9am headlines: Punjab smart lockdown, schools reopening, Karachi crime

Here are the headlines from SAMAA TV’s 9am bulletin.

• A smart lockdown is being imposed in seven cities in Punjab till July 24 to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Neighbourhoods in Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Gujrat and Rawalpindi are being locked down. Seventy-four deaths were reported in one day and 2,751 new cases.
• The federal government has decided to reopen schools, colleges and universities across the country from September 15. It will reexamine the situation in the third week of August or first week of September. If the coronavirus situation doesn’t improve, the decision could be reversed. Some of the precautions is has advised schools to take include wearing masks and studying English, math and science at school and all other subjects at home. Sindh has said it will make a decision based on the situation.
• The US has suspended PIA flight operations in light of the revelations of pilots with fake licences. PIA says the special flights bringing Pakistanis back home will remain operational. Five more flights are bringing Pakistanis home.
• Crime is on the rise in Karachi once again. In Gulshan-e-Hadeed, robbers abducted a man in his car and dropped him off near Hyderabad. A video of a woman being robbed in Gulshan-e-Iqbal Block 13-C has surfaced. A man who tried to intervene and help her was shot and injured.
• A man was killed in firing in Mandi Bahauddin’s Ghania. The police say it was over a longtime enmity and that they are conducting raids to arrest the suspect.
• A rickshaw driver who was kidnapped 17 days ago in Shikarpur has been rescued. The kidnappers let him go after a shootout with the police. The Sukkur police arrested a suspected robber after a shootout. They say they seized a pistol and bullets from him.
• The rain system has left Karachi and headed towards Balochistan. Sea breeze is expected to resume in the city today and temperatures will drop. The Met department has forecast another spell of rain in the second week of July.
• It has been 14 years since Pakistani lost poet Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi. He was the author of over 50 books, including six poetry books.

from Coronavirus – SAMAA https://ift.tt/2CoNdnv