WASHINGTON: The White House has advised the chip industry to diversify its supply chain in case Russia retaliates against threatened US export curbs by blocking access to key materials, people familiar with the matter said. The potential for retaliation has garnered more attention in recent days after Techcet, a market research group, published a report on Feb 1 highlighting the reliance of many semiconductor manufacturers on Russian and Ukrainian-sourced materials like neon, palladium and others. According to Techcet estimates, over 90 per cent of US semiconductor-grade neon supplies come from Ukraine, while 35pc of palladium is sourced from Russia. Peter…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
PARIS: Thousands of protesters headed towards Paris on Friday in convoys from across France, with many hoping to blockade the capital in opposition to Covid vaccination rules and other restrictions despite police warnings to back off. Inspired by Canadian truckers paralysing border traffic with the US, the French protesters set off from Bayonne, Perpignan, Lyon, Lille, Strasbourg and elsewhere with the aim of converging on Paris. A police source said around 1,800 vehicles were closing in on the capital. The demonstrators include anti-Covid vaccination activists, but also people angry at fast-rising energy prices that they say have been a devastating…
WASHINGTON: After months of waiting, US President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order giving half of the $7 billion in frozen Afghan assets to Afghanistan, while keeping the other half for victims of the Sept 11 terror attacks. The US administration blocked the assets belonging to Afghanistan’s central bank, known as Da Afghan Bank or DAB in August last year. The move aimed to prevent the country’s new Taliban rulers, who seized Kabul on Aug 15, from accessing the funds. President Biden said the order to release funds was “part of our ongoing work to address the humanitarian…
KABUL: The Taliban have detained two foreign journalists on assignment with the UN refugee agency and a number of its Afghan staff working in the country’s capital, UNHCR said on Friday. The development in Kabul comes as President Joe Biden was expected to issue an executive order that would allow US financial institutions to facilitate access to $3.5 billion of assets for Afghan aid. Two journalists on assignment with UNHCR and Afghan nationals working with them have been detained in Kabul, the refugee agency tweeted. “We are doing our utmost to resolve the situation, in coordination with others.” The Geneva-based…
MOSCOW: Russia is massing yet more troops near Ukraine and an invasion could come at any time, perhaps before the end of this month’s Winter Olympics, Washington said on Friday. Moscow, for its part, stiffened its truculent response towards Western diplomacy, saying answers sent this week by the EU and Nato to its security demands showed “disrespect”. Commercial satellite images published by a private US company showed new Russian military deployments at several locations near Ukraine. In his starkest warning yet to Americans in Ukraine to get out now, President Joe Biden said he would not send troops to rescue…
United States President Joe Biden will speak to Vladimir Putin on Saturday after the United States warned that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could begin in days. Meanwhile, the US State Department has ordered non-emergency US embassy staff to leave Ukraine amid rising tensions with Russia. “Despite the reduction in diplomatic staff, the core embassy team, our dedicated Ukrainian colleagues, and State Department and US personnel around the world will continue relentless diplomatic and assistance efforts in support of Ukraine’s security, democracy, and prosperity,” the US embassy in Kyiv tweeted after the development. The US had dramatically raised the alarm over…
Renowned scholar Professor Noam Chomsky on Thursday said that Islamophobia has taken a “most lethal form” in India, turning some 250 million Indian Muslims into a “persecuted minority”. “The pathology of Islamophobia is growing throughout the West — it is taking its most lethal form in India,” the famed author and activist, who is also Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a video message to a webinar organised by the Indian American Muslim Council, a Washington-based advocacy organisation. Apart from Chomsky, several other academics and activists took part in the webinar on “Worsening Hate Speech and Violence…
Ayesha Imthiaz, a devout Indian Muslim who considers wearing a hijab an expression of devotion to Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him), says a move by her college to expel hijab-wearing girls is an insult that will force her to choose between religion and education. “The humiliation of being asked to leave my classroom for wearing a headscarf by college officials has shaken my core belief,” said the 21-year-old student from southern Karnataka’s Udupi district, where protests over the head covering ban began. “My religion has been questioned and insulted by a place which I had considered as a temple of education,”…
As the controversy and protests over banning hijab in schools continued in India, drawing condemnation from Pakistani and US officials, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Saturday said “motivated comments on our internal issues are not welcome”. In a short statement issued on Twitter, the spokesperson for the ministry, Arindam Bagchi, said, “A matter regarding dress codes in some educational institutions in the state of Karnataka is under judicial examination by the Honourable High Court of Karnataka. Our constitutional framework and mechanisms, as well as our democratic ethos and polity, are the context in which issues are considered and resolved.”…
LAHORE: An official of the Security Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) on Friday testified before an accountability court as a prosecution witness and maintained that the Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly, Shehbaz Sharif, had never been a director of Ramzan Sugar Mills. Answering several queries of the defence, SECP Additional Registrar Ghulam Mustafa said the record submitted by him before the court did not show that Mr Shehbaz ever held the office of the sugar mills’ director or received any monetary benefit from the accounts of the mills. At this, Mr Shehbaz, who was present in the court,…
