The Pendu (2026)

26/04/2022

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday, in a big move to facilitate the general public, announced an end to load-shedding of electricity across the country from May 1.

The prime minister, also famed as ‘Shehbaz Speed’ for his efficiency to deliver at a fast pace, declared that the government had operationalized 20 out of 27 major power producers, which were shut down for a year.

Chairing a high-level meeting to devise a policy to address the shortage of electricity, PM Sharif said the step was an ‘Eid gift’ for the public who had been suffering frequent power outages in summers.

The prime minister directed the authorities concerned to resolve all the issues pertaining to load-shedding by April 30 so as to ensure a smooth and uninterrupted power supply to consumers.

He stressed establishing an integrated and sustainable fuel system to meet the requirements of power generation and also a plan keeping in view the hot season in particular.

PM Shehbaz called for a long-term effective plan to eliminate the loss of feeders of the power distribution companies.

26/04/2022

KARACHI: The video statement of missing Karachi girl, Dua Zehra, has surfaced in which the teenage girl announced that she was married of her own will to Zaheer Ahmed, ARY News reported.

In a video message, Dua Zehra made stunning revelations about herself, saying she was not kidnapped and left home herself and married Zaheer Ahmed of her own will. The missing girl also claimed that her family was forcing her to marry someone else.

The teenage girl also blamed her parents for domestic violence and added that they were fixing her marriage with her cousin without her consent.

“I was not kidnapped. I left home because my family wanted me to marry someone else against my will,” she said in a video statement.

Dua Zehra also claimed that her father shared her age wrong. “I am not 14. I am an adult, my age is 18,” she added.

The couple were reportedly staying at Zaheer’s uncle’s home.

Earlier, the Karachi police claimed to have traced the 14-year-old girl. The police said the girl married a man named Zaheer Ahmed in the Punjab capital, adding that the Lahore police would soon recover the girl and move her to Karachi.

Dua Zehra’s family had approached police, hours after she went missing from near her house in Alfalah Town on April 16, and had appealed through a number of channels including a welfare organization for help in finding their daughter.

26/04/2022

Last week Elon Musk announced his bid to fully acquire Twitter and take it off the stock market, and initially it seemed like the company would politely (or not so politely) decline. However, a few days later it appears as it did some more thinking and today it officially announced that it's accepting Musk's bid.

This means that Twitter has now "entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Elon Musk", according to the company's press release. The price is $54.20 per share in cash (which means not shares in SEC-speak, and not actual cash, by the way). Thus the total value of the transaction is approximately $44 billion. Upon completion (which could take months because of all the regulatory scrutiny it's bound to come across), Twitter will become a privately held company and will no longer have its shares traded on any stock exchange.

This was Musk's initial plan after all, and it looks like it's all coming together quite nicely for him. The price per stock he's paying represents a 38% premium over Twitter's closing stock price when its shares were last traded.

"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated", Musk said. "I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it", he continued.

Musk has secured $25.5 billion of "fully committed debt and margin loan financing" and is using about $21 billion of his own equity on top of that to finance the purchase.

26/04/2022

The United States (US) announced on Friday to commence a four-year $23.5 million project in Pakistan to steer efficiency in the power sector.

The project aims to increase the share of green energy in Pakistan’s energy mix, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission Director Julie A Koenen said in a statement.

The US government, through the USAID, is partnering with the Pakistani government to launch a four-year $23.5 million power sector improvement project to address climate change and increase the share of green energy in Pakistan’s energy mix.

Through technical assistance to the government and private sector, the project will also improve the management and operations of power transmission and distribution systems, increasing the financial viability, reliability, and affordability of Pakistan’s power system.

“The US looks forward to advancing the partnership with Pakistan to build a clean, efficient, and reliable electricity generation sector, laying a foundation for sustainable and inclusive growth,” Koenen said at the launching ceremony.

“Through this new initiative, USAID will partner with the government of Pakistan to support the transition to a truly competitive wholesale power market.”

26/04/2022

KARACHI/LAHORE: The parents of missing Dua Zehra denied the police claims of tracing their daughter in Lahore, details of her nikahnama, and termed the reports of her recovery ‘fake’, ARY News reported on Monday.

In a press conference, Dua Zehra’s father said that they came to know about her nikahnama along with her daughter’s photo through media but he did not get any copy of the marriage certificate as yet.

He also denied the media reports of Zehra’s legal age for marriage. He added that her daughter will turn 14 after four months, whereas, her age on her alleged marriage document (nikahnama) was mentioned as 18.

A journalist questioned the father whether he has suspicions over the police’s delaying tactics to resolve the case due to a dispute about the legal age of marriage in Sindh and Punjab provinces. To this, he replied that he could not blame anyone but only to say that her daughter was not recovered so far.

He said that the police departments of both provincial capitals, Karachi and Lahore, are coordinating with each other to trace and recover her daughter.

Earlier in the day, Alfalah police claimed that the missing girl has been “traced” and is right now in Lahore city of Punjab.

Police said the girl has married a man named Zaheer Ahmed in Punjab’s capital, adding that the Lahore police will soon recover the girl and move her to Karachi. Asghar Ali and Shabbir Ahmed have been mentioned as witnesses in Zehra’s alleged nikahnama.

26/04/2022

LONDON: Pakistani Embassy in London on Monday has been issued a passport to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, ARY News reported.

It may be noted that the passport of the former prime minister was revoked on Feb 16, last year, who is in London in connection with his treatment.

