ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Champions will face India Champions in a high-voltage final of the World Championship of Legends (WCL) 2024 at Edgbaston Stadium in Birmingham today, Saturday.
India Champions defeated Australia Champions by 86 runs in the second semifinal of the WCL 2024 which was played at the County Ground in Northampton on Friday.
Pakistan Champions won the first semifinal against the West Indies Champions at the County Ground, Northampton. The final is scheduled to be played at 8:30pm Pakistan time.
“The stage is set for a high-voltage clash as arch-rivals Pakistan and India Champions prepare to face off in the grand finale of the WCL T20 2024,” the WCL wrote on its official website.
Six teams competed in the tournament, including England, India, Pakistan, Australia, South Africa and the West Indies.
Hundreds of thousands of Pakistani and Indian fans are going to be on the edge of their seats worldwide, anticipating a fierce battle that will be etched in the cricketing history.
Pakistan squad:
Kamran Akmal, Misbahul Haq, Younis Khan, Shoaib Malik, Sohaib Maqsood, Sharjeel Khan, Umar Akmal, Abdul Razzaq, Shahid Afridi, Muhammad Hafeez, Aamer Yamin, Wahab Riaz and Saeed Ajmal
India squad:
Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, Yusuf Pathan, Robin Uthapa, Naman Ojha, Saurabh Tiwary, Gurkreet Mann, Yuvraj Singh, Irrfan Pathan, RP Singh, HarbHajjan Singh, Vinay Kumar and Rahul Shukla
Pakistan, India Champions lock horns in World Championship of Legends final today
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Pakistan, India Champions lock horns in World Championship of Legends final today
- Pakistan Champions won the first semifinal against the West Indies Champions in Northampton
- India Champions defeated Australia Champions by 86 runs in second semifinal of the WCL 2024
Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh’s ‘banker to the poor’
- Yunus was awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for work on loaning small cash sums to rural women
- Was hit with a 100 criminal cases and smear campaign by state-led agency after being at odds with government
DHAKA: Nobel-winning microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus will helm Bangladesh’s interim government after the ouster of premier Sheikh Hasina, who had hounded him in speeches and through the courts.
The 84-year-old, known as the “banker to the poorest of the poor,” was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work loaning small cash sums to rural women, allowing them to invest in farm tools or business equipment and boost their earnings.
Grameen Bank, the microfinance lender he founded, was lauded for helping unleash breakneck economic growth in Bangladesh and its work has since been copied by scores of developing countries.
“Human beings are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty,” Yunus said during his Nobel lecture, daring his audience to imagine a world where deprivation was confined to history museums.
But his public profile in Bangladesh earned him the hostility of Hasina, who once accused him of “sucking blood” from the poor.
Hasina’s 15-year tenure was characterized by a growing intolerance of dissent before her hurried resignation and departure from Bangladesh on Monday and Yunus’s popularity had marked him as a potential rival.
Yunus announced plans in 2007 to set up his own “Citizen Power” party to end Bangladesh’s confrontational political culture, which has been punctuated by instability and periods of military rule.
He abandoned those ambitions within months but the enmity aroused by his challenge to the ruling elite has persisted.
Yunus was hit with more than 100 criminal cases and a smear campaign by a state-led agency that accused him of promoting homosexuality.
The government unceremoniously forced him out of Grameen Bank in 2011 — a decision fought by Yunus but upheld by Bangladesh’s top court.
He and three colleagues from one of the companies he founded were sentenced in January to jail terms of six months by a Dhaka labor court that found they had illegally failed to create a workers’ welfare fund. However, they were immediately released on bail pending appeal.
All four had denied the charges and, with courts accused of rubber-stamping decisions by Hasina’s government, the case was criticized as politically motivated by watchdogs including Amnesty International.
A Dhaka court acquitted him on appeal on Wednesday.
Pakistan PM says army chief’s collaboration with government ‘role model’ for the future
- Army has historically wielded extraordinary influence in politics, economy and national security even during civilian rule
- Military says no longer interferes in politics but has come under criticism for its treatment of Imran Khan and his party
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday publicly praised Army Chief General Asim Munir, saying his collaboration with the government “in the best interests of Pakistan” should serve as a “role model” for future administrations.
Pakistan has a history of coups and extended periods of direct military rule, with the army wielding extraordinary influence in the domains of politics, economy and national security even with civilian governments in office. However, in recent years, the army’s role has come under unprecedented criticism, especially as it has been seen as working to vanquish the popular former prime minister Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party. The military says it no longer interferes in political affairs.
During this year’s February 8 general election, independent analysts and critics of the military said it backed the election commission in denying a level-playing field to the PTI, whose candidates still ended up winning the most number of seats but did not have the numbers to form government, which was made by a fragile coalition of parties led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
The Sharif administration is widely seen as lacking mass public support and considered close to the currently military set-up.
“There may be examples in the past but what I have seen is that the army chief’s collaboration with the government, in the best interests of Pakistan, is worth watching,” Sharif said as he addressed a ceremony in Islamabad on Thursday.
“I have not witnessed such strong cooperation between the government and constitutional institutions during my entire 40-year political career. The existing relationship between General Munir and the political government should serve as a role model for the future.”
Sharif’s closeness to the military is not new in Pakistani politics. Khan too was also widely believed to have been brought to power in 2018 with the backing of the army, but fell out with top generals and by April 2022 was ousted from the PM’s office in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence. He has since led a defiant campaign against the army, which he accuses of working with his political rivals to unseat him. Both deny the charge.
