Another camel found mutilated and dead, days after similar act of animal cruelty in Sindh
Another camel found mutilated and dead, days after similar act of animal cruelty in Sindh/node/2540226/pakistan
Another camel found mutilated and dead, days after similar act of animal cruelty in Sindh
Camel vendors handle a camel at a camel market set up for the upcoming Muslim Eid al-Adha festival or the 'Festival of Sacrifice' in Karachi on July 18, 2020. (AFP/File)
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s southern Sindh province witnessed yet another act of animal cruelty, as widely reported by the local media on Saturday, after a camel was found dead in the region with its legs amputated.
The incident took place only a few days after a local landlord in Sanghar district was accused of torturing a camel and chopping off its leg with his employees’ help since it had strayed into his fields for grazing.
The story, which triggered significant uproar on social media, led to the camel being transported to Karachi for treatment and a prosthetic leg. Six individuals involved were also arrested by the police.
The most recent incident took place in a modest settlement near Umerkot in Sindh.
“I don’t want to accuse anyone,” Abdul Rashid, the owner of the dead camel, was reported as saying by Geo News. “I have around 40 to 45 female camels. While all of them returned after grazing last evening, she was left behind alone.”
“God knows who made her run, beat her and cut her legs,” he added. “We don’t know anything yet ... We’ll see what to do next.”
Pakistan’s existing animal cruelty laws, rooted in the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1890, prohibit various forms of animal cruelty, including beating, overdriving, and mutilation.
The legislation also prescribes penalties for breaches of these anti-cruelty provisions, which can include fines and imprisonment, though these are not always effectively enforced.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will leave for Riyadh tomorrow, Tuesday, to attend the One Water Summit from Dec. 3-4, the premier’s office said in a statement on Monday.
A joint initiative of Saudi Arabia, France, Kazakhstan and the World Bank, the summit aims for high-level political commitments to promote global cooperation and a coherent international approach toward water resource management.
“At the Summit, the Prime Minister will deliver a keynote address at a roundtable focusing on restoration, preservation, and adaptation in the context of fresh water resources and wetlands,” Sharif’s office said.
“He will also highlight steps being taken by Pakistan to promote water conservation, strengthen climate resilience, improve water quality, create livelihoods, and conserve biodiversity.
“The prime minister will underline the importance of international cooperation to tackle the impact of climate-induced floods, erratic and extreme weather patterns, and heat stress on water resources and ecosystems. He will also call for meaningful international collaboration for sustainable water resource management.”
Sharif is also expected to hold bilateral meetings and engagements on the forum’s sidelines.
The summit is being held on the margins of the next high-level session of the sixteenth session of COP16 of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). It aims to contribute to ongoing United Nations discussions and processes to enhance global water governance, accelerate action on SDG6 on water and sanitation, and build on the momentum of the UN Water Conference in 2023.
The forum will also act as an incubator for solutions in preparation for the next UN Water Conference in 2026, and integrate its agenda into the other existing water processes and initiatives such as the World Water Forum, the Dushanbe Conference and the World Water Week.
“The One Water Summit’s ambition is to scale-up projects by stimulating partnerships between states, international organizations, local authorities, development and private banks, businesses, philanthropies, scientific experts, NGOs and civil society, in line with previous One Planet Summits,” the forum’s website said.
KARACHI: Every year, enthusiasts of an ancient Japanese art form gather in the port city of Karachi to show off their works at the annual exhibition of the Pakistan Bonsai Society.
This year’s edition too saw members of the group putting on display trees that they had grown in containers to create a realistic miniature of mature forms. The members consider themselves artists and the miniature trees, shaped and pruned with precision and care, are not just plants for them but living sculptures rooted in history, tradition and deep personal devotion.
The practice of bonsai, or miniaturizing plants, is thought to have come to Japan from China sometime around the seventh century, when the two countries formally established diplomatic ties. Similar art forms exist in other cultures, including Korea’s bunjae, the Chinese art of penjing, and the miniature living landscapes of Vietnamese Hòn non bộ.
In the world of bonsai, every twist, turn and trim is an artistic act in which horticulture meets creativity.
