ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) warned on Tuesday that the government’s decision to allow indoor dinning and marriages at restaurants and wedding halls for vaccinated people from next month could lead to a fourth coronavirus wave in the first week of August, following the religious Eid Al-Adha holiday.
The country’s pandemic response body, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), on Monday announced that indoor dining at restaurants would be allowed in the country from July 1, though at 50 percent occupancy and only for vaccinated individuals.
“Restaurants and hotels management will institute mechanism for checking of vaccination certificates of guests and will also ensure vaccination of respective management and staff,” the NCOC said in a statement on Monday. “Takeaways are allowed 24/7.”
Likewise, indoor marriages have also been allowed for vaccinated individuals with a maximum limit of 200 guests.
Other than that, the authorities have permitted cinemas to reopen “with strict COVID protocols for vaccinated individuals.”
Medical professionals have, however, raised questions regarding the mechanism to implement the directives for restaurants, cinemas and marriage halls to only serve vaccinated people.
“Every time our number of cases start going down, we become complacent and reopen everything, which leads to another wave,” Dr. Qaisar Sajjad, secretary general of the Pakistan Medical Association, told Arab News on Tuesday.
“The [COVID-19] vaccination rate is slow across the country, and we can face another wave in the first week of August, after Eid Al-Adha,” he said, urging people to get vaccinated at the earliest to protect themselves from the virus.
Restaurants and hotel managements say they don’t have the capacity to check vaccination certificates of guests before serving them, demanding the government devise a mechanism for this.
“It’s good for our industry that the government has allowed indoor dinning for vaccinated people, but how can we check and verify the vaccine certificates of individuals?” said Athar Sultan Chawla, convener of the All Pakistan Restaurants Association, while talking to Arab News.
He said NCOC officials, in a meeting with the restaurants association last week, promised to provide a mobile app for each restaurant, hotel and wedding hall manager to check and verify vaccination certificates.
“We hope the NCOC will provide us with the promised app, otherwise we will not be able to do it on our own,” he said. “Apart from that, the provincial governments have yet to issue separate notifications for easing of the coronavirus restrictions.”
Federal and provincial health authorities did not respond to phone calls and text messages seeking their viewpoint regarding the mechanism to ensure implementation of the new guidelines.
NCOC chief Asad Umar already warned of a new COVID-19 wave in July if people fail to follow health guidelines like wearing face masks and getting shots.
The third COVID-19 wave set in in Pakistan in March, forcing the government to impose virus restrictions across the country. This led to a decline in infection rates by May, leading the NCOC to begin easing curbs from June 15.
The South Asian nation of 220 million has administered 15.6 million COVID-19 doses since February when it started the inoculation drive and is planning to vaccinate at least 70 million people to achieve herd immunity.
The NCOC said in a statement earlier in the day that the country was going to receive three million doses of SinoVac vaccine from China on Tuesday through a procurement plan for June.
Pakistan has so far received 21.13 million doses of different types of vaccines, out of which over 17 million doses are procured on payment, the NCOC said.
The government has also allocated $1.2 billion for further purchase of COVID-19 vaccines during the coming fiscal year.
Pakistani doctors warn of fourth COVID-19 wave after Eid Al-Adha as restrictions lifted
https://arab.news/49s2x
Pakistani doctors warn of fourth COVID-19 wave after Eid Al-Adha as restrictions lifted
- Pakistan Medical Association laments complacency every time infections begin to fall, which causes a new wave
- Restaurants and hotel managements say don’t have capacity to check vaccine certificates, demand government devise a mechanism
Pakistan concludes week-long anti-polio drive in southwestern province hit hardest by disease
- Pakistan to hold next polio drive in Balochistan during first week of February, says official
- Pakistan reported 68 polio cases last year out of which 27 were from Balochistan province
QUETTA: Pakistani health authorities on Monday concluded a week-long polio campaign in its southwestern Balochistan province, hit hardest by the disease, amid looming security threats to vaccinators and security forces guarding them.
Pakistan kickstarted the polio drive on Dec. 30 to vaccinate 2.6 million children against the disease in Balochistan. Pakistan reported 68 polio cases last year out of which 27 were from Balochistan. The northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southern Sindh provinces each recorded 19 cases while the eastern Punjab province and Islamabad each reported one case.
Pakistan, along with neighboring Afghanistan, remains the last polio-endemic country in the world.
“We have achieved our set target in the last province-wide anti-polio campaign,” Dr. Aftab Kakar, the provincial team lead at the National Stop Transmission of Polio (NSTOP) program told Arab News.
“We had set a target to vaccinate more than 2.6 million children but are gathering entry data from all districts but due to the suspension of mobile service in Quetta, some entries are pending.”
Polio is a paralyzing disease with no cure. To provide high immunity against the virus, multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five are essential.
“We are planning our next anti-polio drive in the first week of February 2025 with further training to the polio staff across Balochistan to make next drives more effective,” Kakar said. “We are very much optimistic that polio cases will decline this year because we have noticed a major decline since September and October 2024.”
