Around 33 million Pakistanis are living through one of the worst torrential rains and floods in the country's history. People have been rendered homeless and stranded in flood-hit areas, hundreds have been killed, many remain injured due to incessant flooding triggered by unprecedented rainfall.
Cattle and other animals remain vulnerable amid ruins left behind by the flash floods in rural areas of the country. Homes, infrastructure, and communication networks have been disrupted in several rural districts.
During this time of catastrophe, individuals, local and national level organisations, government agencies, military, and international NGOs are all extending their support by taking initiative to gather donations and funds for flood affectees.
Here is a list of private NGOs and government agencies where you, too, can contribute to help fellow citizens spending their lives in the midst of destruction:
Judge Sarah Netburn says victims of September 11, 2001 attacks should not be able to tap into some of the $7 billion of Afghan central bank assets frozen since Taliban's return to power a year ago.
Afghanistan has been largely cut off from the international financial system since the Taliban took over a year ago.
(Reuters)
A US judge has recommended that victims of September 11, 2001, attacks not be allowed to seize billions of dollars of assets belonging to Afghanistan's central bank to satisfy court judgments they obtained against the Taliban.
US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in Manhattan said on Friday the Afghanistan Bank was immune from jurisdiction, and that allowing the seizures would effectively acknowledge the Taliban as the Afghan government, something only the US president can do.
"The Taliban's victims have fought for years for justice, accountability, and compensation. They are entitled to no less," Netburn wrote. "But the law limits what compensation the court may authorise and those limits put the DAB's assets beyond its authority."
Netburn's recommendation will be reviewed by US District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan, who also oversees the litigation and can decide whether to accept her recommendation.
The decision is a defeat for four groups of creditors that sued a variety of defendants, including Al Qaeda, which they held responsible for the September 11 attacks, and obtained default judgments after the defendants failed to show up in court.
At the time of the attacks, the ruling Taliban allowed Al Qaeda to operate inside Afghanistan.
'Judge has done the right thing'
The United States ousted the Taliban in late 2001, but the Taliban returned to power a year ago when the US and other Western forces withdrew from the country after the pro-West government collapsed.
Lawyers for the creditor groups did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The groups have been trying to tap into some of the $7 billion of Afghan central bank funds that are frozen at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.
In an executive order in February, US President Joe Biden ordered $3.5 billion of that sum set aside "for the benefit of the Afghan people," leaving victims to pursue the remainder in court.
The US government took no position at the time on whether the creditor groups were entitled to recover funds under the Terrorist Risk Insurance Act of 2002.
It urged Netburn and Daniels to view exceptions to sovereign immunity narrowly, citing the risks of interference with the president's power to conduct foreign relations, and possible challenges to American property located abroad.
Other countries hold about $2 billion of Afghan reserves.
Shawn Van Diver, the head of #AfghanEvac, which helps evacuate and resettle Afghans, said he hoped the frozen funds could be used to help the struggling Afghan economy without enriching the Taliban.
"The judge has done the right thing here," he said.
Nearly 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001, when planes were flown into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon in northern Virginia, and a Pennsylvania field.
US sanctions ban doing financial business with the Taliban, but allow humanitarian support for the Afghan people.
Source: Reuters
KARACHI: Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah in a meeting on flood emergency on Thursday said that flood victims of Sindh are living at roads, ARY News reported.
Presiding over a session on flood emergency and relief, Shah stressed on the need for prompt purchase of ration to provide relief to the victims of flood disaster.
“I have visited several districts of Sindh, flood has damaged katcha houses, crops, roads and government buildings,” Murad Ali Shah said.
He directed for assessment of losses through the union councils and providing necessary items to the affected people.
“Tents are immediately required to provide the flood victims, the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) has given an order for provision of 1,86,000 tents,” chief minister said.
He said shelter less flood victims of Sindh have started living at roads.
Chief Minister asked the Corps V to extend help in procurement of tents, “we will provide fund for it.”
The meeting also decided that the Corps V will also extend help to the Sindh government in distribution of relief items.
A suspect in Eastern Pennsylvania has been arrested after he drove through a crowd of people at an event honoring victims of a recent fire and later assaulted a woman, police said.
