Credible News from Pakistan!
International day of Mine Awareness and Assistance is being observed today.
The day aims to raise awareness about landmines and progress toward their eradication.
This year theme of the day is: ‘Safe Ground, Safe Steps, Safe Home’. In a message on the day, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said this day is not just reminder of how the world got rid of the scourge of landmines but also emphasizes the need for more action in this regard.
Source: Radio Pakistan
Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asia at the US State Department Donald Lu has skipped the question when asked about the regime change conspiracy in Pakistan.
The State Department official, during his visit to India, was engaged for an interview by an Indian daily and was questioned for his conversation with Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington.
In response, Donald Lu, who is considered the author of the official communication to Pakistan, avoided direct reply and said we are following developments in Pakistan, and we respect and support Pakistan’s constitutional process and the rule of law.
Source: Radio Pakistan
A five-member bench of Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Umar Ata Bandial is continuing hearing of the suo motu case regarding current political situation.
PPP Counsel Raza Rabbani has completed his arguments.
PML (N) Counsel Makhdoom Ali Khan is now submitting his arguments.
Source: Radio Pakistan
Pakistan’s Supreme Court adjourned until Wednesday a hearing to decide the legality of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s blocking of an opposition bid to oust him, a dispute that has led to political turmoil in the nuclear-armed country.
Former cricket star Khan lost his parliamentary majority last week and had been facing a no-confidence vote tabled by a united opposition that he was expected to lose on Sunday.
But the deputy speaker of parliament, a member of Khan’s party, threw out the motion, ruling it was part of a foreign conspiracy and unconstitutional. Khan then dissolved parliament.
The stand-off has thrown the country of 220 million people, ruled by the military for extended periods since independence in 1947, into a full-blown constitutional crisis.
The opposition challenged Khan’s decision in a legal case in the Supreme Court that began on Monday.
The panel of five judges has not said when it might give a ruling.
“Our concern is about the legality of the ruling of the speaker,” Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial said at the hearing. “We don’t want to indulge in policy matters.”
Opposition lawyer Makhdoom Ali Khan said Khan’s actions were a violation of the constitution.
“This is not just a matter of procedure but it is in negation of parliamentary democracy,” he told the court.
The hearing was adjourned on Tuesday after legal arguments against the move were concluded. The court will hear from Khan’s team on Wednesday.
The court could order that parliament be reconstituted, call for a new election or bar Khan from standing again if he is found to have acted unconstitutionally. Read full story
The court could also decide that it cannot intervene in parliamentary affairs.
Lengthy legal proceedings would create a power vacuum with implications for issues such as talks with the International Monetary Fund to secure funds to support the cash-strapped economy.
No evidence of plot
Political chaos would also worry the powerful military, which has stepped in to remove civilian governments and rule on three occasions, citing the need to end political uncertainty.
The turmoil also threatens to damage ties with long-time ally the United States, after Khan accused it of being behind the plot to overthrow him.
The United States dismissed the accusation.
Pakistan’s security agencies have not found credible evidence to confirm Khan’s complaint of a foreign conspiracy, an official with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.
Khan and the deputy speaker had said Pakistan’s National Security Committee, a top panel that groups civilian officials as well as the military and intelligence chiefs, had confirmed a plot to overthrow him.
However, the official, who is privy to such proceedings, said the security agencies had not come to the same conclusion as Khan and had communicated their view to him.
Khan, who was for years critical of the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, also accused opposition parties of being part of a foreign conspiracy.
Shehbaz Sharif, the opposition candidate likely to replace Khan as prime minister should the court rule against Khan, told media that he had urged army and intelligence chiefs to look into Khan’s accusation.
Political analysts say the military viewed Khan and his conservative agenda favorably when he won a general election in 2018 but the generals’ support has since waned.
Khan denied ever having the backing of the military and the military says it has no involvement in the political process.
Source: Voice of America
China’s navy will strengthen through 2050, analysts say, as the military power expands a key shipyard, steps up coordination and pursues a security deal with a South Pacific ally.
