With more than TikTok 800,000 followers in just two months, Pakistan’s Charlie Chaplin in a bowtie, bowler hat and a cane has risen to success. Usman Khan, 28, from Peshawar, used to sell children’s toys from a roadside stand but during the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed himself into Charlie Chaplin, a century after the silent comedian was propelled to global fame with his slapstick antics.
The Pakistani government is planning to vaccinate more than 300,000 frontline health care workers within the next three weeks, the prime minister’s special adviser on health has said. A Pakistan military aircraft brought back the country’s first consignment of COVID-19 vaccines produced by China’s Sinopharm on Monday. The official rollout of the vaccine campaign will start this week on Wednesday, February 3.
Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) founder Altaf Hussain, who has been away from the public eye for the past few years, has contracted COVID-19 and is currently in an intensive care unit (ICU) at a hospital in the UK. In an audio message released to the public, Altaf revealed that he started seeing symptoms 20 days ago and is currently being treated for the virus.
In a fresh directive, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has revealed that its cabin crew’s passports will be confiscated on arrival abroad. The passports would be returned at the time of check-in on departing flights. The decision was taken in order to control recent incidents of staff “slipping away” in foreign countries. There have been two recent incidents of cabin crew going missing in Canada.
In a historic move, UAE on Saturday announced major changes to its citizenship law, allowing for the naturalisation of foreign investors, doctors, scientists, artists and talented people and their families. The change in the citizenship law aims to ensure the social stability of the people in the country and boost the overall national development process.
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health, Dr Faisal Sultan has announced that around seven million doses of AstraZeneca would reach Pakistan in the first quarter of the current year. The doses of the vaccine will be given to the public free of cost. Pakistan’s vaccine drive starts next week, beginning with frontline healthcare workers.
The National Command and Control Centre (NCOC) has released an eight-step procedure to get the COVID-19 vaccine in Pakistan. The plan aims to vaccinate people under an integrated digital system following the best international practices, according to a statement by the NCOC. All details of immunisation will be handled through the National Immunisation Management System, which the federal government developed last year.
Pakistan will stop issuing manual visas from next month and has asked non-resident Pakistanis and others interested in travelling to the country to apply online for electronic or e-visas. This change applies to all Pakistani missions and embassies across the globe will stop issuing manual visas from Feb 1. Pakistan stopped issuing manual passports several years ago.
The Pakistan International Airlines has confirmed that the captain of a Lahore-bound commercial flight, PK-304, had spotted “an extraordinary object” hovering in the sky in the airspace between Multan and Sahiwal on January 23. A PIA spokesman said that the captain saw something over 1,000 feet above his aircraft, which was at an altitude of 35,000 feet.
Pakistan ranked 124 out of 180 countries — dropping four spots over last year — in the newly released Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by Transparency International. The 2020 edition of the CPI, an annual index that ranks countries based on perceptions of public sector corruption, ranked 180 countries and territories, drawing on 13 expert assessments and surveys of business executives.