Category: 2. World

KARACHI: During a two-day Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)’s summit held recently in China, China’s President Xi Jinping announced the Global Governance Initiative (GGI). Economic nationalists and strategists dub the GGI as a new world order. Pakistan can stand to benefit from such regional and global formations, they said while talking to Business Recorder.

Economic strategist and regional expert Dr Mehmoodul Hassan Khan said the ‘Shanghai Spirit’ features mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diverse civilizations and the pursuit of common development, as the bedrock of regional cooperation of the SCO.

He believes the SCO’s participation in regional e-commerce, digitalization, modernization and social development have been both impressive and indispensable, in stark contrast to the Western style of “carrot and stick” diplomacy, Cold War mentality, conditional economic aid, political compulsion and geostrategic preferential arrangements.

He said it has been an instrumental force for global shared prosperity, a regional economic stabilizer, an industrial stimulator and a champion of peace – qualities that dwarf any Western organization, including North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

According to him, “official statistics show that China’s annual bilateral trade with other SCO member states has surpassed $500 billion while its investment stock in other SCO member states has exceeded $84 billion.“

At the recent Tianjin summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to provide 2 billion yuan ($280 million) in grants to SCO member states within this year.

China will also issue an additional 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) in loans to the member banks of the SCO Interbank Consortium over the next three years.

Dr Khan said the SCO stands for economic prosperity, trans-regional connectivity and regional integration and being an important member of it, Pakistan can develop and diversify its macro-economy and its bilateral and trilateral relations with all its member countries.

He said Pakistan’s socio-economic drive, with all the member countries of the SCO from Central Asia, has been immensely increased in terms of trade, investment, industrial cooperation, services exports, energy cooperation, joint ventures, people-to-people contacts and enhanced political and diplomatic understanding with each other.

He said interestingly, Pakistan’s national capacity of fighting against terrorism has been further modernized and sustained because of the regional anti-terrorist structure of the SCO, and formation of trilateral dialogue among Pakistan, China and Afghanistan.

According to reports, Pakistan’s foreign trade, remittances, agricultural exports, and energy cooperation have been rising since its inclusion in the SCO a couple of years back.

China’s Xi at centre of world stage after days of high-level hobnobbing

According to reports, the combined GDP of SCO members (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, Pakistan, Iran, Belarus) has reached about $24.6 trillion, accounting for around 23 percent of global GDP and 42 percent of the global population.

In 2024, the total trade volume between China and other SCO member states amounted to 3.65 trillion yuan ($512.4 billion), 36.3 times the level recorded when the organization was established.

Economically, the SCO is gaining momentum, experts say. Its future prospects are bright, indicating a collective nominal GDP of $70.4 trillion and a GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms of $81.8 trillion for the year 2025.

Analysts also say the GGI will further enhance Pakistan’s economy, industrial productivity and socio-economic integration with other SCO members and the ‘GGI Global Family’ in the days to come.

Pakistan, China agree to continue working closely for upgraded CPEC-II

After its inclusion in the GGI, Pakistan could be in a better position to receive loans and expertise from all the member countries, especially China, Russia, and other big economies.

It would be the first big “systematic” step towards achieving a “strategic equilibrium” in the working, efficacy and productivity of the international world order, catering to the genuine causes and concerns of developing countries. It would be supportive to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), transforming communities, countries and continents in the world.

Pakistan is passing through difficult times because of the ongoing onslaught of severe floods in the country. A World Bank report has also confirmed that Pakistan is highly vulnerable to natural disasters including earthquakes, landslides, and water scarcity all of which greatly damage the country’s infrastructure and, consequently, negatively affect people’s welfare, Unfortunately, Pakistan has been ranked fifth among nations most affected by extreme weather events driven by climate change.

However, SCO Plus and the GGI could facilitate Pakistan to protect its vested interests of economic security, environment balance, ecological diversity and green transformation. Pakistan is one of the biggest importers of solar panels from China, being part of the SCO.

As Pakistan desires to officially launch the CPEC 2.0, the combination of the SCO and GGI could be immensely beneficial for it. Thus there is an urgent need to form Corridor of Disaster Management, Corridor of Anti-Global Warming and Corridor of the protection of glaciers with the SCO and the GGI, analysts say.

Pakistan is also a staunch supporter of SCO Development Bank which could help its local community and social development.

