Daily Current Affairs

Pakistan’s weak trade diplomacy has pushed the current account deficit to over $12 billion A balance of payments crisis is brewing in Pakistan as data suggests that the current account deficit is over USD 12 billion. This is not being helped by the trends in merchandise exports and imports. During the last fiscal year, the annual change in exports of …

DIBIS, Iraq — The prisoners were taken to a waiting room in groups of four, and were told to stand facing the concrete wall, their noses almost touching it, their hands bound behind their backs. More than a thousand prisoners determined to be Islamic State fighters passed through that room last week after they fled their crumbling Iraqi stronghold of …

Reasons for new infections, include the lack of political will and the stigma attached to the disease. Resurgence of HIV in Pakistan In October 2016, it was reported that more than 50 patients on renal dialysis at the Chandka Medical College Hospital (CMCH) in Larkana had contracted the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The Journal of Pakistan Medical Association put the …

Among the many worrying outcomes of the recent German elections was the further collapse of the main center-left party, the Social Democrats, which received only 20.5 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II. Across Europe, social democratic or center-left parties are in decline. In elections this year in France and the Netherlands, the socialist and labor …

In Pakistan’s agro-based economy, where agricultural production depends largely on irrigated areas, watersheds and their management can have significant positive impact on socio-economic growth. Over the years, water disputes with neighbouring India, coupled with climate change vagaries have painted a bleak picture for the long-term availability of water in the country. Add our current profligacy and the growing pollution of …

A new, upgraded cross-border fibre optic cable will address multiple challenges faced by China and Pakistan. KARACHI: A radical overhaul of Pakistan’s communications framework appears to be on the cards — or at least that is what Beijing and Islamabad have envisioned under their Long Term Plan (LTP) for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. A closer examination of the LTP document …

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump spoke harshly about Pakistan; but he has not yet imposed sanctions, as has been the case with Iran, nor threatened to “totally destroy” it, like North Korea. Pakistani diplomats believe there is room to maintain a working if not a cosy relationship with Washington. That remains to be seen. Islamabad disagrees with the ‘new’ US strategy …

BERLIN — Angela Merkel’s re-election as chancellor of Germany was supposed to be the ceremonial capstone of a year in which Europe did better than anticipated in holding off a populist surge, especially after the new French president, Emmanuel Macron, won so decisively over the National Front of Marine Le Pen. Instead, the election results on Sunday showed that the …

The tragedy of American foreign policy is seen when the intention to improve human rights leads to war and chaos. The nineteenth-century Germans focused so much on philosophy partly in order not to compete with the protean genius of Goethe, who had dominated all the other literary genres in Germany for so long. And so we have Hegel, Nietzsche and …

PAKISTAN has decided to opt for a paradigm shift in its foreign policy. It has also for the first time wisely used its strategic location for deriving long-term economic benefits for the people of this country, particularly in the face of the heightened risk of shrinking foreign capital flows from Western bilateral or multilateral sources. CPEC should be the beginning …