leadership has transformed China, Hina Rabbani Khar says China ‘brings all of Pakistan together’, Ambassador Nong Rong says Pak-China ties are ‘rock-solid’, Mushahid thanks China for swift support to Pakistan during floods Islamabad, 29 August:
Seminar
Pakistan-China Institute organized a special event on the upcoming 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China under its flagship ‘Friends of Silk Road’ initiative. The dialogue featured speeches by the Chief Guest, Ms Hina Rabbani Khar, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, Chairman Senate Committee on Defence & Pakistan-China Institute, Nong Rong, Ambassador of China to Pakistan, Senator Farhat Ullah Babar, Secretary General Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Senator Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, Parliamentary Leader of Balochistan Awami Party, and Senator Dr. Zarqa Suharwardy Taimur, The dialogue was moderated by Mustafa Hyder Sayed, Executive Director Pakistan-China Institute.
The panelists discussed the prospects of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) , which will be held later in 2022. China watchers look for clues to the country’s future. President Xi Jinping is expected to be re-elected for his third term as Secretary General of CPC and President of China.
Moreover, the Party Congress will set key priorities for the next five years, in particular, as well as China’s two-stage development plan for the middle of the twenty-first century.
A special documentary titled ‘China’s Governance under President Xi Jinping in the New Era (2012-2022)’ was also screened, depicting China’s achievements under President Xi Jinping.
The content of the documentary reflected the on-ground realities in China & aspirations of Chinese people who regard President Xi Jinping as the ‘core leader’ of the Communist Party of China, who, through his people-centered approach to governance and development has proven to be the worthy successor to Chairman Mao and Deng Xiaoping.
Mustafa Hyder Sayed, Executive Director Pakistan-China Institute, introduced the Friends of Silk Road Initiative which has become the premier platform to understand China, bridge people-to-people connectivity between Pakistan and China, serving as a platform to gather political leaders, students, media professionals, and think tanks to brainstorm new ideas of thought which both countries can further cement their relationship in various fields.
In his opening remarks, Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, Chairman of Senate Committee on Defence & Pakistan-China Institute, thanked China for donating 25000 tents and cash for flood victims. He said that the core message emanating from President Xi Jinping’s leadership is people-centric development and human security.
He said that the Global Development Initiative (GDI) , introduced by President Xi Jinping on September 21, 2021, promotes inclusive and open collaboration & is a crucial platform for international cooperation and the public good that China offers.
Similarly, this year, President Xi Jinping announced the Global Security Initiative (GSI), which, as President Xi Jinping, said is meant to ‘uphold the principle of indivisible security, build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture, and oppose the building of national security based on insecurity in other countries’.
Commenting on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013, he termed it the most important developmental and diplomatic initiative of the 21st century, terming China as a leader in Climate Change and Globalization.
He also dismissed the notion of a ‘New Cold War, ‘ advocated implicitly by some hawkish quarters, and said the region could not afford another cold war since it would destabilize the whole region needlessly.
He also lauded President Xi Jinping for achieving the goal of making China a moderately prosperous society by eradicating absolute poverty in China in 2021.
Commenting on the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China, he hoped this would be a landmark conference that would set policy directions for China, Asia, and the whole region. Lastly, he wished the 20th CPC Congress great success.
Nong Rong, Ambassador of China to Pakistan, expressed China’s sympathies to Pakistan in lieu of ongoing flooding in the country and said China wouldn’t leave Pakistan in such testing times. Pakistan, he said, has always supported China in such situations.
He recalled how Pakistan donated all the available stock of tents to China in the 2008 earthquake. Commenting on NPC, he said it is the most important political agenda of this year-end. CPEC, he said, has transformed Pakistan’s socio-economic landscape by overhauling infrastructure and alleviating the energy crisis. Ambassador Nong Rong termed Pakistan-China relations as ‘rock-solid’.