Pakistan’s polio program began in 1994 but efforts to eradicate the virus have since been undermined by vaccine misinformation and opposition from some religious hard-liners, who say immunization is a foreign ploy to sterilize Muslim children or a cover for Western spies. Militant groups also frequently attack and kill members of polio vaccine teams.
On Dec. 18, provincial health authorities postponed the nationwide anti-polio drive twice due to security reasons and a boycott by health staffers. The virus killed three children, including a minor girl, in Balochistan’s Quetta, Zhob and Killa Abdullah districts last year.
In the early 1990s, the country reported around 20,000 cases annually, but in 2018, the number dropped to eight cases. Six cases were reported in 2023 and only one in 2021.
Unidentified men shoot dead two cops in northwestern Pakistan
- Both constables were shot dead as they were arriving for duty on a motorcycle from their village, say police
- Such attacks, mostly claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, have been on the rise in KP province in recent months
PESHAWAR: Two police constables were shot dead by unidentified men in northwestern Pakistan on Monday, a police spokesperson said, as Islamabad struggles to contain surging militancy in its Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province bordering Afghanistan.
Constable Himatullah and Constable Khan Bahadur were on their way to the police station from their village Kheru Khel Pakka on a motorcycle early Monday morning when the attack occurred, the district’s police spokesperson Shahid Marwat said.
“On the way, both police officers were shot dead by unknown motorcycle-borne terrorists near Nawab Khan Ziarat within the limits of Ghazni Khel police station,” Marwat said.
Such attacks against security forces and police officers have been on the rise in KP in recent months, with most claimed by Pakistan’s indigenous Taliban movement, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and other militant groups that target security forces’ convoys and check posts and carry out daily targeted killings and kidnappings of law enforcers and government officials.
Pakistan has frequently accused neighboring Afghanistan of sheltering and supporting militant groups like the TTP, urging the administration there to prevent its territory from being used by armed factions to launch cross-border attacks.
The Afghan Taliban deny the charge, insisting Pakistan’s security issues are an internal matter.
Pakistan court to announce £190 million bribe case verdict against Imran Khan on Jan. 13
- Khan, wife are accused of receiving land worth millions of dollars as bribe from real estate tycoon in exchange for favor
- Khan’s PTI party says delay in announcing verdict against former premier “questions legitimacy of merits of trial”
ISLAMABAD: An Islamabad accountability court will announce the verdict in a case involving former prime minister Imran Khan and his third wife Bushra Khan, in which they are accused of receiving land worth millions of dollars as bribe from a real estate tycoon through the Al-Qadir Trust, on Jan. 13, his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said on Monday.
The charitable trust was set up by Khan and his third wife Bushra Khan in 2018 when still in office. Pakistani authorities have accused Khan and Bushra of receiving the land, worth up to 7 billion rupees ($25 million), from a property developer charged in Britain with money laundering.
Authorities accused Khan of getting the land in exchange for a favor to the property developer by using 190 million pounds repatriated by Britain in the money laundering probe to pay fines levied by a court against the developer. Khan’s aides have previously said that the land was donated to the trust for charitable purposes. The real estate developer has also denied any wrongdoing.
This is the second time the announcement of the verdict has been deferred. It was supposed to be announced on Dec. 23 but was delayed to Jan. 6.
“Decision on Alaqadir Trust case postponed till 13th January, communicated by judicial staff to the Former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s legal team,” the PTI said in a message circulated among the media.
Khan’s party said the delay “questions the legitimacy of the merits of the trial,” alleging that it was conducted based on “phony evidence” to keep Khan in prison.
Pakistani news website Geo.tv reported that the decision was deferred as the judge, Nasir Javed Rana, was on leave.
Khan, who has been in jail since August 2023 in a slew of cases, had also become a beneficiary of the restored amendments, his party said after the ruling, arguing that he could now move the courts for acquittal in at least two major corruption cases, namely the land bribe case and an investigation involving the illegal sale of state gifts while he was PM.
Since his ouster from office, the former prime minister has led a campaign of unprecedented defiance against the country’s powerful military, accusing them of colluding with his rivals to orchestrate his removal.
The military has denied Khan’s allegations and insisted strongly it does not interfere in politics.
Pakistan’s Sohail Adnan to face Egyptian opponent in British Junior Open Squash final today
- Adnan storms into tournament’s final after beating Egypt’s Amr Moustafa 3-0 in semifinal on Sunday
- Last week, Pakistani squash player Azan Ali Khan clinched Junior Under-17 Scottish Junior Open Championship
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Sohail Adnan will face off against Egyptian opponent Moez Tamer Elmoghazy today, Monday, in the final of the British Junior Open Squash Championship in Birmingham after he beat another Egyptian opponent, Amr Moustafa, a day earlier.
The five-day championship kicked off in Birmingham on Jan. 2 and the final of the tournament is expected to be played today, Jan. 6. The event is being held at the Birmingham University Sport and Fitness, which features an all-glass show court.
Adnan stormed into the final after beating Moustafa 3-0 in the semifinal on Sunday with a scoreline of 11-7, 11-6 and 11-7.
