Category: World

The Covid-19 pandemic proved a blessing in disguise as the digital economy widened multi-fold during these testing times in Pakistan.

PTI

Pakistan is planning to roll out the most advanced 5G internet in 2022-23 which will accelerate the download speed 10 times to one gigabit per second (Gbps) and widen economic activities in the country, a media report said on Sunday.

Pakistan is developing a comprehensive roadmap for 5G technology readiness in the country. It is aimed at auctioning “spectrum for…5G services in the fiscal year 2023,” the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said in its annual report 2020.

The Covid-19 pandemic proved a blessing in disguise as the digital economy widened multi-fold during these testing times in Pakistan. The crisis has prompted regulators and stakeholders to improve digital infrastructure.

Pakistan has kick-started its journey to make the most advanced 5G internet commercially available to consumers in 2022-23, The Express Tribune reported.

The tested speed stands 10 times higher compared to 100 megabits per second (Mbps) on 4G internet in the world, it said.

Earlier, mobile phone service providing firms successfully conducted a test trial of 5G services under a limited environment and on non-commercial basis in 2019 and 2020.

Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Aminul Haque said the government had planned to launch 5G technology by December 2022, but experts are still sceptical, believing the country will take a much longer time (5-7 years) to roll out the next-generation technology.

Haque made a test video call through 5G to China and said it was a wonderful experience. The voice was loud and clear, and the video quality was also wonderful, the report said.

Saudi Arabia’s airport delays flights after the kingdom intercepts apparent missile or drone attack over its capital.

Saudi Arabia intercepted an apparent missile or drone attack over Riyadh on Saturday, said state media in the kingdom, which has come under repeated attacks from Yemen’s Houthi rebels since 2015.

Social media users posted videos of what appeared to be an explosion in the air over Riyadh. The incident came at about 11am (08:00 GMT).

“I heard a loud sound and thought that something had fallen from the sky,” said one resident, who lives in the Al-Sulaimaniyah district of Riyadh. “The whole house was shaking.”

The Saudi Arabia-led coalition, which backs Yemen’s internationally recognised government against the Houthis, said it “intercepted and destroyed a hostile air target going towards Riyadh”, without elaborating, according to state-run Al Ekhbariya television station.

The Houthis did not immediately acknowledge launching a missile or a drone towards Riyadh on Saturday.

Riyadh’s King Khaled International Airport said there were a number of flight delays, but it was not immediately clear if they were linked to Saturday’s incident.

The US embassy in Riyadh issued a warning to Americans calling on them to “stay alert in case of additional future attacks”.

Saudi Arabia has been repeatedly targeted by the Houthis since its intervention in Yemen’s civil war in 2015.

It is rare, however, for drones and missiles launched by the Houthis to reach the kingdom’s capital – about 700km (435 miles) from the Yemeni border.

The rebels have yet to comment on the incident, which comes only days after Joe Biden was sworn-in as the US president, replacing Donald Trump.

According to the new US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, the Biden administration will quickly revisit the designation of Yemen’s Houthi rebels as “terrorists”.

At his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Blinken said he would “immediately” review the Trump administration’s labelling of the rebels, fearing the move will worsen a humanitarian crisis already described as the world’s worst.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

According to the WhatsApp chat transcript, Goswami texted Dasgupta three days before the Feb. 26, 2019 airstrike, saying “something big will happen” and “On Pakistan the government is confident of striking in a way that people will be elated.”

By: AP

Islamabad: Pakistan’s prime minister reacted angrily Monday to media reports of a text exchange between an Indian TV anchor and a former media industry executive that suggests a 2019 Indian airstrike inside Pakistan was designed to boost Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s chances for re-election.

Imran Khan took to Twitter to respond to Indian media reports of an exchange on the WhatsApp messaging service between popular Indian TV anchor Arnab Goswami and Partho Dasgupta, the former head of a TV rating company.

The purported text exchange three days before the airstrike indicates Goswami had prior knowledge of the attack and that it was designed to drum up support for Modi in his re-election bid in pending parliamentary elections.

Arnab Goswami, a firebrand anchor who is Indian Republic TV’s co-owner and editor in chief, is known for supporting Modi and his nationalist policies.

transcript, Goswami texted Dasgupta three days before the February 26, 2019 airstrike, saying “something big will happen” and “On Pakistan the government is confident of striking in a way that people will be elated.”

Dasgupta tells Goswami the attack on Pakistan would give Modi a “sweeping majority” in the upcoming general election. Months later, Modi surged to a landslide victory in May 2019, propelling his Hindu nationalist party to back-to-back majorities in parliament.

Transcripts of the purported text exchange seen by The Associated Press were filed by Mumbai police as part of a supplementary charge sheet in a different case relating to manipulation of TV ratings.