Senator Farhat Ullah Babar, Secretary General Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), said that the 20th party Congress would be a game changer for China and the region since it will decide the future course of policy for China.Seminar
It is also expected to provide an opportunity for President Xi Jinping to secure a third term as president of China. Moreover, he hoped to learn from China’s experience fighting terrorism and alleviating poverty. He was also concerned about ‘resurgence of militancy in Afghanistan and Pakistan’ and expressed his fears that ‘US may use these militants for terrorism against Pakistan and China’.Seminar
Senator Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar said that the whole process of people’s democracy goes far beyond the rhetoric by political parties in the model of western democracy for getting votes and subsequently leaving their voters in a lurch in facing unresolved problems. Seminar
The whole-process democracy, he said, entails incorporating crucial components of genuine inclusion and participation, such as elections, decision-making, management, and supervision, into a structure that truly empowers people and puts them in control. Seminar
The success of this novel kind of democratic system has been demonstrated by Chinese experience. Moreover, he said that the whole-process people’s democracy in China serves the people and democracy can’t be defined by geographical boundaries.Seminar
Senator Dr. Zarqa Suharwardy Taimur talked about the dividends brought by the CPEC for Pakistan. She said that twenty-seven (27) CPEC projects totaling about $19 billion in investment had been finished as of June 2022, and another twenty-seven (27) CPEC projects totaling about $7.7 billion in investment are now in the construction phase. Seminar
She said that CPEC contributed one to two percentage points to Pakistan’s annual economic growth. CPEC projects, she said, have created over 80,000 job opportunities for Pakistanis plus Pakistani 28,000 students are studying in China.
Seminar
She said China is a pillar of peace and stability in the region and a preserver, promotor, and protector of principles of peaceful coexistence in the region. Seminar
The initiatives launched by President Xi Jinping, whether it is Global Development Initiative or Global Security Initiative, are a testament to the fact that China prioritizes human security and stability over confrontation. Ms Khar termed China as ‘pillar of peace and stability in the region, as promoter of peaceful coexistence’.Seminar
The event was attended by nearly 200 guests from the media, think tanks, academia, civil society and Parliament.Seminar
‘Ghost recruits’: Is Putin raising a Potemkin army to boost troop numbers?
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on August 25 that the Russian army would be reinforced with 137,000 new soldiers as the war in Ukraine grinds on. But analysts say this goal looks impossible for Moscow to achieve.
Putin wants to turbocharge his offensive in Ukraine by pouring in reinforcements, to the tune of 137,000 extra soldiers – bringing the total to 1.15 million active fighters. This would be the biggest increase in Russian military personnel in years, the last such boost being in 2017, when Moscow announced that the army’s ranks had swelled with 13,698 new soldiers.
The thinking seems to be that greater numbers on the ground will give Russian forces the upper hand, amid stalemates in eastern and southern Ukraine.
But analysts are sceptical. “Fine, but as we’ve seen time and again in the past, this is easier to decree than do,” Mark Galeotti, Russia specialist and director of consulting firm Mayak Intelligence, reacted on Twitter.
“What the MOD [the Russian ministry of defence] really wants and needs are more professionals, but that means offering better pay and conditions, in other words real money,” Galeotti’s Twitter thread continued. “You can only go so far hiring convicts!”
“So we may be heading for a further Potemkinisation of the military, with Moscow issuing decrees and the MOD drawing up new orgs that increasingly don’t match the actual numbers in service,” Galeotti went on. “We’ll see if/how this gets operationalised, but at first glance, this sounds like a Kremlin grappling with impotence and a lack of proper ideas how to change the situation in Ukraine,” he concluded.
‘Very few options’ for Russia Galeotti was referring to the “Potemkin villages”, the trompe-l’oeil urban decorations supposedly built in Crimea in the eighteenth century to hide the poverty from the visiting Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Although this historical legend has since been largely disproved, the word “Potemkin” remains widely used to describe efforts to give a bad situation a flattering image.
The first reason why Putin’s plans look like Potemkinisation is that they are based on flawed arithmetic. The Russian president is using the official data showing the country’s army has just over a million men. “But we’ve known they’ve got far fewer than that since they invaded Ukraine,” said Huseyn Aliyev, an expert on the war in Ukraine at Glasgow University.Ghost recruits
“Estimates range from 250,000 to 300,000 men who are ready to fight,” Aliyev continued. “The rest are civilian members of the army who have been registered as soldiers, or family members of government officials whose names have been added so they can receive military salaries.”Ghost recruits
So even if it bore fruit, the plan to bring in an extra 137,000 soldiers would not get Russia up to 1.15 million men. But even that 137,000 figure seems unrealistic.Ghost recruits
Klopp wants Liverpool to take ‘risk’ in search for midfielder
Jurgen Klopp has urged Liverpool’s owners to “risk a bit more” as the Reds boss searches for a new midfielder before the transfer window closes on Thursday.
Klopp was backed by Liverpool’s Fenway Sports Group owners with a potential club record fee to sign Darwin Nunez from Benfica, as well as deals for Fabio Carvalho and Calvin Ramsay since the end of last season.
Those signings could end up costing Liverpool over £100 million ($116 million), but they have recouped a large chunk of that outlay on player sales.