The flood crisis in south Punjab intensified on Friday as with rivers Chenab and Sutlej breaching embankments and submerging dozens of villages. This flood spell has claimed at least 68 lives across the province as per the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) and left scores injured.

River water from the Chenab engulfed large parts of Sher Shah in Multan. Flood waves as high as 12 to 14 feet washed away dozens of settlements. Boats were summoned to evacuate stranded families, who had rushed to their rooftops to escape the flood.

Displaced residents from inundated Basti Khoor have set up camp along the Sikandari canal embankment, where many families are living in the open. Tents are limited, and livestock and household goods are scattered along a one-kilometre stretch near the canal. Rescue and relief teams were yet to reach the site by the time this report was filed.

Read: ECP postpones Punjab by-elections due to devastating floods

Meanwhile, Sutlej River swept through dozens of villages in Vehari and Bahawalpur districts. Hundreds of homes, schools and dispensaries were destroyed.

In Vehari, water levels at Head Islam were reported to be 102,000 cusecs, and over 335,000 cusecs at Head Ganda Singh. Discharge at Head Siphon stood at 93,000 cusecs and at Head Mian Haakim outfall touched nearly 200,000 cusecs. Several protective embankments gave away and Kuttabpur Wagi, Jhoke Fazil, Jhoke Jando, Jhoke Sathu, Kaliya Shah and Hasan Shah villages, among others, were completely submerged.

Design by Ibrahim Yahya 

Similarly in Bahawalpur, the Sutlej caused widespread destruction with over 90% of protective embankments collapsing. The flood water surged into over a 100 villages, as high as 100,000 cusecs at Empress Bridge for instance.

Emergency medical support was rolled out through 26 “clinic-on-wheels” units and a field hospital at Jhangra Sharqi. Livestock vaccination campaigns were launched as well. Some 82 schools were converted into temporary relief camps.

Read more: Punjab devastation raises red flag for Sindh’s crops

The district administration said around 42,000 people and nearly 25,000 livestock have been relocated. The floods devastated residential settlements besides thousands of acres of sugarcane, maize, sesame crops and fodder.

According to the PDMA, nearly 4,000 mouzas (pieces of land) have been affected across Punjab, leaving near 3.9 million people impacted. Of these, 1.8 million people are evacuaees. Relief agencies have established as many as 416 relief camps, 356 medical camps and 318 veterinary camps. Over 1.3 million livestock has also been moved to safer ground.

Water levels also remained high at Kot Mithan and Rojhan in Rajanpur district. At the former, water level was recorded at 490,000 cusecs. As per PDMA data, since mid-June at least 183 people have died, 646 injured and 237 houses have been destroyed in monsoon rains and flooding across Punjab. As many as 121 cattle have perished. District data shows heavy losses in Bahawalpur, Muzaffargarh and Vehari.

 

United States President Donald Trump on Friday said India and Russia seem to have been “lost” to China after their leaders met with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, highlighting his split from New Delhi and Moscow as Beijing pushes a new world order.

“Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!” Trump wrote in a social media post accompanying a photo of the three other world leaders together at Xi’s summit in China.

Asked about Trump’s post, the Indian foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters in New Delhi that he had no comment.

Representatives for Beijing and Moscow could not be immediately reached for comment on Trump’s post on his Truth Social platform.

Xi hosted more than 20 leaders of non-Western countries for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Putin and Modi were seen holding hands at the summit as they walked toward Xi before all three men stood side by side.

Modi’s warming ties with China come as Trump has chilled US-India ties amid trade tensions and other disputes. Trump earlier this week said he was ”very disappointed” in Putin but not worried about growing Russia-China ties.

India plans relief package for exporters hit by US tariffs

Separately, India will roll out a package of measures to help exporters hurt by a surge in US tariffs, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said today.

The new US duties slapped on Indian goods last month included a 25 per cent punitive levy over New Delhi’s Russian oil purchases — taking overall duties as high as 50pc on a wide range of items from garments and jewellery to footwear and chemicals.

“Government will come out with something to handhold those who have been hit by 50pc tariffs,” Sitharaman told CNN TV18, without going into further detail.

The government plans to offer credit guarantees on loans overdue by up to 90 days for small businesses and exporters, Reuters reported earlier, citing government sources.

Exporters said labour-intensive sectors such as textiles, jewellery and seafood, particularly shrimp, which all operate on margins of just 3-5pc — have been hit hardest, causing job losses in industrial hubs in Tamil Nadu and Modi’s home state of Gujarat.

