Pakistan-India ties will improve after polls in India: Imran Khan

Agencies
March 15, 2019

Islamabad, Mar 15: Pakistan will have better relations with its neighbours including India after the upcoming general elections, Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Thursday, claiming that Islamabad has taken the first step on a new path to peace and progress.

Recently, tensions between India and Pakistan escalated after a suicide bomber of Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed killed 40 CRPF personnel in Jammu and Kashmir''s Pulwama district in February 14.

Mr Khan, who announced visa reforms at a ceremony in Islamabad, said that Pakistan is confident today that it has taken the first step on a new path to peace and progress.

"Pakistan will have better relations with its neighbours - including India after the end of their elections.

"We will have good relations with all our neighbours and a peaceful Pakistan will be a prosperous Pakistan," he said as he announced major visa reforms, including online visa issuance facility, to attract tourists and investors.

The elections in India will begin on April 11 and polling would be held over seven phases through May 19, followed by counting of votes on May 23.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party tweeted that the new e-visa scheme will available to visitors from 175 countries.

"This is the first step to open up the country, the Naya (new) Pakistan," Mr Khan said, adding that it would revive the confidence of 60s when Pakistan was making fast progress

The Prime Minister said that Pakistan would attract religious tourism from all over the world.

"Taxila was the centre of Buddhism. We have discovered a 40ft Buddha - the world''s largest sleeping Buddha - which we have yet to share with the world.

"Sikhs'' holiest places like Nankana Sahib and Kartarpur were also in Pakistan. We also have very old sites for Hinduism in Pakistan, including Katas Raj," Mr Khan said.

He also announced that the next season of the Pakistan Super League will be organised in Pakistan instead of Dubai.

Officials said that initially, the e-visa facility will be available to nationals of Turkey, China, Malaysia, the UK and the UAE and later extended to other 170 countries.

Business visas will be given to 90 countries, while 55 countries will be granted visa-on-arrival.

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News Network
February 10,2020

New Delhi, Feb 10: Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah's sister on Monday moved the Supreme Court to challenge his detention under the Public Safety Act.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the petitioner, mentioned the matter for urgent listing before a bench headed by Justice N V Ramana.

Sibal told the bench that they have filed a habeas corpus petition challenging the detention of Abdullah under the PSA and the matter should be heard this week.

The bench agreed for urgent listing of the matter.

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News Network
April 19,2020

Washington, Apr 19: President Donald Trump has expressed his doubts over the official Chinese figures on the number of deaths in their country due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, claiming that the fatalities were way ahead of the US.

Trump's comments come two days after another 1,300 fatalities were added to the official count in the city of Wuhan, where the outbreak started. The revision puts China's overall death toll to more than 4,600.

"We are not number one; China is number one just so you understand," Trump told reporters at a White House news conference on Saturday. "They are way ahead of us in terms of death. It's not even close."

According to Trump, when highly-developed healthcare systems of the UK, France, Belgium, Italy and Spain had high fatality rates, it was O.33 in China.

The president asserted that the actual number was much more than the official Chinese death toll figures, which he said were "unrealistic".

"You know it, I know it and they know it, but you don't want to report it. Why?" he asked. "You will have to explain that. Someday I will explain it."

He also highlighted that on a per-capita basis, the mortality rate in the US was far lower than other nations of Western Europe.

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Agencies
January 6,2020

The Cambridge Analytica scandal is far from over. New explosive details leaked by a whistleblower shows that the extent of the rot is far deeper than previously thought.

An anonymous Twitter account, @HindsightFiles, has started releasing the documents, apparently on behalf of Brittany Kaiser, a former employee of the now defunct British data analytics and consulting company Cambridge Analytica.

"Democracies around the world are being auctioned to the highest bidder. We release the documents that explain how," reads the biography of the @HindsightFiles.

The document will reveal previously unreleased emails, project plans, case studies, negotiations and more spanning over 60 countries.

"Over the past two years I have given evidence to investigators, journalists and academics to analyse what happened at Cambridge Analytica, and how our data was used to influence democracies around the world. In the name of shedding light on these dark practices, I am releasing documents and emails in full for the public good," Kaiser, who worked with Cambridge Analytica from 2014 to 208, was quoted as saying.

"I do this to strengthen the case for data rights and enforcement of our electoral laws online globally. We should all be seeking more ethical digital future for ourselves and our children," added Kaiser who starred in the Oscar-shortlisted Netflix documentary "The Great Hack".

The details released so far includes links to material on the firm's activities in Malaysia, Kenya, Brazil and Iran, an addition to the John Bolton archive.

Over the next months, more than 100,000 documents relating to work in 68 countries are set to be released, according to a report in The Guardian.

More than one and a half year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal first became public, US regulators last month said that the now-defunct British data analytics and consulting company engaged in deceptive practices to harvest personal information from tens of millions of Facebook users for voter profiling and targeting.

According to Kaiser, the Facebook data scandal was part of a much bigger global operation designed to manipulate people in collaboration with governments, intelligence agencies, commercial companies and political campaigns.

The unpublished documents contain material that suggests the firm collaborated with a political party in Ukraine in 2017 even while under investigation as part of Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, said The Guardian report.

"There are emails between these major Trump donors discussing ways of obscuring the source of their donations through a series of different financial vehicles. These documents expose the entire dark money machinery behind US politics," Kaiser was quoted as saying.

Similar tactics were deployed in other countries that Cambridge Analytica operated in, including Britain, she claimed.

The files released by Kaiser suggest that Cambridge Analytica offered to help United Malays National Organisation (Umno), the party of Malaysia's Former Prime Minister Najib Razak, to influence the voting of 40 parliamentary constituencies in the 14th General Election (GE14) in 2013.

Umno, according to the leaks, requested the company to prepare a proposal to regain 13 seats, The South China Morning Post reported on Saturday.

In 2018, Razak claimed that he had never engaged Cambridge Analytica in any way.

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