Tag: United States

  • ‘Saudi crown prince desperate for patchup with Pakistan while Imran, Gen Bajwa may have moved on,’ claims journalist

    ‘Saudi crown prince desperate for patchup with Pakistan while Imran, Gen Bajwa may have moved on,’ claims journalist

    Anchor Usama Ghazi, among other journalists with a presence on YouTube, has claimed that Saudi Arabia is desperate to improve ties with Pakistan as it needs to get closer to the new Biden administration in the United States (US); however, it seems that the civil and military leadership in Pakistan may have moved on.

    Islamabad recently returned $1 billion to Riyadh as the second instalment of a $3 billion soft loan, as the country reached out to Beijing for a commercial loan to help it offset pressure to repay the last $1 billion in January.

    “Now that Pakistan will no longer be under Saudi pressure but the Kingdom will be fearing missing out on a lot under a new US government; it is trying to improve relations with Pakistan that have suffered blows over the past few months,” Ghazi said in a YouTube video, citing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s closeness with former US president Donald Trump as a major reason.

    He went on to claim that a new world was being formed with Pakistan, China, Russia, Turkey and even Iran if Biden’s US removes Trump-imposed sanctions on the country.

    WATCH VIDEO:

    “Saudi Arabia is regretting not outrightly supporting Pakistan on the Kashmir issue against India and seeking back the loan […] but now the ball is in Pakistan’s court,” he said and added that leadership in Pakistan was no longer under any burden. “They have appointed Bilal Akbar as the new envoy [to Saudi Arabia] and Gen (r) Raheel Sharif is already there.”

    While the journalist also mentioned the under-construction Iran–Pakistan gas pipeline and what impact would it have in the new world, it is relevant to note that Ghazi is not the only one to have come forward with such claims regarding alleged Saudi desperation for better ties with Pakistan.

    Senior journalist Irshad Bhatti had earlier claimed that the Saudi government has refused to let former convicted PM Nawaz Sharif, leading to speculations if it was an attempt to appease the Pakistani government.

  • Pakistani origin doctor wipes away $650,000 debt of 200 cancer patients in US

    Pakistani origin doctor wipes away $650,000 debt of 200 cancer patients in US

    A doctor of Pakistani origin in the United States of America Dr Omar Atiq waived of $650,000 in debt for nearly 200 of his patients with cancer. Dr Atiq, an oncologist who founded a cancer treatment centre in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, sent out a holiday greeting to patients before Christmas, announcing that their outstanding payments would be cleared.

    “I hope this note finds you well. The Arkansas Cancer Clinic was proud to serve you as a patient. Although various health insurers pay most of the bills for [the] majority of patients, even the deductibles and co-pays can be burdensome,” the card read.

    “The clinic has decided to forego all balances owed to the clinic by its patients. Happy Holidays.”

    As per details, Dr Atiq’s clinic provided cancer treatments including chemotherapy, radiation therapy and diagnostics. It was closed in late February due to staff shortage.

    The outstanding amount was nearly $650,000 (Rs 104,645,320). However, the clinic worked with a billing company to cancel the debt.

    “We thought there was not a better time to do this than during a pandemic that has decimated homes, people’s lives and businesses and all sorts of stuff,” said Dr Atiq. “We just thought we could do it, and we wanted to, so we went ahead and did it.”

    “Being sick is hard, having cancer is harder, and having cancer in this pandemic is devastating. I am just a regular physician—a regular person that they have in the neighbourhood—just so happens to be me standing here. The ones struggling couldn’t pay, so we thought we could just write off the debt.”

    “It is really fate,” he said, referring to the decision to move. “We have been very grateful. This has been home for a long time. We are grateful for the opportunity for what has happened to our lives here.”

    Atiq said he was happy to give his patients a bit of relief.

    “I love them, I care for them and I am glad I was able to do a little bit at this point for them,” he added.

