China’s coast guard, which has no publicly available contact details, has yet to comment. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Kuan said it was common for Chinese and Taiwanese tourist boats to accidentally enter the other side’s waters. “Boats like these are notContinue Reading
The government plans to boost medical school admissions by 2,000 starting in the 2025 academic year, with a goal of adding 10,000 doctors by 2035. The current annual student intake is about 3,000. With a population of 52 million, South Korea had 2.6 doctors per 1,000 people as of 2022,Continue Reading
Pakistani politicians loyal to jailed former prime minister Imran Khan will forge an alliance with a little-known political group, his party said Monday (Feb 19), after polls marred by allegations of manipulation returned no clear winner.
Candidates backed by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party won the most seats in this month’s election but were effectively sidelined because they were forced to stand as independents.The army-backed Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) failed to secure a ruling majority but has forged a partnership with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and a handful of smaller parties to form the next government.
However, PTI still hopes to seek a majority by having its candidates join the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), a registered political party whose chairman was the only one from the alliance of Islamic political and religious parties group to win a seat.
“We have reached a consensus that our provincial and national assembly candidates will join Sunni Ittehad Council,” PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan told a news conference. Successful PTI-backed candidates will send their applications to join the SIC this week to the Election Commission of Pakistan, which must approve the alliance.
If the commission signs off on them, the alliance could then be entitled to seats reserved for women and religious minorities that are allocated according to election results.
“After this alliance, PTI will be in a position to form a government in the provinces as well as in the centre,” Omar Ayub Khan, PTI’s candidate for prime minister, told the news conference, referring to the National Assembly.
There have been widespread allegations of vote-rigging and result manipulation after authorities switched off Pakistan’s mobile phone network on election day and the count took more than 24 hours.
A senior bureaucrat announced at a news conference on Saturday that he had helped rig the February 8 election and would hand himself in to police.”We converted the losers into winners, reversing margins of 70,000 votes in 13 national assembly seats,” said Liaqat Ali Chattha, commissioner of the garrison city of Rawalpindi where the powerful military has its headquarters.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a leading advocacy group, said after Chattha’s announcement that the “involvement of the state bureaucracy in rigging in Pakistan is beginning to be exposed”.
Imran Khan’s PTI held nationwide protests against the alleged rigging on Saturday (Feb 17).
A small number of supporters took to the streets in major urban centres, with the largest gathering of around 4,000 people in its stronghold northern city of Peshawar. Police detained senior party member Salman Akram Raja and around a dozen supporters in the central city of Lahore, where they surrounded the party headquarters, but said they had all been released by late afternoon.
NEW DELHI: For nine centuries, Indians prayed at the forest shrine of Baba Haji Rozbih, a revered Sufi saint whose grave is one of the capital Delhi’s oldest Islamic sites. Then, in early February, the Delhi Development Authority reduced the site to rubble, the latest victim of a “demolition programme”Continue Reading
Transport ministry figures show the regions of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, along with the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang have closed 43 sections of road and 623 toll stations, CCTV said on Monday. National weather authorities raised the warning for freezing weather conditions to its second highest level, theContinue Reading
Transport ministry figures show the regions of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, along with the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang have closed 43 sections of road and 623 toll stations, CCTV said on Monday. National weather authorities raised the warning for freezing weather conditions to its second highest level, theContinue Reading
MUMBAI: India’s stock market is reaping the benefits as investors divert billions of dollars away from China, amid its slowing economy, towards the South Asian giant.
The trend of China’s economic slowdown is likely to persist in the coming years, as the country struggles with sagging productivity and a rapidly ageing population, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said earlier this month.
Meanwhile, India’s economic growth, large population, and policy reforms are all factors that are driving cash into its equity markets, according to market analysts.
Potential risks still remain, however, including the outcome of India’s general election this year and the broader geopolitical landscape.
Analysts are widely expecting India’s benchmark Sensex and Nifty indices, which include the country’s largest and most actively traded stocks, to continue rising this year with a double-digit percentage increase.
Sectors across the board are poised to perform well, including those seen as having been overvalued, such as public sector banks and power companies, said analysts.
These could benefit from the government’s budget for the next financial year presented at the start of February, which would increase spending in areas such as infrastructure.
The police warned they could arrest “key instigators” of the work stoppages. The training reforms call for a 65 per cent increase in the number of students admitted to medical schools, starting from 2025. The plan is popular with the public, who experts suggest are tired of long wait timesContinue Reading
POLARISING FIGURE Pheu Thai, a party controlled by the Shinawatra family, is currently in power and critics have complained about Thaksin’s lenient treatment and questioned the severity of his health problems. Thaksin made a dramatic return in August and showed no signs of poor health as he emerged from hisContinue Reading
BEIJING: China offered to support long-time strategic partner Hungary on public security issues, going beyond trade and investment relations, during a rare meeting with Prime Minister Viktor Orban, just as NATO struggles to expand its network in Europe. China hopes to deepen law enforcement and security ties with Hungary asContinue Reading