ISI Naveed Mukhtar

Pakistan Army on Sunday made significant postings and transfers, including the transfer of the ISI chief and DG Rangers, Sindh.

The development comes two weeks after Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa took over as Chief of Army Staff (COAS).

Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) in a statement announced that Lt Gen Naveed Mukhtar was appointed as DG ISI. He will replace Lt Gen Rizwan Akhtar who has been posted as President National Defence University (NDU).

A suicide bomber killed 35 Yemeni

A suicide bomber killed 35 Yemeni soldiers and wounded around 50 on Saturday at a military camp in the country's southern city of Aden, military and medical sources said.

The militant Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The bomber detonated his explosives belt as hundreds of troops gathered to receive their monthly pay at the barracks in Al-Sawlaban near the city's international airport, a military source said.

“A martyr from the IS detonated his explosives belt in Al-Sawlaban military camp in Aden during a gathering of the Yemeni army,” the IS-affiliated Amaq news outlet said.

Yemeni authorities have for months pressed a campaign against militants who remain active in the south and east of the war-torn country.

IS and its rival Al-Qaeda have taken advantage of a conflict between the government and the Huthi rebels, who control the capital Sanaa, to bolster their presence across much of the south.

The two groups have carried out a spate of attacks in Aden, Yemen's second city and headquarters of the internationally recognised government whose forces retook the port from the Huthis last year.

Al-Qaeda has long been the dominant force in Yemen, located next to oil-flush Saudi Arabia and key shipping lanes, but experts say IS is seeking to supplant its extremist rival.

In August an IS militant rammed his explosives-laden car into an army recruiting centre in Aden, killing 71 people in the deadliest attack on the city in over a year.

On Monday, Yemeni authorities arrested eight suspected IS militants implicated in a spate of attacks targeting security personnel in the city this year.

A Saudi-led coalition has since March 2015 supported loyalist forces fighting the Huthis.

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The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the US electoral system, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

Citing US officials briefed on the matter, the Post said intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.

The officials described the individuals as people known to the intelligence community who were part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and reduce Clinton's chances of winning the election.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia's goal here was to favour one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” the Post quoted a senior US official as saying, “That's the consensus view.”

The Post said the official had been briefed on an intelligence presentation made by the Central Intelligence Agency to key US senators behind closed-doors last week.

The CIA, in what the Post said was a secret assessment, cited a growing body of evidence from multiple sources. Briefers told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia's goal, the Post quoted officials as speaking on condition of anonymity.

In October, the US government formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organisations ahead of the November 8 presidential election.

President Barack Obama has said he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about consequences for the attacks. But Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the US election.

A CIA spokeswoman said the agency had no comment on the report.

Trump has said he is not convinced Russia was behind the cyber attacks. His transition team issued a statement on “claims of foreign interference in US elections” on Friday but did not directly address the issue.

The hacked emails passed to WikiLeaks were a regular source of embarrassment to the Clinton campaign during the race for the presidency.

The CIA presentation fell short of a formal US assessment by all 17 US intelligence agencies, the Post said. A senior US official said there remained minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the assessment because some questions are unanswered, it said.

Intelligence agencies did not have specific intelligence showing the Kremlin directed the individuals to pass the hacked emails to WikiLeaks, another senior official told the Post.

The actors were “one step” removed from the Russian government rather than government employees, the official said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said in a television interview that the Russian government was not the source of the emails, the Post said

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It might seem strange to use this word for a man who meant such different things to different people, but when you heard Junaid Jamshed’s voice, the one thing it always felt was uncomplicated.

At the heart of the appeal of his various avatars was a voice that carried infinite hope and sunshine.

Junaid Jamshed’s life, career and legacy however, were not uncomplicated.

His journey represented a journey that Pakistani society seemed to have taken with him, and it represented the many contradictions that define our society.

But whether it was in his music videos or in his television appearances as an evangelist, there was always a considered appearance that he put out. It was almost like he always had an eager sincerity to play a construct.

At the time of his death, one of my first reactions was the realisation that a certain idea of Pakistan — of youthful exuberance in golden light amongst green hills — had died with him.

It meant that his legacy upon his death was inherently complicated. After his death, one segment of his fans put up his pop songs, making defiant proclamations of choosing to remember him for them.

