Pakistan Press International
Sindh Assembly was informed on Monday that total twenty two projects are underway in the province through foreign funding.
Answering the questions during question-hour today, Sindh Minister for Development and Planning Saeed Ghani informed the House that transparency of these projects have been ensured.
Source: Radio Pakistan
Spokesman of Punjab Government Malik Ahmad Khan said that provincial government has made effective legislation and solid measures for welfare of women.
In a statement issued from Lahore, he said that under Punjab Zewer-e-Taleem Program, more than four lac students of sixteen districts of South Punjab are being awarded monthly scholarships with one thousand rupees each.
Ahmad Khan said that women employment quota has been increased up to fifteen percent and Women’s Development Department did effective legislation to ensure rights of women in heritage. He said Family courts have also been established in this regard.
Malik Ahmed Khan said that thirty six thousands domestic animals have been distributed in Punjab to empower rural women.
Source: Radio Pakistan
Cairo Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, deputy premier and minister of defense, and President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt jointly opened the renovated Al-Azhar Grand Mosque on Tuesday.
Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar, and several senior officials of Al-Azhar received the leaders, who offered prayer at the mosque and toured its facilities. The Crown Prince and Sisi inspected the renovation work of the mosque that took more than three years.
The renovation work, which has been completed with the support extended by the late King Abdullah and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman, is considered as the largest ever renovation carried out since the mosque’s construction 1,000 years ago.
Source: International Islamic News Agency
Jeddah The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemned Guatemala’s decision to relocate its embassy to the occupied city of Jerusalem in mid-May, considering it an illegal step and a violation of UN Security Council resolutions, particularly resolution 487, and the UN General Assembly resolutions on Jerusalem, which reject any actions that might prejudice the historical and legal status of the occupied city.
The OIC secretary general had sent a letter in early January to the Foreign minister of Guatemala in which he affirmed the OIC’s rejection of this illegal decision, which constitutes an aggression on the rights of the Palestinian people and millions of Muslims and Christians worldwide. It also contributes to consecrating Israeli occupation of the city of Jerusalem. In his letter, the secretary general also called on the Republic of Guatemala to revoke its decision and honor its legal and political obligations under international law and international legitimacy resolutions, and called on it to adopt positions that support the chances for peace based on the two-state solution and the promotion of stability in the region and throughout the world.
Source: International Islamic News Agency
The Punjab Assembly passed two resolutions during the session on Tuesday.
First resolution was presented by Hina Pervaiz Butt in which setting up of storage for solving the water crises was demanded.
Second resolution was presented by Nabila Hakim Ali Khan which demanded to provide proprietary rights to the residents of slums declared by the Lahore Development Authority at the earliest.
Later, the Speaker adjourned the session to meet again tomorrow at 10 a.m.
Source: Radio Pakistan
LOS ANGELES, Held one year ago, the 90th Academy Awards would have very likely been a rose-colored nostalgia fest.
But this year, with a culture-wide reckoning over decades of sexual misconduct, a film business in decline, a volatile political climate and the fact that last year the esteemed show couldn’t even manage to present its biggest award correctly, the film academy and host Jimmy Kimmel on Sunday staged a complex and sometimes incongruous dance of attempting to both honor and atone for the past.
In many ways, the show inside the Dolby Theatre went exactly as planned – scripted, tight, full of past-looking montages, forward-thinking speeches and produced to appeal to all. Presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty got a best picture redo, (“What happened last year is Waterhouse under the bridge, Kimmel quipped) and 86-year-old Rita Moreno got to wear her dress from the 1962 ceremony again.
The Walt Disney Co. sneaked a fair amount of promos (“A Wrinkle in Time, and Mary Poppins Returns) and self-congratulations (for Black Panther) into its ABC broadcast and the production did its best to appeal to the regular moviegoer by trotting out Gal Gadot and other stars to literally give candy to a theater full of people.
The awards also effectively skirted the awkwardness of having an accused man in the spotlight by shifting around long-held presenter traditions and having Jodie Foster and Jennifer Lawrence present the best actress award instead of Casey Affleck. Emma Stone got her Natalie Portman moment, presenting the directing award to four men and Greta Gerwig.
Activists like #MeToo creator Tarana Burke were included in a song segment. And three Harvey Weinstein accusers, Ashley Judd, Salma Hayek and Annabella Sciorra, were given a moment to themselves on stage for nothing more than the fact that they were brave enough to speak up before a hopeful video played highlighting a changing industry, post #MeToo and more diverse.
The video highlighted Greta Gerwig, the fifth woman to ever be nominated for best director, Yance Ford, the first transgender nominee for Strong Island, Dee Rees, whose Mudboundscored a historic cinematographer nomination and the Pakistan-born Kumail Nanjiani, nominated for The Big Sick.