Chinese officials have signed a draft security agreement with South Pacific archipelago the Solomon Islands. That deal, announced last week, alarmed nearby Australia and New Zealand over the possibility of an eventual Chinese base in the Solomons for what is already the world’s largest navy.
Recently, Naval News, an official newspaper of the British Royal Navy, published an article describing a “massive expansion” of China’s biggest shipbuilding site. That site, the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, is expected to have a basin for fitting out ships and a “large” drydock with multiple berths, the newspaper reported.
China has been expanding another two facilities to build nuclear submarines, the report added. It said the expansion opens the possibly of building nuclear-powered aircraft carriers for the People’s Liberation Army Navy.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not answer a request for comment this week about military modernization.
Parts of longer voyage
The initiatives position the Chinese navy to improve through 2050, said Collin Koh, a maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
“Clearly the Chinese are already in the process of bulking up, so I think it might actually be sooner than we actually imagine,” Koh said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping told a Communist Party congress in 2017 that he aimed to “basically complete” military modernization by 2035 and transform the armed forces into a “world-class” military by 2049, according to a U.S. Department of Defense paper released last year.
Jiangnan is a key site for making aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and submarines. The navy had 512 ships in 2012, according to Britain’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, a research group. It now has more than 700, the database Globalfirepower.com says.
China’s most formidable rival would be the United States. The former Cold War rival has sent warships to the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait in respone to Beijing’s perceived aggression toward smaller Asian governments. On Monday, U.S. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger said his troops should do more “campaigning forward” to deter China at sea.
Dearth of ports
A port in the Solomons would ease a shortage of places to moor ships as the Chinese navy tries to project influence into the Pacific Ocean, experts believe. China’s foreign naval bases today are in Myanmar, Pakistan and Djibouti.
“The CCP (Communist Party of China) not only wants to control the first island chain, but also use that as a base and expand their influence to reach the second island chain,” said Chieh Chung, an associate researcher at the National Policy Foundation in Taiwan, in a phone interview with VOA Mandarin.
The first chain refers to the band of islands stretching from the Kuril Islands north of Japan to Borneo. The second includes Papua New Guinea, the Marianas and the Caroline Islands.
Analysts believe any Solomons base is a way off. Protesters rioted in the South Pacific country in November partly because of their country’s links with China. The Solomons established diplomatic ties with Beijing in 2019, casting off former ally Taiwan.
Solomon Islanders resented Australia as a “big brother” in the past and wonder whether China is the next one, said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii.
Command structure overhaul
China faces the longer-term challenge of decentralizing its military command to put battlefield decisions in the hands of field commanders and make fighting more efficient, some experts believe. It’s more “top-down” today than the U.S. military despite efforts since 2016 to improve coordination, said Derek Grossman, senior defense analyst with the U.S.-based RAND Corporation, a research organization.
The People’s Liberation Army network launched an overhaul in 2017 aimed at improving coordination, according to a National Defense University Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs paper.
A key would be aligning the army, strategic support forces and rocket forces in the event of any war, Grossman said. “It’s not just numbers,” he said, referring to equipment and troops. “I think it’s also obviously the quality of their capability, if they’re able to use all of these assets in a coordinated fashion.”
China has not entered combat since the 1970s, when it lost a border war to Vietnam.
The crew aboard China’s two aircraft carriers need more time to train, said Andrew Yang, secretary-general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies research group in Taiwan. The United States has 11 aircraft carriers.
“I think those two aircraft carriers are not ready for real combat yet, because they need a time to train their crews in how to coordinate other combatants in their mission and also in a way to train the carrier fighter jets,” Yang said.
China’s growing number of ships “may just come to naught” without more training and improved “command and control,” Koh said.
Source: Voice of America
PML-Q leaders Chaudhry Pervez Elahi and Chaudhry Moonis Elahi called on Prime Minister Imran Khan in Lahore today (Tuesday).
Overall political situation of the country was discussed in the meeting.