The PML-N supremo has been issued a Pakistani passport in the normal category for 10 years. After a change of government in Pakistan, the passport of Nawaz Sharif has been renewed on the directions of PM Shehbaz Sharif.

New government instructed the relevant authorities to issue a passport to former prime minister and he is free to travel to Pakistan

Ordinary Passport was issued on 23rd of April 2022 in Islamabad. According to Sharif family sources, the travel date is not planned yet. Nawaz Sharif had an appointment at Pakistan High Commission London on the 23rd of April which was cancelled at the last minute and sources claim his fingerprints were taken at his residence by Pakistan High Commission staff.

Nawaz Sharif’s visa was refused by The Home Office and his appeal’s initial bearding held at the First Tier Tribunal (Asylum and Immigration Chamber) on 18th of February this year.

Prime Minister (PM) Shehbaz Sharif had directed the interior ministry to issue a diplomatic passport to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz supremo.

Shehbaz Sharif after assuming charge of his office got a briefing from the diplomatic staff about the issuance of a passport to the PML-N supremo.

Pakistan’s mission in London was directed to issue diplomatic passports to former prime minister and former finance minister Ishaq Dar.

However, the diplomatic staff said only Nawaz Sharif can be issued a diplomatic passport, not Ishaq Dar, on which PM Shehbaz Sharif directed to issue a normal Pakistani passport to Dar.

24/04/2022

There will be a Partial Solar Eclipse at midnight between 30th April and 01st May 2022 according to Pakistan Standard Time (PST).

This first solar eclipse of the year 2022 will not be visible in Pakistan, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department.

This partial solar eclipse will be visible in southern parts of South America, parts of Antarctica, and over the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

The Partial Solar Eclipse will begin at 23:45 PST (30th April 2022), the Maximum Eclipse will be at 01:42 PST (01st May 2022) and the eclipse will end at 03:38 PST (01st May 2022).

The last solar eclipse of the year 2021 on December 04 was also not visible in Pakistan.

The solar eclipse was visible in South Australia, South Africa, South America, the Atlantic region, the Indian Ocean, and Antarctica.

This celestial spectacle was sighted in its totality in the Antarctica region.

Annular eclipses occur when the Moon — passing between Earth and the Sun — is not quite close enough to our planet to completely obscure the sunlight, leaving a thin ring of the solar disc visible.

A solar eclipse always occurs about two weeks before or after a lunar eclipse, when the Moon moves into Earth’s shadow. Lunar eclipses are visible from about half of the Earth’s surface.

#2022

24/04/2022

On Thursday, a division bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) headed by Justice Shahbaz Ali Rizvi refused to hear a petition filed by Maryam Nawaz, Vice President of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), seeking the return of her passport so that she could travel to Saudi Arabia next week to perform Umrah.

After a two-member bench led by Justice Ali Baqar Najafi granted her post-arrest bail in the Chaudhry Sugar Mills case in 2019, the PML-N leader surrendered her passport to the high court and submitted surety bonds.

Maryam asked the court to order the deputy registrar (judicial) to return her passport, which she had surrendered in accordance with the LHC's order dated October 31, 2019, in a petition filed by lawyer Ahsan Bhoon.

However, the bench said that it could not entertain the petition and asked to approach the relevant bench. Bhoon responded that they had argued for fixing it before the relevant bench but to no avail. The bench sent the file to the LHC chief justice so that the matter could be forwarded to the relevant division bench.

24/04/2022

The former prime minister and Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan on Thursday demanded immediate elections in the country and asked the people to get ready for his call to gather in Islamabad in the next stage of the “real freedom” movement.

Addressing a mammoth public gathering at the historic Minar-e-Pakistan, Imran underlined that the PTI was a democratic party and it strongly believed in democracy and added that it would never accept any “imported rule” in the country.

24/04/2022

The Lapsus$ hacking group stole T-Mobile’s source code in a series of breaches that took place in March, as first reported by Krebs on Security. T-Mobile confirmed the attack in a statement to The Verge, and says the “systems accessed contained no customer or government information or other similarly sensitive information.”

In copies of private messages obtained by Krebs, the Lapsus$ hacking group discussed targeting T-Mobile in the week prior to the arrest of seven of its teenage members. After purchasing employees’ credentials online, the members could use the company’s internal tools — like Atlas, T-Mobile’s customer management system — to perform SIM swaps. This type of attack involves hijacking a target’s mobile phone by transferring its number to a device owned by the attacker. From there, the attacker can obtain texts or calls received by that person’s phone number, including any messages sent for multi-factor authentication.

24/04/2022

Instagram’s testing out a new feature, called Templates, that will let creators make Reels by borrowing formats from other videos on the platform, according to a report from Insider (via TechCrunch). The feature appears somewhat similar to TikTok’s own templates tool, which allows creators to drop their own content into a premade sequence.

Reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi spotted an early version of Templates in January, while marketing manager and influencer Josephine Hill has already gotten to experience the feature. In a screenshot posted by Hill in March, it looks like users can swap their own clips into preset frames, as well as add their own audio. This could save users from using third-party templates from sites like Canva, or having to closely follow online tutorials to achieve a specific format, something Hill pointed out to Insider.

The Pendu

26/04/2022

26/04/2022

26/04/2022

26/04/2022

26/04/2022

26/04/2022

24/04/2022

24/04/2022

24/04/2022

24/04/2022

24/04/2022

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share