RIYADH: A delegation from Saudi Arabia participated on Tuesday in the fifth UN Conference on the least developed countries in Doha.
The King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center team (KSrelief) was headed by assistant supervisor general of planning and development, Aqeel bin Jamaan Al-Ghamdi who took part in
a discussion on “investment in people in the least developed countries,” and another on the sustainable development after the pandemic and the capacity to build.
KSrelief have also organized an event on the sidelines of the conference titled, “international partnerships and external assistance”, with the participation of the Saudi Fund for Development and the Saudi Program for the Development and Reconstruction of Yemen.
Al-Ghamdi presented a brief about Saudi Arabia’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak and the assistance Saudi Arabia offered to international community to mitigate the consequences of the pandemic to countries with vulnerable healthcare systems.
Al-Ghamdi also met representatives of humanitarian and relief organizations participating in the conference.
Throughout the conference, the Kingdom’s delegation is set to take part in a number of plenary sessions and high-level meetings, in addition to hosting as many as three side events.
The Kingdom is a major contributor in providing aid to many of the least developed countries in line with the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
Saudi Arabia ranked first among donor countries in offering official development assistance to low and medium-income countries, with a total of SR26.71 billion ($7.12 billion), revealed Supervisor General of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center, Abdullah Al-Rabeeah, citing data published by Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
KSrelief participates in 5th UN Conference on Least Developed Countries
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KSrelief participates in 5th UN Conference on Least Developed Countries
- Kingdom’s delegation is set to take part in a number of plenary sessions and high-level meetings, in addition to hosting as many as three side events
Premature blast kills suicide bomber in northwest Pakistan, harms no one else — police
- Suicide bomber riding a motorcycle set off an explosive device prematurely on a deserted road in Charsadda district
- Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, often target security forces in KP province with suicide bombings
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: A suicide bomber riding a motorcycle set off an explosive device prematurely on a deserted road in northwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing himself but harming no one else, police said.
Local police official Masood Khan said the blast happened in Charsadda district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, where Pakistani Taliban and other insurgents often target security forces.
Khan said the intended target was unclear and bomb disposal experts and police were still investigating whether the man was wearing the explosives or they were attached to his motorcycle.
The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, often target security forces in the province with suicide bombings and other violence.
TTP are separate from the Afghan Taliban but have been emboldened by the group’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021.
20 million Pakistanis daily attempt to access porn sites, telecoms authority says
- Latest figures from PTA come as it introduced a new portal for the registration of VPNs earlier this week
- Digital experts say government trying to block vital tools that allow users to bypass restrictions amid digital crackdowns
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said on Thursday around 20 million Pakistanis were daily attempting to access pornographic websites, which authorities have banned since 2011.
In November 2011, the PTA announced it was in the process of banning the 1,000 most-frequented porn websites in Pakistan. In 2016, the government ordered Internet Service Providers to block more than 400,000 websites which contained pornographic content, while in 2019, around 800,000 additional porn sites were banned by the PTA.
“There are approximately 20 million daily attempts from within the country to access pornographic websites which are blocked at the international gateway,” the PTA statement said.
“However, users bypass restrictions via VPNs and access porn contents. PTA remains fully committed to curbing this issue, taking all necessary measures to block this content effectively.
“So far PTA has blocked a total of 100,183 blasphemous URLs and 844,008 pornographic websites.”
The latest figures from the PTA come as it introduced a new portal for the registration of VPNs on Tuesday, a move that is being widely seen as an attempt by the government to block vital tools that allow users to bypass government restrictions amid a wave of digital crackdowns.
Pakistan has already blocked access to social media platform X since the February general elections, with the government saying the blocking was to stop anti-state activities and due to a failure by X to adhere to local Pakistani laws. Rights activists say the blocking is designed to stifle critical voices and democratic accountability in the country, which the government denies.
VPN users in Pakistan reported significant disruptions to services last weekend (Nov. 9-10), with issues relating to connectivity and restricted access. Downdetector reported disruption to TunnelBear VPN and VPN Unlimited but none of the best VPNs appeared to be affected.
The Proton VPN Observatory, run by the developers of one of the most secure VPNs, Proton, reported a spike in VPN usage in Pakistan on Nov. 9 and recorded a 350 percent increase in VPN sign-ups in Pakistan over Nov. 9-10.