    The Arkansas Medical Society President said his clinic, in part, amassed the outstanding debt because “we have never refused to see a patient.”

    “Not for lack of health insurance or funds nor for any other reason,” he said. “I’ve always considered it a high honor and privilege to be someone’s physician—more important than anything else.”

  • Dollar down by Rs1.77 in two days, Rs159.28 is the new rate

    Dollar down by Rs1.77 in two days, Rs159.28 is the new rate

    Continuing with the previous day’s momentum, Pakistani Rupee gained another 81 paisas against the United States Dollar (USD) in the interbank on Wednesday.

    According to a State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) tweet, USD opened at Rs160.09 and closed at Rs159.28. The local currency had gained Re0.96 against the greenback on Tuesday.

    Money dealers in the market attributed this rally of rupee against USD to encouraging economic indicators as well as the global downfall of the greenback. On the other side, they added, importers are being careful in buying goods from their foreign suppliers owing to the second wave of COVID-19.

    On Tuesday, rupee had weakened against USD. The buying rate of USD was Rs160.4 while it was sold at Rs161.2 at the opening of trading in Pakistan’s currency market on November 24.

    Other currency rates had then been recorded as follows:

    Currency Buying Selling
    Australian Dollar 116 118 
    Canadian Dollar 121 123
    China Yuan 24.45  24.6 
    Euro 188.5 192 
    Japanese Yen 1.55 1.58
    Saudi Riyal 43 43.5 
    UAE Dirham 43.55 44 
    UK Pound Sterling 212.5  215.5 

  • ‘She is counting minutes’: Melania to divorce Donald Trump?

    Donald Trump, who recently lost his presidential re-election campaign to Democratic challenger Joe Biden, could soon find himself facing divorce proceedings, it has emerged. 

    British tabloid Daily Mail quoted a former aide to the first lady of the United States (US), Omarosa Manigault Newman, as saying that the 15-year marriage of Trump and Melania Trump is over and the latter is “counting the minutes until he is out of the office and she can divorce him”.

    “If she [Melania] were to try to pull the ultimate humiliation and leave while he’s in office, he would find a way to punish her,” he said when asked as to why did Melania not divorce Trump earlier.

    The report quoted another former aide, Stephanie Wolkoff Senior, who was the advisor to the first lady, as saying that Trump and Melania had separate bedrooms in the White House and a “transactional marriage”.

    Back in 2016, Melania had burst into tears when Trump won the presidential election as, one friend said, “she never expected him to win”. However, Melania waited five months before moving to Washington from New York allegedly because their son, Barron, had to finish school.

    However, Wolkoff said Melania was negotiating an agreement so that Barron could have an equal share of Trump’s fortune. “Now, four years later, she is going forth with her plan.”

    Reports also say that Trump’s inner circle, including his wife Melania, wants the 45th US president to accept his loss and concede defeat to President-elect Biden and exit the office “gracefully”.

  • Biden is in the house

    Democratic challenger Joe Biden has won an extremely close US election battle against outgoing president Donald Trump. The election results were finally called on Saturday. Biden will become the 46th US president and leaders around the world have started sending congratulatory messages to the president-elect. Kamala Harris, the vice president-elect, has made history. She will be the first woman, the first black person and the first person of South Asian descent to become VP. Yesterday, she said, “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last, because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”

    This US election was different in many ways. From an election held during a pandemic to one of the most polarised election in recent history, it was indeed a nail-biter. The two rivals were neck and neck in a few key battleground states before the final results were announced. According to NBC News, at least 159.8 million Americans voted. The number of votes has been the highest in US presidential election in history while the voter turnout has been the highest in over a century.

    Trump’s term has made politics extremely divisive in the US where racism is on the rise. Due to Trump’s policy on climate change, the US became the first nation in the world to formally withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Trump also gravely mishandled the COVID-19 situation in the US. More than 200,000 people died due to coronavirus before the presidential election.