Neither Dasgupta nor Goswami was available for comment Monday. But Goswami’s Republic TV issued a statement alleging the Pakistani government was conspiring against his station.

The February 2019 airstrike on Pakistan followed a suicide bombing in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir that month that killed more than 40 Indian soldiers. India blamed Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, which claimed responsibility.

Although Pakistan detained Jaish-e-Mohammed’s leaders, Modi’s government launched a nighttime airstrike on the Pakistani town of Balakot, saying it hit a militant camp. Pakistan said Indian warplanes dropped bombs in a forested area, causing no casualties.

Pakistan responded by shooting down an Indian warplane in Kashmir and capturing its pilot, who was later released to ease tensions between the neighboring countries.

Khan alleged in a speech at the U.N. in 2019 that Modi used the airstrike “for domestic electoral gains.”

On Monday, Khan in a series of tweets urged the world community to “stop India from its reckless, militarist agenda before the Modi govt’s brinkmanship pushes our region into a conflict it cannot control.”

“The latest revelations from (a) communication of an Indian journalist, known for his warmongering, reveal the unholy nexus between the Modi govt & Indian media that led to a dangerous military adventurism to win an election in utter disregard for the consequences of destabilizing the entire region,” he said.

Pakistan and Afghanistan have routinely accused each other of unprovoked attacks along the tense Kashmir frontier in violation of a 2003 cease-fire agreement. Kashmir is split between the nuclear-armed rivals, and both claim it in its entirety. They have fought two wars over the region since their independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

The text exchange controversy also drew criticism from India’s opposition, which demanded answers from Modi.

The opposition Congress Party said the text exchange between the two men raised serious questions about India’s national security. “(Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party) govt betrayed our nation by leaking national security information to a so-called journalist,” the party tweeted Monday.

Shashi Tharoor, a Congress Party lawmaker, said Sunday the “leaking of military secrets to a TV channel for its commercial purposes” required a “serious inquiry” by the Modi government. “We all expect it won’t, given the evidence of its complicity in the betrayals revealed,” Tharoor wrote on Twitter.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Memo by Biden’s incoming chief of staff shows president-elect is looking to quickly reverse several Trump policies.

On his first day in office, US President-elect Joe Biden plans to issue a number of executive orders, including one rescinding the controversial travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries.

According to a memo circulated on Saturday by Ron Klain, Biden’s incoming White House chief of staff, the new US administration will launch a spate of reversals on policies implemented by US President Donald Trump over its first 10 days in office.

These also include new coronavirus prevention efforts, rejoining the Paris climate change accord, and immigration legislation allowing for millions to gain citizenship.

Shortly after taking office in 2017, Trump issued an executive order that banned travellers from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States.

That order was, however, reworked several times amid legal challenges and a version of it was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018.

‘Poison of hate’

Analysts say the ban could easily be undone as it was issued by executive order and presidential proclamation, though lawsuits from conservative opponents could delay the process.

“As president, I’ll work with you to rip the poison of hate from our society to honour your contributions and seek your ideas. My administration will look like America, with Muslim Americans serving at every level,” Biden said in October.

Other reversals include the extension of pandemic-related limits on evictions and student loan payments, the imposition of mask mandates in federal property and interstate travel, as well as a solution to reunite immigrant children separated from their families, the memo said.

Biden also plans to submit new legislation to provide for the naturalisation of 11 million undocumented people currently living in the country, in addition to a pledge to vaccinate 100 million people in his first 100 days in office.

Biden had previously announced he will push Congress to approve a $1.9bn stimulus package to tackle an economic slump caused by the coronavirus.

SOURCE : AL JAZEERA

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.).

AP

• Most of the 29,000 cartons in the batch had yet to be sold, the government said
• The ingredients included New Zealand milk powder and whey powder from Ukraine, the government said

Beijing: The coronavirus was found on ice cream produced in eastern China, prompting a recall of cartons from the same batch, according to the government.

The Daqiaodao Food Co., Ltd. in Tianjin, adjacent to Beijing, was sealed and its employees were being tested for the coronavirus, a city government statement said. There was no indication anyone had contracted the virus from the ice cream.

Most of the 29,000 cartons in the batch had yet to be sold, the government said. It said 390 sold in Tianjin were being tracked down and authorities elsewhere were notified of sales to their areas.

The ingredients included New Zealand milk powder and whey powder from Ukraine, the government said.

The Chinese government has suggested the disease, first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, came from abroad and has highlighted what it says are discoveries of the coronavirus on imported fish and other food, though foreign scientists are skeptical.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been

The Chinese government has suggested the disease, first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, came from abroad and has highlighted what it says are discoveries of the coronavirus on imported fish and other food, though foreign scientists are skeptical.