Aware of the huge spending by several of Liverpool’s Premier League title rivals, Klopp is seeking to bolster his injury-hit midfield this week and would like FSG to push the boat out to seal a deal.
However, the German admits Liverpool’s budget is out of his hands and he does not wish to get into a public argument over the subject.
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“What I don’t like is if I say now ‘I’m not sure’ then you make a big thing of it,” Klopp told reporters on Tuesday when asked if he felt backed in the transfer market.
“What does it mean ‘backed’? I realise it was always like this. Is it always easy? No. Do we discuss this kind of things in public? Of course not.
“Let me say it like this, from time to time, I would be ready to risk a bit more but I don’t decide that and that’s fine. We try everything until the deadline.”
Klopp revealed there is “light at the end of the tunnel, definitely” surrounding a glut of injuries in the squad ahead of the visit of Newcastle in the Premier League on Wednesday.
Curtis Jones and Joel Matip are back in training while Diogo Jota, Thiago Alcantara, Caoimhin Kelleher and Ramsay are all making promising progress in their rehabilitation from injuries.
The number of players sidelined in the early part of the season means Klopp is still on the hunt for reinforcements.
“There’s still time but when it’s over and whether someone signs or not, I’ll be really happy about it because we can stop thinking about it and just focus on the squad and team we have,” Klopp said.
“The closer we get to the last minute, the more unlikely it gets. We are not out but it’s really difficult.
“For sure there are a few players out there which would be the right ones but they have different issues. Some of them are contracts or clubs don’t want to sell. We cannot force it. We’ll see.”
Liverpool finally got their first win of the season at the fourth attempt with a Premier League record-equalling 9-0 rout of Bournemouth on Saturday.
“First and foremost, the scoreline is a freaky one. We don’t expect a freakish scoreline again for a lot obvious reasons. What I want to keep is the way we played,” Klopp said.”
Want to save carbon and land? Study suggests wooden cities
Housing people in homes made from wood instead of steel and concrete could save more than 100 billion tonnes of carbon emissions while preserving enough cropland to feed a booming population, research suggested Tuesday.
More than half of people globally currently live in cities and this proportion is set to rise markedly by 2050.
According to some estimates, the infrastructure needed to accommodate up to 10 billion people by mid-century could exceed that constructed since the dawn of the industrial era.
That places a huge emphasis on emissions from construction, one of the most polluting sectors and historically one of the trickiest to decarbonise.
Were all new construction projects carried out using steel and concrete, that could claim up to 60 percent of Earth’s remaining carbon budget for 2C of warming — that is, how much pollution the global economy can produce and still stay within the Paris Agreement temperature guardrail.
Scientists in Germany and Taiwan wanted to see how much carbon could be saved if firms switched to wood to build new homes instead.
They used an open-source land use model to simulate four different building scenarios: one with conventional materials like cement and steel, and three with additional demand for timber.
They also analysed how additional high wood demand could be satisfied, where it could be produced, and the impacts new tree plantations might have on biodiversity and crop production.
They found that housing people in timber homes could avoid more than 100 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2100 — that’s around 10 percent of the remaining 2C carbon budget, equivalent to nearly three years of global emissions.
Wood is known to be the least carbon-intensive building material as trees absorb CO2 as they grow, explained the study lead author Abhijeet Mishra, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
“Production of engineered wood releases much less CO2 than production of steel and cement,” he said. “Engineered wood also stores carbon, making timber cities a unique long-term carbon sink.”
He said that engineered wood was the ideal material for constructing “mid-rise” buildings — between four and 12 stories — to house growing urban populations.
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that around 140 million hectares — an area larger than Peru — would be needed to grow new trees to meet the increased demand under the timber-led building scenario.
But the team calculated that these new plantations could be established on existing areas of harvest forest, and so not impact food supply by eating into crop land.
“We need farm land to grow food for the people –- using it to grow trees could potentially cause competition for the limited land resources,” said co-author Florian Humpenoder, from PIK.
The authors concluded that planting the necessary additional plantations was possible but would require “strong governance and careful planning” from governments in order to limit their impact on biodiversity.
The UN appealed Tuesday for the last $14 million needed to try and prevent a stricken oil tanker from triggering a disaster off Yemen that could cost $20 billion to clean up.
The decaying 45-year-old FSO Safer, long used as a floating storage platform and now abandoned off the rebel-held Yemeni port of Hodeida, has not been serviced since Yemen was plunged into civil war more than seven years ago.
If it breaks up, it could unleash a potentially catastrophic spill in the Red Sea.
