Wednesday, 11 August 2021
FAISALABAD, AUG 11: Global Technology company, vivo, announced that it has started producing an expansive catalog of products locally at its first production base set up in the Industrial Estate of Faisalabad, Pakistan.
As one of the leading brands in the region, this marks vivo’s sixth such intelligent production base as it strengthens its footprint across the globe in line with the “More Local, More Global” strategy.
In order to strengthen its footprint in Pakistan, vivo has invested USD 10 million to set up a domestic manufacturing plant which is in alignment with the “Made in Pakistan” initiative to contribute to the development of the local economy and empowerment of the local workforce.
Pakistan currently has a local demand for 3.3 million mobile phones monthly. The new facility, spread over 4 acres, has a production capacity of 500,000 smartphone units per month.
Since 2014, vivo has been adhering to “More Local, More Global” strategy and readily establishing its global R&D and manufacturing network.
Aside from the newly inaugurated production base in Pakistan, vivo also has already established five such locations in Dongguan, Chongqing, India (Greater Noida), Bangladesh (Dhaka), and Indonesia (Tangerang), combining for a collective manufacturing capacity of hundreds of millions of cutting-edge devices every year.
This steady growth in production capability has become essential in safeguarding the global supply of vivo products and satisfying international user demands. “Pakistan is becoming an increasingly favorable destination for local manufacturing hubs,” said Eric Kong, CEO, vivo Pakistan.
“The decision to set up this local manufacturing plant in Pakistan is not just our approach to enrich users’ lives with high-quality, homegrown technologies but also to empower the local workforce with more opportunities.”
“vivo believes in the Benfen philosophy which encourages us to build technology for the good of society,” he added.
With 8 assembly lines, the facility is already operational in Faisalabad and has produced the first batch of ‘Made-in-Pakistan’ mobile phones as of February 1, 2021.
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COURTESY propakistani
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ISLAMABAD, AUG 11: National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf said on Wednesday that social media accounts operated from Afghanistan and India were being used to malign Pakistan as Afghan authorities failed to stop sweeping territorial gains made by the Taliban.
Addressing a press conference alongside Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry, Yusuf regretted the “global silence” in response to India propagating disinformation against Pakistan.
But he said the government would keep presenting analytics-based data to show the “information warfare” being faced by Pakistan.
“Afghanistan has a volatile situation now, but let me tell you Afghan and Indian accounts are being used to malign Pakistan,” he added, noting that ‘Sanction Pakistan’ was widely trended on Twitter to create a narrative against the country.
He clarified that he had just returned from the United States and there was no talk of sanctioning Pakistan.
“Attempts are underway to blame Pakistan for Afghanistan’s failures. As the Taliban offensive is increasing, there are campaigns to shift its blame on Pakistan.”
Yusuf said senior Afghan officials, including his Afghan counterpart, were involved in such campaigns, adding that the government would expose everything through data and not fake news. “We won’t expose fake news through fake news,” he commented.
The remarks came as the Digital Media Wing of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting launched a “Deep Analytics Report” on “Anti-State Trends”.
The 135-page report covering “PTM, Political Parties, Indian and Fake News Nexus” dissects what it terms anti-Pakistan trends from 2019 to 2021.
According to NSA Yusuf, the five top themes used by the elements involved in the propaganda are:
- Discredit the Pakistani government and especially Pakistan Army
- Fan sub-nationalism
- Target the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)
- Keep Pakistan on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list
- Blame Pakistan for all the chaos in Afghanistan
‘Stop blaming the victim’
Yusuf regretted that a number of people inside Pakistan too unknowingly believed such trends to be genuine and started promoting them. “These hashtags are initiated through 40 per cent of bot activity,” he said.
The NSA also called out the Afghan army, saying the force that was raised 20 years ago had surrendered before the Taliban and excused itself from putting up a fight.
“It’s not our fault. You must look at the Afghanistan map and see the territories captured by the Taliban. They are mostly areas which are far off from Pakistan,” he stressed.
Yusuf said a “targeted, deliberate and conscious” disinformation campaign was being constantly run by accounts in India and Afghanistan, some of which were linked to the state apparatus, in order to defame Pakistan in the international arena.
“I must remind you that Pakistan is a victim of the war in Afghanistan. We suffered more than 80,000 casualties with $150 billion loss in economy, therefore, stop blaming the victim,” he added.