There are also reports Pakistan is imposing a national firewall, which the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA) has said could cost the economy up to $300 million. In August, the Pakistan Business Council (PBC) warned that frequent Internet disruptions and low speeds caused by poor implementation of the firewall had led many multinational companies to consider relocating their offices out of Pakistan, with some having “already done so.”
Digital rights activists say Islamabad is implementing the Internet firewall to monitor and regulate content and social media platforms, but the government denies the firewall is meant for censorship purposes.
1 million migrants in the US rely on temporary protections that Trump could target
- People from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and recently Lebanon, are currently receiving such relief
- But President-elect Donald Trump promised mass deportations and suggested he would scale back the use of Temporary Protected Status
NEW YORK: Maribel Hidalgo fled her native Venezuela a year ago with a 1-year-old son, trudging for days through Panama’s Darien Gap, then riding the rails across Mexico to the United States.
They were living in the US when the Biden administration announced Venezuelans would be offered Temporary Protected Status, which allows people already in the United States to stay and work legally if their homelands are deemed unsafe. People from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and recently Lebanon, are currently receiving such relief.
But President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have promised mass deportations and suggested they would scale back the use of TPS that covers more than 1 million immigrants. They have highlighted unfounded claims that Haitians who live and work legally in Springfield, Ohio, as TPS holders were eating their neighbors’ pets. Trump also amplified disputed claims made by the mayor of Aurora, Colorado, about Venezuelan gangs taking over an apartment complex.
“What Donald Trump has proposed doing is we’re going to stop doing mass parole,” Vance said at an Arizona rally in October, mentioning a separate immigration status called humanitarian parole that is also at risk. “We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status.”
Hidalgo wept as she discussed her plight with a reporter as her son, now 2, slept in a stroller outside the New York migrant hotel where they live. At least 7.7 million people have fled political violence and economic turmoil in Venezuela in one of the biggest displacements worldwide.
“My only hope was TPS,” Hidalgo said. “My worry, for example, is that after everything I suffered with my son so that I could make it to this country, that they send me back again.”
Venezuelans along with Haitians and Salvadorans are the largest group of TPS beneficiaries and have the most at stake.
Haiti’s international airport shut down this week after gangs opened fire at a commercial flight landing in Port-Au-Prince while a new interim prime minister was sworn in. The Federal Aviation Administration barred US airlines from landing there for 30 days.
“It’s creating a lot of anxiety,” said Vania André, editor-in-chief for The Haitian Times, an online newspaper covering the Haitian diaspora. “Sending thousands of people back to Haiti is not an option. The country is not equipped to handle the widespread gang violence already and cannot absorb all those people.”
Designations by the Homeland Security secretary offer relief for up to 18 months but are extended in many cases. The designation for El Salvador ends in March. Designations for Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela end in April. Others expire later.
Federal regulations say a designation can be terminated before it expires, but that has never happened, and it requires 60 days’ notice.
TPS is similar to the lesser-known Deferred Enforcement Departure Program that Trump used to reward Venezuelan exile supporters as his first presidency was ending, shielding 145,000 from deportation for 18 months.
Attorney Ahilan T. Arulanantham, who successfully challenged Trump’s earlier efforts to allow TPS designations for several countries to expire, doesn’t doubt the president-elect will try again.
“It’s possible that some people in his administration will recognize that stripping employment authorization for more than a million people, many of whom have lived in this country for decades, is not good policy” and economically disastrous, said Arulanantham, who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, and helps direct its Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “But nothing in Trump’s history suggests that they would care about such considerations.”
Courts blocked designations from expiring for Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador until well into President Joe Biden’s term. Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas then renewed them.
Arulanantham said he “absolutely” could see another legal challenge, depending on what the Trump administration does.
Congress established TPS in 1990, when civil war was raging in El Salvador. Members were alarmed to learn some Salvadorans were tortured and executed after being deported from the US Other designations protected people during wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kuwait, from genocidal violence in Rwanda, and after volcanic eruptions in Montserrat, a British territory in the Caribbean, in 1995 and 1997.
A designation is not a pathway to US permanent residence or citizenship, but applicants can try to change their status through other immigration processes.