David Gressly, the United Nations’ resident and humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, leads UN efforts on the Safer.
“Less then $14 million is now needed to reach the $80 million target to start the emergency operation to transfer oil from the Safer to a safe vessel,” said Gressly’s communications advisor Russell Geekie.
“We’re deeply concerned. If the FSO Safer continues to decay, it could break up or explode at any time,” he told reporters in Geneva, via video-link from Sanaa.
“The volatile currents and strong winds from October to December will only increase the risk of disaster. If we don’t act, the ship will eventually break apart and a catastrophe will happen. It’s not a question of if, but when.”
He said the result would potentially be the fifth largest oil spill from a tanker in history, with the clean-up costs alone reaching $20 billion.
The Safer contains four times the amount of oil that was spilled by the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, one of the world’s worst ecological catastrophes, according to the UN.
“It would unleash an environmental, economic and humanitarian catastrophe,” said Geekie.
The ship contains 1.1 million barrels of oil. The UN has said a spill could destroy ecosystems, shut down the fishing industry and close the lifeline Hodeida port for six months.
The Safer is unusable, is fit only for scrappage and nothing on it works, said Geekie.
“This is a ticking time bomb,” he warned.
“You don’t want to go and smoke a cigarette on the deck, I can tell you that much.”
French Green MP’s attack on ‘macho’ barbecue culture stirs backlash
Are barbecues “a symbol of virility”? A prominent French green MP has sparked a national debate by suggesting that red meat is macho and grilled ribs are a gender issue.
Sandrine Rousseau, a leading figure in the EELV party and self-declared “eco-feminist”, has raised one of the most talked about topics of the end-of-holidays period.
In seeking to draw attention to the impact of meat-eating on climate change, she told an event at the weekend that the country needed “to change mentality so that eating steak cooked on a barbecue is not a symbol of virility.”
Citing figures from researchers, the 50-year-old former academic said that men ate twice as much red meat as women in the country of “steak frites” and “beef bourguignon”.
As French people return to work after the long August break, radio and TV stations as well as social media are sizzling with hot-headed views on Rousseau’s barbecue-bashing.
“That’s enough of accusing our boys of everything. Stop ‘deconstructing’ our men. Stop Rousseau’s fantasies,” right-wing MP Nadine Morano wrote on Twitter.
Far-right lawmaker Julien Odoul asserted that “since the dawn of time, the muscular mass of men means they eat more meat (protein) than women. It’s not ‘virilism’, it’s nature.”
He vowed to continue his “Cro-Magnon diet based on French meat,” referring to carnivorous cave-dwelling early humans found in southwest France.
Climate change fears The EELV is seeking to capitalise on a summer of weather-related catastrophes ranging from a severe drought to huge wildfires in France to draw attention to climate change.
In recent weeks, the party has floated the idea of a ban on building new private swimming pools as well as restrictions on private jets.
Rousseau defended herself in an interview on LCI television on Monday, saying she was taking part in a discussion about how to convince people to change their eating habits.
“In fact, reducing your quantity of meat is the most effective action against climate change from a personal perspective, even more so than the car,” she said.
Men are more resistant than women to change their diets, she alleged, while admitting that she ate “small amounts” of red meat and was not fully vegetarian.
“I’m fed up… What are we prepared to do? We’ve just lived through a summer when we’ve seen the real impact of climate change for the first time and what are we prepared to do?” she said.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) devoted a chapter this year to its climate solutions report to stress how consumers could drastically reduce global emissions.
It also singled out shifting to a plant-based diet instead of meat as one of the most effective changes individuals could make.
But the biggest potential for avoidance was in reducing long-haul flights.
Fall in meat consumption Rousseau cited work by French writer Nora Bouazzouni, author of the 2021 book “Steaksisme,” which explored attitudes to food consumption.
Bouazzouni argues that eating habits are not gendered — or driven by protein requirements — but are instead learned cultural behaviours.
Health scares, higher prices and growing awareness about animal rights have led to a gradual fall in meat consumption in France since the end of the 1990s.
But most French people remain proudly carnivorous and the majority of school children are fed meat at least four days a week despite recent efforts to introduce vegetarian options.
Imran Khan, the head of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, staged a three-hour worldwide telethon on Monday to raise money for flood victims in the nation. The former prime minister raised Rs5 billion during the event.
Imran Khan was accompanied by a number of famous people during the telethon. The telethon also included appearances from the chief minister of Punjab, Pervaiz Elahi, the premier of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Mahmood Khan, and Sania Nishtar, the previous premier’s former social protection assistant.
