Iramb Zusha

The winners of the 2018 Dragons of Asia awards have been announced at the Gala Awards Event at the TGV Cinema Complex in Kuala Lumpur. Starcom Pakistan has won six Dragon awards including best brand building and awareness campaign. Starcom thanks its clients for having high expectations from them and congratulates its team in exceeding them. Award details are RED DRAGON 2018 Best Campaign in Asia for Coke & Edhi Bottle of Change. BLUE DRAGON 2018 Best Campaign in Pakistan for Coke and Edhi Bottle of Change. GOLD DRAGON Best Cause, Charity Marketing of Public Sector Campaign for Coke & Edhi Bottle of Change. BLACK DRAGON Best Brand Building and Awareness Campaign for Tang & Best Use of Public Relations for Cadbury Dairy Milk; Mondelez International Pakistan. Best Use of Media for Coke & Edhi Bottle of Change.

Daraz is set to join Alibaba’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival for the first time. The event, which was introduced by parent company and ecommerce giant Alibaba 10 years ago, is now the world’s biggest sale day and is set to drive Pakistan into a new era of online shopping. The GyaraGyara Sale will kick off on the midnight of November 11 and last 24 hours, featuring discounts of up to 91%. It will be a full day of hourly flash sales, mystery boxes, brand vouchers and unbelievable deals. With 3 million products from over 15,000 local and international sellers, Pakistan will now have access to a never seen before assortment of deals. 11.11 is the first mega sale event on the new Daraz App, offering users a truly personal AI driven experience showing the best products and deals. CEO Daraz, Dr Jonathan Doerr, stated, “Over the last few years, we have pioneered ecommerce to accelerate the digital transformation in Pakistan. We are thrilled to see the impressive results achieve...

At 87 years old, Taiwanese glove puppeteer Chen Hsi-huang is the star of a new documentary which reflects his determination to revive the dying traditional craft and a late-life renaissance as a high-profile promoter of the art form. The film, entitled “Father”, tells the story of how Chen pursued the craft in the shadow of his father, the legendary puppeteer Li Tian-lu, who drew huge audiences to his shows in the 1950-1970s and appeared in several movies. Also known as “Budaixi”, glove puppetry spread to Taiwan in the 19th century from the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian and was mainly performed at religious and festive occasions, becoming a popular form of entertainment. Puppeteers manoeuvre small glove dolls on ornate wooden stages to present historical and martial arts stories accompanied by live folk music. Chen said he values the traditional puppetry because it is characterized by subtle movements, with the puppeteer taking on all roles, from a young woman to an old man. ...

NEW YORK:  An iconic 1972 painting by British artist David Hockney soared to $90.3 million at Christie’s on Thursday, smashing the record for the highest price ever paid at auction for a work by a living artist. With Christie’s commission, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures),” surpassed the auction house’s pre-sale estimate of about $80 million, following a bidding war between two determined would-be buyers once the work hit $70 million. The previous record for a work by a living artist was held by Jeff Koons’ sculpture “Balloon Dog,” which sold for $58.4 million in 2013. Hockney’s previous auction record was $28.4 million. The 1972 work by the 81-year-old British artist, one of Hockney’s most famous paintings which depicts a man in a pink jacket looking down on another figure swimming underwater in a pool, was reported to have been consigned by British billionaire currency trader Joe Lewis. Christie’s did not identify the seller or the successful bidder, who was bidding...

LONDON: Seven rare vintage posters of Mickey Mouse are expected to fetch thousands of dollars at an auction that coincides with the 90th anniversary of the cartoon character’s first film appearance. The seven posters, dating from the 1930s and 1940s, went on display on Friday at a commemorative exhibition in London organised by Disney. They are going under the Sotheby’s hammer in an online auction that runs until Nov. 26. A price list in a statement from the auctioneer and Walt Disney Co. UK & Ireland suggests they could fetch more than 130,000 pounds in total. “We’re expecting a lot of interest… There are collectors who collect animation posters from all over the world and Mickey Mouse historically is the most valuable of all the animation characters,” Bruce Marchant, Sotheby’s film poster consultant, told Reuters. “They’re particularly rare posters from England, France, Belgium and two of them are the only known surviving examples and for three of the others, there are certainly ...