 (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.).

ANI

China has imposed a temporary travel ban on Pakistani passengers after 10 of them tested positive for COVID-19.

According to Geo News, China has also stopped operating flights from Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) for three weeks.

China | Representational Image | File Photo

PIA spokesperson Abdullah Hafeez confirmed that the national carrier has temporarily halted the flights after the development.

Pakistani passengers, who travelled to China with a negative coronavirus test report, later tested positive upon arrival, informed the spokesperson.

On Thursday, China reported 144 COVID-19 infections, the highest number of cases in over 10 months, due to a severe outbreak in the northeast that has put over 28 million people under lockdown, reported Geo News.

North China’s Hebei Province reported 90 locally transmitted infections and nine asymptomatic cases on Thursday.

By the end of Thursday, there were 553 locally transmitted confirmed cases and two imported cases being treated in hospitals in Hebei, Xinhua reported.

Meanwhile, Pakistan on Friday recorded 2,417 new infections and 45 deaths, reported ARY News.

The total COVID-19 caseload in Pakistan stands at 514,338, along with 10,863 deaths.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.).

AFP

Beijing: China on Saturday finished building a 1,500-room hospital for COVID-19 patients to fight a surge in infections the government said are harder to contain and that it blamed on infected people or goods from abroad.

The hospital is one of six with a total of 6,500 rooms being built in Nangong, south of Beijing in Hebei province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

China had largely contained the coronavirus that first was detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019 but has suffered a surge of cases since December.

A total of 645 people are being treated in Nangong and the Hebei provincial capital, Shijiazhuang, Xinhua said. A 3,000-room hospital is under construction in Shijiazhuang.

Virus clusters also have been found in Beijing and the provinces of Heilongjiang and Liaoning in the northeast and Sichuan in the southwest.

The latest infections spread unusually fast, the National Health Commission said.

“It is harder to handle,” a Commission statement said. “Community transmission already has happened when the epidemic is found, so it is difficult to prevent.”

The Commission blamed the latest cases on people or goods arriving from abroad. It blamed “abnormal management” and “inadequate protection of workers” involved in imports but gave no details.

“They are all imported from abroad. It was caused by entry personnel or contaminated cold chain imported goods,” said the statement.

The Chinese government has suggested the disease might have originated abroad and publicized what it says is the discovery of the virus on imported food, mostly frozen fish, though foreign scientists are skeptical.

Also Saturday, the city government of Beijing said travelers arriving in the Chinese capital from abroad would be required to undergo an additional week of “medical monitoring” after a 14-day quarantine but gave no details.

Nationwide, the Health Commission reported 130 new confirmed cases in the 24 hours through midnight Friday. It said 90 of those were in Hebei.

On Saturday, the Hebei government reported 32 additional cases since midnight, the Shanghai news outlet The Paper reported.

In Shijiazhuang, authorities have finished construction of 1,000 rooms of the planned hospital, state TV said Saturday. Xinhua said all the facilities are due to be completed within a week.

A similar program of rapid hospital construction was launched by the ruling Communist Party at the start of the outbreak last year in Wuhan.

More than 10 million people in Shijiazhuang underwent virus tests by late Friday, Xinhua said, citing a deputy mayor, Meng Xianghong. It said 247 locally transmitted cases were found.
Meanwhile, researchers sent by the World Health Organization were in Wuhan preparing to investigate the origins of the virus. The team, which arrived Thursday, was under a two-week quarantine but was due to talk with Chinese experts by video link.

The team’s arrival was held up for months by diplomatic wrangling that prompted a rare public complaint by the head of the WHO.

That delay, and the secretive ruling party’s orders to scientists not to talk publicly about the disease, have raised questions about whether Beijing might try to block discoveries that would hurt its self-proclaimed status as a leader in the anti-virus battle.

Source: AFP

AFP

Geneva: The World Health Organization’s (WHO) emergency committee will meet two weeks early on Thursday (Jan 14) to discuss the new coronavirus variants from South Africa and Britain that have rapidly spread to at least 50 countries and sparked widespread alarm.

The newly identified variants, which appear to be significantly more infectious than the strain that emerged in China in 2019, come as spiking virus numbers force many nations to enforce new lockdowns.

The committee normally gathers every three months but the WHO said the director-general pulled the meeting forward “to consider issues that need urgent discussion”.

“These are the recent variants and considerations on the use (of) vaccination and testing certificates for international travel,” the global body said on Wednesday.

There are concerns that the new mutations may render certain vaccines less effective, undermining hopes that inoculations offer the best hope of recovery from the global pandemic.