The event’s moderator, Senator Faisal Javed Khan, claimed that the former prime minister raised more over Rs5 billion in donations during a three-hour flood telethon.
On Monday, Ahsan Iqbal, the minister of planning, development, and special initiatives, issued a warning that the country would have problems with food security as a result of flooding and heavy rainfall.
Federal Minister Ahsan Iqbal stated during a speech at a gathering in Islamabad that the country’s recent floods and torrential rains had severely harmed the crops of rice, bananas, onions, and other agricultural products.
Additionally, he continued, “40% to 50% of the cotton crop has also been devastated nationwide due to flooding.”Ahsan Iqbal said that the devastation wrought by the recent floods in Pakistan was greater than that brought on by the storm in 2010, stating that “0.9 million cattle and one million dwellings had been wiped away in floods.”
Angola holds funeral for former leader dos Santos amid post-election tensions
Amid post-election tensions, Angola held a funeral on Sunday for long-serving ex-leader Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who died in Spain in July but whose burial was delayed by a family request for an autopsy.
Dos Santos died in a clinic in Barcelona on July 8 at the age of 79. His funeral was taking place days after an election that appeared to have returned his MPLA party to power but whose results have been disputed by the opposition.
Dos Santos and his family dominated Angolan politics for the 38 years that he ruled until 2017. His once Marxist party, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), in power for nearly five decades, looks certain to have won Wednesday’s poll.
His rule was marked by a 27-year on-off civil war against U.S.-backed rebels from the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), who he defeated in 2002. The country also enjoyed an oil-fuelled boom, but more than half the population of more than 30 million live in poverty.
“Today we pay tribute to the former president for the contribution he made to the nation as the Architect of Peace,” Social Affairs Minister Carolina Cerqueira said, using the honorific title dos Santos earned for ending a conflict that killed half a million people.
Heads of state and senior ministers from around the continent, as well as the president of Angola’s former colonial ruler Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, attended.
The presence of foreign VIPs enabled authorities to seek to head off possible protests over the disputed provisional results, which gave the MPLA and President Joao Lourenço a 51% majority while UNITA, now the main opposition group, got 44.5%.
The national police force said that due to the state funeral, citizens intending to organise activities should “contain themselves out of respect for the former head of state,” according to a statement reported by the Lusa news agency on Saturday.
A lion in a zoo in Ghana killed a man who jumped the fence and landed in its enclosure on Sunday, according to a statement from wildlife officials.
According to the Forestry Commission, the government organisation in charge of wildlife in Ghana, the guy was mauled after scaling the zoo’s perimeter gates in the nation’s capital, Accra.
The statement added that the burglar had died from his wounds after being mauled and injured by one of the inside the enclosure’s inner railing.The Accra Zoo’s, and two cubs were still safely enclosed there, it was noted.
How is the city of Paris adapting to climate change?
After a summer of searing heatwaves and droughts, the city of Paris is under pressure to revise and accelerate its much-touted plans to prepare the French capital for the challenges of global warming. FRANCE 24 takes a close look at the city’s efforts to go green.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, best known for her pledge to make Paris 100% bikeable, has made tackling climate change a top priority and is widely regarded as a vocal advocate of greening Europe’s capital cities. However, this past scorching summer has highlighted the need to accelerate efforts to make Paris more resistant to the effects of global warming.
The city of Paris has won plaudits for its Climate Action Plan, which aims to make the city carbon neutral by 2050. According to Vincent Viguié, a researcher in climate change economics at the Centre for International Research on Environment and Development (CIRED), the plan “places the city among the most active in the world on this subject, both in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the present and future impacts of climate change”.
But for Alexandre Florentin, a Paris councillor and member of the green party Génération écologie, the city’s administration must be careful not to rest on its laurels.
While Paris “was ahead of other cities” when it first published its Climate Action Plan, he says, it has since “fallen behind when it comes to the energy and climate crises”.
“The climate emergency doesn’t shape the rest of the city’s policy enough, when it should be driving it,” he says. For instance, “it’s great to build bicycle lanes, but we don’t think enough about the impact of mass tourism and aeroplanes. We need to do things in conjunction”.
Hidalgo’s green belt The Paris Climate Action Plan was revised in June with the aim of accelerating the city’s ecological transition and ensuring it remains on track to meet targets set under the UN-backed Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. The idea was to focus on the specific needs of each Parisian arrondissement (district) and step up efforts to reduce inequalities that have been further exacerbated by climate change.