Tensions between Khan and the army reached a crescendo on May 9 last year when alleged supporters of the PTI attacked and damaged government and military installations. Hundreds of PTI supporters and leaders were arrested following the riots and some continue to remain behind bars as they await trial. The army has also initiated military court trials of at least 103 people accused of involvement in the violence. Many close Khan aides have since deserted him, due to what is widely believed to be pressure from the army, which denies the charge.
Khan has been in jail since last August, though all four convictions handed down to him ahead of a parliamentary election in February have either been suspended or overturned. Khan says all legal cases against him are politically motivated.
Last week, Khan offered to hold “conditional negotiations” with the South Asian nation’s military — if “clean and transparent” elections were held and “bogus” cases against his supporters were dropped.
“We prefer negotiations with the real decision-makers, the military leadership, instead of this puppet government,” Khan said in a statement from prison shared with the media by the PTI.
Pakistan says working with Iraq on special pilgrimage passports to regularize movement of travelers
- Pakistan’s religious affairs minister confirms 20,000-30,000 pilgrims who went to Iraq in last 5-7 years overstayed
- Says one option to regularize pilgrims’ movement are special passports that can only be used for pilgrimage
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government is working with Iraqi officials on options to better monitor and regularize the movement of pilgrims, the Pakistani minister of religious affairs said this week, including issuing special passports that could only be used for the purpose of pilgrimage.
Some of the holiest Muslim sites, particularly for Shi’te Islam, are in Iraq, including the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, where thousands of devotees arrive daily from Iraq and around the world. These include the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, which contains the tomb of Ali, the son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and one of the four caliphs of the Rashidun Caliphate. Another is the shrine of Imam Husain, the prophet’s grandson, in Karbala, the second holiest site for Shi’te Muslims. The annual Arbaeen pilgrimage to the shrine of Husain is considered the world’s largest public gathering, with millions flocking to Karbala.
Last month, Pakistani pilgrims to Iraq made headlines when Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Chaudhry Salik Hussain was widely reported as saying during a briefing to a Senate committee that there were at least 50,000 cases of Pakistani pilgrims who had traveled to Iraq and gone “missing.”
In an interview to Arab News this week, Hussain clarified that he had not used the word “missing” in the briefing.
“I never use the word missing [about pilgrims]. They’re not missing,” he said. “They are basically unauthorized people who go for ziaraat [pilgrimage] and then overstay.”
Many people, the minister explained, went on a pilgrimage visa and remained in Iraq in the hopes of finding jobs there or after being misled by travel agents who promised them employment in Europe or other countries:
“Probably up to 30,000 Pakistani might be still there [in Iraq] over five to seven years as a lot of them came back.”
The government was now working on a policy to streamline and monitor the visits of Pakistani pilgrims including through special passports, Hussain said.
“We are already devising a plan with the Iraqi government to regularize and give them legal status who are already there working in different farms, shops, factories, different areas,” the minister said.
“We’ll be signing an MOU very soon, which would regulate all of these migrations, people who go for the Ziaraat [pilgrimages] so we can better monitor them. There are a few options under consideration. We are thinking of issuing special passports, which would just be just for this journey, for ziarat, and then that passport cannot be used anywhere else.”
HAJJ 2025
Speaking about next year’s Hajj preparations, Hussain said Saudi Arabia had approved a quota for Pakistan of around 180,000 pilgrims for 2025.
“Saudi government side has really upgraded the system of Hajj and Umrah, especially for Hajj, they have made a simple formula that [there is a] first come, first serve basis [policy]: this is the space we have, if you come earlier, you get a good space, if you come late, these are the options we have,” the minister explained.
To ensure a hassle-free Hajj for next year, all preparations were being made in advance, Chaudhry added.
“We have told all our private Hajj organizations that they should be prepared themselves well in advance in terms of the accommodation, the transport, the food. All these things should be prepared well in advance so that we can get a good allocation from the Saudi side,” the minister said.
“We together [with Saudi Hajj ministry and embassy] are re-reorganizing the [religious affairs] ministry when it comes to Hajj.”
Death toll from six weeks of monsoon rains jumps to 154 in Pakistan
- NDMA says most deaths occurred in the eastern Punjab and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces
- Scientists and weather forecasters blame climate change for heavy rains in Pakistan in recent years
ISLAMABAD: The death toll from nearly six weeks of monsoon rains and floods across Pakistan has risen to 154, officials said Thursday, as downpours continued in much of the country, inundating some villages.
More than 1,500 homes have been damaged since July 1, when the monsoon rains began, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said. Orchards in remote areas of the southwestern Balochistan province were damaged, and rains flooded many streets in the eastern city of Lahore.
Azad Kashmir has also been battered by rains, causing landslides.
Many of the 154 deaths occurred in the eastern Punjab and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, according to the disaster agency and provincial authorities.
Pakistan is in the middle of the annual monsoon season, which runs from July through September. Scientists and weather forecasters blame climate change for heavy rains in recent years.
So far this year, Pakistan has received less rain than in 2022, when climate-induced downpours swelled rivers and inundated at one point one-third of the country, killing 1,739 people and causing $30 billion in damage.
Veon posts 13.9% jump in core profit, boosted by customer gains in countries like Pakistan
- The company’s sales grew by 24.2% in Pakistan where it owns the largest telecom provider Jazz
- The top Veon official mentions ‘robust organic performance’ across services in different markets
