Author: Theph

In another reduction of fuel prices, the government on Wednesday cut the price of petrol by Rs3 per litre and that of high-speed diesel (HSD) by Rs7.

Following the revision, petrol will retail at Rs335 per litre, while HSD will cost Rs364 on Nov 12 (Thursday), according to a notification by the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra).

The government continues to levy Rs114 per litre in taxes and duties on petrol and Rs100 per litre on diesel.

Under an arrangement announced on Nov 2, for 30 days, oil refineries will contribute to the petroleum levy by bearing a cumulative impact of Rs15 billion, according to the government. This allows a Rs14.71 reduction in the petrol price at the consumer end.

On Sept 17, the government rolled out the Prime Minister’s Fuel Relief Scheme across the country to ease the public’s burden amid rising fuel prices due to the Middle East situation.

The subsidy scheme applies to owners of motorcycles, rickshaws and vehicles of up to 800cc.

The government and Jamaat-i-Islami held another round of negotiations today to formulate a way forward on relief in petroleum prices.

Rise in fuel prices

The price of HSD has come down from a peak of Rs520.35 recorded on April 3. Its price had started rising from Rs281 per litre after the US-Iran war broke out on Feb 28.

The petrol price had peaked at Rs458.41 on April 3 after beginning its upward trajectory from Rs266 in the first week of March.

Meanwhile, the government has reintroduced a raft of austerity measures in response to rising fuel prices amid the ongoing Middle East conflict. Under these measures, markets are required to close by 9pm, and fuel allocations for official vehicles have been cut by 50pc for three months.

Since July 17, the government has been revising fuel prices on a near-daily basis due to fluctuations in international market prices following renewed hostilities between Iran and the US.

The petroleum minister stated that the cabinet and the prime minister had decided to give Ogra the responsibility of deciding fuel prices on a daily basis based on international market trends.

Prior to this, the government had been announcing weekly revisions to fuel prices since early March, alongside measures for the conservation of fuel amid possible oil supply disruptions due to the conflict. The federal government had also announced targeted relief measures in April to provide subsidised fuel.

Petrol is mainly used in private transport, small vehicles, rickshaws and two-wheelers, and changes in its price affect the middle and lower-middle classes.

Similarly, changes in diesel prices also impact the public at large, as it is mainly used in the heavy transport sector, power plants and large generators.

Petrol and HSD are the major revenue earners, with monthly sales of about 700,000 to 800,000 tonnes, compared to just 10,000 tonnes of monthly demand for kerosene.

Source: dawn

UK police were questioning on Wednesday a senior American soldier assigned to Nato and suspected of spying for Russia, after his arrest amid a joint investigation with the US military and law enforcement.

The espionage case, the latest involving suspected Kremlin agents in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, comes with tensions heightened between Moscow and various European capitals after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

It also follows recent security scares at two British air force bases hosting the US military, which officials have accused Iran of being behind. Tehran has denied the allegations.

UK Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) have said the 41-year-old American soldier was detained near Gloucester, southwest England, on suspicion of violating national security laws and taken to a London police station.

Later on Tuesday, a senior Nato military official confirmed the soldier was assigned to its Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), the alliance’s 20-nation, high-readiness force led by the British Army.

Based at Imjin Barracks near Gloucester, it can deploy at short notice anywhere in Europe or globally under the direct operational command of Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

Imjin is also just a few miles from the UK’s sensitive GCHQ intelligence, security and cyber agency headquarters.

Probe ‘ongoing’

Vicki Evans, CTP’s senior national coordinator, said the “significant” arrest and investigation followed close collaboration between UK and US authorities.

“The allegations are serious and our investigation is very much ongoing,” she said in a statement late Tuesday.

US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Kash Patel thanked British authorities — including the country’s domestic spy agency, MI5 — and their American counterparts “for their outstanding work”.

“This important arrest involves allegations of espionage, which is of the utmost concern to the United States and our allies,” he said in a statement.

Police arrested the US soldier under two sections of the UK’s national security laws, one relating to obtaining or disclosing protected information and the other to assisting a foreign intelligence service.

