Abandoning Afghanistan peace process for any reason would be a great travesty: PM Khan

Warning the world that a hasty international withdrawal from Afghanistan will be unwise, Prime Minister Imran Khan said abandoning the Afghan peace process for any reason would be "a great travesty".

This was stated by the premier in an opinion piece he wrote for The Washington Post on Saturday wherein he spoke about the casualties of war suffered by Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"With the exception of the resilient Afghans themselves, no people have paid a higher price for the conflict in Afghanistan than the people of Pakistan. Through decades of conflict, Pakistan has dealt with the responsibility of taking care of more than 4 million Afghan refugees," wrote PM Imran.

The prime minister talked about how the war in Afghanistan disrupted Pakistan's economic trajectory and radicalised fringes of the country's society. "The Pakistan I had known growing up in the 1960s and 1970s changed in some deeply unsettling ways," he stated.

PM Imran wrote about how lasting peace in Afghanistan could only be achieved by an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led peace process, adding that the world had learned of how "peace and political stability in Afghanistan could not be imposed from the outside through the use of force".

"The path we have traveled to get here wasn’t easy, but we were able to press on thanks to the courage and flexibility that were on display from all sides. The United States and its allies facilitated the prisoner exchange between Kabul and the Taliban. The government of Afghanistan and the Taliban responded to the Afghan people’s yearning for peace," he stated, referring to Pakistan's efforts for the peace process.

He warned that the intra-Afghan peace talks — that aim to find a political solution to the existing conflict — is likely to be even more difficult but the world should not give up on prospects of peace in Afghanistan.

PM Imran stated categorically that "a bloodless deadlock on the negotiating table is infinitely better than a bloody stalemate on the battlefield", calling on all parties who have invested in peace in Afghanistan to resist the temptation for settling unrealistic timelines.

Referring to India, the prime minister warned the world that it should be careful of regional spoilers "who are not invested in peace and see instability in Afghanistan as advantageous for their own geopolitical ends".

He said that like the US, Pakistan did not want to see Islamabad turn into a sanctuary for international terrorists ever again. He stated that attacks by terrorists had been launched from Afghanistan that targeted Pakistan, calling on Kabul to take measures to ensure it does not happen again.

"Since 9/11, more than 80,000 Pakistani security personnel and civilians have laid down their lives in perhaps the largest and most successful fight against terrorism. But Pakistan continues to be the target of attacks launched by externally enabled terrorist groups based in Afghanistan.

"These terrorist groups pose a clear and present danger to global peace. We hope the Afghan government will take measures to control ungoverned spaces inside its territory from where terrorist groups are able to plan and carry out attacks against the Afghan people, the international coalition forces stationed in Afghanistan, and other countries in the region, including Pakistan. Like the United States, we do not want the blood and treasure we have shed in the war against terrorism to be in vain," he wrote.

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WHO warns two million virus deaths possible

Coronavirus deaths could more than double to two million without collective action against the pandemic, the World Health Organisation has warned, as Australia’s prime minister urged any nation that develops a vaccine to share it with the world.

The number of cases worldwide has soared past 32 million, with deaths approaching one million, the global economy devastated, and major cultural and sports events disrupted.

But despite the pandemic showing no signs of slowing, Japan’s new prime minister Yoshihide Suga struck a defiant note on Friday, saying his country was determined to hold the postponed Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

“One million is a terrible number and we need to reflect on that before we start considering a second million,” the WHO’s emergencies director Michael Ryan told reporters on Friday when asked how high the death toll could go.

“Are we prepared collectively to do what it takes to avoid that number?

“If we don’t take those actions... yes, we will be looking at that number and sadly much higher.”

The pandemic has spurred worldwide efforts to develop a vaccine to help defeat Covid-19, as well as efforts to try to ensure fair and widespread distribution.

“Whoever finds the vaccine must share it... This is a global responsibility and it’s a moral responsibility,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday in a message to the virtual UN General Assembly.

“Some might see short-term advantage or even profit, but I assure you... humanity will have a very long memory and be a very, very severe judge.”

Without a vaccine or effective treatment, social distancing and lockdowns remain among the few options for governments to curb the spread of the virus, making large gatherings like spectator sports and music concerts highly risky.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics, postponed for a year, were the biggest such casualty, and Japan’s new leader vowed to hold them in 2021.

“In the summer of next year, Japan is determined to host the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games as proof that humanity has defeated the pandemic,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told the United Nations General Assembly in a video message.

But with continued spikes worldwide, there are concerns about whether the event will be possible even next year if the pandemic is not under control.