At the start of the year, the main environmental objectives listed on the City Hall’s website included making schools more accessible by foot, transforming playgrounds into “oases” and planting more than 22,000 trees to combat heatwaves and bolster biodiversity.
In May, Hidalgo announced that she wanted to transform the city’s 35 km-long périphérique (ring-road) from a “grey belt” into a “green belt” by planting a total of 70,000 trees and reducing the number of traffic lanes from 4 to 3. For 2024, when Paris is due to host the summer Olympics, Hidalgo has plans to create an “Olympic lane”, which will be designated for buses, taxes and carpooling for those participating in the Olympics. According to the mayor’s deputy, David Belliard, this would help reduce traffic by up to 80,000 vehicles.
The Paris mayor has also pledged to plant more than 170,000 trees in the city itself and expand its parks and gardens by 30 hectares by 2026.
Finance Minister Miftah Ismail reported that the International Monetary Fund executive board on Monday authorised the seventh and eighth reviews of the $6 billion Pakistan program, following months of frantic work.
Announcing the news on Twitter, Finance Minister Miftah Ismail wrote: “Alhamdolillah the IMF board has approved the resumption of our EFF plan. The seventh and eighth $1.17 billion tranches ought to arrive soon.
The prime minister was also congratulated by the finance minister for “taking so many difficult decisions and rescued Pakistan from the default.” Shehbaz Sharif.
LARKANA: Although Pakistani pacer Shahnawaz Dahani is occupied competing for his nation in the Asia Cup, his village has been entirely flooded as a result of the ongoing terrible floods brought on by unusually heavy monsoon rains.
In Pakistan, a terrible calamity has resulted in the deaths of 1,033 individuals, as well as the loss of many homes, livestock, and crops, forcing many people to abandon their homes and seek shelter elsewhere.
Dahani, a cricket player for
Pakistan in the upcoming Asia Cup 2022, is from the hamlet of Khawar Khan Dahani in Larkana, Sindh.
The bowler Shaheen Shah Afridi left for London on Monday, according to a statement from the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), where he will finish his recovery.
Shaheen needs consistent, devoted knee specialist care, and London has some of the greatest sports medicine and rehabilitation facilities in the world, according to PCB Chief Medical Officer Dr. Najeebullah Soomro. We have chosen to send the player there since it is in his best interests.
We are optimistic Shaheen will regain full fitness before the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup because the medical department will receive daily feedback on his development while he is in London.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is loosely adapted in the series. As it airs on the South Korean cable network tvN, it will be available to stream on Netflix in a few locations.
Three sisters are portrayed in the story; the oldest seeks financial stability, the middle sister wants to be a news reporter, and the youngest is determined to be an artist. Unfortunately, money stands in the way of all of their aspirations.
The three of them are all impoverished until they become involved in a plot against a wealthy family.Cast: Kim Go-eun Nam Ji-hyun Park Ji-hu Wi Ha-joon
CAPE CANAVERAL: The first mission of NASA’s Artemis program, the replacement for Apollo, was scheduled to launch on Monday, carrying a massive next-generation rocketship around the moon and back unmanned for six weeks.
The Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which stands 32 stories tall and consists of two stages, was scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, during a two-hour launch window that started at 8:33 am EDT.
The SLS-Orion’s first flight, codenamed Artemis I, aims to put the 5.75 million pound craft through its paces in a demanding demonstration flight, pushing its design envelope, before NASA decides it is safe enough to transport astronauts.
JAKARTA: The third earthquake to shake the region since early Monday was a 6.1-magnitude one that occurred off the coast, an island in Indonesia. Before 10.30am, a shallow earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra’s Mentawai Islands was reported, although it did not cause a tsunami warning.
Sumatra
Since the early hours of Monday, there have been three earthquakes that have occurred in quick succession, each becoming more powerful. A 5.2-magni tremor occurred before daybreak, and a 5.4-magnit earthquake was felt less than an hour later.
Residents of the Mentawai islands, Padang, the provincial seat, and the nearby hilly region of Bukitinggi felt the 6.1-magni earthquake powerfully for many seconds.
With one million followers on the well-known video-sharing app TikTok, Geo News has reached the milestone of becoming the first media outlet in Pak to do so.
The media organization’s TikTok account has 1,700 videos with 10.2 million likes. The account publishes a wide range of videos, including political news, sports news, entertainment stories, updates on the state of Pak, and interviews with prominent people.
This makes it possible for users to encounter a variety of themes.
