US officials and Taliban representatives are scheduled to meet Saturday and Sunday in order to address the issue of containing extremist groups in Afghanistan and evacuating foreigners and Afghans from the country. The meeting marks the first one since American forces left Afghanistan in late August, ending a 20-year presence and strengthening the Taliban’s grip on power.
The Institute of Space Technology in Islamabad’s team of nine students won first place at the International Free Mission UAV Competition Turkey’s eminent Aerospace and Technology festival. Over 240 teams from more than 85 nations took part in TEKNOFEST this year in Bursa. The team of Pakistani students received a cash prize of 36,000 Turkish Lira
A Pakistani bodybuilder Shehzad Qureshi added another medal to the country’s collection at the ongoing World Bodybuilding and Physique Sports Championship in Tashkent. Shehzad Qureshi finished second for Pakistan with a silver medal in the 80 kg event. In his first endeavor, Shehzad won a medal and is hopeful of winning the gold next year.
The 60-year-old Pakistani bodybuilder Abdul Waheed won the gold medal in the 50+ category at the World Bodybuilding and Physique Sports Championship in Tashkent. In the junior category, Omar Shehzad already won a silver medal. In the meantime, Datuk Paul Chua, WBPSF’s president, believes Pakistan is safe to host international events.
A former product manager for Facebook’s civic misinformation team said the company’s business model promotes hate speech, damages democracy, and is even “tearing our societies apart.” Frances Haugen, who left Facebook in May of this year, was the whistleblower who leaked a report that showed Instagram impacts the mental health of teenage girls to the Wall Street Journal.
Facebook’s outage costs Zuckerberg $5.9 billion after a former product manager becomes whistleblower
The stock of Facebook fell 4.8% Monday due to continued political pressure and a long-term outage, which cost CEO Mark Zuckerberg billions. Zuckerberg’s fortune dropped by $5.9 billion to $117 billion. Currently, he ranks 6th on the world’s wealth ranking. Facebook’s stock came under pressure after one of its ex-workers disclosed internal research to AOL and the Wall Street Journal.
Many people around the world complained that Facebook, its associated applications WhatsApp and Instagram were experiencing loading problems. Users reported that social media apps started displaying error messages at 15:45 GMT (8:45 pm PST). Approximately 50,000 users reported outages on downdetector, a website that monitors outages. The Downdetector platform tracks outages by combining status reports from a number of sources, including user input.
The prestigious American College of Physicians has nominated Dr. Omar Atiq to be its next president. Atiq is the first physician of Pakistani descent and the only second international medical graduate to hold this position. Pakistani physicians constitute a third of the total number of physicians in the United States. Atiq is the sole candidate running for the post and elections will be held in January.
Social media helped to reunite a Bangladeshi man in his 80s with his nearly 100-year-old mother after about 70 years. Around the age of ten, Abdul Kuddus Munsi was sent to live with his uncle but lost touch with his family after running away and being adopted by two sisters. The video was posted on Facebook by a businessman in April, asking for help in finding Kuddus’ parents.
France’s politicians continue their targeted campaign against Muslim organizations as elections approach. Right-wing French interior minister Gerald Darmanin announced on Twitter that he would take legal action against a Muslim publishing house for promoting Islamic content. The publisher sold books about influential Muslim figures who fought to preserve their religion. He claims the Nawa Editions publishing house publishes works that are “anti-universalist and hostile to Western values.”