There have been 116 deaths and more than 10,000 infections in the city of Lahore alone.

Whereas, the latest figures released by Sindh’s provincial dengue surveillance cell showed that 567 patients suffering from dengue fever were admitted to various public and private hospitals in Karachi and 13 other districts.

As preventative measures, among shutting down educational institutions, students have also been instructed to wear full-sleeve shirts until the epidemic ceases. And health workers have fumigated parts of various cities in Pakistan.

Despite these precautions, the outbreak is rapidly increasing. Is the government’s response in preparing the country for the epidemic adequate?

More importantly, is the public responsibly observing precautionary measures?

Dawn.com invites its readers to give their views and suggestions.

With many users complaining about the changes to their settings and profiles on Facebook, would you seriously consider switching to Google+ as your primary social network?

Many of us love to hate facebook, is that going to help Google+ become a successful competitor?

Dawn.com invites its readers to give their view and suggestions.

No preliminary post-mortem examination was carried out to determine the cause of it’s death. Hence, if there was a hazardous environmental factor that contributed to the whale’s death, and may as well be threatening other marine life, it remains uninvestigated.

What’s even more harrowing about the tragedy is that the Cantonment Board Clifton let the corpse go to waste by not preserving its skeleton for educational and research purposes.

Instead, the only viable solution was to chop of the whale’s decomposing body and dump it in open plots in Phase VIII of the Defence Housing Authority.

The Sindh Wildlife Department washed its hands clean of the mess by providing no guidelines. Because the skeleton was not complete, the department did not think it was necessary to preserve or study it. If the whole world went by this mentality – there would probably be million of fossils discarded today instead of being displayed in various museums around the world!

One wonders why we’ve even bothered to keep appearances by having wildlife departments – perhaps they have bigger fish to fry?

Dawn.com invites its readers to give their view and suggestions on how we can make an effort to preserve, protect and study the wildlife and marine animals our land and oceans are full of.

The announcement prompted a strong reaction in the local media. An editorial in the Dawn described the new law as ‘bordering on officially-sanctioned state censorship’ and warned that it might be used to silence the government’s critics.

Meanwhile, the country’s telecommunication supervisory bodies were quick to clarify that no mechanism existed for screening e-messages in bulk, and the Federal Investigation Agency said investigations would be only be launched upon the receipt of a formal complaint.

The government effort to regulate electronic communication comes less than month after the announcement of a 20-paisa tax on the sending of each SMS – a move that was retracted soon afterward following public uproar.

What do you think the government’s motivation is in imposing the new law? Is the state right to impose curbs on the transmission of e-messages? Do you think the recent role of electronic communication in fomenting protest in neighbouring Iran has indirectly influenced this decision?

Journalism as we know it is undergoing a transition. Prestigious newspapers in the United States are losing up to US$ 1 million a week. It is estimated that in the coming year, eight of the 50 largest newspapers in the US will cease publication. Already, publications such as The Christian Science Monitor are publishing only on the web. And many news outlets are increasingly producing bite-sized news items – SMS headlines, short podcasts, two-minute videos and news feeds – to cater to the fact that most readers and viewers are now accessing the news using mobile, hand-held devices.

The shift from print to web has also sparked other changes, both good and bad, in traditional journalism. For example, internet-based softwares such as blogs force reporters and columnists to hyperlink to their sources, thereby reducing plagiarism and making journalists’ sources transparent. At the same time, numerous research studies have shown that people consume less news online: the average internet user spends 56 minutes a month on news sites (12.6 minutes a week) while the average newspaper reader spends 12.4 hours a month (2.8 hours a week) mulling over column inches.

Given the increasing ease with which people can access the internet and the present-day culture of a 24/7 media world, do you think newspapers are a thing of the past? Does the shift from print to web make news outlets better or worse? Do you prefer reading a newspaper or clicking through a website to get news and other information? Will mobile technology change our understanding of news delivery systems?

The best responses will be highlighted on this week’s episode of Wired and Active, which airs on DawnNews on Wednesday, July 1, at 8:30 p.m.

The Pentagon, for example, uses more than five million computers on 100,000 networks in 65 countries. For the past few years, the Pentagon networks have suffered numerous attacks, with hackers copying terabytes of military data. And yet, America’s online infrastructure remains vulnerable to security breaches. Earlier this year, the US Army resolved to develop a doctrine that would define the boundaries of its cyberspace and articulate a plan to defend its virtual borders. Some defence analysts have gone so far as to suggest that a conventional martial response be put in place to defend against cyber attacks.

To explicate the concept of cyber-warfare and virtual borders, Wired and Active will be speaking with security experts who explain that cyberspace is the new venue for military espionage. A US-based security expert will also call into the show to discuss the military’s online infrastructure. And CNN-IBN’s security correspondent unveils military planning to ward off cyber warfare.

What would you like to learn from these experts about cyber warfare? Do you think that armies are suitably prepared to prevent cyber attacks? What are the greatest dangers posed by martial excursions in the virtual world? And how equipped do you think the Pakistan Army is to deal with battle at this new, virtual frontline?

The best responses will be highlighted on this week’s episode of Wired and Active, which airs on DawnNews on Wednesday, June 24, at 8:30 p.m.

The Pakistan government continues to maintain that security around its stockpile of nuclear weapons is ‘second to none.’ The top US military officer Mike Mullen has gone on record as saying that his country is ‘comfortable’ with Pakistan’s nuclear safety.

But with the growing threat from the Taliban and related militants, how safe do you think the arsenal really is? Do you trust the government and armed forces to safeguard the country’s nuclear weapons?