Pakistan has decided to close its borders to Britain, joining several other countries, over fears of a highly infectious new coronavirus strain. A meeting of the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) placed a temporary restriction on inbound travellers from the UK (direct or indirect) to Pakistan that will come into effect on the midnight of December 22 (i.e. 00:00 hours Dec 23) and last until the midnight of Dec 29.
Pakistan will be launching the nation’s first job portal, Prime Minister Imran Khan said, talking about one part of the Digital Governance Programme. “In the first phase, NADRA, Ehsaas Programme, police investigation and the investment board will be digitised,” he said in Islamabad. A roadmap for the digital transformation of government institutions has been drafted.
First Pakistani space scientist at the University of Cambridge, Dr Yarjan Abdul Samad has won the Young Leaders Award for 2020 by the Young Professionals Society (YPS). Dr. Yarjan, a senior research associate and a teaching fellow at Cambridge Graphene Centre, is currently working on a research project on loop heat pipes for use in space applications.
Pakistan-origin American, Ali Zaidi, has been named as the Deputy Adviser on US’s Domestic Climate Change Policy by the US President-elect, Joe Biden. Ali Zaidi, a Harvard graduate, has been serving as Deputy Secretary of Climate Policy to the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo. He is also the Chairman of Climate Policy and Finance for New York.
Waleed Khan, a student of Army Public School Peshawar, who received eight bullets and underwent 12 surgeries subsequently, has been elected the member of Youth Parliament in the United Kingdom. Waleed had been hit on face by six bullets, disfiguring him beyond recognition. Khan was sent to UK for plastic surgeries where he underwent six major face surgeries and another six other surgeries.
The provincial government has decided to purchase the two houses belonging to renowned Indian film artists, Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar. The decision came after the owners started demolishing the two buildings, declared as heritage sites in 2016. It caused uproar across the subcontinent and finally prompted the provincial archaeology department to step in and halt the process.
Acknowledged for her groundbreaking cell-biological work on the mechanisms of epigenetic gene regulation, Pakistan-born Asifa Akhtar has been selected as a recipient of Germany’s Leibniz Prize — one of the most prestigious awards of the country. Akhtar is also serving as the first international female Vice President at Germany’s Max Planc society — a fundamental research and science organization.
Popular Turkish star, Engin Altan Düzyatan, who essayed the famous Erutgrul Ghazi in the famous period drama Diriliş: Ertuğrul recently visited Pakistan on a short trip. It has been however, been reported that Kashif Zameer, who organised Düzyatan’s trip to Pakistan, has been arrested by Lahore police. Kashif has apparently been charged with fraudulent activities in the past.
Pakistan is mourning the sixth anniversary of the 2014 terror attack at the Army Public School in Peshawar that martyred 148 people, making it the deadliest act of terrorism in Pakistan’s history. The attack had shocked the entire nation as terrorists stormed inside the school and fired at children who were attending classes at the time.
A Toronto-based Pakistani doctor has introduced an instant Covid-19 diagnostic test using a smartphone. Dr Naqeeb Khalid, who graduated from King Edward Medical University in 1983, says his innovation is based on a digital platform that displays the result instantly on any smartphone and can also communicate or store the results along with time and GPS information.