Asia

The Railway link between India and Bagladesh was defunct in the 1965 war.  The Network has started again this month. The Haldibari-Chilahati rail link between India and then East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) was operational till 1965. Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina virtually inaugurated the rail link. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, regular train services could not be started on the section. "The first goods train carrying stone chips to Bangladesh through the revived Haldibari --Chilahati rail link leaves from Damdim station of Alipurduar Division in NFR (Northeast Frontier Railway) on 31.07.2021," the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) in a statement said. The Haldibari-Chilahati rail link was part of the broad g...

FY21 turned to be good for Pakistan in terms of country’s exports and remittances but, it remained gloomy for FDI. The Net FDI of country was down by 29 percent year-on-year with inflows down by 9 percent and outflows higher by 61 percent. Similar to the ongoing trend, power sector continued to dominate the net FDI inflows accounting for nearly 50 percent of the net FDI during FY21. Half of the investment (50 percent) arrived from China, which continues to be the single largest source of FDI for Pakistan. Part of the decline in FDI is due to the overall global slowdown in in foreign investments since the outbreak of Covid-19 where almost every country - developed or developing (excluding China and India) – witnessed a sharp decline in these foreign inflows. However, apart from the g...

Karachi, Pakistan: In January, a shipment from Pakistan was detected with coronavirus after which China banned the seafood import from Pakistan. The Pakistan fish export has been hit very badly by this move of China. Out of top 15 exporters, some nine firms are now temporarily banned by the Chinese authorities, Dawn reported. Qadri Noori Enterprise chief executive officer Manzar Alam told Dawn that around 50 companies have been exporting fish to China. Giving details of the ban, he said in case the coronavirus is detected in one shipment, the exporter faces a one-week ban and in case of four cases, then the exporter cannot send the shipment for eight weeks, he said. He said Pakistan's seafood exports have since been in crisis as 60 per cent out of the country's total fish expo...

The peace talks going on in Dhaka between Afghan government and Taliban are no way going to end soon. The Taliban has demanded to surrender of Afghan government to Islamist group. Delegations from the two sides ended 48 hours of negotiation in Qatar with a joint statement at the weekend saying they will meet again next week to continue until a settlement is reached. The Taliban’s ‘Supreme Leader’ Haibatullah Akhundzada maintained ahead of the meeting that “the Islamic emirate strenuously favours a political settlement”. But, at the same time, the Islamists has continued their offensive to capture territory, and carry out bomb attacks. There is a broad consensus among the Afghan government and its international supporters that the Taliban should become part of the countr...

New Delhi, India: The tourism will increase as the easing restriction said business tycoon Mohamed Ali Janah. He also thanked India for helping his country in the hour of need when and sending covid relief.   “We have had almost 600,000 tourists coming to Maldives under very difficult circumstances. Most of the tourists come to Maldives from Russia followed by India,”. “Because of the high numbers of COVID-19 patients in this part of the world, the government temporarily closed the borders, but then now they again open so I’m sure that India would overtake Russia. I would say that Russia and India saved Maldives, during these very difficult circumstances,” he said. Talking about India as an investment destination, Janah elaborated that business communities from both countr...

CHITRAL: The locals of the of Yurjogh village in Lot Koh valley have complained that the government is suooprting the local leader of the ruling party PTI in grabbing public land. They said that the government had also approved a huge amount of Rs40 million for irrigation project on the said piece of land. Addressing a press conference, the villagers including Wazir Khan, Mufti Israruddin, Haji Mohammad Nawaz, Sher Wali Khan and others said that the piece of land was a pasture near their village that was a public property as given in the gazette notification of 1975. They said that the irrigation project would render their village Yurjogh vulnerable to landslide. They added that the geological survey carried out by Focus Humanitarian Assistance, Pakistan in 2002 unambiguously ...

Washington, US: The former American military commander in Afghanistan in Afghanistan said that US might regret the withdrawal of its troops in such way as the condition is worsening with every passing hour.   Speaking on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," General David Petraeus on Sunday said, "The situation on the ground has become increasingly dire with each passing week. The on-ground situation in Afghanistan has become dreadful in the last few weeks with large number of Afghan National Security Forces dying in battle with the Taliban. These forces are not sure if someone is coming to their rescue, which has caused uncertainty in the battlefield, CNN reported citing former Gen Petraeus. "I fear we will look back and regret the decision to withdraw," Petraeus said. "Beyond that, ...

Islamabad, Pakistan: The opposition has lashed on the ruling party jamaat-e-Islam and the leader of the country Imran Khan for not able to find a missing person and decrease the poverty in Balochistan region.  Lashing out at Prime Minister Imran Khan, Jamaat-e-Islami emir Senator Sirajul Haq has said that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government has failed to end poverty, resolve missing persons' issue and restore law and order in Balochistan, despite completing three years of its rule. Dawn reported that the Jamaat-e-Islami chief on Thursday said that there was no difference between the Imran Khan-led country's government and previous governments of PPP and PML-N in destroying the economy by taking massive foreign and internal loans. The former senator said that clean drinking w...

LAHORE: Since 2014, foreign engineers in Pakistan had been faced attacks on them. In May 3, 2004, a car bomb in Gwadar had killed three engineers from China, a suicide bomber had killed 11 French engineers in Karachi in 2002. The recent incident took place in Kohistan, which claimed a dozen lives including that of nine Chinese nationals, the Pakistani government said the bus carrying Chinese and Pakistani construction workers plunged into a ravine from a slippery mountainous road The claim raised many a eye-brow on the social media platforms, knowing country’s foes like India have been spewing venom against the US$62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, which is a paradigm shift for the country due to building of network of roads, railways, hydro-power projects and ...