LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was fighting on Friday to shore up his authority after a senior aide resigned over his false claim that the leader of the opposition Labour Party failed to prosecute a notorious child sex abuser. Johnson, who in 2019 won the biggest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher, has repeatedly refused to resign over reports that he and some of his staff attended Downing Street parties during Covid-19 lockdowns. Those revelations raised questions about Johnson’s often chaotic style of leadership and have led to the greatest threat to him since he took office. They follow a…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
NEW DELHI: India’s official death toll from Covid-19 passed 500,000 on Friday, although many experts believe the real figure is likely much higher. The daily update from the country’s federal health ministry showed the number of fatalities reaching 500,055, up 1,072 in the previous 24 hours. Total infections stood at 41.9 million, according to the statistics, second only to the United States. Case numbers have jumped in recent weeks due to the highly infectious Omicron strain but rates have slowed in recent days and the health ministry last week said there were indications of a plateau in virus cases in…
KABUL: The United Nations has demanded the Taliban provide information on two more women activists allegedly detained by the group this week — bringing to four the number missing in Afghanistan this year. Since their August return to power, the Taliban have cracked down on dissent by forcefully dispersing women’s rallies, detaining critics and beating local journalists covering protests. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said late Thursday it had sought “urgent information” on the reported detention of two more women activists by the Taliban in the capital Kabul this week. “UN repeats its call for all ‘disappeared’…
WASHINGTON: In a major move towards easing restrictions on Afghanistan, the United States has now decided to allow international banks to transfer money to the country for humanitarian purposes. A directive issued by the US Department of Treasury earlier this week also allows aid groups to pay teachers and healthcare workers at state-run institutions without the fear of breaching US sanctions on the Taliban. “Both US and non-US companies can ship food to Afghanistan, and banks can process financial transfers and other transactions associated with food shipments to Afghanistan,” said the directive issued in Washington. The Treasury also outlined permitted…
MOSCOW: China and Russia proclaimed a deep strategic partnership on Friday to balance what they portrayed as the malign global influence of the United States as China’s President Xi Jinping hosted Russia’s Vladimir Putin. In a joint statement, the two countries affirmed that their new relationship was superior to any political or military alliance of the Cold War era. “Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation,” they declared, announcing plans to collaborate in a host of areas including space, climate change, artificial intelligence and control of the Internet. The agreement marked the…
President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday restored sanctions waivers to Iran to allow international nuclear cooperation projects, as indirect American-Iranian talks on reviving the 2015 international nuclear deal with Tehran enter the final stretch. The waivers had allowed Russian, Chinese and European companies to carry out non-proliferation work to effectively make it harder for Iranian nuclear sites to be used for weapons development. The waivers were rescinded by the United States in 2019 and 2020 under former President Donald Trump, who pulled out of the nuclear agreement. The indirect talks are aimed at having the United States return to the…
LAHORE: The Punjab government on Friday decided to retain the already notified nine-member Special Medical Board (SMB) to assess the fresh medical reports of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and give its opinion about his physical health condition and capacity to travel back to Pakistan from the UK. The SMB, constituted on the instructions of the federal cabinet on Jan 14, has been retained — now on the request of the Attorney General of Pakistan — to review the fresh reports submitted by Mr Sharif’s interventional cardiologist Dr Fayaz Shawl. “Mr Sharif’s medical reports submitted by Dr Shawl have been…
ISLAMABAD: A parliamentary committee on Friday approved four bills, including one seeking separation of the judiciary and the district administration in Islamabad. The Senate Standing Committee on Interior, which met with Senator Mohsin Aziz in the chair, also discussed a number of other bills. Besides the committee members, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, senior officials from the interior ministry and the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) administration participated in the meeting. The committee discussed the draft ‘Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Act 2021’ which seeks amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) 1898 to end judicial powers enjoyed by bureaucrats…
LAHORE: PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif contacted PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari here on Friday and invited him for a luncheon meeting on Saturday. Mr Sharif, the opposition leader in the National Assembly, telephoned the colleague on opposition benches and discussed with him the current national political scenario. He invited the PPP chairman, who arrived in the city along with his father Asif Ali Zardari earlier in the day, for the luncheon meeting on Saturday. Bilawal accepted the invitation. PML-N officials say that former president Zardari was also invited for the meeting to be held at Shehbaz’s Model Town residence in…
ISLAMABAD: The federal government has recommended provision of a security cover jointly by the Sindh Rangers and provincial police to the recently retired chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) Gulzar Ahmed since he is expected to spend most of his time in Karachi. The suggestion came from the threat assessment committee of the interior ministry comprising senior police officials, representatives of the administration and intelligence agencies that met soon after the Supreme Court registrar’s office wrote a letter to the interior secretary seeking complete security for Justice Ahmed after his retirement, an interior ministry source told Dawn. The committee was headed by…
