Author: Passad Siyal

In a move that can cause fresh tensions in the region, Sri Lanka has allowed the Chinese Navy training ship, Po Lang, to dock at its port, despite a 12-month moratorium imposed earlier this year on foreign research vessels, following security concerns raised by India and the United States. Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath explained the decision to permit the Po Lang—a three-masted tall ship with a crew of 130. He emphasized that the vessel is classified as “a training vessel and not a research craft.” He stated that there has been no change in the policy regarding research vessels. The…

After Tajiks were charged with a deadly attack in Moscow, the country has cracked down on signs of Islam. But experts say it’s not addressing the causes of terrorism. People in Tajikistan were expecting a government crackdown after Tajik men were arrested and charged with a terrorist attack on a Moscow concert hall in March. But it still seemed excessive to Nilufar, a 27-year-old education professional, when she saw local authorities with scissors outside a K.F.C. in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital, trimming beards that were deemed too long. Excessive, but not so surprising. In the span of a month, Nilufar herself…

Russia may respond to any U.S. confiscation of its currency reserves frozen in the West by seizing the assets, including property and cash, of U.S. citizens and investors in Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, a senior security official, said on Saturday. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill allowing the Biden administration to confiscate Russian assets held in American banks and transfer them to Ukraine, something the Kremlin has said would be illegal and trigger retaliation. In response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, the United States and its allies prohibited transactions with Russia’s central bank and finance ministry and blocked about…

KARACHI, Pakistan Pakistan’s top court on Wednesday declared that the country’s first democratically elected Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was executed in a murder case in 1979, did not get the right to a “fair trial,” wrapping up a years-long hearing, a court record said. The case, what is known as a presidential reference, was filed in June 2011 by Asif Ali Zardari, former president and co-chairman of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), seeking the Supreme Court’s opinion on revisiting the death sentence awarded to Bhutto. In a unanimous “opinion,” the nine-member bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan…

Around the world, taxes on tobacco, alcohol and junk food have been used to reduce consumption of those products, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). New research led by an investigator in the Penn State College of Health and Human Development identified reasons these taxes remain low in Nepal, a lower-income nation with high rates of smoking and alcohol consumption. “Industry misinformation and ambiguous tax regulations pose substantial barriers to the implementation of higher taxes on tobacco and alcohol in Nepal,” said Yubraj Acharya, associate professor of health policy and administration at Penn State and lead author of the study, which was recently published in BMJ…

United Energy Group (UEG) of China has agreed to acquire a more than 30% stake in PRL from state-run oil marketing company PSO, reported the Express Turbine. PSO currently holds a 63.6% stake in PRL, a hydro skimming refinery situated on the coastal belt of Karachi, Pakistan. The refinery is equipped to process various imported and local crude oil to meet the country’s strategic and domestic fuel requirements. The sale forms part of PSO’s efforts to attract $1.5bn (Rs426bn) of investment to support the refinery expansion and upgrade plan. PSO forms part of a joint venture with Pakistani companies that is further…

London (15/11 – 67) The streets in Colombo, Sri Lanka, erupted into celebration on July 13, 2022 after weeks of peaceful protests forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country. Rajapaksa, long implicated in war crimes when he was defense secretary, had presided over an economic catastrophe amid allegations of widespread corruption and impunity. But a year later, despite some superficial changes, there is no sustained improvement in the country’s economic situation that impinges many people’s human rights. The acute shortage of fuel that was the most visible feature of the economic crisis has eased. But more than six million people – nearly 30…

ECONOMYNEXT – Washington based World Bank is supporting Sri Lanka’s return to a growth path by helping transform key sectors with more concessional funds Managing Director of Operations Anna Bjerde said, as the island recovers from a sovereign default. The agency will ensure that its new funding is greater than repayments as the country works on making debt sustainable. Sri Lanka defaulted on its external debt after the deployment of the most aggressive ‘macro-economic policy’ in the history of its central bank from 2020 involving large liquidity injections while taxes were also cut to close what economic bureaucrats said was a ‘persistent…

London, Dublin (1/11 – 66) Hamas is sheltered in a sea of civilians. Ostensibly a Palestinian political and military organization established in 1987, Hamas “governs” on the basis of having won a majority in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections – defeating Fatah, another Islamist terror combine – before forming a government in the Gaza Strip, described as “…the world’s largest open-air prison” for its Palestinian inhabitants. So why don’t the Palestinians, having been robbed of their ancient lands, simply up and move somewhere else? It is telling that none of the Islamic nations surrounding Israel care to admit any more…

Berlin (05/11 – 40) The international transport corridor “Tajikistan-Europe” will be expanded. The initiative for the implementation of the “Crossroads of the World” project was announced at the IV International Tbilisi Silk Road Forum, which concluded in the capital of Georgia. The project envisions the development of connections between Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Iran. This means that the Silk Road, which once passed through the North Caucasus, will now be connected to the South Caucasus hub. “In this way, another node is added to the multimodal corridor ‘China – Tajikistan – Uzbekistan – Turkmenistan – Iran – Turkey – Europe’,”…