“We are artists, using our horticulture knowledge and aesthetic sense, we create these bonsai,” Salman Farooqui, an enthusiast with over a decade of experience, told Arab News on Sunday, as his hands gently guided a tiny tree branch into shape.
Farooqui described bonsai as the only “recognized” living art form that traces its origins back to the ancient Gandhara civilization, which existed from around 500BC to 900AD in what is now northern Pakistan and Afghanistan, long before it became synonymous with Japan.
Buddhist monks in the ancient Taxila and Harappa cities meditated under the shade of the Peepal tree, or Ficus religiosa, with its roots intertwining with the spiritual practices of the time, according to Farooqui. The art form then shifted to Tibet in China, before it finally reached Japan.
Visitors attend the annual exhibition of Pakistan Bonsai Society in Karachi on December 1, 2024. (AN Photo)
“The imagination of Buddha was under the Peepal tree,” Farooqui said. “Japan gave it an official recognition.”
For many Karachiites, the journey into the world of bonsai began with the efforts of a visionary, the late Maj. Gen. Dr. Shaukat Ali Syed, who brought the art form to Pakistan in the 1960s and is often credited with popularizing it in the South Asian country. The Pakistan Bonsai Society itself was established in 1998, the brainchild of Dr. Syed, whose legacy lives on through its annual exhibitions and workshops.
“I saw a live bonsai for the first time at his [Dr. Syed’s] residence in Karachi when I was a child. He had been growing them since the ‘60s,” Khawaja Mohammad Mazhar, an engineer who retired from the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and took up the cultivation of bonsai in 1980, told Arab News. “POTTED PLANTING”
Bonsai plants, unlike traditional potted ones, require care, patience, and expertise. They can be grown from seeds, cuttings or nursery stock. Beginning with a thicker trunk to form the base of the tree is often the quicker method but regardless of the starting point, all bonsai are treated as living sculptures that are pruned and shaped meticulously over time.
Various techniques, including painstaking pruning and wiring, are used to give the trees a mature appearance, Mazhar explained. It could take decades to complete one tree, meant to symbolize a scene from nature, and they could then survive for centuries.
Bonsai trees are seen exhibited by the Pakistan Bonsai Society in Karachi on December 1, 2024. (AN Photo)
“It’s the same normal plants, they are only trained,” Mazhar said:
“They have a shallow pot, the roots do not spread much as they are constantly trimmed, and they are kept in the same shallow container, while the shaping is controlled from the top through wiring, through weights.”
The “clip and grow” method, in which parts of the plant were selectively trimmed to encourage specific growth patterns, is a main technique of the art.
Local plants are best suited for bonsai cultivation and Karachi’s enthusiasts recommended training native species into sculptural forms that express their unique ecological and cultural climates.
“An imported plant from outside will not survive here as a bonsai,” Manzar said.
Mansoor Alam Khan, another enthusias who found his passion for the art form through the Pakistan Bonsai Society, began cultivating about 10 years ago. The practice allowed him to continue his love for planting trees in Karachi, where space is often limited.
In fact, bonsai, which literally means “potted planting,” became popular as a way of bringing nature inside for many Japanese whose small houses made gardens impossible.
“I was inclined toward planting trees since childhood but there isn’t enough space in Karachi so we couldn’t grow trees,” Khan told Arab News. “When I met these people [at the Pakistan Bonsai Society] and saw that they are growing these trees in their homes so I followed suit too. I have made a really good collection in the last 10 years.”
Visitors attend the annual exhibition of Pakistan Bonsai Society in Karachi on December 1, 2024. (AN Photo)
“Everyone talks about planting trees these days to save the environment. So, if there is not enough space, you can start gardening from your home too,” he added. “For instance, if someone has 50 plants on their rooftop, they can turn them into bonsais.”
Farooqui, who practices bonsai with his wife Ruby Salman, said though the art was in its “introductory conditions,” in Pakistan, more young people were becoming interested.
“Now, as we train more youngsters into this art form, I hope it will become known in this country in the future,” he said.
His wife added that the Internet was helping to boost interest in bonsai among younger people.
“Yes, I feel that when kids do come [to Bonsai Society] and when they come to know the whole story about the bonsai, when we tell them that how it started, they really take an interest in it.”
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Monday set a new record as it cruised past 103,000 points during the intraday trading, stock analysts said.