Source: Radio Pakistan
AUSTIN, Texas, April 04, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Wickfire suffered the latest in an extensive line of litigation defeats to TriMax. This time, a District Court dismissed Wickfire’s meritless claims permanently.
In 2021, an Appellate Court ruled that Wickfire lacked any evidence supporting its multi-million-dollar claims against TriMax. Undeterred by this monumental loss, Wickfire tried its hand once more and failed.
After losing at the Appellate Court, Wickfire moved a District Court to order TriMax pay Wickfire more than $400,000. This led to a flurry of findings and orders against Wickfire:
The orders and findings appear in published opinions from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Case Number 17-3043040 and the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, Case No. 1:14-CV-0034-RP.
The lawsuit centered around Google AdWords Auctions, an online-auction platform where companies like TriMax and Wickfire compete for advertising space. Wickfire asserted a series of claims against TriMax, but as to each one, Wickfire failed. Wickfire alleged TriMax intentionally interfered with Wickfire’s contracts, intentionally interfered with Wickfire’s prospective business, and committed civil conspiracy. An Appellate Court found “Wickfire offered no such proof” and declared that each of these claims failed.
After the Appellate Court found an earlier District Court judgment awarding $2.3 million to Wickfire to be erroneous due to the lack of any supporting evidence, the District Court more recently issued the “TAKE NOTHING” judgment. Through the “TAKE NOTHING” judgment, Wickfire received no award and, conversely, was ordered to pay its own attorneys’ fees and costs.
In the same lawsuit, the jury previously found Wickfire LLC and its co-owners, Chet Hall and Jon Brown, to have intentionally interfered with TriMax Media’s business. TriMax argued that Wickfire intentionally interfered with TriMax’s contracts by (1) paying kickbacks to merchant representatives in exchange for exclusivity agreements; (2) impersonating TriMax by placing unauthorized ads that plagiarized TriMax’s ad copy and contained other identifying information of TriMax; (3) repeatedly clicking on TriMax ads in order to artificially increase TriMax’s costs (known as “click fraud”); and (4) using an automated software program to manipulate the Google auction system (known as “bid jamming”).
TriMax presented evidence to the jury that Wickfire had been suspended from over 200 Google accounts, violated merchant terms, and employed fake user agents and proxies to conceal its identity. The jury also saw evidence that Google referred to Wickfire as “Known Fraudsters” and that Wickfire registered the domain name “GoogleClickFraud.com”.
TriMax also presented evidence regarding Wickfire’s destruction of evidence. During the litigation, Wickfire wiped all the data from its Chief Technology Officer, Jon Brown’s, laptop and then failed to disclose that information to TriMax or the District Court. Once TriMax uncovered the destruction, Wickfire claimed it was necessary, since the laptop had been stolen during a home burglary. However, the police report—which TriMax obtained independently after Wickfire failed to produce a copy—contradicted Wickfire’s story because it mentioned nothing about an allegedly stolen laptop.
While the jury heard extensive evidence about Wickfire’s conduct comprising Wickfire’s intentional interference against TriMax (which the jury found to have occurred), some of the most devastating evidence was excluded. For example, the jury was not permitted to see:
Despite the jury’s finding against Wickfire, Chet Hall, and Jon Brown for intentional interference with TriMax’s business, no damages against Wickfire were awarded. This was, as the District Court noted, a finding reached by the jury after “the jury heard evidence that Google investigated Wickfire’s AdWords bidding and determined it was permissible.”
However, the District Court’s Final Judgment did not disturb the jury’s finding that Wickfire, Chet Hall, and Jon Brown committed the intentional interference in the first place. Thus, the interference finding against Wickfire, Chet Hall, and Jon Brown stands and is final.