The NSA emphasised that the actual failures were in the 20 years of what happened in Afghanistan. “This [propaganda] will not work because the kind of data we are showing you through forensics is irrefutable,” he said.
He added that many in positions of power at the global level were busy trying to shift the blame and create fake news about Pakistan, “but we will respond to it through data analysis”.
He also urged Pakistanis not to believe everything on social media, asking them to check and verify if they saw a trend going in a particular direction.
He assured the nation that the country was safe and would remain safe, saying the government would not shy away from calling out whoever was involved in defaming Pakistan.
‘India generating fake Twitter trends’ against Pakistan
Earlier, Information Minister Chaudhry said government teams had analysed Twitter trends from June 2019 to August 2021 and “it transpired that India led the top trends against Pakistan and the biggest player which helped India was PTM (Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement) and its activists.” He added that representatives of the Afghan government were also part of such activity.
Giving a breakdown of a few trends allegedly based on disinformation, Chaudhry said the PTM had initiated 150 trends against Pakistan in the last two years consisting of 3.7 million tweets — and it takes more than 1,000 hours to do tweets at this scale, he added.
He said the PTM had also actively supported Baloch activism and on Aug 14, 2020, the hashtag ‘#BalochistanSolidarityDay’ was trended with massive support from India, with around 150,000 tweets posted with the hashtag by Indian activists in a day.
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DUBAI, AUG 11: Emirates released a new advertisement featuring a woman standing on top of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Later, it also shared a BTS video showing how the ad was filmed. The videos have gone viral on social media.
Emirates, which is the largest airline and the flag carrier of the United Arab Emirates, has occupied the top spot on the trends list after it released a new advertisement featuring a woman standing on top of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
The 30-second advert has gone viral on social media as users were left in awe after watching the clip. Nicole Smith-Ludvik, who is a professional skydiving instructor, features as an Emirates cabin crew member in the advert.
As the ad opens, Nicole in the Emirates uniform is seen holding up message boards that read, “Moving the UAE to the UK Amber list has made us feel on top of the world. Fly Emirates. Fly better.”
As the camera pans out, you will see that Nicole is actually standing on the tip of Burj Khalifa with a spectacular view of Dubai’s skyline in the backdrop. At 828 metres above the ground, the Burj Khalifa is the world’s tallest building.
Nicole also shared the ad on Instagram, saying, “This is, without a doubt, one of the most amazing and exciting stunts I’ve ever done. A big shout out to Emirates Airlines for your creative marketing idea! It was a pleasure being a part of the team!”
Nicole Smith-Ludvik is a “world traveller, skydiver, yoga instructor, hiker and adventurer” as described on her Instagram bio.
Meanwhile, social media users were absolutely stupefied after watching the Emirates ad and shared their thoughts and opinions in the comments section.
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COURTESY indiatoday
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ISLAMABAD, AUG 11: Pakistan Youth Change Advocates (PYCA) recently held an expert consultation ahead of the publication of its white paper, “Public Investment in Education: An Appraisal of SDG-4 in Pakistan.”The upcoming white paper and the consultation were part of the organization’s #InvestinEducationStrengthenPakistan campaign. Educationists, public finance experts and members of the civil society participated in this consultative session.
Earlier this year PYCA had published a white-paper,“Public Investment in Education: Covid-19 and other emergencies in the past.” which highlighted the dismal state of education financing in the country. The paper had pointed-out lacunas in the country’s current budgeting process and emphasized the need to address these gaps to create more fiscal space to enhance public investment in education and other social services.
The organization will now publish a second white paper in the same series focusing on Pakistan’s performance vis-Ã -vis Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, i.e., quality education. The research paper that is slated to publish in September 2021 analyzes the key areas of intervention if Pakistan so desires to achieve the various targets laid down under SDG 4 by the year 2030.
Author of the paper and public finance expert, Mr. Asim Bashir Khan while presenting the key findings and recommendations of the research to audience said, “Both the federal and provincial governments understand the fact that the current state of public investment in education is not up to the required mark.
This is evident from the majority of the sector plans as well as the Vision 2025 document which pledges to allocate 4% of the GDP to education. However, in actuality Pakistan has been unable to allocate more than 2.5% of its GDP in the last 20 years. The COVID crises have led to a further decline in public investment in education with merely 1.5% of GDP being allocated for education in the fiscal year 2020 – 21.”
