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Posts published in “Day: November 16, 2016

COAS Gen Raheel to visit Waziristan today: report in Pakistan Today, Nov 15, 2016

Peshawar:  Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif Tuesday will visit South and North Waziristan  at the invitation of local tribes. During his visit, the army chief will inaugurate important development projects in Waziristan. The operation was launched on 15 June 2014 in North Waziristan along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as a renewed effort against militancy in the wake of the 8 June attack on Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, for which the TTP and the…

Afghans return deadline may be extended: by KALBE ALI in Dawn, November 15th, 2016

ISLAMABAD: The deadline for the repatriation of Afghan nationals will probably be extended till 2018, as political parties on both sides of the ideological spectrum have increased pressure on the government in this regard. The decision was taken on Monday at an in-camera conference of parliamentary parties, chaired by Federal Minister for States and Frontier Regions (Safron) Lt Gen (retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch. The participants in the meeting, however, decided that a new date for…

Ashraf Ghani wants Taliban chief on UN Sanctions List

KABUL: Afgan President Ashraf Ghani on Monday suggested that the UN Security Council should include the supreme leader of the Taliban Mulla Haibatullah Akhundzada and other terrorists to the sanctions list. During a meeting with the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee delegation, Ghani also insisted on international talks to help curb the financial resources of the militants which he believes are mainly guaranteed through criminal economic issues, specifically with the drug trafficking. He said the…

With Odes to Military March, China Puts Nationalism Into Overdrive By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ in The NY Times, Nov 15, 2016

BEIJING — It took all of five minutes for Wang Lei, a gruff veteran of the People’s Liberation Army, to start humming and stomping his feet. The curtain had just risen on “The Long March,” a new opera celebrating the early days of the Chinese Communist Party, and a rifle-toting chorus of performers dressed as soldiers was rushing onstage at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing. “We come from different places,” they…

China’s Communist Youth League told to limit membership to elite pupils By Zhuang Pinghui in The South China Morning Post, Nov 14, 2016

A one-time launch pad for ­Communist Party rising stars has been told to rein in secondary school student membership as part of a sweeping overhaul of its operations. Over the next three to five years, the Communist Youth League, which helped launch the political careers of former president Hu Jintao and Premier Li Keqiang, will cap membership at 30 per cent of final-year junior high school pupils and 60 per cent of high school pupils.…

Family of Chinese student forced to give nude selfies to loan sharks have to sell home to pay off her debts By Jane Li in The South China Morning Post, Nov 15, 2016

A father has had to sell the family home to pay off huge online loans run up by his daughter at college in eastern China, according to a news website report. Some loan sharks made the young woman give them nude pictures of herself as a form of insurance to make sure the loans were paid off and have intimidated her and her family, the news website Youth.cn reported. Some of the pictures of the…

How a Shanghai white-collar worker is joining frantic scramble to shift cash overseas as yuan hits seven-year low By Maggie Zhang in SCMP, Nov 15, 2016

Simius Zhang, a white-collar office worker in Shanghai, is determined to safeguard his family assets as China’s currency weakens. Believing the yuan will continue to depreciate in the coming years, Zhang is maximising every possible channel to move his wealth into assets denominated in other currencies. When China UnionPay, the state-backed bank card issuer, banned the use of its products issued on the mainland to buy investment-grade insurance policies in Hong Kong – the latest…

China introduces emergency plan for local gov’t debt risks Xinhua report in Global Times, Nov 15, 2016

Following rising concern over local government debt, China floated a four-grade emergency plan Monday that could mean “fiscal re-balancing.” With Grade I being the most serious, classification involves the nature and impact of any incident, according to the State Council announcement. The city and county governments will fiscally re-balance if their annual interest payment on general debt is 10 percent higher than its public spending budget, or if interest on special debts is 10 percent…

Aircraft carrier the Liaoning ready for battle at any time: senior officer By Yang Sheng and Guo Yuandan in Globaltimes, Published: 2016/11/14

China’s first aircraft carrier the Liaoning recently left a shipyard in Qingdao, East China’s Shandong Province to start a new training mission, with the political commissar of the carrier saying it is constantly prepared for war. Li Dongyou, the political commissar of the Liaoning, told the Global Times that “As a military force, we are always prepared for war and our combat capacity also needs to be tested by war. At this moment, we are…

Fears for Gulen-inspired Turkish schools in Pakistan grow : report in Daily Times, 15-Nov-16

ISLAMABAD: As Pakistan welcomes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with grandeur on his upcoming visit, officials in Islamabad are perplexed at the way the host country is being pressurised to expel more than 100 Turkish teachers from Pak-Turk schools across the country. They are to be replaced with people from Maarif Foundation- a radical state-run subsidiary of the Turkish government. Since the failed military coup in July this year, President Erdogan’s government launched a massive…

India’s bid to join NSG failed : by Mohammad Jamil in daily times, 15-Nov-16

The writer is a freelance columnist. India’s ambitious bid to become the member of the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) failed on 11th November, as not only China but at least seven other countries also blocked consensus at the elite group, which controls transfer of nuclear technology in the world. Indian media considered it a major setback to India, though in the light of China’s stance it was a foregone conclusion that India would not…