Author: Kulthum el-Akram

DUBAI: Saudi authorities sized 460,000 Captagon pills at the Duba port found in a consignment that arrived in the Kingdom. The consignment was earlier declared as containing machines, and the pills were found hidden in the cavities of the machines during a security check, the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority said in a statement on Friday. The drugs haul had an estimated street value of between $4.6 million and $11.5 million, according to research published in the International Addiction Review Journal, based on assumptions that users pay in the range of $10-$25 a pill. Amphetamines are largely used by young…

President Joe Biden and House Republicans are currently deadlocked over the possibility of raising the debt ceiling, drawing the US closer to a potential default, which would have global consequences. If the crisis is not resolved within the next 10 days, the US could fall headlong into a recession – but the American economy would not be the only one affected. Here’s how a US debt default would affect the Middle East. What impact would a US debt default have on the Mena region? Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar all hold significant sums in US treasuries and…

Leng Kaiwei is the director of Duan & Duan (Chongqing) Law Firm. As the cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) advances in Central Asia, Leng and his law firm found new opportunities there and opened Tashkent Office in Uzbekistan, the law firm’s Central Asia business center. Since its opening, the office has successfully provided legal services to over 100 Chinese firms entering Uzbekistan and other Central Asian markets, including those in sectors of building materials, construction, chemicals, manufacturing and other industries closely related to the BRI. As a Chinese lawyer, Leng said he is a participant and also…

SINGAPORE – The state visit by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to the Chinese city of Xian and his participation in the China-Central Asia Summit last week emphasized the importance of bilateral relations and multilateral interaction. It highlighted Kazakhstan’s eagerness to engage with China, said Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the S.Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and a senior associate fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, in an interview with The Astana Times. Pantucci is an author of several publications about China’s relations with Central Asia, including the book “Sinostan: China’s Inadvertent Empire.” According to the expert,…

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is rolling out the red carpet for Central Asian nations this week as Beijing attempts to expand its reach into a region that has long been regarded as Russia’s sphere of influence. The leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are gathering in the central Chinese city of Xi’an for a summit that began Thursday. It is the first in-person meeting of the heads of state together with China since they established diplomatic relations after the fall of the Soviet Union, according to China’s state media, and comes as the region grapples with the knock-on…

Beyond promoting security and development collaborations, the recent China-Central Asia Summit also empowers Beijing to take over Moscow as the dominant influence in the Central Asia region and diversify its trade routes, says international security expert Stefan Wolff. BIRMINGHAM: As G7 leaders were preparing for their recent summit in Japan, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted his Central Asian counterparts from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Central Asia is critical to China’s attempts to build an alternative to the US-led liberal order that is unquestionably dominated by Beijing and in which Russia will, at best, be a junior partner. In his opening address,…

BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 18. The value of trade turnover between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan amounted to $599 million from January through December 2022, which is an increase of 20 percent over 2021 ($496 million), trend reports via the State Statistical Committee of Kyrgyzstan. Exports from Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan in the reporting period made up $236 million, increasing by 31 percent compared to the same period of 2021 ($180 million). Meanwhile, the value of exports from Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan amounted to $362 million, which is by 14 percent more than in 2021 ($316 million). The value of foreign and mutual trade turnover of…

ISLAMABAD — A prominent female rights activist in Afghanistan lambasted the global community Saturday for failing to come up with a plan or agreement on how to help her crisis-ridden country since the Taliban took control of it 18 months ago.Mahbouba Seraj, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, spoke virtually from the Afghan capital, Kabul, to a town hall at the Munich Security Conference on prospects for her country under Taliban rule.“Is there a plan, or you are just going to sit down and have meetings after meetings and talk about it and not get anywhere?” she asked. “Is that the…

The US Secretary of State has warned China there will be “consequences” if Beijing provides material support to Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. Antony Blinken said in an interview after meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that Washington was concerned Beijing was considering supplying weapons to Moscow. The top diplomats of the two superpowers met at an undisclosed location on the sidelines of a global security conference in Munich. Just hours earlier, Mr Wang had scolded Washington as “hysterical” in a running dispute over the Americans downing a suspected Chinese spy balloon. Relations between the two countries have…

Think you are up for a salary hike this year? Businesses in the UAE reckon they need to, as counter to inflation costs and more. Image Credit: ShutterstockDubai: Businesses in the UAE could come up with a 4.4 per cent salary hike this year, a marginal hike on the 4.2 per cent gain employees got in 2022. This is according to a survey of nearly 500 businesses in the UAE by WTW, an advisory firm. Organisations are raising their pay packets for three specific reasons: 80 per cent say they are concerned about inflation (and trying to match inflationary increases…