BUENOS AIRES: Argentina has struck a deal for a $44.5 billion standby agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the government said on Friday, a major breakthrough in tense and lengthy talks to restructure loans the country cannot repay. The South American country has been locked in talks for over a year with the IMF over a new programme to revamp debt outstanding from a failed $57bn loan deal from 2018, the fund’s largest ever. It faced a $700 million payment due on Friday. “With this agreement, we can order the present and build a future,” President Alberto Fernandez said…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
SAN FRANCISCO: Apple reported record $124 billion quarterly revenue on Thursday, despite a global chip pinch and shifting impacts of the pandemic that have weighed down other big tech players. The expectations-beating results offered signals that the coronavirus-era tech boom may not be quite over yet, even as diminishing growth shadows firms like lockdown lifestyle champ Netflix. “We set all time records for both developed and emerging markets and saw revenue growth across all of our product categories except for iPad, which we said would be supply-constrained,” CEO Tim Cook told analysts. Smartphone sales topped $71bn, buoyed by strong demand…
YANGON: Hours before Myanmar’s new parliament was due to convene last February, troops rounded up lawmakers in dawn raids, ending a brief democratic interlude and setting the stage for months of bloodshed. A year later the country’s latest junta is struggling to contain the backlash unleashed by its power grab, with daily clashes and swathes of the country outside of its control. Almost 1,500 civilians have been killed and over 11,000 arrested in its ongoing crackdown, according to a local monitor, with rights groups accusing junta troops of torture and extrajudicial killings. But for a pro-democracy movement angered by the…
LAHORE: Indian singer and actor Gippy Grewal was barred from entering Pakistan through Wagah Border on Friday as the Indian immigration authorities reportedly stopped him at the Atari border on Friday. According to sources in the Evacuee Propriety Trust Board, arrangements were in place to receive the singer at the border as he was scheduled to visit Kartarpur. “He was to move to Kartarpur (Narowal) at 9:30am and return to Lahore by 3:30pm. Later, Gippy was scheduled to attend a reception at Governor House. On Jan 29, he was to visit Nankana Sahib before his return to India,” an ETPB…
GENEVA: Pakistan has rejected as dubious India’s claims about its “impeccable” disarmament record, saying New Delhi is solely responsible for pioneering nuclear proliferation in South Asia that escalated tensions in the region and beyond. “It is India which dealt a death blow to non-proliferation norms by conducting its first nuclear test in 1974, followed by additional nuclear tests in 1998,” Pakistani delegate Mohammad Omar told the Conference on Disarmament, now in session in Geneva. India, he said, conducted the test by diverting nuclear material from the Canada-supplied CIRUS reactor in clear violation of its safeguards commitments to the suppliers. Mr…
MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin said on Friday the United States and Nato had not addressed Russia’s main security demands in their standoff over Ukraine but that Moscow was ready to keep talking. Putin offered his first reaction to the US and Nato responses to Russia’s demands in a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron after weeks of personal public silence on the crisis, in which Russia has massed troops near Ukraine. The Kremlin quoted Putin as telling Macron he would study the written responses provided by Washington and Nato this week before deciding on further action. Nato chief sees…
ADEN: At least five people were killed and 34 injured in what Yemeni-government media said was a Houthi missile strike on Marib city on Wednesday night, state news agency SABA said on Friday. A resident and a medical source said a missile on Wednesday had fallen next to a military building in the al-Matar area. Marib city is the Yemeni government’s last northern stronghold. It sits in an energy-producing region which has been the focus of fighting over the past year, during which Iran-aligned Houthi forces advanced towards the city. According to Reuters, the fightin for Marib has dashed UN-led ceasefire efforts as…
The Pakistan High Commission in India on Friday issued a visa to an Indian senior citizen, allowing him to meet his family members in Pakistan, with whom he was separated 74 years ago due to Partition in 1947. “Today, Pakistan High Commission issues visa to Sika Khan to visit his brother, Mohammed Siddique, and other family members in Pakistan,” the embassy announced on Twitter. The two brothers, separated in 1947, were recently reunited after 74 years at the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor. A video of the siblings meeting each other at the Kartarpur Corridor had gone viral on social media, making people on…
A high-level inter-ministerial delegation led by National Security Adviser (NSA) Moeed Yusuf arrived in Kabul on Saturday for talks on bilateral matters of mutual interest, focusing on Pakistan’s efforts to avert a humanitarian crisis in the country. The NSA and his delegation were received by Nooruddin Azizi, the acting minister for commerce and industry, at Hamid Karzai International Airport, according to the Pakistan Embassy. Senior officials, including Pakistan’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Mohammad Sadiq, were also part of the delegation. Pakistan Ambassador to Afghanistan Mansoor Ahmad Khan said the NSA had a “productive meeting” with Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan…
WASHINGTON: The Modi government’s public mischaracterisation of the February 2019 Balakot air strike raises questions about India’s ability to deal with an exceptionally dangerous regional situation, warns a recently released research paper. The paper — “Strategic Implications of India’s liberalism and Democratic Erosion” — argues that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, “India’s commitment to democracy is increasingly in doubt” and this “erosion is most obvious in the areas of tightened media controls, limits on civil society organisations, and reduced protections for minorities.” The author, Daniel Markey, a Senior Adviser on South Asia at the United States of Peace, wrote…