A heavy police presence was reported at the Intoxicology Department bar in Berwick, Pennsylvania after multiple pedestrians were reportedly struck, WOLF-TV reported.
The incident left one person dead and 17 people injured, Pennsylvania State Police said.
"On Saturday, August 13, 2022, at approximately 6:15 p.m. Pennsylvania State Police Bloomsburg received a call to assist Berwick Police Department with a vehicle that drove through a crowd at a community event on West 2nd Street, Berwick Borough, Columbia County," a statement said.
Multiple people were reportedly injured when a car hit pedestrians at a fire victim memorial in Berwick, PA
(Google Maps)
Twelve of the victims were transported to Geisinger Danville hospital, three were transported to Geisinger Wyoming Valley, one was transported to Berwick Hospital and one was transported to Geisinger Bloomsburg, according to the statement.
WNEP-TV reported that the crash happened at a day-long event meant to benefit the families of 10 people killed in a recent fire in Nescopeck, Pennsylvania.
State Police said the same suspect believed to be responsible for the crash was found later in Luzerne County, where police received a call of a male suspect beating a woman.
"Upon Troopers arrival, they discovered a female deceased and a male who was detained by a Municipal Police Department," the statement added. The suspect remains in custody at PSP Shickshinny, awaiting criminal charges.
The Borough of Berwick Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Investigations into both incidents remain active.
"The Columbia County District Attorney's Office along with the Troop N Major Case Team are investigating the homicide incident in Berwick, Columbia County," PSP said.
Anyone with information, including video surveillance or photos of either incident, is encouraged to call PSP Bloomsburg at 570-387-4261 or PSP Shickshinny at 570-542-4117.
Andrew Mark Miller is a writer at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
Passenger van and truck collide in Rahim Yar Khan district of eastern Punjab province, leaving 13 dead and five injured, officials say.
Fatal road accidents are common in the South Asian country, mainly due to lax safety and infrastructure standards.
(TRTWorld)
At least 13 people have been killed and five injured in a collision between a passenger van and a truck in eastern Pakistan.
The accident took place on a highway in Rahim Yar Khan on Saturday, a district in Punjab province, some 590 kilometres from the provincial capital Lahore.
The speeding truck overturned and rammed into the ill-fated van, which was carrying 18 passengers, including women and children, according to rescue officials.
Deadly accidents
Fatal road accidents are common in the South Asian country, mainly due to lax safety and infrastructure standards.
In June, a speeding bus veered off a narrow mountain road and plummeted into a ravine in a remote area of southwest Pakistan, killing 22 passengers including women and children.
In July 202, a jam-packed bus carrying mostly labourers traveling home for a major Muslim holiday rammed into a container truck on a busy highway in central Pakistan, killing at least 33 people.
LONDON — Piece by piece, the Covid-19 sanctuary was born on a hilltop in the town of Bedworth in central England. The process was meant to be a metaphor for a human life. Like bones fused over time, it grew taller as the memorial’s creators spent months joining intricate pieces of wood into a skeletal structure that finally stood on its own, 65 feet high.
Then they burned it all down.
There have always been monuments to commemorate the loss of life from calamitous events, such as the thousands of memorials dedicated to world wars, the Sept. 11 attacks, the Holocaust.
But the Covid-19 pandemic, now in its third year, has presented a unique challenge for grieving families. It is not a singular event, in one location. As the death toll of more than six million worldwide continues to rise, communities and families are trying to keep up, building memorials as the tragedy is still unfolding, its end not yet written.
New monuments are being installed. Old projects are expanding. Photographs and biographies of Covid-19 victims in Malaysia and South Africa are updated online. Landscapes in villages and cities are transformed by remembrance, from a waist-high structure in Rajannapet, India, to spinning pinwheels fixed along a walkway in São Paulo, Brazil.
Names are painted on a wall along the River Thames in London and on rocks arrayed in hearts on a farm in New Jersey. Thousands of fluttering flags were planted at the Rhode Island State House. Ribbons are tied to a church fence in South Africa.
“People died alone in hospitals, or their loved ones could not even see them or hold their hands, so maybe some of these memorials have to do with a better send-off,” said Erika Doss, a University of Notre Dame professor who studies how Americans use memorials.
“We really do need to remember, and we need to do it now,” Dr. Doss said. “Covid isn’t over. These are kind of odd memorials in that names are being added. They are kind of fluid. They are timeless.”
