Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday launched Raast person-to-person payment system for instant digital transactions, saying it would create ease for the masses and bring them into the fold of formal economy. Addressing the launch ceremony in Islamabad, he said the country’s 220 million-strong population could become a “great asset” if brought within the formal economy through digitalisation. On the other hand, if the country did not take advantage of technological advancements and the majority of the population remained outside the formal economy, then it would become a “burden”. Sharing features of Raast, the premier said it would create ease…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
MANAMA: Prime Minister Naftali Bennett arrived in Bahrain on Monday for the first-ever official visit by an Israeli head of government to the Gulf state, a reporter said. Bennett’s visit is the latest such initiative following the US-brokered 2020 Abraham Accords, which defied decades of Arab consensus that ruled out ties with Israel in the absence of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Bahrain and its close ally the United Arab Emirates became only the third and fourth Arab states — following Egypt and Jordan — to establish ties with Israel when they signed on to the pacts negotiated under…
LAHORE: Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has announced that Afghan trucks carrying wheat from India through Pakistan to the war-torn country would be allowed to pass toll-free. Islamabad has completed arrangements to facilitate the supply of wheat by India to Afghanistan on humanitarian grounds and assigned the customs department to ensure hassle-free formalities. Under the arrangement, 60 trucks would reach Wagah Border (Lahore) from Afghanistan to further travel to Attari (India) and collect the first consignment of wheat from Indian authorities. “Under the government’s decision, we will not charge any duty/tax from the Afghan authorities on the collection of wheat from India…
WASHINGTON: The Biden administration cannot yet release half of the $7 billion it has set aside for Afghanistan as it involves a lengthy judicial process, says a senior US official. US President Joe Biden issued an executive order on Friday, saying that half of this fund would go to a trust fund the administration would set up for humanitarian relief in Afghanistan. The other half would be kept for compensating the victims of the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. The order, however, also said that the administration needs judicial permission to do so as a US federal court…
MOSCOW: Russia held the door open on Monday to further talks on resolving its standoff with the West and said some of its military drills were ending, signalling a possible easing of the crisis over Ukraine. While the comments from President Vladimir Putin and his foreign and defence ministers seemed to offer hope of a de-escalation, the Pentagon said Russia had strengthened its forces amassed on the border with Ukraine over the weekend. Putin “continues to add forces along that border with Ukraine and in Belarus, even just over the course of the weekend, he’s well north of 100,000,” spokesman…
ABU DHABI: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday visited the United Arab Emirates for the first time in nearly a decade, to revive relations that were long strained by regional disputes. He was greeted in the capital Abu Dhabi by Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the UAE’s de facto ruler, who had travelled to Ankara in November on the first high-level visit to Turkey since 2012. That trip “marked the beginning of a new era in relations,” Erdogan said at Istanbul airport before leaving for his two-day visit. “We are planning to take steps that will bring…
Faced with truckers’ protests popping up across the nation, and hampering cross border trade, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday became the only Canadian leader since his father 50 years ago to declare a state of emergency in peacetime. Trudeau unveiled a series of tough measures to tackle funding for the protests, including letting banks freeze accounts linked to the protests without a court order, and said federal police will help end the blockades. But despite the apparent parallels, historians say there are big differences between Trudeau’s announcement and the one his father made in October 1970. For one, Liberal Prime Minister…
The Taliban on Monday warned that it would reconsider its policy towards the United States if President Joe Biden did not reverse his “unjustified” decision to return only half of Afghanistan’s $7 billion deposited on US soil. The United States will free up half of the $7 billion in frozen Afghan central bank assets on US soil to help Afghans struggling with a humanitarian crisis and hold the rest to possibly satisfy terrorism-related lawsuits against the Taliban. “If the United States does not deviate from its position and continues its provocative actions, the Islamic Emirate will also be forced to reconsider its…
A dispute over restrictions on the wearing of the hijab by female students in a southern Indian state has now reached India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, with a group of youngsters asking a college to ban the head covering. Authorities closed colleges in Karnataka in India’s south last week after a new uniform policy barred students from wearing headscarves in classrooms, leading to protests by Muslim students and counter-protests by Hindu students. Muslims have criticised the ban as another way of marginalising a community that accounts for about 13 per cent of Hindu-majority India’s 1.35 billion people. In Uttar Pradesh,…
Russia said on Tuesday it was pulling back some of its forces near the Ukrainian border to their bases, in what would be the first major step towards de-escalation in weeks of crisis with the West. The move came amid an intense diplomatic effort to avert a feared Russian invasion of its pro-Western neighbour and after Moscow amassed more than 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders. Following the announcement, Ukraine said that its joint diplomatic efforts with Western allies have managed to avert a feared Russian invasion. “We and our allies have managed to prevent Russia from any further escalation. It…