The law allows them to hold him without charge for up to 14 days.

Police said “the country to which the allegations relate is Russia”, adding officers were carrying out searches at two locations in Gloucestershire.

But asked about the case, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday: “This arrest has nothing to do with us. We do not know what it is connected with.”

‘Sobering’

Sean Stinchon, the commanding general of US Army Counterintelligence Command, said the arrested person was a “senior soldier, entrusted with sensitive information”.

He called it a “sobering reminder that insider threats are real and persistent”.

The UK-US probe is not linked to any other ongoing investigations, the police statement said.

Western countries have for years accused the Kremlin of espionage within their borders, as well as masterminding a string of incidents to undermine support for Ukraine as it battles Russia’s invasion.

In September, a British man appeared in a London court over allegations that he was preparing to sabotage a drone factory and drone manufacturing sites on behalf of Russian military intelligence.

Last year, a 66-year-old British man was jailed for seven years for his attempts to spy for Russia.

Beyond Britain, a number of European countries have made similar arrests, while Russia has also detained individuals it has claimed are spies.

On Wednesday, Russian security services said two “agents” working for Polish intelligence had been arrested in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Poland and Lithuania.

It followed Poland — a key supporter of neighbouring Ukraine in its war — announcing last week that it had arrested six people suspected of spying for Moscow and supplying its military.

Source: dawn

United States envoys will separately meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday as they seek to seize “openings” from two days of talks in Abu Dhabi on ending the Ukraine war.

Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will travel first to Moscow to meet the Russian president, before flying to Dublin — where Zelensky will attend European meetings — to debrief the Ukrainian leader.

The countries agreed in Abu Dhabi to a major prisoner exchange — the “biggest” ever, according to Kushner — though no side gave any figures.

But the talks — the first since February, when the US war in Iran halted diplomacy — also revealed deep splits over the role Europe should play in future talks.

All sides talked up progress and said talks would continue, though Ukraine’s top negotiator Rustem Umerov said “significant differences remain”.

Kushner said the meeting with Putin would “go over what was discussed today and try to make more progress on some of the issues that we discussed because we see some openings and some opportunities”.

With Zelensky, the pair will “further explore some of the ideas that we came up with here today”.

Umerov said that there was “still a lot of difficult work ahead, but there are opportunities to continue the negotiation process”.

Russia’s delegation chief Vladimir Medinsky told reporters the “discussion will certainly continue”.

But he questioned including Europe in the talks.

“We don’t really understand what there is to talk about with them. We have not received a single peace initiative, not one concrete proposal from the European countries,” he said.

Medinsky later told Russian TV that Moscow’s aim is a “new, modern Yalta and Potsdam” — referring to the 1945 conferences that saw Western leaders divide Europe with the USSR’s Joseph Stalin.

Ukraine has warned against just that and has called for more involvement from its key European backers.

Kushner said seeking ways to “get the Europeans added to the format” would be on the agenda with Putin.

Officials from Britain, France, Germany and Italy, as well as Nato and the European Union, travelled to Abu Dhabi for meetings on the sidelines.

Five years of war

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed since Russia invaded in February 2022, in what has become Europe’s worst conflict since World War II.

Millions more have fled the fighting in eastern and southern Ukraine, large swathes of which have been destroyed by relentless aerial bombardments.

Russia is demanding Ukraine withdraw from parts of eastern Ukraine it still controls and wants a sweeping deal on “Europe’s security architecture” as part of any agreement to halt the war.

That is widely seen as a reference to Moscow’s long-standing demands to push back the Nato military alliance in eastern Europe and end Western military support to Kyiv.

Kyiv says a ceasefire must come before any discussions on territory and has called for a direct meeting between Zelensky and Putin to discuss the biggest issues.

Putin has ruled that out. The Kremlin has invited Zelensky to Moscow if he wants to meet the ex-KGB spy.