    On the day of the election when millions of ballots were left to count, Trump decided to claim victory. In the same breath, he suggested “major fraud on the nation” without offering any evidence and said he would take the election results to the US Supreme Court. Trump has been crying rigging, an all too familiar word in our part of the world, even before the election. Trump’s campaign filed lawsuits in some states as Trump has also been crying foul on Twitter, where most of his tweets are being flagged by the social network. Biden, on the other hand, was conciliatory in a speech after the election where he called for healing and unity in the wake of the brutal election. “We are not enemies… to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as enemies… we are campaigning as Democrats, but I will govern as an American president.”

    We hope that with the end of the four tumultuous years of Trump’s presidency, while the Democrats heal their own country, they do not end up hurting the rest of the world. For all his faults, Trump was not seen as a war-president. We hope that the US will not restart its interventionist policies under Biden.

  • Who will win the US presidential race?

    Who will win the US presidential race?

    Voters in the United States (US) will decide on November 3 whether Donald Trump remains in the White House for another four years.

    The Republican president is being challenged by Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden, who is best known as Barack Obama’s vice-president but has been in US politics since the 1970s.

    As election day approaches, polling companies will be trying to gauge the mood of the nation by asking voters which candidate they prefer.

    Biden is currently leading Trump in the national polls. The 10-poll average indicates that just over half of Americans intend to back Biden while Trump’s support trails this by around seven or eight points.

    BUT WHO WILL WIN?

    Trump triumphed in 2016 despite losing the popular vote, and pollsters misjudged the size of his support, so despite Biden’s lead, it is still difficult to predict who will win the keys to the White House.

    However, according to the latest polling averages, Biden’s lead over the incumbent is remaining solid despite a slight downfall in the wake of the US presidential debates and Trump’s diagnosis with coronavirus, The Telegraph reports.

    Who do you think will win the US presidential race?

    Donald Trump
    Joe Biden

    Biden’s polling average has remained above 50 per cent since October 4, and the Democratic nominee has consistently polled in the lead since the race began.

    If state polls are close to the final result, it suggests Biden is on course for gains in at least two swing states — Michigan and Wisconsin — and Arizona, which has been more likely to vote Republican in recent years.

    WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:

    In American politics, the term swing state refers to any state that could reasonably be won by either the Democratic or Republican presidential candidate by a swing in votes. These states are usually targeted by both major-party campaigns, especially in competitive elections.

    While Florida and Texas are too close to call — carrying 67 electoral college votes between them — Pennsylvania and its 20 votes for the presidency are leaning Democrat according to the latest polls.

    The electoral college is a process and not an actual place. To become president, what really counts is winning a majority of electoral votes. Each state has been allotted electoral votes based on the size of its population and whoever wins a particular state is expected to bag all the electoral votes allotted to that state.

    There are 538 electoral votes in total which means that a candidate needs to secure 270 to win.

    To put it simply, when the US public votes in the election, they are not voting for the president. Instead, they are voting for a group of people who will then choose the president and vice president.

    The word “college” here simply refers to a group of people with a shared task, BBC says. The electoral college meets every four years, a few weeks after election day, to carry out that task.

    Of the states that could go either way based on the latest polls, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida all flipped to Donald Trump from the Democrats in the 2016 election, and his chances of retaining the presidency could rest on reclaiming victory here and holding on to Texas.

    Having voted Republican in every election since 2000, Texas is now a toss-up and could be pivotal to the final result.

  • Prisoners forced to listen to ‘Baby Shark’ for hours as torture

    Jail employees at Oklahoma, USA are facing charges for painful misbehaviour and torture as more than four prisoners were often handcuffed and forced to stand and listen to the popular children’s song Baby Shark repeatedly for hours.