The committee of experts is overseen by France’s Didier Houssin and its recommendations will be published after the meeting.

The meeting comes as global infections soared past 91 million and deaths approached 2 million, with governments around the world reimposing painful economic lockdowns and social restrictions.

The newly discovered variants can only be identified by sequencing their genetic code, an analysis that is not possible everywhere.

A third mutation, originating in the Brazilian Amazon and whose discovery Japan announced on Sunday, is currently being analysed and could impact the immune response, according to the WHO.

Source: AFP/dv

ANI

Norway: Twenty-three people died in Norway within days of receiving their first dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine with 13 of those deaths apparently related to the side effects of the shots, New York Post reported citing the health officials.

All 13 were nursing home patients and at least 80 years old.

Common reactions to the vaccine, including fever and nausea, “may have contributed to a fatal outcome in some frail patients,” New York Post quoted Sigurd Hortemo, chief physician at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, as saying in a statement on Friday.

While officials aren’t expressing serious concern, they are adjusting their guidance on who should receive the vaccine.

More than 30,000 people in Norway have received the first shot of the Pfizer or Moderna coronavirus vaccine since late last month.
Agency’s medical director Steinar Madsen has stated that the “agency is not alarmed by this.”

“It is quite clear that these vaccines have very little risk, with a small exception for the frailest patients. Doctors must now carefully consider who should be vaccinated. Those who are very frail and at the very end of life can be vaccinated after an individual assessment,” he said.

The agency reported Thursday that a total of 29 people had suffered side effects, including the 13 people who died.

Twenty-one women and eight men experienced side effects, officials said.

Besides those who died, nine had serious side effects — including allergic reactions, strong discomfort and severe fever — while seven had less serious ones, including severe pain at the injection site, New York Post reported.

According to health officials around 400 people die each week in the nursing home population.
A Pfizer rep said the company is “aware of reported deaths” following the administration of the vaccine in Norway and is working with the Norwegian Medicines Agency to gather all the relevant information.

The total number of coronavirus cases reported in Norway is 58,202, while the death toll stands at 517, according to the Johns Hopkins University

Press Trust of India

Houston: WhatsApp announced delaying by three months the implementation of a new privacy policy that has faced massive backlash with tens of millions of its users moving from the platform to rivals like Signal and Telegram.
The policy change was originally scheduled to come into effect on February 8, the Facebook-owned company said.

It has clarified that the update does not affect data sharing with Facebook with regard to personal conversations or other profile information and only addresses business chats in the event a user converses with a company’s customer service platform through WhatsApp.

“We’ve heard from so many people how much confusion there is around our recent update. There’s been a lot of misinformation causing concern and we want to help everyone understand our principles and the facts,” WhatsApp said in a company blog.

“WhatsApp was built on a simple idea: what you share with your friends and family stays between you. This means we will always protect your personal conversations with end-to-end encryption, so that neither WhatsApp nor Facebook can see these private messages. It’s why we don’t keep logs of who everyone’s messaging or calling.

We also can’t see your shared location and we don’t share your contacts with Facebook,” it said further.

Asserting that none of that changes, the company said, “The update includes new options people will have to message a business on WhatsApp, and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data. While not everyone shops with a business on WhatsApp today, we think that more people will choose to do so in the future and it’s important people are aware of these services. This update does not expand our ability to share data with Facebook.”

The company said it was moving back the date on which people will be asked to review and accept the terms.

“No one will have their account suspended or deleted on February 8. We’re also going to do a lot more to clear up the misinformation around how privacy and security works on WhatsApp. We’ll then go to people gradually to review the policy at their own pace before new business options are available on May 15,” it added.
The company released a separate blog post Friday trying to clear up the confusion, and it included a chart that specifies what information is protected when someone uses WhatsApp.

Facebook executives, including Instagram chief Adam Mosseri and WhatsApp head Will Cathcart, also used Twitter to try and clear up the confusion.

Facebook’s poor privacy track record, and the fact that WhatsApp has over time turned its sights on monetising the platform for its large international user base, has eroded trust in the chat app, which, in turn, has had the effect of turning a relatively mundane update into a worldwide controversy.

WhatsApp now says it is now going to use the three-month delay to better communicate both the changes in its new policy and its long-standing privacy practices around personal chats, location sharing, and other sensitive data.

“We’re now moving back the date on which people will be asked to review and accept the terms,” the blog post reads.

The company said no one will be losing access to the app if they didn’t agree to the new terms of service agreement that communicated the changes earlier this month.

“We’re also going to do a lot more to clear up the misinformation around how privacy and security works on WhatsApp. We’ll then go to people gradually to review the policy at their own pace before new business options are available on May 15,” it added.

With inputs from PTI

 (This story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.).