KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Shoaib Bukhari passed away on Tuesday after prolonged illness. He was 72.
He breathed his last at a private hospital. His funeral prayers will be offered after Isha prayers, MQM spokesperson Amin ul Haque said.
He contested the 2002 general elections on the ticket of Muttahida Qaumi Movement and emerged victorious. He served as Sindh?s Planning and Development minister from 2002 till 2007.
TAIPEI: A Taiwan tour bus carrying tourists from China crashed into a highway railing en route to the airport and burst into flames on Tuesday, killing all 26 on board, Taiwanese authorities said.
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The bus was carrying 24 tourists on an eight-day tour organised by a travel agency in China´s northeastern province of Liaoning, authorities said in a statement.
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The driver and the tour guide, both from Taiwan, were also killed. "The fire moved very fast. All 26 died," Lu Jui-yao, an official with the National Highway Police Bureau, told reporters.
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Taiwan is a popular destination for mainland tourists, who provide a major source of tourism revenue for the island.
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Traffic accidents in Taiwan involving Chinese tourists are not uncommon. China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and for years travel between the two sides was restricted, but tourist exchanges have deepened over the past two decades, with many Chinese visiting the democratically ruled island for the first time.
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The cause of the fire was unclear.
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Taiwan authorities were investigating.
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Taiwan's cabinet spokesman, Tung Chen-yuan, said government officials dealing with tourism and China affairs had reached out to their mainland counterparts and that they would help arrange for relatives of the victims to come to Taiwan.
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The passengers were on their way to Taoyuan, the island's main airport just south of the capital Taipei, for their flight back to China when the accident happened.
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SRINAGAR: Indian soldiers fired on a stone-throwing crowd defying a curfew in the Kashmir region, killing three people, police said on Tuesday, as unrest sparked by the death of a separatist leader flared.
Authorities have imposed a curfew in Muslim-majority Kashmir for 11 days, blocked mobile phones and briefly ordered curbs on newspapers to stop people from gathering and to control the worst outbreak of violence there in six years.
Late on Monday, protesters blocked a main road and threw stones at an army convoy.
"Some miscreants then tried to snatch weapons from the army and tried to set vehicles on fire," a police spokesman said on Tuesday.
The army opened fire after the protesters refused to heed warnings and two women were killed, the spokesman said.
A third person died in hospital on Tuesday, taking the death toll to 42 since protests erupted over the killing of Burhan Wani, a 22-year-commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen militant group on July 9.
About 3,500 people have been hurt, many with eye injuries caused by pellets Indian forces have been firing from a non-lethal weapon. The injuries have fueled anger.
Kashmir is India's only Muslim-majority state and has been contentious since India and Muslim Pakistan were carved out of British-ruled India and declared independent in 1947.
Both sides rule the Himalayan region in part but claim it in full and India has long accused Pakistan of arming separatist militants battling Indian forces in its part of Kashmir. Pakistan denies that.
The young separatist militant Wani represented a new generation of fighters in a region where alienation runs deep even though militant attacks have fallen dramatically since the revolt broke out in 1989.
India's interior minister, Rajnath Singh, said he had ordered security forces to exercise restraint. He told parliament he would visit Kashmir soon and hold talks with people "whose pain is being felt by every Indian".
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which has long advocated a tough stand on Kashmir, shares power with a regional party in Kashmir and has been criticized for failing to address grievances.
Separatist groups have called for protests after prayers this Friday. Residents said they were running out of cash as banks were shut because of the curfew.
KARACHI: The Special Court constituted to try former president Gen (rtd) Pervez Musharraf for high treason on Tuesday ordered freezing of his accounts through the State Bank of Pakistan.
The three-member Special Court under Justice Mazhar Alam Mian Khel heard the case.
The court in its ruling, ordered the revenue and other authorities to confiscate the details of the former president’s property.
The special court said that all the property records should be submitted to it through the session judge.
During the hearing, Musharraf’s advocate in his argument said that there are others as well who have a share in his property.
Upon which the court responded that whoever the contenders are they should appear before it within six months to present their stance.
The Interior Ministry presented a report related to the ex-president’s assets to the court.
Following which prosecution lawyer Akram Shaikh said that the prosecution had completed the trial in 2014, and only the accused’s statement was to be taken.
The special court said that the matter pertaining to the former president’s property would be resolved according to law.
In the hearing held on July 12, the court had asked the Interior Ministry to submit a response over not providing details of Musharraf’s property.
The court in one of its previous rulings had declared ex-president Musharraf a ‘proclaimed offender’.
In March 2014, Musharraf was formally indicted over treason charges for imposing emergency and the Provisional Constitutional Order on November 3, 2007.
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A leaked video from Varun Dhawans?s upcoming appearance on the Kapil Sharma show sees him donning Taher Shah?s avatar from his famous song ?angel?
Actors Varun Dhawan, Jacqueline Fernandez and John Abraham are all set to make an appearance on the Kapil Sharma Show next week to promote their film Dishoom.
The leaked video shows Dhawan in a purple gown, cascading tresses and oversized wings lip-syncing the lyrics to Taher Shah?s song Angel, reported the Indian Express.
Ace director Karan Johar took micro-blogging website to tweet about the appearance.