It is not easy for the builders of these memorials to capture death. It is elusive and vast, like the airborne virus that claimed lives and left the question of how to make a physical manifestation out of a void.
For the builders of the sanctuary in Bedworth, a former coal mining town, the answer was to turn away from their communal artistry of nearly 1,000 carvings of pine and birch arches, spires and cornices, and to reduce it to ash at sunset on May 28.
What the moment needed, one organizer said, was an event of catharsis and rebirth, in which people who had seen the sanctuary standing can now go back and see it gone.
“It will still be there in their mind,” Helen Marriage, a producer of the project, said. “Feel the emptiness, which is the same way you feel with this dead, loved person.”
Wall of Hearts
Over a year after it started, new names are still being added to the thousands scrawled on hearts painted on a wall along the River Thames in London.
Read More on the Coronavirus Pandemic
A walk along its nearly half-mile stretch shows how death gutted generations and left few countries untouched. Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish and Urdu are among the languages in messages to “Grandpa,” “Mum,” “Daddy,” “Nana.”
Uncle Joshua. My brother. My first friend.
Their authors tried to understand death. “Angel wings gained too soon” was how someone described Sandra Otter’s death on Jan. 30, 2021. “Keep on Rocking” was the message to Big Pete.
The virus claimed neighbors, comedians and drinking buddies, their stories told in marker on the wall. Dr. Sanjay Wadhawan “gave his life saving others.” Cookie is “still remembered at the post office.” To all London “cabbies, RIP.”
Some tried to make sense of loss. Angela Powell was “not just a number.” One person wrote, “This was murder,” and another said, “They failed them all.” A woman named Sonia addressed Jemal Hussein: “Sorry you died alone.”
The wall’s founders were citizens and activists, who started painting the empty hearts last year toward the end of one of Britain’s lockdowns to represent the more than 150,000 people who had Covid-19 on their death certificates in Britain.
Soon, the hearts held countless names.
“We have no control over it,” said Fran Hall, a volunteer who regularly paints new hearts and covers up any abusive graffiti that appears.
“We could be painting one section, and people are adding hearts further down,” she said. “It is still happening. It is really organic.”
Shared Grief
Dacia Viejo-Rose, who researches society’s use of memorials at the University of Cambridge, said the “coming out” of grief over Covid-19 was compelling because so many suffered in isolation.
“It became so much about what are the statistics of people dying, that we lost track of individual suffering,” she said. “We lost track of the individual stories.”
People who are grieving will often seek solace at a memorial that is unrelated, she said.
One day in June, Du Chen, a student from China who is studying at Manchester University, knelt to write in Mandarin on one of the painted hearts in London, to “wish everybody well.”
“People are not just commemorating the people they have lost, but also the way of life before the pandemic,” he said.
A family of tourists from Spain paused, saying their people suffered, too. Alba Prego, 10, ran her fingers along photographs attached to a heart mourning a California man, Gerald Leon Washington, who died at 72 in March.
“The people who wrote that loved him very much,” she said.
Around her, unmarked hearts awaited new names.
With the death toll climbing, there will be more.
White Ribbons
Space is also being found for remembrance on a fence at St. James Presbyterian Church in Bedfordview, a suburb on the edge of Johannesburg. In early 2020, caretakers began tying white satin ribbons on the fence for people who died of Covid-19.
In January 2021, the month with the highest average deaths in South Africa, the church said it would tie one ribbon for every 10 people who died.
More than 102,000 people have died from Covid-19 in South Africa, although the rate has slowed, the latest figures show. In early July, the fence had 46,200 ribbons tied to it, said the Rev. Gavin Lock.
Families “suffered huge trauma in not being able to visit loved ones in hospital, nor view the deceased, and in some cases not able to follow customary rites,” he said.
White Flags
In Washington, D.C., more than 700,000 white flags, one for each person lost to Covid, were planted on 20 acres of federal land. From Sept. 17 through Oct. 3, 2021, mourners wandered through the rustling field, writing messages and nameson the flags.
“I miss you every day, baby,” a woman whispered as she planted a flag, in a moment captured in a documentary published by The New York Times.