Zelensky’s aide Kyrylo Budanov, who took part in the Abu Dhabi talks, said negotiations were “not easy” and that Ukraine’s main goal was to “achieve a just and lasting peace as soon as possible”.

European security

Kushner said the talks had helped, but declined to say on what issues the two sides might be able to agree.

“Some areas we see places where we can find compromises, others we need to have more discussions, but I think this was a good first step,” he told reporters.

He also urged Europe to “identify one person to speak on their behalf” in the negotiations.

Europe has been rattled by US President Donald Trump’s proposal for a deal with Russia on rewriting European post-war security, worrying that Washington will force Kyiv to accept a peace that heavily rewards Moscow.

Kushner on Tuesday said the US hoped to “create a new framework” of security between Ukraine, Russia and Europe that will secure “decades, if not centuries, of peace”.

Ukraine has insisted Russia end hostilities before any discussion on a future security arrangement for Europe, and warned against a “Yalta 2.0” carving up of the continent.

Germany said on Wednesday that Russia must halt the war before there could be any talks on European security.

Source: dawn

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres railed against the oil and gas lobby on Wednesday, telling world leaders fossil fuels “must go the way of the dinosaurs” at a climate summit missing several prominent figures.

The two-week COP31 talks kicked off in Turkiye this week with governments under pressure to tackle climate change after a year of searing heatwaves and wildfires in Europe, and deadly floods in Nepal.

“The brutal truth is that the climate crisis is outrunning us,” Guterres told dozens of world leaders assembled in the Mediterranean city of Antalya for two days of speeches by heads of state and government.

But few major breakthroughs are anticipated at the COP31 negotiations, which run until November 20, as countries grapple with an oil price shock and geopolitical tensions fuelled by the US war with Iran and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Since agreeing in 2023 for the first time to transition away from fossil fuels — the main driver of climate change — nations have struggled to advance that goal at the annual UN conferences.

At his final COP before stepping down in December, Guterres said governments cannot keep expanding fossil fuel production while claiming to support the fight against climate change.

“Fossil fuels must go the way of the dinosaurs, but that won’t happen on its own. The dinosaurs did not have a lobby, but fossil fuels do,” he said in another salvo against an industry he has long accused of fuelling climate chaos.

“Their strategy is simple: Distort the science. Delay the policy. Delay the action. Delay the accountability. It’s time to kick the habit — and end the fossil fuel addiction,” he said to sustained applause.

Climate silence

But some big names are missing at COP31, with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham the only leader from a G7 country scheduled to address the summit.

“Since the start of this year, climate change has disappeared from speeches and documents from our global leadership,” recently re-elected Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told fellow leaders.

“We’ve turned to talking more about arms and tariffs than the survival of future generations,” he said.

Climate campaigners breathed a huge sigh of relief when Lula, who has overseen a dramatic drop in deforestation in the Amazon, defeated right-wing rival Flavio Bolsonaro in last month’s presidential election.

“Brazil is back to defend the continuity of a healthy planet,” Lula said.

While European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen spoke in Antalya, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni were among the European leaders not present.

The leaders of Canada, Japan and India are also expected to skip the event, while Chinese President Xi Jinping, who rarely attends COPs, was represented by Vice President Han Zheng. Unsurprisingly, President Donald Trump, who pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, is also not attending.

Fossil fear

Climate activists singled out two of Wednesday’s higher-profile speakers – the EU’s von der Leyen and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – for failing to mention fossil fuels by name during their speeches.

Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, whose Pacific nation is threatened by rising sea levels, said, “Every new oil well drilled, every new piece of coal extracted is a threat to my country’s future.

“The discovery of new fossil fuel resources is not something to celebrate, but something to fear,” she said.

Her message stood in stark contrast to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who earlier this week announced the “good news” that his country had discovered new oil fields.

In his address on Wednesday, Erdogan said the world needed a “fair” energy transition that “takes into account the energy security and different development needs of different countries”.

Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, warned that “the quest for carbon neutrality without guaranteeing energy security can undermine our efforts”.

“The measures that are aimed at protecting the climate should not constitute barriers facing countries and impede their achievements of economic development,” he said.