Watch out when @Varun_dvn took up the ultimate #Dishoom challenge and became an ANGEL on the @KapilSharmaK9 show pic.twitter.com/V1JsaQnEtS
? Karan Johar (@karanjohar) July 18, 2016
Dhawan?s co-stars and the audience thoroughly enjoyed the act.
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KIEV: It was yet another online discussion blaming a rape victim for provoking her attacker that prompted Ukrainian activist Anastasiya Melnychenko's campaign to shatter taboos in her homeland and neighbouring Russia.
In response Melnychenko typed out an unflinching account of the string of sexual assaults she has suffered throughout her life then posted it on Facebook with the hashtag #IAmNotAfraidToSpeak, repeated in Ukrainian and Russian.
Her courageous move this month opened the floodgates and soon hundreds of women in Ukraine and Russia started to share their own personal stories of sexual violence, a subject that is more often hushed up or ignored.
For many of the women it was a powerful way to release pent-up painful memories.
"I was a schoolgirl, when it happened. A young guy followed me to my house, pulled me by the jacket", wrote 30-year-old art critic Asia Bazdyrieva.
"I was 19, it was my boyfriend´s pal. He was two metres (six foot five) tall, very big and strong. The street was completely empty and I was afraid to resist. He raped me," posted mother-of-four Valeriya Bezlepkina.
"I was a young girl with freckles from a poor district. Violence was a common thing there, familiar to every girl I knew", shared famous restaurant critic Aurora Ogorodnyk.
Melnychenko's openess helped to break down a wall of silence that activists say exists around the issue of sexual violence and especially rape in the ex-Soviet region.
"In our society blaming the victim is the norm", Melnychenko told AFP.
"That is why women are silent about the abuse. They do not talk about these incidents to their relatives or to the police because they are afraid of being condemned".
Violence loves secrecy
In Ukraine a country of some 45 million inhabitants only around 320 cases of rape or attempted rape were registered by the authorities last yearÂ
Rights activists insist that the small number of reported attacks does not represent the true scale of the problem.
"Sexual violence is a subject that gets disregarded", says Anna Sayenko, a lawyer from La Strada Ukraine, an international women´s rights centre.
In most cases women do not immediately go to a police station for a forensic examination due to fears of being judged by society, Sayenko said.
"The most important thing is to convey to women that the first thing they need to do if it happens to them is to contact the police", she said.
By breaking through the fear of how people will react, Melnychenko´s online campaign appears to have struck a deep chord with women in both Ukraine and Russia.Â
Psychologist Alevtyna Shevchenko says such sharing of experiences works as a sort of group therapy, where the interaction between the participants encourages even those who are usually silent to talk.
"Violence loves secrecy and silence," Shevchenko says.
"Admitting out loud that the problem exists is the first step towards solving it. There is no other way".
Brave pioneers
Not all reaction to the campaign has been positive, however.
Some online commentators, mainly men, accused the participants of "exhibitionism" and performing a "public striptease", with one labelling the campaign a "festival of homemade porn".
But broadly speaking the response appears to have been supportive and a Ukrainian lawmaker on Tuesday said that deputies were already collecting signatures to change legislation on sexual violence against women after reading the posts.
Melnychenko hopes that she and the women who have come forward with their experience especially those who spoke about being raped have sparked a shift in the discussion that will bring about a real change in Ukraine as it tries to pivot towards the West.
"Public debate is a big step for our society," she said.
"Thanks to these brave pioneers, other women have realised that they are not alone and they have more support than they thought."
JAMRUD: The political administration in Jamrud Tehsil of Khyber Agency on Monday gave a week’s deadline to the Afghan refugees without proper documentation to vacate their houses and leave the area, official sources said.
The sources said that a crackdown would be launched against illegal Afghans on the expiry of the deadline. Officials of the political administration with the help of tribal elders in their respective areas made announcements through loudspeakers in mosques, asking the Afghan refugees to leave the area if they lacked proper residential documents.
Assistant Political Agent of Jamrud, Saiful Islam, told reporters that they had received strict directives from the high-ups to take action against illegal Afghans if they failed to present themselves for voluntary repatriation.
He added that the move was part of the security arrangements and maintaining law and order in the area. The official stressed, “Necessary measures would be taken to ensure no illegal foreigner is left behind in Jamrud tehsil of the Khyber Agency. “
He declared that it would be considered tantamount to challenging the writ of the government if the Afghan citizens residing illegally in the area failed to offer themselves for voluntary repatriation.
The political administration also asked the elders of the respective areas to help the government in the drive against illegal Afghan refugees.
PARACHINAR: The political administration on Monday arrested 10 cab drivers for allegedly transporting illegal Afghan nationals into Pakistan.
Talking to reporters, Assistant Political Agent of Parachinar Shahid Ali Khan said the administration took the action on reports about the involvement of cab drivers in helping the Afghan nationals cross the border without any legal documents.
He said the cab drivers used to transport the Afghan nationals through secret routes in Borki and Kharlachi.
He said all the arrested cab drivers were residents of the Kurram Agency.The official said the administration also arrested an Afghan national for obtaining a domicile certificate illegally.
He said the arrested Afghan national, identified as Tamim Khan, revealed that he had paid a huge amount to two tribal elders for verification of the documents required for applying for the domicile certificate.
- Originally appeared in The News
