The Minister of Information and Culture of Afghanistan Abdul Bari Jahani submitted his resignation to President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani. In an online statement posted through his official Facebook account, Minister Jahani said he can not continue to serve as the Information and Culture Minister due to the illness he is suffering from. Jahani thanked President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani for his trust and urged him to approve his resignation. According to Jahani, his resignation letter to…
Posts published in “Day: November 8, 2016”
A Taliban group commander was killed in an explosion triggered by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) planted by the group’s own fighters in northern Kunduz province of Afghanistan. The Ministry of Defense (MoD) said the incident took place in Dasht-e-Archi district, leaving 4 Taliban group members dead, including a commander of the group. MoD further added that the slain Taliban commander has been identified as Tofan who was killed along with three other Taliban fighters.…
A number of Afghan political leaders have moved to broker peace talks between government and the Taliban following secret talks between the two parties in Qatar recently. Sayed Ishaq Gailani, a former MP and leader of the National Solidarity Movement of Afghanistan (NSMA), said that politicians were in contact with the Taliban and there would be further interactions of this sort in future. “We are seeing how to mediate between government and Taliban. The Taliban…
A Taliban commander who joined the peace process in Sar-e-Pul province two months ago, returned to the insurgent group after killing five public uprising members and taking their weapons. According to local security officials the incident happened on Sunday night. “He had relations with the enemy. He killed five public uprising forces,” said Sayed Naqib Darman, head of operations in Sar-e-Pul Police Headquarters. According to the officials, another commander of the Taliban who joined the…
ISLAMABAD: American voters are all set to decide who is a better choice — Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump — for the Oval Office. But for Pakistan, the choice is not between good or bad rather it is a matter of who will be the ‘lesser evil’. Pakistan’s predicament is who should it back to win the US presidential election. This is the crux of what The Express Tribune has gathered in background and on-the-record…
ISLAMABAD: A parliamentary body of the Upper House on Monday recommended to the government to include the Diamer-Bhash Dam, construction of an airport in Gilgit-Baltistan, and an industrial park in projects under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). A committee was constituted to resolve a boundary dispute between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan. Senator Sajid Mir chaired the committee. Headed by Ministry of Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan affairs secretary, the committee will submit its report within 15…
ISLAMABAD: The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government on Monday withdrew its objections to the alignment of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) western route, facilitating the final approval of the 285km-long route by the Executive Committee of National Economic Council (ECNEC). In April this year, ECNEC had conditionally approved the western route costing Rs124.2 billion after Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa objected to it and claimed that it was in violation of the agreement struck at the All Parties Conference (APC) held in…
HONG KONG — In the nearly two decades since Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule, the Communist government in Beijing has tolerated all manner of activity in the city that it generally finds intolerable on the mainland: annual vigils for those killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre, newspapers publishing scurrilous gossip about China’s leaders, huge demonstrations for free elections. But by deciding to intervene in a local court case and essentially blocking two politicians from…
A key ally of Communist Party anti-corruption tsar Wang Qishan has been appointed the country’s spy master amid a shake-up over graft. Chen Wenqing, 56, was officially named minister of state security by the national legislature on Monday, a position he was widely expected to assume after being anointed the ministry’s party chief last year. Chen started his career as a policeman in Sichuan province and was Wang’s deputy at the Central Commission for Discipline…
Finance Minister Lou Jiwei, who has been struggling in recent years to tackle the country’s huge debt problems, is stepping down as he approaches retirement age. He will be replaced by Xiao Jie, a former tax bureau chief who has previously suggested that the government has room to raise personal taxes. The announcement was made by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) on Monday. Xiao, 59, a deputy secretary general in the…
A weaker yuan exchange rate against the US dollar is not helping China’s export machine – at least not during the past two months. Although the yuan lost about 1.5 per cent against the greenback in October, shipments of Chinese products to overseas markets dropped 7.3 per cent in dollar terms last month compared with a year earlier, following a fall of 10 per cent in September, according to data released by China’s General Administration…