Shedding light on the urgency of the situation, Former Chairman FBR Dr. Muhammad Irshad commented, “Unfortunately, the situation of education in Pakistan paints a sad story. On one hand the government has been unable to prioritize investment in education and on the other hand, a huge disparity remains rampant between the educational opportunities provided to boys and girls at the community level.”
Commenting on the legislative side of the dilemma, Marium Amjad of AWAZ CDS shared, “In general practice we immediately jump from legislation to implementation.However, there are many steps in between these two milestones that dictate whether or not a law will be implemented.”
Citing the example of Punjab she said,“The Free and Compulsory Education was passed in the province in 2014. However, to date it cannot be implemented because it has neither been notified by the provincial government nor has its rules of business been formalized.”
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ISLAMABAD, AUG 11: Huawei Pakistan together with Higher Education Commission launched its Seeds for the Future program 2021, it is an 8-day long culture and ICT technologies learning program where the nominated 40 brilliant engineering students from Pakistan will attend the online training together with students from Bahrain. Due to the restrictions put in place by Covid-19, just like last year, the program will continue to stay online.
The program first launched in Pakistan in 2015 and this is the 7th time Seeds for Future is happening in Pakistan. Out of a pool of more than 1000 applicants, 40 have been nominated by the Higher Education Commission. They are all undergraduate engineering students.
The initial period of the learning is about Chinese culture and Chinese language. Later on, they will get technical training from Huawei and industry ICT experts who will share their expertise on a wide range of courses covering 5G, cloud computing, AI, strategic leadership and etc. They will also participate in the“Tech4Good” Group Project in this year.
The Seeds for the Future program has been a successful addition to Huawei’s social-enterprise partnership goal in Pakistan since the first batch of Pakistani students traveled to China in 2015. The aim of the program, which has been active in more than 130 countries & regions since its inception in Thailand, has been to nurture upcoming STEM talent from around the world. As a global ICT market leader, Huawei has taken it upon itself to promote local ICT industries as part of development in their operational regions.
The ICT industry is one of the fastest growing in Pakistan, and the world. The demand for qualified and market-ready professionals in the field is growing rapidly — it is becoming a need, in our burgeoning online-based globalized reality. Programs such as Seeds for the Future address this long-term possibility of deficiency with appropriate foresight.
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Tuesday, 10 August 2021
DUBAI, AUG 10: The International Cricket Council (ICC) says it is preparing a bid for the game’s inclusion to the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Cricket was last featured in the Olympics in 1900 in Paris when only two teams competed at the event – the Great Britain and hosts France.
“A Working Group has also been formed to lead the bid,” according to ICC statement.
The ICC Olympic Working Group will be chaired by England and Wales Cricket Board Chair Ian Watmore. He will be joined by ICC Independent Director Indra Nooyi, Chair of Zimbabwe Cricket Tavengwa Mukuhlani, ICC associate member director and Vice President of the Asian Cricket Council Mahinda Vallipuram and Chair of USA Cricket, Parag Marathe.
Pakistan doesn’t have any representation in the ICC Working Group.
Cricket will feature in the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games next year, which, according to ICC, shapes as a perfect showcase for what the sport can bring to the Olympics.
“Our sport is united behind this bid, and we see the Olympics as a part of cricket’s long-term future. We have more than a billion fans globally and almost 90 per cent of them want to see cricket at the Olympics,” ICC Chair Greg Barclay said in a statement.
Barclay said the addition of cricket to the Olympic Games would be beneficial to both the sport and the Games themselves.
As many as 30 million cricket fans live in the USA, making LA 2028 the ideal Games for cricket to make its return to Olympic competition, the statement says.
Barclay added: “Clearly cricket has a strong and passionate fanbase, particularly in South Asia where 92pc of our fans come from whilst there are also 30m cricket fans in the USA. The opportunity for those fans to see their heroes competing for an Olympic medal is tantalising.”
The ICC representative said “We believe cricket would be a great addition to the Olympic Games, but we know it won’t be easy to secure our inclusion as there are so many other great sports out there wanting to do the same.”
Chair of USA Cricket Parag Marathe said the time was now for cricket to make its long-awaited return to the Olympics.