Massive relief effort under way in Pakistan as flood death toll mounts
A huge relief operation was under way Monday and international aid began trickling in as Pak struggled to deal with monsoon flooding that has killed more than 1,000 people and affected more than 33 million in the South Asian nation.
Officials said 1,136 people have died in Pak since June when the seasonal rains began, but the final flood death toll could be higher as hundreds of villages in the mountainous north have been cut off by flood-swollen rivers washing away roads and bridges.
The first aid flights began arriving on Sunday, from Turkey and the UAE.
The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but it can also bring destruction.
Officials said this year’s flooding has affected more than 33 million people – one in seven Pakistanis – destroying or badly damaging nearly a million homes.
Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman called it “the monster monsoon of the decade”.
This year’s floods are comparable to 2010’s – the worst on record – when more than 2,000 people died and nearly a fifth of the country was underwater.
ISLAMABAD: According to PTI Secretary-General Asad Umar, Shaukat Tarin gave “reasonable” advice to the finance ministers of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa because he is a former finance minister and therefore understands the country’s economy.
Umar stated at a news conference that the IMF should be informed that our provinces have been hit by a flood and that this is not a typical circumstance. “He urged both finance ministers to advise the federal government they should go back to the IMF,” Umar added.
According to the PTI leader, Tarin requested that the federal government ask for a concession in the budget surplus that was initially agreed upon. Tarin requested this information from the finance ministers.
Venezuela and Colombia restore diplomatic ties after three years
Venezuela and Colom restored full diplomatic relations Sunday after a three-year break, as a new leftist government in Bogota takes shape.
A new Colombian ambassador, Armando Benedetti, arrived in Caracas and said on Twitter, “Relations with Venezuela should never have been severed. We are brothers and an imaginary line cannot separate us.”
He was welcomed by deputy foreign minister Rander Pena Ramirez.
Colombia’s new leftist president, Gustavo Petro, and Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolas Maduro announced on August 11 that they planned to restore diplomatic relations that were severed in 2019.
That rupture was the culmination of years of tension between leftist Venezuela under successive conservative presidents starting with Alvaro Uribe.
Embassies and consulates in both countries were closed, and flights between the neighbors grounded.
Even the 2,000-kilometer (1,200-mile) land border between the two countries was closed between 2019 and October 2021, when it was opened to pedestrians only.
Petro is first leftist president.
The last president in Ivan Duque, did not recognize Maduro as president—but rather opposition leader Juan Guaido.
was one of around 60 countries to do so, having rejected Venezuela’s 2018 presidential election, which was boycotted by the opposition.
In addition to exchanging ambassadors, the normalization process will include the full reopening of the border, which has remained largely closed to vehicles.
ISLAMABAD: After Shaukat Tarin allegedly pushed Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to leave the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreement, Finance Minister Miftah Ismail criticised the leadership.
The findings were made public by an audio leak on Monday in which the former finance minister was heard giving instructions to the finance ministers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab to use the recent floods as the primary justification for pulling out of the agreement.
The letter has already been drafted by the Punjab government, which the runs in conjunction with the PML-Q but which is entirely under the authority of PTI.Following the release of the leaked recording, Mifath stated in a news conference that Pakistan is currently drowning and that the only hope left is the international lender.
As Pakistan battled to deal with the monsoon floods that has afflicted more than 33 million people, a sizable relief operation was under way Monday as foreign money started to trickle in.Hundreds of settlements in the hilly north have been shut off by flood-swollen rivers that are washing away roads and bridges, according to officials.
Although 1,061 people have perished since June, when the seasonal rains started, the eventual death toll may be higher.The Indian subcontinent’s yearly monsoon is crucial for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams, but it can also cause havoc.
One in seven Pakistanis, according to officials, were affected by this year’s flooding, which also severely damaged or destroyed close to a million homes.Sherry Rehman, the minister for climate change, referred to it as “the monster monsoon of the decade.”
Black Sea dolphins casualties of Russia’s war in Ukraine
Pacing up and down a beach of fine white sand on the Black Sea coast, 63 year-old Ukrainian scientist Ivan Rusev breathes a sigh of relief: he did not find any dead dolphins today.
A few moments earlier he had rushed towards what he thought was a stranded dolphin. Mercifully it turned out only to be “tangled fishing gear”.
Rusev spoke to from the Tuzly Estuaries National Nature Park, a protected area of 280 square kilometres (108 square miles) in the Bessarabia region of south-west Ukraine.
Rusev, whose weather-beaten face is shaded by a hat he brought during adventures in central Asia, is the scientific director of the park.