The benchmark KSE-100 index was at 103,036 points at around 250pm on Monday, recording a 1.66 percent gain from Friday’s close of 101,357 points.
The development came as Pakistan’s statistics bureau said annual consumer inflation had slowed to 4.9 percent in November, lower than the government’s forecast, largely due to a high base a year earlier.
Analysts said the stocks showed record bullish activity amid upbeat data on CPI inflation, which was likely to ease the central bank policy.
“Strong economic data and surging foreign exchange reserves [$11,418.5 million in week ending on Nov. 22] played a catalyst role in bullish activity at the PSX,” Ahsan Mehanti, chief executive officer (CEO) of Arif Habib Corporation, told Arab News.
Consumer inflation cooled from 7.2 percent in October, a sharp drop from a multi-decade high of nearly 40 percent in May 2023. The PSX breached the 100,000-mark for the first time on Thursday to close at 100,082 points. The South Asian country slashed interest rates by 250 basis points earlier in November to help revive a sluggish economy amid a big drop in the rate of inflation.
The market rally is also attributable to Pakistan’s new $7 billion loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that has bolstered investor confidence, according to some analysts. The IMF’s disbursement of the first tranche of approximately $1 billion in September, along with fiscal and monetary reforms, improved the sentiment.
But Muhammad Ali Khan, an investment banker and analyst, downplayed the IMF factor and pointed to low interest rates and correction in the market, which had been undervalued for years, as the main reasons behind the bullish trend.
“The stock market had come down to very low valuations, especially in the region, the interest rate is going down and a lot of cash was sitting on the sidelines before this rally,” he told Arab News.
Khan was skeptical of the market performance in the long run, though he expected the market to go up to 110,000 points in the coming days before undergoing another correction.
“This is a speculative market at this point in my view, given that large-scale manufacturing, exports and all other major indicators are crippling,” he said.
“We came off the ventilator. That doesn’t mean we are healthy. IMF saved us, IMF did not solve anything for us.”
ISLAMABAD: Seven out of 34 memorandums of understanding (MoUs) signed with Saudi Arabia earlier this year have been actualized into agreements worth $560 million, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office said on Monday.
The announcement came after Sharif was briefed on progress made on 34 MoUs worth $2.8 billion signed between Pakistani and Saudi business in October. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have a significant trade relationship, with Pakistan exporting mainly agricultural products and Saudi Arabia exporting mainly petroleum products.
“In a short period of time, 34 investment memorandums of understanding were signed between the two countries, out of which 7 have been given the form of agreements worth $560 million,” Sharif’s office said in a statement after he chaired a meeting to review progress on investment between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
“Prime Minister expressed satisfaction over the progress of various ongoing projects between the two countries,” the statement added, as the PM was briefed on discussions held at the second meeting of the Pakistan-Saudi Arabia Joint Task Force in November and informed about cooperation in various sectors.
Pakistan has pushed in recent months to strengthen trade and investment ties with friendly nations, particularly the Kingdom, which has promised a $5 billion investment package that cash-strapped Pakistan desperately needs to shore up foreign reserves and fight a chronic balance of payment crisis.
Pakistanis are the second-largest expatriate community in the Kingdom, with over 2.5 million living and working in Saudi Arabia, the top source of remittances for the South Asian nation.
Pakistan November consumer inflation slows to 4.9% year on year
The finance ministry projected inflation would slow to 5.8%-6.8% in November and ease to 5.6%-6.5% in December
The South Asian country last month slashed interest rates by 250 basis points to help revive a sluggish economy
Updated 02 December 2024
Reuters
KARACHI: Pakistan’s annual consumer inflation slowed to 4.9% in November largely due to a high base a year earlier, the statistics bureau said on Monday, lower than the government’s forecast.
The finance ministry had projected inflation would slow to 5.8%-6.8% in November and ease to 5.6%-6.5% in December, it said in its monthly economic report published last week.
The South Asian country slashed interest rates by 250 basis points earlier in November to help revive a sluggish economy amid a big drop in the rate of inflation.
Consumer inflation cooled from 7.2% in October, a sharp drop from a multi-decade high of nearly 40% in May 2023.
Consumer prices in November rose +0.5% from October, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