“USA Cricket is thrilled to be able to support cricket’s bid for inclusion in the Olympics, the timing of which aligns perfectly with our continuing plans to develop the sport in the USA,” he said.
“With so many passionate cricket fans and players already in the USA, and a huge global audience and following for the sport around the world, we believe that cricket’s inclusion will add great value to the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games and help us to achieve our own vision for establishing cricket as a mainstream sport in this country,” he added.
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LONDON/ISLAMABAD, AUG 10: The British High Commission in Pakistan on Monday said that the decision to keep the country on the red list, under the coronavirus travel restrictions, was based on data and science.
The British government placed Pakistan and India on the red list on April 2 and 19, respectively. However, in an updated list, the government announced that India, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE would be moved to the amber list from August 8.
A day earlier it was reported that UK senior health official JO Churchill said that Pakistan was being retained on Britain’s “red list” due to the “worsening Covid-19 situation and low testing rates”.
The decision was met with backlash from the Pakistani public and politicians alike who termed it unjust. Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari criticised the British government, calling the measure ‘ridiculous’.
“UK gov[ernmen]t, dominated by Indophiles and despite globally documented India’s continuing disastrous handling of Covid pandemic, moved India to Amber List but keeps Pak on Red [list]; then under pressure from Opp[osition] MPs gives feeble excuse Pak didn’t share data,” Minister Mazari said in a tweet.
She further stated that the British government had never asked for Pakistan’s Covid-19 data which was already publicly available as the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) has a centralised database, which is updated daily and added that it was also being shared with the UK High Commission.
“Earlier UK govt had given another excuse – that more Pak passengers than Indians tested positive! Shifting goalposts!” the minister added.
“We are proud of our people-to-people links with our 1.6m diaspora at the heart of our relationship. We recognise that many people are disappointed that Pakistan remains on the UK’s Covid red list,” the British High Commission in Pakistan wrote on its official Twitter handle late on Monday.
It said that the decision to keep Pakistan on the red list is based on data and science. “Every week we share the latest NCOC data with colleagues in London. We are ek saath (together) with Pakistan in the fight against Covid & look forward to normal travel resuming again when safely possible,” it wrote in another tweet.
In a letter dated August 6, Churchill while explaining the reason for keeping Pakistan on the red list of countries said the UK’s Joint Biosecurity Centre continues to assess risk based on factors including incidence, trends in deaths/hospitalisations, exported cases as well as testing and test positivity rates.
Her response comes after Pakistan including several members of the British House of Commons slammed the UK government for keeping Pakistan on its red list of countries at the latest coronavirus travel update while removing India from it.
“In Pakistan, the combination of a deteriorating epidemiological situation, combined with low testing rates and limited genomic surveillance, presents a high risk that an outbreak of a new variant, or existing VoC [variant of concern], will not be identified before it is imported to the UK,” she said in a letter.
The red list of the countries means only the UK nationals and those with residency rights will be allowed to travel to the country if they stayed in Pakistan in the 10 days before they arrive. The amber travel list means that returnees can quarantine at home, rather than in a hotel.
Britain’s MP Yasmin Qureshi had termed the move to keep Pakistan on the red list while downgrading India “a clear and blatant discrimination towards Pakistan”.
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Monday, 9 August 2021
NEW YORK, AUG 9: The United Nations panel on climate change told the world on Monday that global warming was dangerously close to being out of control and that humans were “unequivocally” to blame.
Already, greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are high enough to guarantee climate disruption for decades if not centuries, the report from the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned.
In other words, the deadly heatwaves, gargantuan hurricanes and other weather extremes that are already happening will only become more severe.
Monday alone saw 500,000 acres of forest burning in California, while in Venice tourists waded through ankle-deep water in St Mark’s Square.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the report as a “code red for humanity”.
“The alarm bells are deafening,” he said in a statement. “This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.”
In an interview with Reuters, activist Greta Thunberg called on the public and media to put “massive” pressure on governments to act.
In three months’ time, the UN COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, will try to wring much more ambitious climate action out of the nations of the world, and the money to go with it.
Drawing on more than 14,000 scientific studies, the IPCC report gives the most comprehensive and detailed picture yet of how climate change is altering the natural world — and what could still be ahead.
Unless immediate, rapid and large-scale action is taken to reduce emissions, the report says, the average global temperature is likely to reach or cross the 1.5-degree Celsius warming threshold within 20 years.