“Textiles and apparel manufacturers in Tiruppur, Noida and Surat have halted production amid worsening cost competitiveness,” SC Ralhan, president of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations, said.

The tariffs, among the highest imposed by the Trump administration, delivered a serious blow to ties between the two powerful democracies that had in recent decades become strategic partners.

Nearly 55pc of Indian exports to the US, worth about $48 billion, now face a cost disadvantage against rivals from Vietnam, China and Bangladesh, Ralhan said last week ahead of an exporters’ meeting with the finance minister.

Thousands of workers have already been laid off, exporters have said.

Sitharaman also said that India would continue to buy Russian oil as it proves economical.

New Delhi has said its purchases of Russian oil have kept the markets in balance.

“We will have to take a call [on] which [supply source] suits us the best. So we will undoubtedly be buying it,” the finance minister said, adding that India spends most of its foreign exchange on purchases of crude oil and refined fuels.

“Whether it is Russian oil or anything else, it’s our decision to buy from the place which suits our needs whether in terms of rates, logistics, anything,” Sitharaman added.

GENEVA: The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have committed numerous crimes against humanity in Sudan’s civil war, in particular in their siege of El-Fasher in western Darfur, UN investigators said Friday.

The United Nations’ fact-finding mission for Sudan determined in a new report that the RSF had “committed crimes against humanity, notably murder, torture, forced displacement, persecution on ethnic grounds, and other inhumane acts.”

It also found evidence of war crimes by both sides in the conflict between the regular army and the RSF, which has killed tens of thousands of people since it broke out in April 2023.

“Our findings leave no room for doubt: civilians are paying the highest price in this war,” mission chief Mohamed Chande Othman said in a statement.

“Both sides have deliberately targeted civilians through attacks, summary executions, arbitrary detention, torture, and inhuman treatment in detention facilities, including denial of food, sanitation, and medical care,” he said.

“These are not accidental tragedies but deliberate strategies amounting to war crimes.”

While faulting both sides in the brutal conflict, the investigators highlighted in particular the paramilitary force’s brutality in El-Fasher, which it has besieged since May 2024.

“RSF, during the siege of El-Fasher and surrounding areas, committed myriad crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, enslavement, rape, sexual slavery, sexual violence,” the statement said, also pointing to “forced displacement and persecution on ethnic, gender and political grounds.”

“The RSF and its allies used starvation as a method of warfare and deprived civilians of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, medicine and relief supplies — which may amount to the crime against humanity of extermination,” it added.

The fact-finding mission demanded international action to bring perpetrators of such crimes to justice.

“Accountability is not optional — it is a legal and moral imperative to protect civilians and prevent further atrocities,” mission member Mona Rishmawi said in the statement.

TOKYO — Kim Jong Un put on a command performance this week at a gathering of some two dozen world leaders in China, striding with confidence and a broad grin across one of the biggest international stages of his 14-year career as North Korea’s leader.

As Kim returns home Friday, his time in Beijing marks a stunning transformation from his first tentative, violent years in power, when some analysts suggested the inexperienced young leader would struggle to survive threats to his rule.

Serious diplomacy with a large group of leaders was unimaginable.

But in Beijing, Kim looked like the leader his propaganda services have constantly sought to portray: an important — crucial, even — player in world affairs, entirely at home with the biggest hitters in Eurasia.

Beginning in 2018, when he and U.S. President Donald Trump held the first of their much-publicized meetings, Kim has emerged as a far different, far more confident leader than when he was thrust into power after his father’s death in 2011.

Granted, he is not yet appearing at the United Nations or established Western global forums. And the attendees in Beijing — which didn’t include leaders from the U.S., Western Europe or Japan — showed little interest in pressing him on widespread concerns about human rights violations or his nuclear weapons. But the events this week are a watershed in his use of international diplomacy to advance his largely secluded nation’s aims.

He deftly handled his two biggest allies, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, laughing with them, pledging enduring assistance to Moscow in its war against Ukraine, and strengthening a sometimes shaky relationship with China. He confidently rubbed shoulders with world leaders at a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

He even felt self-assured enough to bring his young daughter, and possible successor, along for the ride.

“He now appears a seasoned realist and political survivor. In addition to human rights violations and nuclear missile development, Kim has added calculated diplomacy to his authoritarian toolkit,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

For decades, the biggest trip, internationally, for a North Korean leader was an occasional armored train ride to China, where he was somewhat condescendingly feted by his country’s only real ally, an economic, diplomatic and military lifeline in a neighborhood filled with enemies.