Prior to issuing the “TAKE NOTHING” judgment and dismissing Wickfire’s meritless claims permanently, a Magistrate Judge considered a motion to disqualify Wickfire attorney, Katy Hall (formerly known as Katy Atlas). TriMax alleged that while in possession of TriMax’s sensitive documents, Katy Hall began a personal and intimate relationship with Chet Hall (CEO and Co-Founder of Wickfire, and, himself a party to the case), divorced her prior husband, had a child with Chet Hall, and married Chet Hall after he divorced his prior wife. TriMax also alleged that Katy Hall wrongfully accepted an in-house position with Wickfire while in possession of the documents. Katy Hall is currently Chief Operating Officer of Wickfire’s BuyersGuide.org. A Magistrate Judge however, ruled that TriMax could not “meet its heavy burden to prove that disqualification is warranted” and denied the motion to disqualify Katy Hall.
TriMax’s CEO, Laura Woodruff, commented: “After the Fifth Circuit exonerated TriMax in 2021, we were surprised that Wickfire chose to continue asserting meritless claims with the District Court. However, we are pleased with the recent orders by the District Court, which—like the Appellate Court before it—repeatedly rejected Wickfire’s claims for lack of merit. We are, however, still disappointed that Google and the Networks permitted Wickfire to intentionally interfere with TriMax’s business in the first place. Nevertheless, based on the jury’s finding that Wickfire interfered with TriMax’s business—a finding that was not reversed or altered by the recent Final Judgment—we now hope tactics like impersonation of competitors, kickbacks, bid jamming, and click fraud, will no longer be tolerated in the online advertising industry.”
About TriMax Media:
Founded in 2003, TriMax Media is a digital marketing agency specializing in performance-based search engine marketing. TriMax served on the first Google Advertiser Research Council and was one of the first companies to generate over one million leads for its clients utilizing Google AdWords. The agency focuses on creating highly effective search marketing campaigns and developing successful long-term relationships with its clients.
Company Contact:
For questions, please contact:
Barry M. Golden
Egan Nelson LLP
214.893.9034
barry.golden@egannelson.com
LONDON and SINGAPORE, April 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — To achieve growth and success past 2030, businesses must start to understand the living, shopping, and financial habits of Gen Z or Zoomers (consumers aged between 16 and 24) now – and accept that they are very different from previous generations. This demographic, who never knew life without the internet and smartphones, currently represents the largest population group on earth, accounting for almost 2.5 billion people, surpassing Millennials in 2019.
That’s why Thunes, the global payments platform, conducted a global study of Zoomers to get insight into their shopping, social, and payment preferences. Thunes interviewed 6,500 people between the ages of 16 and 24 from 13 developed and emerging countries.
Thunes CEO Peter De Caluwe said: “To many, Gen Z is a misunderstood and overlooked generation. This is a generation to which “dial-up” and “desktop” are meaningless words and who don’t just think “mobile-first”, but live and breathe in apps, social media, digital platforms and soon – the metaverse. We should start to take this generation seriously as the revenues and strategic plans of many businesses – especially those that are relying on fast growth – are dependent on them”.
“We knew that social media would be a key part of a Zoomer’s daily life, but what our survey helped to reveal is the extent to which they are driving spending activity in this demographic. Another important aspect of their lives that we wanted to explore is their relationships with money and their affection for mobile-driven payment methods. As a company that embraces the diversity of Payments and builds the next-generation Payments infrastructure for the world, we will use these insights to shape our Payment capabilities and solutions for the large group of the Internet businesses that we serve,” he added.
Mobile wallets are gaining traction, particularly in emerging markets where bank accounts have been historically difficult to access and financial exclusion is widespread. Mobile providers have led a digital payments revolution in Asia, while in Africa, the major telecoms providers have offered similar digital payments solutions.
As the world moves online, social media, content and entertainment platforms, payment providers, and consumer brands looking to capitalise on Zoomers and their online spending habits must consider all the factors above. Gen Z will be influenced first, not by price or even range or scarcity, but by their social circles, brand engagement online, and trendy, convenient, trustworthy payment options.
Peter De Caluwe said: “Failure to recognise the imminent influence of the digitally native Zoomer could result in a once perfectly shoppable brand witnessing slipping sales.”
Link to full report
Media contact: Sylvia McKaige, Sylvia.mckaige@salweengroup.