By May 12 this year, when the death toll in the United States reached one million, President Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-staff for four days at the White House and in public areas.
The white flags have kept going up.
Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, the artist behind the installation, “In America: Remember,” said a memorial using new flags was being planned for New Mexico in October. In June, thousands were planted at the State House lawn in Providence, R.I., to commemorate the 3,000 people who died of Covid-19 there.
“What we are seeing is this push for handling it at the state and local level, because no one sees it happening at the national level,” Ms. Firstenberg said.
“The plane is still crashing,” she said. “And it is super hurtful to families to not somehow acknowledge that the pain is still there.”
Flood victims say administrations asking for their CNICs to receive rations.
Many affectees have lost everything in the floods, including CNICs.
Toll from torrential rains and flooding in Balochistan has reached 149.
LASBELA: The recent floods in Balochistan trigged by the rains have devastated the homes of thousands of people, especially in the province’s Lasbela District.
However, the flood affectees have accused the administration of treating them in a derogatory fashion during the distribution of rations by asking for original computerised national identity cards (CNICs).
The officials are reportedly seeking the CNICs for verification purposes, but the affectees have stated that they lost everything when their homes were flooded.
“Ration comes for us but they ask for CNICs. We did have some cards but not for everyone. How can a family of 10 survive on one card’s ration?” one of the victims told Geo News.
The victim appealed to the administration to resolve this issue, adding that if they feel they are lying, they can survey their homes to determine the number of people in a household.
“We are standing here for ration. We have not received anything [but] they are pushing us out. We can talk to the tehsildar when we go inside,” another victim told Geo News.
On the other hand, when Geo News reached out to the administration to get their version, they were only able to find empty offices.
So far, the toll from the torrential rains and flooding in Balochistan has reached 149.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has visited the province multiple times since the rains caused havoc on the province. He has said that the government is working day and night to help the affectees.
Earlier this week, the premier had assured that the rations were being provided to the victims rescued from the flood-affected areas.
PM Shehbaz further maintained that the federal, provincial, and other institutions were engaged in relief efforts, while medical camps were being established to curb viral diseases.
Seven adults and three children die after fire engulfs a house in eastern Pennsylvania state, officials say, with a horrified firefighter Harold Baker arriving at the site to discover charred victims were his family.
"I tried to get in as fast as I can," firefighter Harold Baker tells media, saying he attempted to enter the house multiple times before his colleagues pulled him away.
(AP)
Ten people, including seven adults and three children, have been killed after a fire tore through a house and a horrified firefighter who arrived to battle the blaze only to discover that the victims were his family, authorities said.
A criminal investigation into the fire is under way, authorities said on Friday. The children who died in the fire were ages 5, 6 and 7, Pennsylvania State Police said in a news release.
The other victims ranged in age from 19 to 79.
Nescopeck Volunteer Fire Co. firefighter Harold Baker told the Citizens' Voice newspaper of Wilkes-Barre that the 10 victims included his son, daughter, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, three grandchildren and two other relatives.
The fire in Nescopeck was reported around 2:30 am [local time]. One person was found dead inside the single-family home shortly after emergency responders arrived, while two other victims were found later in the morning.
Three adults escaped the blaze.
"The residence was completely destroyed by the fire" and K9 units were deployed to help in the search for victims, police said.
'They’re all dead'
Baker said that the address initially given for the call was a neighbouring home, but that he realised it was his family's residence as the fire truck approached.
"When we turned the corner up here on Dewey (Street) I knew right away what house it was just by looking down the street," Baker told the Citizens' Voice. "I was on the first engine, and when we pulled up, the whole place was fully involved. We tried to get into them."
Neighbours reported hearing a loud popping sound or explosion before seeing the front porch of the home rapidly consumed by flames. Some also reported hearing a young man screaming in front of the home, "They’re all dead."
Baker, who was relieved of his firefighting duties because of his relationship with the victims, said 14 people were living in the home. One of them was out delivering newspapers, and three others escaped, he said.
"I tried to get in as fast as I can," he told the newspaper, saying he attempted to enter multiple times before his colleagues pulled him away.
“It’s a complex criminal investigation with multiple fatalities,” Pennsylvania officials said.
Republican Congresswoman Jackie Walorski, her two aides, and a driver of another car are killed in Indiana state road accident, police say.