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Monday, October 18, 2021

Pakistan celebrates Eid Milad un Nabi with religious zeal, fervour

Eid Milad un Nabi, a day of spiritual significance in Islam, is being celebrated across the country today (Tuesday) with traditional zeal and fervour.

It is the anniversary of the birth of Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Already announced a public holiday, the day will dawn with a 31 and 21-gun salute in the federal and provincial capitals, respectively, following a night of Mehfil-e-Naat, conferences, and fireworks. Special prayers will be offered in mosques to uphold and flourish Islam and religious teachings, unity, solidarity, progress, and the welfare of the Muslim community.

State and religious organisations, Milad committees and individuals have planned a number of activities, including processions, seminars, conferences and discussion programmes to mark the annual event.

Distribution of sweets and food has been planned in markets, schools, colleges, orphanages, among the disabled and others.

In Islamabad, the Central Milad Procession will start from Bhutto Cricket Ground, near Sitara Market in Sector G-7.

Numerous small processions will join the main procession. The Milad procession will culminate at the shrine of the father of Imam Barri situated at Aabpara. Local Milad committees have chalked out a comprehensive plan to hold Eid Miladun Nabi processions across the country.

Provincial and district Seerat committees have already finalised the plan to organise Seerat Majjalis. Naat Khawani, speeches by Ulema on Seerat topics, particularity the topic of this year’s National Seerat Conference and quiz.

Streets and roads, as well as bazaars, shopping centres, government and private buildings have been beautifully decorated and illuminated with lights, colours and banners bearing writings about the celebration of Eid Miladun Nabi.

Many vendors have set up colourful stalls with a unique collection of badges, stickers, flags, and banners inscribed with religious slogans to pay respect and reverence to Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Federal and provincial governments have already prepared contingency security plans in coordination with other law enforcement agencies to guard the processions and other events to be held today.

The president and prime minister, in their separate messages on the occasion of Eid Miladun Nabi, have said Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) laid the foundation of Riyasat-e-Madina, which rose before the world as an example in terms of humanity, justice, and rule of law.

President Dr Arif Alvi, in his message, said that Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) united humans for the oneness of Allah and that it is his characteristics that made people who were each other's worst enemies, each other’s well-wishers.

The president said that the Holy Prophet (PBUH) established such a welfare state where the rich and poor enjoyed equal rights.

While lauding the efforts of the present government in turning Pakistan into a model welfare state on the patterns of Riasat-e-Madina, he hoped that all resources will be utilised for this purpose.

Prime Minister Imran Khan, meanwhile, said that the arrival of Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) in the world brought a revolution in society.

He said it was the effect of the life of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) that the Arab tribes that were victims of internal chaos for centuries emerged as a nation.

The prime minister said that in this state system, minorities were protected, the poor and needy were taken care of and the rights and obligations of the state and citizens were determined.

He said the government has formed the Rahmat tulil Aalameen Authority to apprise the people and the world about the life and teachings of Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

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Facebook eyes 10,000 EU jobs to build ‘metaverse’

Facebook announced plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build the “metaverse”, a virtual reality version of the internet that the tech giant sees as the future.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been a leading voice in Silicon Valley hype around the idea of the metaverse, which would blur the lines between the physical world and the digital one.

The technology might, for example, allow someone to don virtual reality glasses that make it feel as if they’re face-to-face with a friend — when in fact they are thousands of miles apart and connected via the internet.

“The metaverse has the potential to help unlock access to new creative, social, and economic opportunities. And Europeans will be shaping it right from the start,” Facebook said in a blog post.

The European Union hires, spread over the next five years, will include “highly specialised engineers”, but the company otherwise gave few details of its plans for the new metaverse team.

“The EU has a number of advantages that make it a great place for tech companies to invest — a large consumer market, first class universities and, crucially, top quality talent,” the blog post said.

‘A bad reputation to fix’

The announcement comes as Facebook grapples with the fallout of a damaging scandal, major outages of its services, and rising calls for regulation to curb its vast influence.

The company has faced a storm of criticism over the past month after former employee Frances Haugen leaked internal studies showing Facebook knew its sites could be harmful to young people’s mental health.

Andreas Aktoudianakis, EU lead digital policy analyst at the European Policy Centre, noted that Facebook has “a bad reputation to fix” and that the metaverse announcement represented “a positive narrative” in troubled times.