“This victory sets the stage for a thrilling final encounter against top-seeded Egyptian player Moez Tamer Elmoghazy in the Under-13 category,” state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported on Sunday. “Adnan will be aiming to cap off a remarkable tournament with a gold medal.”
Pakistan has always been counted among the world’s top squash-playing nations, introducing legendary players of the sport such as Jahangir Khan, Jansher Khan, Azam Khan, and Qamar Zaman to the world. Between themselves, Jansher Khan and Jahangir Khan won the World Squash Open title 14 times for Pakistan during the ‘80s and the ‘90s.
Last month, Jansher Khan was inducted into the Professional Squash Association (PSA) Hall of Fame. A key part of the Pakistani dominance of the sport throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Jansher Khan won the World Championships eight times – a record in the men’s game – and also added six British Open titles to a glittering trophy haul.
A World No.1 for 97 months throughout his career, Khan’s final professional title count of 99 is the greatest of any player since records began.
Last week, Pakistani squash player Azan Ali Khan clinched the Junior Under-17 Scottish Junior Open Championship 2024 in Edinburgh after beating Switzerland’s Landro Wagle in the final.
‘Form of violence’: From US to Pakistan, deepfake videos target women politicians
- Pakistani lawmaker Meena Majeed was targeted in deepfake video showing her publicly hugging male minister
- Pakistan lacks legislation to combat sexualized deepfakes while the UK’s laws criminalize sharing deepfake porn
WASHINGTON: From the United States to Italy, Britain, and Pakistan, female politicians are increasingly becoming victims of AI-generated deepfake pornography or sexualized images, in a troubling trend that researchers say threatens women’s participation in public life.
An online boom in non-consensual deepfakes is outpacing efforts to regulate the technology globally, experts say, with a proliferation of cheap artificial intelligence tools including photo apps digitally undressing women.
The intimate imagery is often weaponized to tarnish the reputation of women in the public sphere, jeopardizing their careers, undermining public trust, and threatening national security by creating conditions for blackmail or harassment, researchers say.
In the United States, the American Sunlight Project, a disinformation research group, identified more than 35,000 instances of deepfake content depicting 26 members of Congress — 25 of them women — across pornographic sites.
A study published by the group last month showed that nearly one in six women in Congress have been victims of such AI-generated imagery.
“Female lawmakers are being targeted by AI-generated deepfake pornography at an alarming rate,” said Nina Jankowicz, chief executive of the ASP. “This isn’t just a tech problem — it’s a direct assault on women in leadership and democracy itself.”
ASP did not release the names of the female lawmakers depicted in the imagery to avoid public searches, but it said it privately notified their offices.
In the United Kingdom, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner was among more than 30 British female politicians found to be targeted by a deepfake porn website, according to a Channel 4 investigation published last year.
The high-traction site, which was unnamed, appeared to use AI technology to “nudify” about a dozen of those politicians, turning their photos into naked images without their consent, it said.
The tech advancements have given rise to what researchers call an expanding cottage industry around AI-enhanced porn, where users can turn to widely available AI tools and apps to digitally strip off clothing from pictures or generate deepfakes using sexualized text-to-image prompts.
In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is seeking 100,000 euros ($102,950) in damages from two men accused of creating deepfake porn videos featuring her and posting them to American porn websites.
“This is a form of violence against women,” Meloni told a court last year, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.
“With the advent of artificial intelligence, if we allow the face of some woman to be superimposed on the body of another woman, our daughters will find themselves in these situations, which is exactly why I consider it legitimate to wage this war.”
In Pakistan, AFP’s fact-checkers debunked a deepfake video that showed lawmaker Meena Majeed publicly hugging an unrelated male minister, an act culturally deemed immoral in a conservative Muslim-majority nation.
In a separate episode, Azma Bukhari, the information minister of the Pakistani province of Punjab, said she felt “shattered” after discovering a deepfake video online that superimposed her face on the sexualized body of an Indian actor.
“The chilling effect of AI-generated images and videos used to harass women in politics is a growing phenomenon,” the nonprofit Tech Policy Press said last year, warning that the trend will have a “silencing effect on the political ambitions” of women.
The proliferation of deepfakes has outstripped regulation around the world.
Pakistan lacks legislation to combat sexualized deepfakes. UK laws criminalize sharing deepfake porn and the government has pledged to ban its creation this year, but so far no firm timetable has been laid out.
A handful of US states including California and Florida have passed laws making sexually explicit deepfakes a punishable offense and campaigners are calling on Congress to urgently pass a host of bills to regulate their creation and dissemination.
While high-profile politicians and celebrities, including singer Taylor Swift, have been victims of deepfake porn, experts say women not in the public eye are equally vulnerable.
After ASP notified the targeted US Congresswomen, the fake AI-generated imagery was almost entirely scraped from the websites, reflecting what it called a “disparity of privilege.”
“Women who lack the resources afforded to members of Congress would be unlikely to achieve such a rapid response from deepfake pornography sites if they initiated a takedown request themselves,” ASP said.