RIYADH: Saudi women have mounted a rare protest against the abaya, posting pictures on social media wearing the obligatory body-shrouding robe inside out. The conservative petro-state has some of the world’s toughest restrictions on women, who are required to wear the typically all-black garment in public. Powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in March said wearing the robe was not mandatory in Islam, but in practice, nothing changed and no formal edict to that effect was issued. Using the hashtag “inside-out abaya”, dozens of women have posted pictures of flipped robes in a rare protest against the strict dress code. “Because #Saudi feminists are endlessly creative, they’ve come up with new form of protest,” activist Nora Abdulkarim tweeted this week. “They are posting pictures of (themselves) wearing their abayas inside-out in public as a silent objection to being pressured to wear it.” Another woman on Twitter said the online campaign, which appears to be gaining traction after ...

“Please enjoy your meal,” says Nepal´s first robot waiter, Ginger, as she delivers a plate of steaming dumplings to a table of hungry customers. The poor Himalayan nation is better known for its soaring mountain peaks than technological prowess, but a group of self-taught young innovators are seeking to change that. Local start-up Paaila Technology built Ginger, a 1.5 metre (five-foot) tall robot, from scratch and programmed her to understand both English and Nepali. The bilingual humanoid robot — named Ginger after a common ingredient in Nepali cuisine — can even crack jokes like Apple´s Siri or Amazon´s Alexa. Three ´Gingers´ work at Naulo restaurant in the dusty capital Kathmandu, where pot-holed roads and crumbling buildings still bear the scars of a powerful earthquake that hit more than three years ago. “This is our testing ground. We are fine tuning it with responses from our customers,” Binay Raut, CEO of the company, told AFP. The team of 25 young engineers — Raut is the oldes...

WASHINGTON: Facebook on Thursday denied allegations in the New York Times that it tried to mislead the public about its knowledge of Russian misinformation ahead of the 2016 US presidential election, but severed links with a Republican consultancy. The Times detailed obfuscation by Facebook’s top bosses on the Russia front, said the company has at times smeared critics as anti-Semitic or tried to link activists to billionaire investor George Soros, and also tried to shift public anger away toward rival tech companies. In a statement in response, Facebook disputed “inaccuracies” in the story, but said it was ending its contract with a Republican lobbying company named in the article, Definers Public Affairs, which specializes in opposition research. The Times, in a lengthy investigative piece based on interviews with more than 50 people both inside the company and with Washington officials, lawmakers and lobbyists, argued that Facebook’s way of dealing with crisis was to “delay, deny an...

The race to build a better electric car battery is turning to silicon, with several companies working to engineer types of the material that can boost driving range and cut production costs. About 500,000 electric vehicles (EVs) were sold globally in 2016, a figure that is expected to jump sevenfold by 2022, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That increase is forecast to be helped by government mandates to cut tailpipe emissions by banning gasoline and diesel-powered cars. But many drivers have so far been put off by the high cost of EVs and worries about driving range, which so far is limited to a few hundred miles (kilometers) before needing a charge. But silicon could, if adopted en masse for EV batteries, help boost energy storage. One such company, California-based Sila Nanotechnologies, aims to have its technology in over a million electric vehicle (EVs) batteries by the middle of the next decade, Chief Executive Gene Berdichevsky said in an interview. Silic...

WASHINGTON: SpaceX got the green light this week from US authorities to put a constellation of nearly 12,000 satellites into orbit in order to boost cheap, wireless internet access by the 2020s. The SpaceX network would vastly multiply the number of satellites around Earth. Since the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, was launched in 1957, humanity has sent just over 8,000 objects into space, according to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. Between one quarter and one half of those are believed to still be operational. On Thursday the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced it had authorized SpaceX to launch 7,518 satellites, adding to 4,425 satellites it has already approved. None of the satellites has launched yet. Elon Musk’s company has six years to put half in orbit, and nine years to complete the satellite network, according to FCC rules. SpaceX wants most of the satellites to fly in low Earth orbit, about 208 to 215 miles (335 to 346 kilomet...