Another group exhorted the media not to bring up his musical past, arguing that he had forsaken it. There was the memory of his misogynist statements, including one which led to a blasphemy charge, which his privilege allowed him to escape the usual punishment for. There were pictures and videos and tweets which were all used to make a claim on what he represented.

This article is not meant to address all those issues.

What prompted me to write it instead was the cascade of emotions that Junaid Jamshed’s voice in various pop songs evoked in me. At the time of his death, one of my first reactions was the realisation that a certain idea of Pakistan — of youthful exuberance in golden light amongst green hills — had died with him.

That was the setting he first emerged in, the setting that some of us only remember him as.

Stripped of its context, 'Dil Dil Pakistan' is a saccharine pop song that replaces the beloved with patriotism. But when you consider its appearance in the final days of Zia’s era, its radical impact gets clearer.

An appeal to modernity, to youth, to fun all embodied in the frail, attractive persona of Junaid Jamshed and his bandmates. The impact of the video was inherently complicated, yet Junaid’s uncomplicated voice singing about an uncomplicated love carried the song through all the tricky terrain.

Pakistani pop music had been little more than a concept before Junaid and the Vital Signs, and it became an entire phenomenon because of them. At the heart of its initial appeal was JJ himself, and his endless charisma as the frontman. He seemed to enjoy his reputation as a heartthrob, and yet also represented a very halal sexuality that wasn’t provocative.

Pakistani pop music had been little more than a concept before Junaid and the Vital Signs, and it became an entire phenomenon because of them.

But what Junaid’s voice achieved added far more heft to the pop scene. His ability to express emotions matched that of the most popular traditional singers, even when he had none of their training.

For an audience bred on ghazal and geet,it was his uncomplicated voice that allowed them to make the complicated transition to pop music. He set the template for the modern pop singer in Pakistan, comfortably at ease with corny, romantic numbers like 'Sanwali Saloni' as well as with deceptively melancholic tracks like 'Hum Tum'.

Indeed, the music that emerged in the 1990s largely followed the path set by the Signs, with almost all frontmen taking their cues from his uncomplicated voice and his complicated appeal. But while there were a few who could match his mastery over songs of love and heartbreak, there was no one who could match what he brought to patriotic songs.

It was only Junaid’s voice which could bring sincerity to this most overwrought of genres, and it was the reason that the Signs managed to produce several ‘national anthems’. The patriotic song is still an obligatory release for most musicians and bands, but none of them can bring the uncomplicated wholeheartedness that JJ brought to them.

Junaid’s uncomplicated voice also served as the bridge for the talents of two of Pakistan’s greatest creative polymaths.

On one end was the ideology of Shoaib Mansoor, whose songs both spoke of the urgent need to build a bright future and lamented of the loss of an idyllic (imagined) past. On the other end was the musical versatility of Rohail Hyatt, who kept searching for creative excellence even as the nascent industry demanded that the band produce easily digestible pop. Resolving all these contradictions and complications was Junaid’s uncomplicated voice, which was just at ease at emoting the intricacies of Shoaib’s verses as it was dealing with the challenging demands of Rohail’s compositions.

The music that emerged from all of this remains some of the most timeless produced in Pakistani pop. Even as the people that made it, particularly Junaid Jamshed himself, fell into contradictions and complications, the music continues to endure. The music continues to invoke an idea of this country created by the rhymes and dreams of a generation. That generation today is no longer young, and its dreams no longer true. But its music lives on forever, sung in that beautiful, uncomplicated voice.

Faryal makhdoom DRAMA

Faryal Makhdoom recently made headlines when she alleged that her in-laws were harassing her, trying to cause a rift in her marriage to boxer, Amir Khan.

On Snapchat, Faryal, who is also building her own beauty brand, claimed that Amir's family had attempted to hit her and also tried to engineer a divorce when she was nine months pregnant with the couple's first child. She claimed that her husband was also a victim of their bullying tactics.

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Chairing the last session as the head of Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) on Thursday, Maulana Mohammad Khan Sherani decried the proposal to rename the Quaid-i-Azam University's (QAU) physics centre after Professor Abdus Salam.

The council discussed the proposal after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif forwarded a summary to President Mamnoon Hussain of his approval to rename the National Centre for Physics at QAU the “Professor Abdus Salam Centre for Physics”.

