2 killed, 450 injured in police crackdown on protesters in Pak

August 31, 2014

Anti-govt protestersIslamabad, Aug 31: At least two persons were killed and about 450 others injured overnight when police baton- charged hundreds of anti-government protesters led by Imran Khan and Tahir-ul-Qadri who marched towards Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's residence here demanding his resignation.

The clashes started after Tehrik-e-Insaf chairman Khan and Awami Tehrik chief Qadri yesterday ordered their hundreds of supporters to shift the protest venue in the front of the residence of Prime Minister Sharif to force him to quit.

Police fired tear gas shells and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters outside the prime minister's official residence and the adjacent parliament building.

Hundreds of protesters entered the lawn of parliament but they were pushed back at the main entrance of the building where army was deployed.

About 450 injured were brought to Polyclinic and Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, the two premier state-run hospitals, a government official said.

A police official said over 70 policemen and five Frontier Constabulary personnel were injured in clashes with protesters armed with sticks, catapults and stones.

Dr Ayesha Isani of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences hospital told reporters that a man brought to the hospital late last night had passed away.

She confirmed that earlier a man was brought dead to the hospital who had drowned by falling into a trench.

So far the protesters failed to break into the security cordon and reach the PM House.

Khan was present in his container mounted on a truck and frequently addressed his supporters. He said he will register cases against the Sharif brothers and interior minister Nisar Ali Khan for ordering crackdown on protesters.

His party leader Pervaiz Khattak said that they will not stop until Sharif resigns, as the protest entered 18th day.

Qadri today emerged from his container and addressed the supporters in husky voice which he said was due to effect tear gas. "I salute my sons and daughters who won today," he said without explaining.

He promised to make another speech later on and vowed to continue to struggle till final victory of "revolution".

Fearing backlash from protesters, roads leading to Prime Minister Sharif's Lahore residence, where he is currently residing, have been blocked and heavy contingent of police deployed. His brother and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif is also living there.

Sharif had left the prime minister house in Islamabad for his Lahore residence, which is sprawling on acres of land, on Friday along with his personal staff.

"Sharif had vacated the prime minister house fearing it might come under siege from the protesters," a source in the ruling PML-N said.

"Sharif will not move to the prime minister house in Islamabad till the police manage to clear the area from Khan's Pakistan Tahreek-i-Insaf and Qadri's Pakistan Awami Tahreek," the source said, adding Sharif and his family members would not travel by road in the present circumstances.

Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid said that protesters had committed a crime by attacking parliament which is a "symbol of democracy".

Intermittent clashes are continuing and fresh contingents of police were sent this morning as reinforcement.

The situation was very tense in the capital as a number of demonstrators refused to budge from the protest site.

Both the leaders are agitating since August 14 against alleged rigging during the last year general elections.

A late night government announcement categorically ruled out Sharif's resignation and there is no threat to his life.

Meanwhile, the protesters clashed with police at famous Liberty Chowk and the Mall Road in Lahore. Half a dozen protesters suffered injuries and were shifted to hospital where their condition is stated to be out of danger.

A group of Khan's supporters gathered outside the residence of Defense Minister Khawaja Asif in Sialkot, some 150 km from Lahore, and pelted stones at it.

Police, however, managed to disperse them.

In Multan, some 350 km from Lahore, the Tehrik-e-Insaf activists blocked the motorway road for several hours. Police used baton to disperse them.

Tehrik-e-Insaf Punjab president Ejaz Chaudhry said: "Today we will block all entry and exit points of Punjab province. We will bring the life to standstill to pressure Nawaz Sharif to resign."

Opposition leaders have criticised both Khan and Qadri for inciting violence.

Jan Achakzai of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam said that both Qadri and Khan talked about western democracy but what they did was in clear violation of international democratic norms.

Pakistan People's Party Aitizaz Ahsan said that demand for resignation was illegal and the Prime Minister should not accept it. He blamed the protesters for the violence.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
January 6,2020

The Cambridge Analytica scandal is far from over. New explosive details leaked by a whistleblower shows that the extent of the rot is far deeper than previously thought.

An anonymous Twitter account, @HindsightFiles, has started releasing the documents, apparently on behalf of Brittany Kaiser, a former employee of the now defunct British data analytics and consulting company Cambridge Analytica.

"Democracies around the world are being auctioned to the highest bidder. We release the documents that explain how," reads the biography of the @HindsightFiles.

The document will reveal previously unreleased emails, project plans, case studies, negotiations and more spanning over 60 countries.

"Over the past two years I have given evidence to investigators, journalists and academics to analyse what happened at Cambridge Analytica, and how our data was used to influence democracies around the world. In the name of shedding light on these dark practices, I am releasing documents and emails in full for the public good," Kaiser, who worked with Cambridge Analytica from 2014 to 208, was quoted as saying.