The nominees signaled a renaissance. The winners told a slightly different story.
With a more diverse, more international and younger infusion of voting members into the film academy, the movie in love with movies still won the top awards. Guillermo del Toro’s fantasy romance The Shape of Water, won best picture, director, score and production design.
Growing up in Mexico, I thought this could never happen, del Toro said. It happens.
The acting awards, which have been locked for three months, went to the expected winners – all esteemed veterans and three of whom had never been nominated before: Frances McDormand won best actress for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and her co-star Sam Rockwell won for his supporting performance. Gary Oldman picked up the best actor prize for transforming into Winston Churchill in Darkest Hourand Allison Janney for becoming Tonya Harding’s mother in I, Tonya.
At 89, James Ivory became the oldest Oscar-winner for his adapted screenplay for Call Me By Your Name. And Christopher Nolan’s ambitious World War II nail-biter Dunkirk picked up three technical awards.
But Gerwig’s Lady Bird left empty handed, Rachel Morrison did not become the first female cinematography winner (the long-snubbed Roger Deakins got that honor finally for Blade Runner 2049 after 14 nominations) and Ford was not the first transgender Oscar-winner.
There were glimpses of progress, in Chile’s A Fantastic Woman, which starred the transgender actress Daniela Vega, won best foreign film. Disney and Pixar’s celebration of Mexican culture, Coco, took best animated feature, as well as best song for Remember Me.
The biggest thank you of all to the people of Mexico, said director Lee Unkrich to loud applause. Marginalized people deserve to feel like they belong. Representation matters.
And Jordan Peele became the first African-American to win best original screenplay for his horror sensation Get Out.
Peele said he stopped writing it 20 times, skeptical that it would ever get made.
But I kept coming back to it because I knew if someone would let me make this movie, that people would hear it and people would see it, said Peele. So I want to dedicate this to all the people who raised my voice and let me make this movie.
Even McDormand used her moment on stage to make a statement on behalf of women.
If I may be so honored to have all the female nominees stand with me, McDormand said.
We all have stories to tell and projects we need financed, she added, before uttering the phrase inclusion rider, referring to actors signing contracts that mandate a film’s gender and racial inclusivity.
Everyone seemed to take this moment of an industry in flux to heart.
We can’t let bad behavior slide anymore, said Kimmel at the show’s start. The world is watching us.
And indeed as the last show in this very long season, made even longer thanks to the Olympics, and with an unprecedented pressure to address all the ills of society and 90 years of movies it was perhaps always going to be too big a feat for one group of entertainers to tackle in a single nearly four-hour production.
There’s only so much they can do, after all, and there is no one like Kimmel to remind everyone that it is still the movie industry.
In an aside about the pay disparity between Mark Walhberg and Michelle Williams for All the Money in the World reshoots, Kimmel said upon discovering that both actors were represented by the same talent agency that, This one shook me.
Source: Voice of America
Reports from Pakistan say the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party gained control of parliament’s upper house in a secret ballot on March 3.
Pakistan’s national and provincial parliaments were voting on March 3 in Senate elections that are seen as a test of the PML-N party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Pakistan’s Geo TV and other local media report that candidates backed by the PML-N won 15 of the 52 Senate seats up for grabs, overtaking the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) as the largest group in the upper house.
PPP candidates reportedly won 12 seats.
“PMLN now the single largest party in Senate as well,” tweeted Sharif’s daughter and presumed political heir, Maryam Nawaz Sharif.
Mushahid Hussain Sayed, who won a seat in the capital, Islamabad, said the senate victory vindicates Sharif’s political “narrative” with voters.
Pakistani political analysts say that by working with allied politicians in the Senate, PML-N should have de facto control of the 104-seat chamber.
However, official results will not immediately show how well PML-N has done because some candidates were barred from running under the party’s banner.
PML-N party officials say those candidates, running as “independents,” are expected to pledge their allegiance to PML-N if they are elected to the Senate.
Lawmakers in the country’s four provincial assemblies � Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Baluchistan — and the National Assembly were electing the 52 senators from among more than 130 candidates.
The vote came as Sharif’s PML-N is in disarray after the Supreme Court in July 2017 disqualified Sharif from office due to corruption charges.
His party then changed the country’s laws to allow him to resume his role as its leader.
Pakistan’s election commission (ECP) rejected his nomination as head of the party but said that the party’s lawmakers could contest the March 3 vote by lawmakers as independent candidates.
PML-N’s leaders have been beset by corruption allegations, including against Sharif’s younger brother, Shahbaz Sharif.
Copyright (c) 2015. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.