The pledges to cut emissions made so far are nowhere near enough to start reducing the level of greenhouse gases — mostly carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels — accumulated in the atmosphere.
‘Wake-up call’
Governments and campaigners reacted with alarm.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he hoped the report would be “a wake-up call for the world to take action now, before we meet in Glasgow”.
The report says emissions “unequivocally caused by human activities” have already pushed the average global temperature up 1.1°C from its pre-industrial average — and would have raised it 0.5°C further without the tempering effect of pollution in the atmosphere.
That means that, even as societies move away from fossil fuels, temperatures will be pushed up again by the loss of the airborne pollutants that come with them and currently reflect away some of the sun’s heat.
A rise of 1.5°C is generally seen as the most that humanity could cope with without suffering widespread economic and social upheaval.
The 1.1°C warming already recorded has been enough to unleash disastrous weather. This year, heatwaves killed hundreds in the Pacific Northwest and smashed records around the world. Wildfires fuelled by heat and drought are sweeping away entire towns in the US West, releasing record carbon dioxide emissions from Siberian forests, and driving Greeks to flee their homes by ferry.
Further warming could mean that in some places, people could die just from going outside.
“The more we push the climate system … the greater the odds we cross thresholds that we can only poorly project,” said IPCC co-author Bob Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University.
Irreversible
Some changes are already “locked in”.
Greenland’s sheet of land-ice is “virtually certain” to continue melting, and raising the sea level, which will continue to rise for centuries to come as the oceans warm and expand.
“We are now committed to some aspects of climate change, some of which are irreversible for hundreds to thousands of years,” said IPCC co-author Tamsin Edwards, a climate scientist at Kings College London.
“But the more we limit warming, the more we can avoid or slow down those changes.”
But even to slow climate change, the report says, the world is running out of time.
If emissions are slashed in the next decade, average temperatures could still be up 1.5°C by 2040 and possibly 1.6°C by 2060 before stabilising.
And if, instead the world continues on its current trajectory, the rise could be 2.0°C by 2060 and 2.7°C by the century’s end.
The Earth has not been that warm since the Pliocene Epoch roughly three million years ago — when humanity’s first ancestors were appearing, and the oceans were 25 metres higher than they are today.
It could get even worse, if warming triggers feedback loops that release even more climate-warming carbon emissions — such as the melting of Arctic permafrost or the dieback of global forests.
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ISLAMABAD, AUG 9: Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Monday reiterated that Pakistan will play its effective role in the Afghan peace process, but underlined that “peace in the neighbouring country is a shared responsibility and the international community cannot shy away from it”.
“We won’t let some harsh statements block our desire to attain peace and stability,” he told a press conference in Islamabad today.
Qureshi said Pakistan had repeatedly expressed its concern at spoilers which were based within and outside Afghanistan. “There are elements who don’t want to see peace and stability, and they want to keep Pakistan in a sandwiched position for the perpetuation of their own ambitions for power”.
‘Stop pointing fingers’
The foreign minister said that Pakistan had repeatedly urged against pointing fingers, adding that “if you have an issue, bring it up, discuss it and let’s find a way out.”
“I have invited the Afghan foreign minister in writing to visit Islamabad to raise the issues that he has in mind so that as neighbours, we can discuss and resolve them,” Qureshi said.
He added that Pakistan had also urged the Afghan government to refrain from a “blame game” and engage with Pakistan in a meaningful manner to address the challenges to peace and security in the region.
“We have repeatedly stated that we have no favourites in Afghanistan. We see all sides of the conflict as Afghans. It is unfortunate to scapegoat Pakistan for the failures of others. The issues of governance and meltdown of Afghan National Defence Forces needs to be looked into, instead of simply pointing fingers at Pakistan.”
He underlined that the peace process in Afghanistan was at a critical juncture.
It is important that all energies are focused at finding an inclusive, broad-based and comprehensive political settlement through a process that is Afghan-led and Afghan owned, the minister added.
He reiterated that it was for the Afghans to decide about their future. He said Pakistan had consistently been advocating that there was no military solution to the conflict and a “negotiated political situation” was the only way forward, something which the international community now agreed.
Qureshi said Prime Minister Imran Khan had always been an advocate of a negotiated political solution “and I am glad that there is a convergence at the international level that this is the sensible way forward.”