WASHINGTON: Imagine an airport where thousands of planes, empty of fuel, are left abandoned on the tarmac. That is what has been happening for decades with satellites that circle the Earth. When satellites run out of fuel, they can no longer maintain their precise orbit, rendering them useless even if their hardware is still intact. “It’s literally throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars,” Al Tadros, vice president of space infrastructure and civil Space at a company called SSL, said this month at a meeting in the US capital of key players in the emerging field of on-orbit servicing, or repairing satellites while they are in space. In recent years, new aerospace companies have been founded to try and extend the lifespan of satellites, on the hunch that many clients would find this more profitable than relaunching new ones. In 2021, his company will launch a vehicle — as part of its Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program — that is capable of servicing two to...

KARACHI: Just three days after a rickshaw driver committed self-immolation and later died when he was forced to pay extortion by a traffic cop, another similar case surfaced when a driver of three-wheeler attempted to burn himself due to poverty. According to details, rickshaw driver, Shahid, set his rickshaw on fire in North Nazimabad area of the city and also attempted to commit self-immolation but was stopped by passers-by. Citing poverty as the reason, Shahid lamented that he was “unable to get any passengers because the CNG stations are closed every other day”. He further said that he has been unable “to afford his expenses and has not paid the rent on his house for three months,” adding that his children are suffering from an eye disease. Police officials arrived at the spot and took him to the police station to record his version. On Oct 22, a rickshaw driver who had set himself on fire as a protest against the alleged extortion by traffic police succumbed to severe burns. Afte...

Lahore: For 40 years, Allah Ditta has fought waves selflessly to help people live. Having saved 800 people and recovered 2,000 dead bodies, Allah Ditta says he cannot help being a savior to someone. Reminiscing a similar incident, he told ARY News, “A woman once jumped from the bridge to commit suicide, I caught her and brought her to safety. In return she slapped me really hard  but I didn’t get angry. I told her I cannot let you die, I have to save your life.” For Allah Ditta, race or religion doesn’t matter. He says every life is valuable. No dead body can be discriminated on the basis of faith, “Sometimes after 2-3 days sometimes we find decomposed dead bodies, and no one is ready to touch them even the parents, I even bathe them. I don’t hate dead bodies.” Allah Ditta has been rewarded by the government.for risking his life to help others live.

World Diabetes Day is being observed across the world today. World Diabetes Day was first observed in 1991 by International Diabetes Federation (IDF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to create awareness in the world about increasing threat posed by diabetes. World Health Organization described diabetes as: Diabetes is a chronic, progressive noncommunicable disease (NCD) characterized by elevated levels of blood glucose (blood sugar). It occurs either when the pancreas does not produce enough of the insulin hormone, which regulates blood sugar, or when the body cannot effectively use the insulin it produces. The occasion brings the global diabetes community together in order to create a voice for the awareness of the disease. World Health Organization stated that around 350 million people in the world suffer diabetes whereas it was the direct cause of some 1.5 million deaths in 2012. It is projected that diabetes will be the seventh leading cause of death by 2030. Diabetes has tw...

MELBOURNE: Australian surgeons on Friday successfully separated 15-month-old Bhutanese twins, Nima and Dawa, who had been joined at the torso. The team of more than 20 doctors and nurses spent six hours operating on the pair, who shared a liver but no other major organs, to the relief of the surgeons. “We didn’t find surprises,” said Joe Crameri, who led the surgery at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. “We are here earlier because there weren’t any things inside the girls’ tummies that we weren’t really prepared for,” he told reporters. “We saw two young girls who were very ready for their surgery, who were able to cope very well with the surgery and are currently in our recovery doing very well,” he told reporters. He said the next 24 to 48 hours would be critical to their recovery, but was optimistic about the outcome. Nima and Dawa, and their mother Bhumchu Zangmo, arrived in Australia a month ago with the help of an Australian charity, but doctors had delayed the surgery ...

