The problem is that even though the 2016 miniseries had its moments, fully half of it was an absolute disaster, with three episodes that served as reminders of why the show eventually left the air in the first place.
With the sudden fury of a flash storm, images of an angry mob lynching a young man to death at the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, Pakistan, broke across the news cycle and social media platforms to chilling effect April 13. Mashal Khan, a 23-year-old journalism student at the institute, had been attacked after a series of accusations that he had posted blasphemous content online following an argument with a group of fellow students. Whether he had done so or not was irrelevant — the insinuation of wrongdoing was enough.
From the moment the allegations were made he was as good as dead. Everything that took place afterward was a brutal formality in a country long driven by a mindset that allows people to kill with impunity whenever they perceive their religious sentiments have been offended. And so it proved in this case also.
The savagery of the assault was captured in chaotic video footage taken on mobile phones, which showed the crowd shouting “Allahu Akbar” and stomping on Khan’s lifeless body — the final rites of a slaughter in which the victim was stripped naked, clubbed, beaten and shot....
Since then, it has emerged that there is no evidence Khan committed any blasphemy at all. According to some claims, anger against the student might have been whipped up by the university itself after his comments on a television interview about how the institute was being run. It could be that Khan’s only crime was to expose the failings of a few university officials rather than abuse the prophet of Islam.The writer goes on to note that the problem is deeply embedded in the culture:
Debate on the subject is as good as dead, and those who might choose to enter this Sisyphean undertaking are at risk of being killed themselves. Unsurprisingly, no leading lawmakers or public figures dare comment for fear of the assassin’s bullet.I think this would have to count as within the bottom few countries on the planet that I would chose to visit. (Perhaps we can exclude certain virtually lawless Horn of Africa states - I'm not sure you can even treat them as serious tourist destinations - although, I see now, that a company will take you to Mogadishu.)
Moreover, for all the incalculable grief the blasphemy laws continue to cause, there is a great deal of support for the legislation among average Pakistanis, as if the loss of life is a reasonable price to pay to uphold the sacred.
Moves to revise the laws have been rebuffed by public outcry and street protests, forcing the hand of the administration. When Salman Taseer was murdered, his killer Mumtaz Qadri was hailed as a “ghazi,” a warrior, and over 100,000 people attended Qadri’s funeral after he was executed for the crime.
Tourists are allowed to bring in following items without duty;
Personal clothing, hand bags travel goods and toiletries;
medals trophies or prizes;
jewelry not exceeding Rs.1000/-;
01 watch and 01 travelling clock;
spectacles and physical aid;
01 cigarette lighter and 02 fountain pens;
01 pen-knife and similar items of personal use;
01 electric iron and 01 electric shaver for men or 01 hair dryer for female tourist;
01 still camera and 10 rolls of film;
01 sub-standard cinematography camera with projector and two rolls of films;Yes, you don't want the country flooded with illegal foundation pen imports, rolls of camera film, and your cinematography camera needs to be "sub-standard"?
01 pair of binoculars;
01 portable musical instrument;
01 portable sound recording apparatus;
01 portable typewriter;
01 invalid chair in use;
A self-employed man in his 40s was robbed of ¥40 million in cash during a daylight mugging in Tokyo’s busy Ginza district Friday afternoon.Proof, I suppose, that there is no where in the world where it is a good idea to walk down a street carrying $875,000 AUD in cash in a bag.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department’s Tsukiji Police Station, the mugging, believed to involve three men, took place on Suzuran Street in Chuo Ward.
A man hit the victim in the back and kicked him in the stomach before grabbing his bag filled with ¥72 million in cash, police sources said. Some of the cash fell out during the attack.
And:The Galaxy S8 and plus-sized S8+ are absolutely brilliant smartphones. They're not without their flaws, but in everything from industrial design to internal hardware to software refinement, Samsung has knocked this one out of the park.
Gimmicks aside this is the best android smartphone you can buyAnd:
From the moment I picked up the S8 – and its larger, 6.2-inch sibling the Galaxy S8+ – I realised it was even more special than I expected. This is a phone that feels innovative, a phone that I can’t help but recommendI would be nervous about carrying around a $1200 device in my pocket continually - but I've never lost or broken a phone before. Maybe in two years time, if they've dropped below $1,000...
A study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that the death rate from heart attacks rises 15 percent on the day of marathons, largely because of delays caused by road closures.The obvious solution is to ban city marathons. Sure, run around in the countryside, if you must, but don't get in my way of the drive to hospital.
The authors, led by Harvard Medical School’s Anupam Jena, analyzed the death rate for Medicare patients hospitalized for cardiac arrest and heart attacks on marathon days in 11 cities, compared to non-marathon days. For example, they looked at the Monday of the Boston marathon, compared with the death rate for the five previous and five following Mondays. Then, they compared it to the death rate in a nearby city that wasn’t affected by marathon-related road closures.
It turns out that for every 100 people who have a heart attack or cardiac arrest, an additional four people die if they happen to have it on the day of the marathon.
It took about four minutes longer to reach the hospital by ambulance on marathon days. But the study authors suspect the real reason for the heightened mortality is the delays patients encountered when they tried to drive themselves to the hospital—as about a quarter of them opted to do. In those cases, it can take 30-to-40 minutes longer to reach the hospital on a day with marathon road closures, Jena stimates.
Jena acknowledged that we don’t know, for a fact, that those people died because it took them too long to reach the hospital, but that explanation seems most likely.
Her second novel will appear under her real name and there will be no pretences about its origins. Kingdom of the Wicked came about while she was studying at Oxford funded by a scholarship won through the US-based Institute of Humane Studies. When Dale realised she had six months left and there would be no 100,000-word doctoral thesis in the pipeline, but rather a follow-up to her vexed literary debut, she returned the remaining funds.She does seem to have moved from job to job an unusually large number of times, if you ask me...
"I made sure I wrote to them personally and apologised for what I'd done. They weren't hugely happy but I did at least give some money back," she said.
