ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan revisited his call to help Afghanistan under the international doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), inviting the international community to fulfil its obligation to the Afghan people by providing humanitarian assistance to the country. “One pillar of R2P is to help protect people from mass scale humanitarian crisis left in the wake of a prolonged conflict. Right now millions of Afghan people are in danger of starvation,” he tweeted. This tweet was a follow-up to his earlier call for immediate humanitarian relief for Afghans, fulfilling the obligation under the “UN principle of R2P”. The later tweet…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
OSLO: A Taliban delegation led by Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi on Sunday began talks focused on human rights with Afghan civil society members ahead of their highly anticipated meetings with western officials in Oslo. The delegation dedicated the first day of their three-day visit to talks with women’s rights activists and human rights defenders from Afghanistan and from the Afghan diaspora. The meetings are taking place behind closed doors at Soria Moria Hotel in the snow-capped mountains above the Norwegian capital, as Norway, which had played a mediating role in Middle East and Colombia conflicts in the past, is facilitating…
CAIRO: The Arab League on Sunday said Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels should be labelled as a “terrorist” group after they attacked the United Arab Emirates. On January 17 the Houthis claimed a drone and missile attack that struck an oil facility and the airport in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi, killing three people and wounding six. It was the first deadly assault acknowledged by the UAE inside its borders and claimed by the Yemeni insurgents during a seven-year Saudi-led coalition campaign against the rebels. The pan-Arab bloc, based in the Egyptian capital, said the Houthis should be designated “as a terrorist organisation”…
COPENHAGEN: The Omicron variant has moved the Covid-19 pandemic into a new phase and could bring it to an end in Europe, the WHO Europe director said on Sunday. “It’s plausible that the region is moving towards a kind of pandemic endgame,” Hans Kluge said in an interview, adding that Omicron could infect 60 percent of Europeans by March. Once the current surge of Omicron currently sweeping across Europe subsides, “there will be for quite some weeks and months a global immunity, either thanks to the vaccine or because people have immunity due to the infection, and also lowering seasonality.”…
The lira was slightly weaker on Monday after Turkey’s finance minister was cited as saying he expected some $10 billion of forex bank deposits to be converted to lira due to a new law exempting such deposits from corporate tax. Sources also cited Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati as saying he expected inflation to rise to about 40 per cent in the months ahead, lower than most estimates, and that no interest rate hikes were planned by the central bank. At 0542 GMT, the lira traded at 13.49, weakening 0.15pc from Friday’s close of 13.47. It tumbled 44pc last year after…
A journalist was killed in Tijuana on Sunday, the local prosecutor said, the second media worker murdered in less than a week in the northern Mexican border city. Lourdes Maldonado Lopez was “attacked with a firearm while she was in a vehicle,” said the Baja California state prosecutor’s office. Mexico is one of the world’s deadliest countries for reporters. Media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders regularly ranks it alongside Afghanistan and Yemen among the world’s most dangerous places for news media. Maldonado had worked for several media outlets, including Primer Sistema de Noticias (PSN), which is owned by Jaime Bonilla, who…
The United Arab Emirates intercepted and destroyed two Houthi ballistic missiles targeting the Gulf country on Monday with no casualties, its defence ministry said, following a deadly attack a week earlier. For more than six years, the Houthis have been battling a Saudi-led coalition that includes the UAE, repeatedly carrying out cross-border missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, and launching an unprecedented assault on the UAE on Jan 17. “The remnants of the intercepted ballistic missiles fell in separate areas around Abu Dhabi,” the ministry said, adding it was taking necessary protective measures against all attacks. UAE newspaper The National cited residents reporting…
ISLAMABAD: Expressing confidence that people would never take to the streets against him, especially on the call of the ‘tainted’ opposition, Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday warned his opponents that if he was forced out of office, he would become even more dangerous for them. “If I exit the government, I will pose a greater threat to you. Right now, I am sitting quietly in my office and watching the drama unfold. But if I take to the streets, you will have nowhere to hide,” he said while answering callers’ questions, live on national television. PM Khan lashed out…
MUZAFFARABAD: A female Sambar deer believed to have penetrated the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) territory from across the Line of Control (LoC) in Kotli district was released into its natural habitat along the unmarked dividing line on Sunday. The Sambar (Rusa unicolour) is a large deer native to the Indian subcontinent, South China and Southeast Asia that is listed as a vulnerable species on the IUCN Red List since 2008. AJK wildlife and fisheries department director Naeem Iftikhar Dar told that a group of villagers had captured the deer in their Dharamsal village, located in the proximity of the…
LAHORE: Former prime minister and Pakistan People’s Party Punjab president Raja Pervaiz Ashraf on Sunday said that in-house change of government is the only option for strengthening democracy and parliament in the country. He expressed these views while talking to the media after a press conference, along with party secretary general Syed Hassan Murtaza, Ahsan Rizvi, Asif Raza Baig and Afnan Butt at the PPP’s Model Town Secretariat here. Mr Ashraf said the party was seeing “positive signs” in the other opposition parties regarding tabling a no-confidence motion against the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government, adding that such a move could be…