    Gregory Cornell Butler Jr. and Christian Charles Miles, both 21 years of age, are jailers who have been charged for the offense on counts of cruelty to prisoners and victimizing them ‘undue emotional stress.’ Along with the jail employees, their supervisor, Christopher Raymond Hendershott, 50 years of age, is also involved.

    According to the officials, the prisoners were handcuffed to a wall then the song was played on loop at a loud volume on the speaker for hours.

    “It was unfortunate that I could not find a felony statute to fit this fact scenario,” Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater said.

  • VIDEO: Coronavirus patient Trump spotted gasping for breath

    VIDEO: Coronavirus patient Trump spotted gasping for breath

    United States (US) President Donald Trump has officially been discharged from Maryland’s Walter Reed Medical Center following his coronavirus diagnosis and is back at the White House.

    Upon his return, Trump removed his mask for a photo op, despite still being very much infected with the highly contagious disease. However, it was not a pretty scene.

    Pictures and videos show the US president climbing a set of stairs at the White House and gasping for breath.

    WATCH VIDEO:

    Though his doctors concede he is not yet “out of the woods” in his fight against COVID-19, Trump has framed the disease as in the past, “Now I’m better and maybe I’m immune? I don’t know. But don’t let it dominate your lives.”

    At least 11 of the president’s aides or allies have either contracted the virus or — in the case of his daughter Ivanka — are working from home. Entire suites of offices sit vacant as Trump’s aides work to isolate him in the residence and out of the West Wing.

  • Donald Trump, wife Melania test positive for coronavirus

    Donald Trump, wife Melania test positive for coronavirus

    United States (US) President Donald Trump and his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, have tested positive for coronavirus.

    It was announced by the president himself as he took to Twitter and revealed that both Melania and him had tested positive for COVID-19 and started with the quarantine process.

    This comes one month ahead of the US election.

    In an earlier tweet, Trump had said that they were waiting for their coronavirus test results after close aide, Hope Hicks, had tested positive for the same.

    Hicks, 31, is the closest aide of President Trump to have tested positive. She had travelled with the president on Air Force One earlier this week. Trump had even said in an interview on Thursday night that he and the first lady spend a lot of time with her.

    Prime Minister Imran Khan has also wished them a speedy recovery.

    The US remains worst-hit by the virus that has affected at least 34.2 million people worldwide with over a million deaths. By the filing of this report, the number of coronavirus cases in Trump’s America stood at 7.31 million with over 208,000 deaths.

    The now infected president has over the past few months been widely criticised for “not taking the pandemic seriously”.

  • VIDEO: Joe Biden says ‘InshaAllah’ to mock Trump during first presidential debate?

    VIDEO: Joe Biden says ‘InshaAllah’ to mock Trump during first presidential debate?

    Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden cast doubt during Tuesday night’s debate on whether United States (US) President Donald Trump would ever release his tax returns. 

    “You’ll get to see it,” Trump said repeatedly as moderator Chris Wallace pressed him to commit to a firm timeline. Biden retorted, “When? InshaAllah?”

    While the Arabic language phrase literally means “God Willing,” it also has colloquial connotations of ambiguous commitment.

    As Muslims, especially Arabs, pointed out the phrase used by Biden, many wondered if they had mistaken something for InshaAllah.

    Until journalist Asma Khalid of US-based National Public Radio (NPR), who is covering the 2020 presidential campaign, confirmed it.

    Biden earlier released his personal income taxes, which show the former vice president and his wife Jill Biden paid about 30% of their $985,000 gross personal income.

    Trump has refused to voluntarily release his income taxes, which had been a presidential custom stretching back decades.

    READ MORE: ‘Will you shut up, man?’ and much more from Trump vs Biden presidential debate

    The New York Times reported Monday that Trump did not pay any federal income taxes in 10 of the last 15 years. It said the former businessman paid just $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and another $750 in 2017, the year he took office.

    Trump disputed the report during Tuesday night’s debate, saying he has “paid millions of dollars in taxes, millions of dollars of income tax.”