Finland announced concrete plans to phase out fossil fuels, becoming just the fourth country after France, Germany and the Netherlands to do so.

COP31 host Turkiye is championing a voluntary initiative to accelerate the electrification of transport, buildings and industry, with a target of raising electricity’s share of global energy consumption to 35 per cent by 2035.

The EU has stressed that electrification must be “clean”, which could spark debate over the role of oil, gas and coal in the Turkish proposal.

Source: dawn

Minister for Overseas Pakistanis and PML-Q leader Chaudhry Salik Hussain on Wednesday asserted that he stood by his claims regarding corruption in Punjab.

Last week, Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz sent a Rs5 billion defamation notice to Hussain for levelling allegations of corruption against her government and demanded that he retract his remarks.

“Reality is reality. I stand by it and will continue to,” he said on Geo News programme ‘Capital Talk’ while responding to a question about his brother Shafay Hussain being a minister in the same Punjab government he had criticised.

Salik said he did not think about hesitating to make the remarks because of this connection. The PML-Q leader further said he would present evidence for his accusations before the court when furnishing his response to CM Maryam’s defamation notice.

“Making statements about dragging someone to court does not suit a politician,” he regretted, while referring to the Punjab CM’s remarks.

In response to a question, Salik said he had not been contacted by any government official or PML-N after the incident; except for an earlier meeting with Information Minister Attaullah Tarar during which he explained the context.

However, the latest “below-the-belt” remarks by Maryam and earlier responses by her minister worsened the row.

On CM Maryam’s demand for him to resign from the ministry, the minister noted that his party was a coalition partner of the government under an arrangement and recalled Maryam was not even present during meetings at that time.

However, the PML-Q leader said it was up to the PML-N if it considered it no longer needed coalition partners.

In her Nov 3 speech, the Punjab CM had claimed that Salik’s anger stemmed from neither corruption nor progress; rather, the issue was that she had changed the deputy commissioner of Gujrat a few days earlier, whereas Salik allegedly wanted a DC of his choice to be appointed.

Asked about this on the show, Salik said: “We had very good working coordination with the former Gujrat deputy commissioner (DC), who had been working for the past 1.5 years.

“When DCs were being appointed 1.5 years ago, we asked that the official should be experienced in construction and urban development, as the development projects in the region were facing delays.”

However, after the appointment of the new DC, we did not raise any objection, he clarified.

The PML-Q further argued that his interview in Lahore was recorded on Sept 25 — rather than earlier this month when the remarks surfaced — while the DC was appointed on Oct 31.

“The Punjab chief minister made these remarks based on incorrect information,” Salik said.

The minister also regretted the withdrawal of his security by the provincial government after the incident.

He said that the Punjab government had deployed Elite Force officials at his Gujrat residence; however, after the incident, they were ordered to report back to the Police Lines.

What did Salik say?

During a talk show on a private television channel, the PML-Q leader praised the performance of his uncle Chaudhry Pervez Elahi as a former Punjab chief minister, further criticising the incumbent provincial administration headed by CM Maryam and alleging that he regularly heard complaints of corruption.

He also questioned lavish government spending, particularly the use of an official aircraft, arguing that public representatives should remain mindful of the country’s economic difficulties.

He said officials using government aircraft should be required to demonstrate the tangible outcomes and public benefits of their trips.

He also called for greater ministerial accountability, proposing that federal and provincial ministers should be empowered to perform their duties while also being held accountable for their performance.

Salik’s remarks carry particular political significance given the fractured relationship between the Chaudhry family and the PTI leadership.

Salik, the younger son of PML-Q president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, belongs to a family whose political loyalties have diverged sharply since the ouster of Imran Khan’s government in 2022 through a no-confidence vote.

While Elahi and his son, former federal minister Moonis Elahi, aligned themselves with the PTI, the Shujaat family chose to stand with the Sharifs. Salik’s elder brother, Shafay Hussain, is also part of CM Maryam’s cabinet in Punjab.

Source: dawn