Kim is still using the bullet-proof green train, and this latest foreign trip was to Beijing. But the similarities ended there.

Kim and Trump met one-on-one in Singapore in 2018 and then in Vietnam in 2019. They also had talks later on the border between the two Koreas.

These were the first summits between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. The talks failed to stop North Korea’s decades-long pursuit of nuclear weapons and the missiles to carry them to distant targets — ambitions that have drawn harsh international sanctions.

There was widespread criticism that Trump had helped transform Kim’s image, from pariah to legitimate dialogue partner.

The 2018 and 2019 summits and Trump’s interest in another are “gifting Kim the legitimacy he craves,” said Jeff Kingston, a specialist on Asia at Temple University Japan. “Going forward Kim will use Trump to gain attention and seek aid, an old formula that has sustained this dynastic regime,”

Kim’s more recent travel also includes two high-profile trips to Russia, in April 2019, for a summit with Putin in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok, and in September 2023 to meet again with the Russian leader at a space facility.

Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, national founder Kim Il Sung, was more adventurous in his travels, but Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, famously avoided plane travel, hence the special armored train.

During his 17 years in power, Kim Jong Il made roughly a dozen trips abroad. Almost all were train trips to China. He was traveling by train when he died in 2011.

Experts believe North Korea’s previous rulers largely avoided events with multiple heads of state in attendance because they were conscious of North Korean propaganda portraying them as peerless leaders — and of international condemnation of their nuclear ambitions.

Trips to China, however, were seen as crucial. Like his son, Kim Jong Il knew that he needed to pay his respects to Beijing, which provides the North with everything from fuel to shrimp chips and is North Korea’s major link, by air and by rail, to the outside world.

Of course, this dependency makes the Kim dynasty vulnerable — one of the reasons Kim Jong Un has expanded his diplomatic circles. When he saw a chance to help heavily sanctioned, isolated Russia, he seized it, sending thousands of North Korean troops and large quantities of military equipment to help it fight Ukrainian forces in return for economic and military assistance.

Xi invited 26 foreign leaders to the massive military parade Wednesday.

But there was a particular buzz surrounding Kim.

Xi invited Kim to stand by him and Putin on the rostrum in Tiananmen Square. The three leaders walked shoulder-to-shoulder to the platform, pausing to shake hands with WWII veterans.

As he basks in the glow of his Beijing trip, however, a big, as yet unanswered question is the future of Kim’s negotiations with Washington over his nuclear and missile programs.

Trump has repeatedly signaled a desire to talk, but North Korea has rejected those offers.

Kim has carried out a far larger number of weapons tests than his father and grandfather, persevering in the face of deep international disapprobation and crippling sanctions, apparently convinced that nuclear arms alone guarantee his nation’s survival.

Kim’s success in Beijing seems to offer him a little more leverage in any future negotiations.

“He has now stepped onto the international stage with the confidence of a strategic power,” said Koh Yu-hwan, former president of South Korea’s Korean Institute for National Unification, “and you could say he has been treated accordingly.”

___

Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim and Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this story from Seoul, South Korea.

Katharine the Duchess of Kent has died at the age of 92.

The news of the death of the oldest living member of the Royal Family following Queen Elizabeth II’s death in 2022 was announced by the Buckingham Palace on Friday.

“It is with deep sorrow that Buckingham Palace announces the death of Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Kent,” the palace said in a statement.

The statement continued as, “Her Royal Highness passed away peacefully last night at Kensington Palace, surrounded by her family.”

“The King and Queen and all Members of The Royal Family join The Duke of Kent, his children and grandchildren in mourning their loss and remembering fondly The Duchess’s lifelong devotion to all the organisations with which she was associated, her passion for music and her empathy for young people,” it concluded.

Katharine married Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, a cousin of the late Queen Elizabeth II, in 1961.

Known for her keen musicianship and advocacy for children and young people, she remained a quiet but beloved figure within the Royal Family.

The late Duchess will be remembered for her warmth and compassion, most memorably when she consoled a tearful Jana Novotná after her Wimbledon final loss in 1993.

In a move that reflected her modest nature, the Duchess dropped her HRH title later in life, preferring to be known simply as Mrs. Kent.