He recalled that Pakistan played an instrumental role in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table in 2019. “Pakistan facilitated the conclusion of the US-Taliban peace agreement in Feb 2020 in Doha.
Pakistan helped convene the intra-Afghan negotiations in Sep 2020 and in Dec 2020, Pakistan contributed to the rules of procedure agreed between the parties. Pakistan has joined the troika — US, Russia, China — to facilitate the intra-Afghan talks and the Doha process.”
The foreign minister said Pakistan looked forward to the upcoming troika meeting on Aug 11 in Doha. He added that Pakistan had also invited Afghan leaders, “minus the Taliban” to a conference in Islamabad to discuss the way forward, adding that the conference was postponed on Ashraf Ghani’s request.
“We urge all sides to show respect for human rights and international humanitarian laws.”
He said: “The situation is evolving and things have not been managed well … I think the world should ponder and see the amount of money spent [in Afghanistan]. Where is it gone? The lack of will to fight that we have seen in Afghanistan. Can we be held be responsible for that? No we cannot and we should not,” he thundered.
He stressed that Pakistan would not be “apologetic”, adding that “we will articulate our point of view because we have been sincere and honest in attaining peace and stability there.”
World must not be oblivious to Pakistan’s sacrifices
Qureshi asserted that Pakistan had paid a huge price as a result of the conflict in Afghanistan. “Let the world know that Pakistan has been a victim. The price that we have paid has to be understood. We have had close to 80,000 casualties; we have suffered huge economic losses. The world should not be oblivious to that.”
He said that Pakistan had never been supportive of a military takeover, adding that it will result in a lot of bloodshed.
To a question, he said: “Our objectives in Afghanistan are in sync with what the US and the international community is saying.”
We want ‘orderly withdrawal’
The foreign minister said Pakistan had been pressing for a responsible ‘orderly withdrawal’ [of US forces from Afghanistan].
“When you are withdrawing, it must be in a manner that there is no vacuum created within Afghanistan, because what we fear is that if there is a vacuum, terrorist outfits will be a major beneficiary of it. Along with withdrawal, there should be a process of negotiations that will go hand in hand.”
Earlier, he castigated India for not allowing Pakistan to address the UNSC meeting on Afghanistan, saying “India has been in our view in breach of its obligation as president of the security council.”
He also said that an Afghan representative had propagated disinformation and levelled baseless allegations against Pakistan to mislead the international community. “We reject those baseless accusations,” he added.
Responding to another question, Qureshi said Pakistan had been facilitating the peace process. “Our role has been and will continue to be of a facilitator of the Afghan peace process and not that of a guarantor.”
He also underlined that Pakistan had opened five border crossings during the Covid-19 pandemic. “We let stranded Afghans go home and we facilitated transit trade as well. So the idea was to be supportive to their needs,” he explained.
The minister said almost 98 per cent of Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan was fenced.
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ISLAMABAD, AUG 9: MATSUDA Kuninori, Ambassador of Japan to Pakistan, on Monday expressed grief and sorrow over the loss of precious lives in the bomb blast which occurred in Quetta on August 8th, leaving two policemen dead and numbers of people injured.
“Any act of terrorism cannot be justified for whatever reason or purpose. Our thoughts and prayers are with the government, the people of Pakistan, and the families of those who have lost their dear ones in the tragic incident. Please accept my deepest condolences and sympathies to the families of victims and I pray for the early recovery of those injured in the blast” said the Ambassador in his condolence message.
While appreciating the efforts of Pakistani security forces in maintaining peace and stability, the Ambassador reiterated that Japan is committed to continuing to support the Government of Pakistan and its valiant security forces to combat terrorism.
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Sunday, 8 August 2021
QUETTA, AUG 8: At least two policemen were martyred and eight others injured in an explosion near Quetta’s Serena Hotel on Sunday evening.
Four passers-by were also wounded in the blast that targeted a police mobile near Tanzeem Chowk, Balochistan government spokesperson Liaquat Shahwani said in a statement.
He said the bomb was fitted into a motorcycle.
The injured were shifted to hospital, where an emergency was imposed.
He condemned the attack, saying “terrorists want to disturb Balochistan’s peace and spread fear.”
“[We] will bring to justice the elements trying to create disturbance in peaceful Balochistan,” he added.
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COURTESY DAWN NEWS
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