"I do this to strengthen the case for data rights and enforcement of our electoral laws online globally. We should all be seeking more ethical digital future for ourselves and our children," added Kaiser who starred in the Oscar-shortlisted Netflix documentary "The Great Hack".

The details released so far includes links to material on the firm's activities in Malaysia, Kenya, Brazil and Iran, an addition to the John Bolton archive.

Over the next months, more than 100,000 documents relating to work in 68 countries are set to be released, according to a report in The Guardian.

More than one and a half year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal first became public, US regulators last month said that the now-defunct British data analytics and consulting company engaged in deceptive practices to harvest personal information from tens of millions of Facebook users for voter profiling and targeting.

According to Kaiser, the Facebook data scandal was part of a much bigger global operation designed to manipulate people in collaboration with governments, intelligence agencies, commercial companies and political campaigns.

The unpublished documents contain material that suggests the firm collaborated with a political party in Ukraine in 2017 even while under investigation as part of Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, said The Guardian report.

"There are emails between these major Trump donors discussing ways of obscuring the source of their donations through a series of different financial vehicles. These documents expose the entire dark money machinery behind US politics," Kaiser was quoted as saying.

Similar tactics were deployed in other countries that Cambridge Analytica operated in, including Britain, she claimed.

The files released by Kaiser suggest that Cambridge Analytica offered to help United Malays National Organisation (Umno), the party of Malaysia's Former Prime Minister Najib Razak, to influence the voting of 40 parliamentary constituencies in the 14th General Election (GE14) in 2013.

Umno, according to the leaks, requested the company to prepare a proposal to regain 13 seats, The South China Morning Post reported on Saturday.

In 2018, Razak claimed that he had never engaged Cambridge Analytica in any way.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
May 28,2020

May 28: Boeing is cutting more than 12,000 jobs through layoffs and buyouts as the coronavirus pandemic seizes the travel industry, and more cuts are coming.

One of the nation's biggest manufacturers will lay off 6,770 U.S. employees this week, and another 5,520 workers are taking buyout offers to leave voluntarily in the coming wee

Air travel within the U.S. tumbled 96% by mid-April, to fewer than 100,000 people on some days. It has recovered slightly. The Transportation Security Administration said it screened 264,843 people at airports on Tuesday, a drop of 89% compared with the same Tuesday a year ago.

Boeing had said it would cut 10% of a work force that numbered about 160,000. A Boeing spokesperson said Wednesday's actions represent the largest number of job cuts, but several thousand additional jobs will be eliminated in the next few months.

The layoffs are expected to be concentrated in the Seattle area, home to Boeing's commercial-airplanes business. The defense and space division is stable and will help blunt the impact of the decline in air travel and demand for passenger jets, the company said.

Boeing said additional job cuts will be made in international locations, but it did not specify numbers.

"The COVID-19 pandemic's devastating impact on the airline industry means a deep cut in the number of commercial jets and services our customers will need over the next few years, which in turn means fewer jobs on our lines and in our offices," CEO David Calhoun said Wednesday in a memo to employees.

Calhoun said the company faces the challenges of keeping employees safe and working with suppliers and airlines "to assure the traveling public that it can fly safe from infection."

Calhoun warned that Boeing will have to adjust business plans constantly because the pandemic makes it hard to predict the impact on the company's business.

Boeing's crisis began with two crashes of its 737 Max, which led regulators around the world to ground the jetliner last year. The company's problems have deepened with the coronavirus, which has cut global air traffic by up to 90% and caused airlines to postpone or cancel orders and deliveries for new planes.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
February 19,2020

Beijing, Feb 19: The death count from China's new coronavirus epidemic jumped to 2,000 on Wednesday after 132 more people died in Hubei province, the hard-hit epicentre of the outbreak.

In its daily update, the province's health commission also reported 1,693 new cases of people infected with the virus.

This brings the total number of cases in mainland China past 74,000.

Most of the cases are in Hubei, where the virus first emerged in December before spiralling into a nationwide epidemic.

Wednesday's jump in the death count was an increase on Tuesday's figures, although the number of new cases reported in Hubei were the lowest for a week.

A study released by Chinese officials claimed most patients have mild cases of the illness.

Outside of hardest-hit Hubei, which has been effectively locked down to try to contain the virus, the number of new cases has been slowing and China's national health authority has said this is a sign the outbreak is under control.

President Xi Jinping, in a phone call with the British prime minister, said China's measures were achieving "visible progress", according to state media Tuesday.

However, the World Health Organization has cautioned that it was too early to tell if the decline would continue.

On Tuesday the director of a hospital in the central Hubei city of Wuhan became the seventh medical worker to succumb to the COVID-19 illness.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.