She stepped away from royal duties and quietly dedicated more than a decade to teaching music at a primary school in Hull.

As a mark of respect, the Union Flag at Buckingham Palace was also lowered to half-mast shortly after the announcement.

Moreover, a framed notice was placed on the palace railings, continuing a long-standing tradition.

It feels like there are so many things constantly vying for our attention: the sharp buzz of the phone, the low hum of social media, the unrelenting flood of emails, the endless carousel of content.

It’s a familiar and almost universal ailment in our digital age. Our lives are punctuated by constant stimulation, and moments of real stillness – the kind where the mind wanders without a destination – have become rare.

Digital technologies permeate work, education, and intimacy. Not participating feels to many like nonexistence. But we tell ourselves that’s OK because platforms promise endless choice and self-expression, but this promise is deceptive. What appears as freedom masks a subtle coercion: distraction, visibility, and engagement are prescribed as obligations.

As someone who has spent years reading philosophy, I have been asking myself how to step out of this loop and try to think like great thinkers did in the past. A possible answer came from a thinker most people wouldn’t expect to help with our TikTok-era malaise: the German philosopher Martin Heidegger.

Heidegger argued that modern technology is not simply a collection of tools, but a way of revealing – a framework in which the world appears primarily as a resource, including the human body and mind, to be used for content. In the same way, platforms are also part of this resource, and one that shapes what appears, how it appears, and how we orient ourselves toward life.

Digital culture revolves around speed, visibility, algorithmic selection, and the compulsive generation of content. Life increasingly mirrors the logic of the feed: constantly updating, always “now” and allergic to slowness, silence and stillness.

What digital platforms take away is more than just our attention being “continuously partial” — they also limit the deeper kind of reflection that allows us to engage with life and ourselves fully. They make us lose the capacity to inhabit silence and confront the unfilled moment.

When moments of silence or emptiness arise, we instinctively look to others — not for real connection, but to fill the void with distraction. Heidegger calls this distraction “das man” or “they”: the social collective whose influence we unconsciously follow.

In this way, the “they” becomes a kind of ghostly refuge, offering comfort while quietly erasing our own sense of individuality. This “they” multiplies endlessly through likes, trends, and algorithmic virality. In fleeing from boredom together, the possibility of an authentic “I” disappears into the infinite deferral of collective mimicry.

Heidegger feared that under the dominance of technology, humanity might lose its capacity to relate to “being itself”. This “forgetting of being” is not merely an intellectual error but an existential poverty.

Today, it can be seen as the loss of depth — the eclipse of boredom, the erosion of interiority, the disappearance of silence. Where there is no boredom, there can be no reflection. Where there is no pause, there can be no real choice.

Heidegger’s “forgetting of being” now manifests as the loss of boredom itself. What we forfeit is the capacity for sustained reflection.

Boredom as a privileged mood

For Heidegger, profound boredom is not merely a psychological state but a privileged mood in which the everyday world begins to withdraw. In his 1929 to 1930 lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, he describes boredom as a fundamental attunement through which beings no longer “speak” to us, revealing the nothingness at the heart of being itself.

“Profound boredom removes all things and men and oneself along with it into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals beings as a whole.”

Boredom is not absence but a threshold — a condition for thinking, wonder, and the emergence of meaning.

The loss of profound boredom mirrors the broader collapse of existential depth into surface. Once a portal to being, boredom is now treated as a design flaw, patched with entertainment and distraction.

Never allowing ourselves to be bored is equivalent to never allowing ourselves to be as we are. As Heidegger insists, only in the totality of profound boredom do we come face to face with beings as a whole. When we flee boredom, we escape ourselves. At least, we try to.

The problem is not that boredom strikes too often, but that it is never allowed to fully arrive. Boredom, which has paradoxically seen a rise in countries drowning in technology like the US, is shameful. It is treated like an illness almost. We avoid it, hate it, fear it.

Digital life and its many platforms offer streams of micro-distractions that prevent immersion into this more primitive attunement. Restlessness is redirected into scrolling, which, instead of meaningful reflection, produces only more scrolling. What disappears with boredom is not leisure, but metaphysical access — the silence in which the world might speak, and one might hear.

In this light, rediscovering boredom is not about idle time, it is about reclaiming the conditions for thought, depth, and authenticity. It is a quiet resistance to the pervasive logic of digital life, an opening to the full presence of being, and a reminder that the pause, the unstructured moment, and the still passage are not failures – they are essential.