The hiring spree could also lend Facebook some bargaining power as it seeks to influence two mammoth pieces of tech legislation being negotiated by the EU, the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act.

But Aktoudianakis said the EU’s tough tech regulation was in fact one of the reasons why Europe made sense as the location for Facebook’s new metaverse team.

“If there is a place where there is clarity about what you can do with artificial intelligence — at least compared to others — that place is Europe,” he said, pointing to similarly strong regulation on data protection.

“From a company point of view, if you want to start something like the metaverse, I think Europe would be the place to do it.” Zuckerberg predicted in July that Facebook will transition from “primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company” over the next five years.

Facebook bought Oculus, a company that makes virtual reality headsets, for $2 billion in 2014 and has since been developing Horizon, a digital world where people can interact using VR technology.

In August it unveiled Horizon Workrooms, a feature where co-workers wearing VR headsets can hold meetings in a virtual room where they all appear as cartoonish 3D versions of themselves.

Metaverse evangelists point out that the internet is already starting to blur the lines between virtual experiences and “real” ones.

Stars such as pop diva Ariana Grande and the rapper Travis Scott have performed for huge audiences, watching at home, via the hit video game Fortnite.

In Decentraland, another online platform widely seen as a forerunner to the metaverse, you can already get a job as a croupier in its virtual casino.

“No one company will own and operate the metaverse. Like the internet, its key feature will be its openness and interoperability,” Facebook said.

Other companies are pouring millions into developing the technology that could turn a fully-fledged version of the metaverse into reality.

Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, has raised $1 billion in new funding, with some of that money set to support its vision of the metaverse.

Other tech giants, including Google and Amazon, are meanwhile investing heavily in innovations that could prove crucial to the development of the metaverse, not least cloud computing and data storage.

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US envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad steps down from position

The United States' special envoy for Afghanistan is stepping down following the chaotic American withdrawal from the country, the US State Department said on Monday.

Zalmay Khalilzad will leave the post this week after more than three years on the job under both the Trump and Biden administrations. He had been criticised for not pressing the Taliban hard enough in peace talks begun while Trump was president but Secretary of State Antony Blinken thanked him for his work.

“I extend my gratitude for his decades of service to the American people,” Blinken said of Khalilzad, a former US ambassador to the United Nations and Afghanistan.

Khalilzad had initially planned to leave the job in May after Biden’s announcement that the US withdrawal would be completed before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in September. However, he was asked to stay on and did so.

Khalilzad had served as the special envoy for Afghan reconciliation under both the Trump and Biden administrations since September 2018, when then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo brought him on board to lead negotiations with the Taliban and the Afghan government.

An Afghan native, Khalilzad was unsuccessful in getting the two sides together to forge a power-sharing deal but he did negotiate a US agreement with the Taliban in February 2020 that ultimately led to the end of America’s longest-running war.

The agreement with the Taliban served as the template for the Biden administration’s withdrawal of all US forces from Afghanistan, which many believe was conducted too hastily and without enough planning. Thousands of Afghan citizens who worked for US forces there over the past two decades were left behind in the rush to leave as were hundreds of American citizens and legal residents.

President Joe Biden and his aides frequently said the agreement that Khalilzad negotiated tied their hands when it came to the pullout and led to the sudden takeover of the country by the Taliban, although administration critics noted that Biden had abandoned the “conditions-based” requirements for a complete US withdrawal.

In interviews and in his resignation letter described to the AP, Khalilzad noted that the agreement he negotiated had conditioned the final withdrawal of US forces to the Taliban entering serious peace talks with the Afghan government. He also lamented that those negotiations and consequently the withdrawal had not gone as planned.

Despite the criticism, Khalilzad remained on the job, although he skipped the first high-level post-withdrawal US-Taliban meeting in Doha, Qatar earlier this month, prompting speculation he was on his way out. Khalilzad will be replaced by his deputy Thomas West, who led the US delegation to that last round of talks in Doha.

However, the US will not be sending a representative to a Russia-hosted conference on Afghanistan this week, the State Department said. Speaking before Blinken’s announcement of Khalilzad’s departure, department spokesman Ned Price cited “logistics” as the reason the US would not participate in the Moscow talks.

Khalilzad said in his resignation letter that after leaving government service he would continue to work on behalf of the Afghan people and would offer his thoughts and advice on what went wrong in Afghanistan and the path forward.

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