Advocates are pressing the White House for a new TPS designation for Nicaraguans before Biden leaves office. Less than 3,000 are still covered by the temporary protections issued in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch battered the country. People who fled much later under oppression from President Daniel Ortega’s government don’t enjoy the same protection from deportation.
“It’s a moral obligation” for the Biden administration, said Maria Bilbao, of the American Friends Service Committee.
Elena, a 46-year-old Nicaraguan who has lived in the United States illegally for 25 years, hopes Biden moves quickly.
“He should do it now,” said Elena, who lives Florida and insisted only her first name be used because she fears deportation. “Not in January. Not in December. Now.”
India’s toxic smog cuts off visibility in several areas
- Delhi pollution ranked in the ‘severe’ category for the second day in a row
- Pollution in New Delhi is likely to stay in the ‘severe’ category on Friday as well
NEW DELHI: Toxic smog blanketed northern India on Thursday, becoming too thick to see through in several places, as high levels of pollution combined with humidity, low wind speed, and a drop in temperature, officials said.
The city of Lahore in neighboring Pakistan ranked as the world’s most polluted in winter’s annual scourge across the region, worsened by dust, emissions, and smoke from fires burnt illegally in India’s farming states of Punjab and Haryana.
However, operations at New Delhi’s international airport were not affected by the smog, which weather officials expect to scatter during the day as breezes pick up.
Visibility remained at 300 m (980 ft), the airport operator, Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) said, while some airlines warned flights could be affected.
“Winter fog may impact flights” with Delhi, the city of Amritsar in Punjab, where authorities said visibility was zero, and the temple city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, IndiGo said in a message on X.
New Delhi’s international airport diverted some flights on Wednesday.
The minimum temperature in Delhi fell to 16.1°Celsius (61°F) on Thursday from 17°C the previous day, weather officials said.
Its pollution ranked in the ‘severe’ category for the second day in a row, with a score of 430 on an index of air quality maintained by the top pollution panel that rates a score of zero to 50 as ‘good’.
Pollution in New Delhi is likely to stay in the ‘severe’ category on Friday as well, the earth sciences ministry said, worsening to ‘very poor’ later, or an index score in the range of 300 to 400.
The number of farm fires to clear fields of paddy stubble in preparation for the planting of wheat in north India has risen steadily this week to almost 2,300 on Wednesday from 1,200 on Monday, the ministry’s website showed.
In Pakistan, Lahore, the capital of the eastern province of Punjab, was rated the world’s most polluted city on Thursday, in live rankings kept by Swiss group IQAir. Authorities there have also battled hazardous air this month.
The province has already shut schools, halted some building work, banned most outdoor activity, and ordered early closures of some businesses in efforts to combat the problem.
Pakistan rover to join China’s Chang’E 8 mission to explore lunar surface in 2028
- Chang’E 8 mission is a robotic exploration of the lunar south pole, known for its challenging terrain, by China in 2028
- Pakistan’s rover will conduct scientific experiments such as lunar soil study and conduct tests for human presence
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s national space agency announced this week its rover will join China’s Chang’E 8 mission to explore the moon’s surface in 2028, describing the development as a “significant milestone” for the South Asian country.
The Chang’E 8 mission is a robotic exploration of the lunar south pole by China, expected to launch in 2028. The Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO), the country’s space program, said its rover will land on the lunar south pole in 2028 as part of the Chang’ E 8 mission. The south pole of the moon is known for its challenging terrain and potential scientific discoveries.
In May, Pakistan launched its first lunar satellite aboard China’s Chang’e-6 probe, which was tasked with landing on the far side of the moon that perpetually faces away from the Earth. China was the first country to make such an ambitious attempt.
“SUPARCO’s rover, with an approximate weight of 35 kilograms, will join China’s Chang’E 8 mission, which is part of the larger International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project,” SUPARCO said in a statement on Wednesday.
“This collaboration marks a significant milestone for Pakistan’s space program, as SUPARCO’s indigenous rover will be part of the mission to explore the lunar surface.”
SUPARCO said the mission would involve scientific experiments such as lunar soil study, lunar surface mapping and testing new technologies for human presence on the moon. It highlighted that the rover, equipped with state-of-the-art scientific instruments, would play a pivotal role in collecting data.
“This collaboration with China highlights the strong bilateral relations between the two countries and their shared vision for space exploration,” it concluded.