Here’s what’s happening across the border: Transgender model’s movie wins global award; tweets saying Israeli aircraft in Pak airspace sparks massive row.
Imran Khan’s sister owns benami properties in Dubai, FIA report
PM Imran Khan’s sister Aleema Khanum allegedly owns benami properties in Dubai, reports The Express Tribune citing a document submitted by Federal Investigation Agency.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Mumtaz Ahmed Muslim, former PPP minister Amin Faheem’s widow Rizwana Ameen, singer Adnan Sami’s mother Noreen Sami Khan and several others are named in the report. FIA has already sent notice to all the people who have bought properties on another person’s name.
An e-mail notice was sent to Khanum as FIA was informed about her absence in the country currently.
On Thursday a report submitted by FIA in Pakistan’s Supreme Court revealed that Pakistanis have properties in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Among them 150 people have reportedly admitted of owning properties abroad, while 82 have denied any such claims.
Pakistan movie with a social message wins award at global fest
Pakistan social activist and transgender model Kami Sid’s 2018 movie Rani has won the award for ‘Outstanding Writer’ at America’s NBC Universal Short Film Festival, The Express Tribune reports.
The movie has been directed by Hammad Rizvi, a US-based filmmaker. The awards were held at DGA Theatre in Los Angeles. Sid shared a picture from the event on her Instagram handle.
The film has been screened at other international film festivals as well. GrayScale, which is one of the foreign productions, had shared the film’s poster when it was selected to be screened at Outfest Los Angeles Film Fest and wrote: “Rani is a short film about a Pakistani transgender woman who sets out to take care of an abandoned baby.”
Rani was shot in Karachi and features Sid alongside Maaz Khan.
TV host critical of Ahmadis not allowed to visit Norway for Islamic event
Orya Maqbool, a TV show host in Pakistan, has reportedly not been allowed to travel to Norway after news videos of him speaking against the Ahmadiyya and the Jewish communities went viral in the country, Rabwah Times reports.
The host was to visit the country’s capital city Oslo for an Islamic event at a school.
The news was confirmed by his own TV show ‘Harf e Raz’ which is aired on Pakistan’s NEO TV Network every week. A report aired Wednesday on the channel read that “The right to free expression, freedom to travel and the right to meet friends and family has been stripped from Pakistani citizen Orya Maqbool Jan”.
Jan was supposed to head an Islamic event scheduled for Saturday in Lillestrom, a small town 18 km north of Oslo and share the stage with the town’s deputy mayor Boye Bjerkholt.
The event, however, might not be organised as the school where it was supposed to be held declined to rent space to the organiser- Zohra Manzoor Welfare society. Sandra Hansen, the principal of the public school, said that they withdrew their permission to allow the organiser to hold the event at their school when they learnt Friday about the content of the event and the views of Maqbool.
She was quoted as saying: “Neither our school or the community can support the types of extreme views fronted by Mr. Jan”.
Journalist’s tweets say Israeli aircraft entered Pak airspace
A series of tweets from Avi Scharf, the editor of English edition of Israeli daily Haaretz, claiming that an Israeli aircraft flew from Tel Aviv to Islamabad Wednesday have sparked a torrent of rumours on social media regarding the legitimacy of the incident, reports The News International.
According to a BBC report, the registration of the plane was not from Israel and that it actually flew from Amman, the capital city of Jordan.
Scharf who was the first one to point this incident out on Twitter said that the plane had not directly flown from Tel Aviv into Islamabad. He, however, reasoned that the pilot of the aircraft might have used the trick of making the flight route look like it was Amman-Islamabad bound plane instead of a Tel-Aviv Islamabad flight.
Israeli 🇮🇱 bizjet flew from TLV to Islamabad, #Pakistan 🇵🇰, on the ground 10 hours, and back to TLV.
Cleared flight-plan with usual 5min groundtime trick in Amman
M-ULTI glex pic.twitter.com/haHn1NU73L
— avi scharf (@avischarf) October 25, 2018
The BBC report cited him as saying that the plane halted at Amman for 5 minutes after taking off from Tel Aviv and then left for Islamabad. At Islamabad, the journalist mentioned that it remained there for 10 hours.
Ahsan Iqbal, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party (PML-N) leader, quoted the BBC report, seeking an explanation from the government to which information minister Fawad Chaudhry responded by saying, “The fact is that neither Imran is a Nawaz Sharif nor he has a fake Aristotle like you in his cabinet. We will neither hold secret talks with Modi nor Israel”.
حقیقی صورتحال یہ ہے کہ عمران خان نواز شریف ہے نہ اس کی کابینہ میں آپ جیسے جعلی ارسطو ہیں، ہم نہ مودی جی سے خفیہ مذاکرات کریں گے نہ اسرائیل سے، آپ کو پاکستان کی اتنی فکر ہوتی جتنی ظاہر کر رہے ہیں تو آج ہم ان حالات میں نہ ہوتے، اس لئے جعلی فکر نہ کریں ،پاکستان محفوظ ہاتھوں میں ہے https://t.co/JUtbZQbArj
— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) October 27, 2018
Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has dismissed reports that an Israeli aircraft was spotted in Pakistan’s airspace and termed them “totally baseless”, reported The Express Tribune.
As there exists no diplomatic ties between Pakistan and Israel, aircraft registered in either of these two countries are not authorised to enter each other’s airspace.
Journalist Omar R. Quraishi has also tweeted considerably about this incident and questioned the Pakistan government to respond to the incident.