Now his job entails walking every morning along beaches bordered by anti-tank mines in search of the dolphins that have been washing up here since the beginning of the war.
“We only found three dolphins over our entire 44 kilometres (27 miles) coastline last year,” he
“This year, over the five kilometres (3 miles) that we can still access, we already found 35 of them.”
Much of the coastline has been off-limits to employees of the park since Ukrainian troops took up positions there to prevent any possible Russian sea assault.
This means Rusev and his team cannot say exactly how many dolphins have been stranded in the park or survey the full extent of the damage.
Dangerous sonars –
In any case, the death toll is “terrifying,” says Rusev, who has been keeping an online diary — now widely followed on Facebook — about the impact of the war on wildlife.
Elon Musk says the planet needs more oil … and babies
Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has fathered 10 children, said on Monday the world needs to “make more babies” — and keep digging for oil.
The richest man on the planet, who has repeatedly warned that low birth rates posed a “danger” to civilization, said ahead of an energy conference in Norway that the world is facing a “baby crisis”.
Elon Musk
Asked about the greatest challenges facing the world, Musk cited the transition to renewable energies but also said the birth rate was “one of my favourite… things to be concerned about.”
“We don’t want the population to drop so low that we’ll just eventually die,” Musk, founder of American electric car manufacturer Tesla and SpaceX, told reporters in Stavanger, southwest Norway.
“At least make enough babies to sustain the population,” he added.
Many Western societies and populated countries such as China are facing declining birth rates and ageing societies.
“They say civilization might die with a bang or with a whimper,” added Musk. “If we don’t have enough kids, then we will die with a whimper in adult diapers. And that will be depressing.”
He also said the planet still needed new fossil fuel sources.
“I think realistically we do need to use oil and gas in the short term, because otherwise civilization would crumble,” he said, adding that “some additional exploration is warranted at this time”.
Musk, who has been divorced three times, is the father of 10 children, one of whom died at 10 weeks old.
Earlier this year one of his children, who recently turned 18, filed a petition in a California court to change her name and gender identity to female.
Court documents said that she did not want “to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form” as one of the reasons for the name change.
Musk also has two children with the musician Grimes, a girl they named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk — although the parents said they will mostly call her Y — and a boy born in May 2020 called “X Æ A-12”, or more simply, X.
Musk announced last fall that he was “semi-separated” from the singer.
The American press recently revealed that he also had twins in November with an executive at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-implant maker, a few weeks before the birth of Exa Dark Sideræl Musk.
Waqar Younis, a former captain of Pakistan, criticised the Pakistan cricket team after their performance against India in the Asia Cup 2022 match at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium on Sunday was “exposed badly against short balls.”
In the second game of the Asia Cup 2022, played on Sunday at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium, the Indian bowlers outperformed the Pakistani batsmen, who struggled to play short balls and kept losing wickets at regular intervals.
In today’s critical match, three of Pakistan’s top five hitters, including Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan, and Fakhar Zaman, are struck by short balls, prompting a forceful response from the former captain.
Despite being compared to other royal figures, Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, has been successful in upholding her unique image as a member of the royal family.
According to royal specialists, Kate has secured her own identity since she never aspired to be like Princess Diana, which is the secret to her success.
The Duchess, who has been compared to her mother-in-law by the media because of her wardrobe selections, has adopted Diana’s stance when making family decisions. She has never, however, allowed her legacy to trump her uniqueness.
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez stunned onlookers with their extraordinary romantic outing in Italy on Saturday when they were on their second honeymoon there.The newlyweds spread love throughout Italy’s streets with their incredible chemistry.
The happy couple also enjoyed an outside meal. The 50-year-old took a brief break from his own dinner to help his newlywed bride put a mouthful of food in her mouth.Before leaving for a shopping trip in Como, the couple shared a kiss before walking hand in hand and mingling with locals.
In a cream embroidered maxi dress with a crisscross string breast and long sleeves, Lopez looked stunning. She wore heels, a sun hat that matched her outfit, and a cream handbag with colourful embroidery.
LONDON: PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif on Sunday urged all party officials and members to assist flood victims and cancel all other commitments since “now is not the time for politics.”
Nawaz Sharif
The party leader urged wealthy people to financially aid flood victims across Pakistan. commended the efforts made by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif throughout the crisis.
He disclosed that the vice-president of the party, Maryam , would also examine the relief efforts now underway and travel directly to flood-affected districts.
He promised that PM Shehbaz and Maryam will stay by the victims’ sides during these trying times by saying, “PM Shehbaz and Maryam would grasp the hands of all affected.”