In a further illustration of the impact of the virus, authorities in Brazil — which has the world’s second-highest death toll — indefinitely postponed Rio de Janeiro’s carnival.

And just 1,000 fans a day are being allowed at the French Open, with organisers of one of the world’s biggest tennis events saying it means “millions of euros up in smoke”.

The WHO warning came as the United States, the hardest-hit nation in the world, crossed seven million cases — more than a fifth of the global total despite accounting for only four per cent of the world population.

Many European nations, meanwhile, are struggling with new waves of infections.

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Paris cleaver attack suspect says wanted to target Charlie Hebdo

A Pakistan-born teenager has admitted to stabbing two people with a meat cleaver outside the former Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine, investigators said on Saturday, with nine people now detained.

The 18-year-old said he wanted to avenge the republication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) by the satirical weekly, which in January 2015 was also targeted by gunmen.

The attack on Friday came three weeks into a trial in Paris of suspected accomplices in the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo, a policewoman and a Jewish supermarket that left 17 people dead.

While the man is believed to have carried out the stabbings alone, eight other people are now also under arrest following two more detentions on Saturday.

The two new individuals arrested were the suspect’s younger brother and another acquaintance, a judicial source said.

The man, who said he was born in Pakistan and is 18, “takes responsibility for his action”, a source close to the investigation said.

The man said during questioning he places his actions “in the context of the republication of cartoons” in Charlie Hebdo on the eve of the trial opening.

The people wounded were employees of prize-winning TV production agency Premieres Lignes, whose offices are in the same block in central Paris that used to house Charlie Hebdo.

However, it is not believed that the two, who had stepped out onto the street for a cigarette break, were specifically targeted.

The man mistakenly believed Charlie Hebdo's offices were still in that building and wanted to attack journalists from the magazine, a source close to the inquiry said, confirming information first published in the Le Parisien newspaper.

Charlie Hebdo moved offices after the 2015 attack and its current address is kept secret for security reasons. The two victims were badly wounded but their lives are not in danger.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the attack was “clearly an act of Islamist terrorism”. Anti-terror prosecutors have opened an investigation.

Five of the individuals detained were in an apartment in Pantin in the northern Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, the last presumed address of the suspected attacker.

Police also released another man who was close to the scene of the attack but who was confirmed to have been a witness who had “chased the assailant”, a judicial source said.

The young man, who arrived from Pakistan three years ago, was believed to have last lived in a small flat in a four-storey building in the district.

“He was very polite. I often saw him sitting on the landing with his telephone. He helped me carry my groceries,” said one neighbour, who identified herself as Josiane. Prime Minister Jean Castex on Saturday hailed the “efficiency” of the security forces following the attack during a visit to police headquarters, and said the “enemies of the Republic will never win”.President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government has in recent weeks begun using increasingly tough rhetoric on domestic security issues in what analysts see as a shift to the right.

The interior minister admitted that the risk of an attack around the former offices had been “underestimated” and said he had asked for an explanation from the police.

“There was an attack, when there was an attack, it is obvious that we could have done better”, he said.

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Trump picks Amy Barrett as Ruth Ginsburg's successor as he moves to tilt US Supreme Court rightward

United States President Donald Trump on Saturday nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, and she pledged to become a justice in the mold of the late staunch conservative Antonin Scalia, setting another milestone in Trump’s rightward shift of the top US judicial body.

Trump’s announcement during a flag-festooned White House Rose Garden ceremony — with Barrett, 48, by his side and her seven children on hand — sets off a scramble by Senate Republicans to confirm her as the president has requested before Election Day in five and a half weeks, when he will be seeking a second term in office.

If confirmed by the Senate to replace liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died at age 87 on September 18, Barrett would become the fifth woman ever to serve on the court and would push its conservative majority to a commanding 6-3.

Like Trump’s two other appointees, Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, Barrett is young enough that she could serve for decades in the lifetime job, leaving a lasting conservative imprint. Barrett is the youngest Supreme Court nominee since conservative Clarence Thomas, who was 43 in 1991.

Scalia, who died in 2016, was one of the most influential conservative justices in recent history. Barrett previously served as a clerk for Scalia on the high court and described him as her mentor, citing his “incalculable influence” on her life.

“His judicial philosophy is mine too: a judge must apply the law as written. Judges are not policymakers,” Barrett said.

On the court, Scalia voted to curb abortion rights, dissented when the court legalised gay marriage — he called it a “judicial putsch” — and backed broad gun rights, among other positions.

With Trump’s fellow Republicans holding a 53-47 Senate majority, confirmation appears certain, although Democrats may try to make it as difficult as possible.