GENEVA: Antibiotics are used far more in some countries than in others, a survey by the World Health Organization (WHO) showed on Monday, suggesting that urgent action was needed to slash unnecessary consumption of the medicines. The “WHO Report on Surveillance of Antibiotic Consumption” looked at antibiotic use in 65 countries and found the Netherlands used 9.78 defined daily doses (DDD) per 1,000 people, while Britain used twice as much and Turkey almost twice as much again, at 38.18 DDD per 1,000 inhabitants. Iran’s consumption was similar to Turkey’s, while Mongolia’s was the highest of all among the countries surveyed, at 64.41 DDD per 1,000 people. Collecting the data is vital for tackling antimicrobial resistance, the extremely worrying trend of bacterial infections becoming immune to antibiotics, the report said. “Findings from this report confirm the need to take urgent action, such as enforcing prescription-only policies, to reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics,” Suzanne Hil...

NEW JERSEY: An 11th child has died in less than four weeks at a New Jersey rehabilitation center, one of 34 young patients with compromised immune systems to have been infected by a viral outbreak, state health officials said on Friday. The child, who died late Thursday, and the others at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in the town of Haskell, became ill with adenovirus between Sept. 26 and Nov. 12, the state’s Department of Health said in a statement. The deaths of the first six children at the facility’s pediatric center were announced by health officials on Oct. 23. Adenoviruses frequently cause mild to severe illness with cold-like symptoms, particularly in young children. The infection can cause other illnesses, including pneumonia, diarrhea and bronchitis. The strain of adenovirus affecting the facility is associated with communal living arrangements, the health department said. State health officials, after prohibiting new admissions to the facility, said they ...

They found that 60 percent of veterans who did 20 minutes of quiet meditation every day showed significant improvement in their symptoms, and more completed the study than those given exposure therapy.  “Over the past 50 years, PTSD has expanded to become a significant public health problem,” Sanford Nidich, of the Maharishi University of Management Research Institute, told AFP. “Due to the increasing need to address the PTSD public health care problem in the US, UK and worldwide, there is a compelling need to implement governmental policy to include alternative therapies such as transcendental meditation as an option for treating veterans with PTSD.” Transcendental meditation involves effortlessly thinking of an idea or mantra to produce a settled, calmer state of mind — scientists call it “restful alertness”. Unlike exposure therapy, meditation can be practised at home, takes up relatively little time, and researchers say it would be significantly cheaper than current treatment t...

Renowned actor and director Ayub Khosa has got the right solution for turning e-social gathering into a real life assembly, ARY News reported. In a video doing rounds on social media, the Operation 021 actor, who is known for lightheartedness and jolly personality, can be seen sitting with his friends and peers at a restaurant. All are still busy with their mobile phones while sitting in a gathering at a public place, which prompts Khosa to do this. “Bro give me your mobile, you too please and brother give me your phone as well and this is mine,” he says while snatching the phones from their hands and puts all including his own in a plastic bag. “Bro be present in the meeting and eat food… you all are engaged with mobile phones,” he says before snatching mobile phone of the last man who is filming all this. It is a common sight in company of families, friends or office colleagues that every individual gets absorbed in social media, on screens of their handsets. Khosa’s act would serve ...

LOS ANGELES: HBO’s hit Emmy-winning drama “Game of Thrones” will debut its eighth and final season starting in April, the network announced in a trailer released online on Tuesday. The video featured footage from previous seasons to recap the costly battles that preceded the coming showdown for control of the fictional kingdom of Westeros. The network did not reveal a specific date for the final season’s premiere. “Game of Thrones,” which has won multiple Emmy awards, is HBO’s biggest hit ever with some 30 million viewers in the United States and an army of devoted fans worldwide. Several spinoffs of the series are in the works. HBO, owned by AT&T Inc (T.N), said in June that it had given a pilot order to a prequel that will take place thousands of years before the events of the current series. Read More: ‘Mrs. Maisel,’ ‘Game of Thrones’ win on night of Emmy upsets “Game of Thrones” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” had won the top prizes at the Emmy awards, on September 18, a night ...