Addressing a press conference after the council's meeting, the CII chairman said changing the department's name would not set the right precedent.

“We have concerns over the change of its [physics centre's] name as it was earlier named to honour Dr Riaz,” said Sherani, but declined to offer any reason for the opposition.

He was also asked if the CII had objections over renaming of other institutions or roads but Sherani declined to offer any comment over the subject.

Nuclear physicist and Pakistan’s first Nobel laureate Professor Abdus Salam hailed from the country’s Ahmedi community.

Pakistan declared Ahmedis non-Muslims in 1974. In 1984, they were banned from calling themselves Muslims. They are banned from preaching and even from travelling to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage. Their publications are prohibited.

In May 2010, suicide bombers killed 80 people at two Ahmedi places of worship.

'Sindh bill against forced conversions un-Islamic'

The council also discussed the minorities bill recently passed in Sindh, which criminalises forced conversions and bars conversion of minors.

Sherani said the law is "illegal, unconstitutional and un-Islamic". The council further declared that the legislation was against basic human rights.

“The law was not correct and it was not fair either,” Sherani said. “If anyone is forced to convert from his or her religion, then that is unfair, even if the person who has converted is a hundred years old.”

He added that the country's constitution allowed every person to adopt Islam as per their own will.

“Anybody who is sane and has decision making power has to be allowed to adopt Islam, but limiting this choice to the minimum age of 18 years is not correct,” he added.

“This law is against the spirit of Islam too and we will write to all concerned including Governor Sindh against this law,” he said.

The meeting also opposed any proposed amendment in the blasphemy law.

Sherani said the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights had called to discuss the blasphemy law but that "disturbing the existing laws" wouldn't be right.

“Parliamentarians should instead focus on making the remaining laws Sharia compliant,” he added.

Sherani, who is also an MNA from the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam Fazl (JUI-F), is set to retire from the chairmanship of the CII on December 16, 2016 after completing two terms of three years each.

A team from France-based ATR will help probe the PK-661's Haveliyan crash of Dec 7

A team from France-based ATR will help probe the PK-661's Haveliyan crash of Dec 7 with a group of experts affiliated with the aircraft manufacturer expected to arrive in Pakistan in the next 24 hours, aviation sources told DawnNews.

Sources added that the French embassy has also ensured full cooperation in the investigation.

The plane's black box and audio recorder will be sent to France on Monday or Tuesday, sources told DawnNews, adding that data retrieved from the black box and recording device in France will be handed to Pakistan's Safety and Investigation Board (SIB).

Sources said data analysis will take another two to three weeks, adding that data decoded from the black box and the voice recorder will determine the direction of the investigation.

The PIA flight carrying 48 passengers and crew crashed on the way to Islamabad from Chitral on Wednesday. The Civil Aviation Authority confirmed there were no survivors from the ill-fated flight.

Popular singer-turned-preacher Junaid Jamshed also perished in the crash along with his wife.

Former Pakistan fast bowler Wasim Akram announced Saturday he will not be the bowling coach of the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for the 2017 Indian Premier League (IPL)

Former Pakistan fast bowler Wasim Akram announced Saturday he will not be the bowling coach of the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for the 2017 Indian Premier League (IPL) season on account of other "professional commitments and time constraints", ESPN reported.

"We will miss Wasim bhai who has been part of the KKR family for the last few years and has played a significant role in our title triumphs in 2012 and 2014," Venky Mysore, CEO and managing director of KKR, said. "We wish him the very best in all his endeavours."

Akram returned the sentiment, praising the team for its talent, camaraderie and synergy.

"I have loved the camaraderie in the KKR team and have enjoyed every opportunity to mentor [it] over the years," he said. "I am surely going to miss being part of the dressing room but I wish the team continued success."

Akram, who turned 50 in June, joined the KKR coaching staff in 2010. However, he took a break from IPL in 2013 to spend more time with his family.

Earlier, Sri Lanka Cricket Chief Thilanga Sumathipala said they invited the Pakistan Swing King to mentor local players in the next two years and visit the island at least twice a year.

“We have invited him to be with us in the next two years as our consultant in pace bowling,” said Sumathipala.

Akram is also working as the mentor for Islamabad United, the defending champion of Pakistan Super League (PSL). The next PSL season is set to start in February 2017.