An emboldened Supreme Court conservative majority could shift the US to the right on hot-button issues by, among other things, curbing abortion rights, expanding religious rights, striking down gun control laws, halting the expansion of LGBT rights, and endorsing new restrictions on voting rights.

 

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US restricts exports to China’s top chipmaker

The United States has imposed restrictions on exports to China’s biggest chip maker SMIC after concluding there is an “unacceptable risk” equipment supplied to it could be used for military purposes.

Suppliers of certain equipment to Semiconductor Manufacturing Intern­ational Corporation will now have to apply for individual export licenses, according to a letter from the Commerce Department dated Friday and seen by Reuters.

The latest move marks a shift in US policy from earlier this year, when applicants seeking military end user licenses to sell to SMIC were told by the Commerce Department that the licenses weren’t necessary, according to three people familiar with the matter.

SMIC said it had not received any official notice of the restrictions and said it has no ties with the Chinese military.

“SMIC reiterates that it manufactures semiconductors and provides services solely for civilian and commercial end-users and end-uses,” SMIC said.

“The Company has no relationship with the Chinese military and does not manufacture for any military end-users or end-uses.” SMIC is the latest leading Chinese technology company to face US trade restrictions related to national security issues or US foreign policy efforts.

Telecoms giant Huawei Technologies had its access to high-end chips curtailed by its addition to a Commerce Department blacklist known as the entity list.

SMIC’s new designation is not as severe as being blacklisted, which makes it difficult to get any export license approved.

The Pentagon earlier this month, Reuters was first to report, said it was working with other agencies to determine whether to blacklist SMIC for its purported links to the Chinese military.

US companies including Lam Research, KLA Corp and Applied Materials, which supply chipmaking equipment, may now need to get licenses to ship certain goods to SMIC.

It is unclear which suppliers received the letter, but typically once the Commerce Department comes to the conclusion that there is a risk of military use or diversion, it sends that information to the companies.

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security declined on Saturday to comment specifically on SMIC, but said it was “constantly monitoring and assessing any potential threats to US national security and foreign policy interests”.

The administration has increasingly trained its focus on Chinese companies that bolster Beijing’s military. Last month, the United States blacklisted 24 Chinese companies and targeted people it said were part of construction and military actions in the South China Sea, its first such sanctions against Beijing over the disputed strategic waterway.

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LeBron James refutes allegations of encouraging violence towards police

Basketball star LeBron James recently shut down allegations of 'encouraging violence' of any kind towards the police or other law enforcement agencies, in latest statement to a media outlet.

For the unversed, LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva had called out American basketball player LeBron James for allegedly ‘encouraging violence’ towards the police.

While speaking on KABC Radio's The John Philips Show, Villanueva had called out the basketball player and addressed him to match a reward of over $100,000 as he said, “I know you care about law enforcement.”

It is only recently that James responded to the alleged allegations per VLAD TV, and was even quoted saying, “I’ve never in my 35 years ever condoned violence. I never have. But I also know what right is right and what wrong is wrong. I grew up in the inner city and the Black community in what we call ‘the hood’ or ‘the ghetto,’ however you want to picture it.”

“I’ve seen a lot of accounts first-hand of Black people being racially profiled because of our color. I’ve seen it throughout my whole life. I’m not saying that all cops are bad. Throughout high school and things of that nature, and I’m around them all the time, and they’re not all bad.”

James concluded his statement by adding that he never set up such a ludicrous reward and, “I have zero response on the sheriff.”

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Centre blaming Sindh to hide its own incompetency: Murad Ali Shah

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, while reacting to Centre's earlier accusations that the provincial government was responsible for the recent gas outages in Karachi, maintained that the federal government is blaming Sindh government to hide its own inefficiency.

While speaking to media after inaugurating the Manora Beach Road on Saturday, CM Murad said he was surprised to know that the federal government was holding Sindh responsible for the crisis.

“The federal government is controlling power and gas generating and distributing companies, and they are responsible for providing uninterrupted power and gas supplies,” he asserted, adding that the main reason for making such allegations was to hide one's own incompetency.

Referring to the newly unveiled Rs1.1 trillion Karachi development package, Shah noted that most of the projects are underway already and are funded by the provincial government.

He said his government is committed to developing the infrastructure, drainage, and the sewerage and mass transit systems of the city on a priority basis.

The metropolis is once again hit hard by the crippling power outages in many parts of the city owing to extremely low gas production at SUI Southern Gas Company (SSGC) fields causing a shortfall of as much as 960-970 mmcfd.

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