Khokhar was initially allowed by the assembly speaker Nisar Ahmed Khuhro to present his views however he was later prevented from speaking.
The MPA termed the word ban list as a sheer violation of minorities’ rights. During his fiery speech, he left his bench and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the speaker, demanding for the said resolution.
Law Minister Ayaz Soomro convinced Khokhar to go back to his seat as he assured him of taking this issue to the federal level.
Similar assurance was given by other ministers including Rafiq Engineer, Power Minister Shahzia Marri, Minister for Local Government Agha Siraj Durrani, Minister for Youth Affairs Faisal Sabzwari and Deputy Speaker Sindh Assembly Shehla Raza.
Khokhar, however continued to express his disapproval. He pointed out that on one hand anyone who utters blasphemous remarks against the Muslim prophet is hanged, while on the other hand there is no protection of minority rights.
Sindh Minister for Antiquities Muhammad Rafiq Engineer reminded Khokhar that Muslims also believe in the prophethood of Jesus Christ (Pbuh) and deeply respect him. He also assured him of getting this matter resolved.
PTA says list is not final
PTA spokesperson Mohammad Younis Khan said that the list that has going viral online, is not a list of words that are to be blocked or filtered.
“This list was prepared just to help the operators of different companies to design their software to meet the purpose,” said Khan.
“The final list will be prepared after getting input from all the stakeholders and will be provided to the mobile phone companies for implementations,” Khan added.
As reported earlier, a PTA letter was circulated online, which ordered the imposition of a “system” to ban select words in mobile SMS messages.
A set of two extensive lists in English and Urdu was allegedly compiled by the PTA. The list of English words crosses the 1,000 figure, while the Urdu list contains over 550 words.
A scan of the letter (dated November 14, 2011) sent from Muhammad Talib Doger, Director General (Services) PTA, stated that the filtering of content through SMS must be considered under the scope of “Protection from Spam, Unsolicited, Fraudulent and Obnoxious Communication Regulations, 2009″ and the SOPs laid down to control spamming. The letter was written with reference to a meeting held with mobile phone operators on October 18, 2011 in Islamabad.
Firms would be able to set up and maintain basic websites to boost their Internet profile and find new customers, the company said at the unveiling of the programme in New Delhi.
Registry costs and all technological support on building the website would be free for a year before monthly pay-as-you-go fees kick in.
"The initiative aims to break down the barriers that stop small businesses from getting online by offering a quick, easy and free tool to set up and host a website," Google said in a press release.
It said it would take only 15 minutes to register and get online with an .in domain name.
Just five percent of India's eight million small and medium-sized businesses have websites, Google said, adding that it hoped 500,000 firms would get online through its programme within three years.
"Businesses often believe that getting online is too complex, costly and time-consuming," Google said.
RIM, which had said on Tuesday that services had returned to normal, said later the problems had actually spread beyond EMEA and India to Argentina, Brazil and Chile.
“The messaging and browsing delays … were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure,” it said. “As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service.”
The service disruptions are the worst since an outage swept north America two years ago, and come as Apple prepares to put on sale its already sold-out iPhone 4S on Friday.
“It’s a blow upon a bruise. It comes at a bad time,” said Richard Windsor, global technology specialist at Nomura.
“One possibility could be that it encourages client companies to look more at other options such as allowing users to connect their own devices to the corporate server and save themselves the cost of buying everyone a BlackBerry.”
Many companies, no longer seeing the need to pay to be locked into RIM’s secure proprietary email service, have already begun allowing employees to use alternative smartphones, particularly Apple’s iPhone, for corporate mail.
RIM has made inroads into the youth market attracted by its free BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service, partially compensating for its losses in the corporate market. But new products like its PlayBook tablet computer have been poorly received.
Following a dismal set of quarterly results and a plunge in its share price, some investors are now calling for a break-up, sale or change of management at the company.
Increasingly frustrated users tweeted their frustration on Wednesday, while RIM’s own official Twitter feed was last updated on Tuesday night, saying problems were being resolved and it was sorry for the inconvenience.
Veteran British entrepreneur Alan Sugar, who founded electronics company Amstrad in 1968, tweeted: “In all my years in IT biz, I have never seen such an outage as experienced by Blackberry. I can’t understand why it’s taking so long to fix.”
Some customers used humour to deal with the situation. One joke making the rounds on Twitter said: “What did the one BBM user say to the other? Nothing.”
Sales of the new model, an upgraded version of the firm's flagship smartphone, had doubled in two months after hitting the five-million mark in July, the company said.
The new device was released locally on April 29 and in some European countries in May. It also went on sale in China in July before hitting the US market in September.
"In just five months the Galaxy S II has seen tremendous growth, reflecting strong support from carrier partners," JK Shin, the head of the firm's mobile device unit, said in a statement.
Shin said earlier this year that Samsung planned to sell globally more than 10 million of the phones, powered by Google's Android operating system and spearheading the firm's smartphone push this year.
Sales at home amounted to 3.6 million followed by 3.4 million in Europe and 2.3 million in rest of Asia, the company said.
The firm, one of the world's major mobile phone sellers competing against companies like Apple, has sold more than 14 million of its Galaxy S smartphone which was released in June 2010.
Samsung and Apple are at loggerheads in a series of patent lawsuits over the technology and design of their smartphones and tablet computers.
Despite their legal battles, Apple is one of the biggest customers for Samsung's chips and display screens.
