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NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s handpicked Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat was on Monday appointed India’s first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), a day before he was to step down on superannuation. “Government has decided to appoint Gen Bipin Rawat as the CDS with effect from December 31, 2019 and until further orders and extension of Gen Bipin Rawat with effect from December 31, 2019 and till such period he holds the office of CDS,” The Hindu said quoting the defence ministry late on Monday evening. Gen Rawat is set to retire as the Army Chief on Dec 31 on completing three years of tenure and will assume charge as the CDS. Vice Chief of Army Lt Gen MM Naravane is scheduled to take over as the 28th Chief of Army Staff (COAS). In Dec 2015, the Modi government had appointed Gen Rawat as the Army Chief by superseding two senior officers Lt. Gen. Praveen Bakshi and Lt. Gen. P. M. Hariz, and both have since retired. According to an official Gazette dated December 28 the upper age lim

ISLAMABAD: The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) has worked out minor adjustments in the costs of various imported petroleum products in the range of 1.8 per cent to a maximum 3.2pc for January 2020. The Finance Division will make the final decision on Tuesday whether to keep the petroleum products prices unchanged largely as a good gesture of the New Year or pass on the raise to end consumers. The Ogra has worked an increase of Rs2.61 or 2.3pc in the per litre petrol price. In case, government approves the increase, consumer price of petrol will go up to Rs116.6 per litre from the existing Rs113.99 per litre. Most of the vehicles especially passengers are consuming petrol as fuel. Therefore, increase in the price will lead to increase in the transport fares across the country. The consumption of petrol as fuel also increased following massive shortfall in CNG availability. Moreover, Ogra recommends an increase of Rs2.25 or 1.8pc per litre prices of high-speed diesel (HSD), w

Chinese scientist He Jiankui.—AFP BEIJING: A Chinese court on Monday sentenced the scientist who claimed to be behind the world’s first gene-edited babies to three years in prison for illegal medical practice, state media reported. He Jiankui, who shocked the scientific community last year by announcing the birth of twin girls whose genes had allegedly been altered to confer immunity to HIV, was also fined three million yuan ($430,000), Xinhua news agency said. He, who was educated at Stanford University, was sentenced by a court in Shenzhen for “illegally carrying out the human embryo gene-editing intended for reproduction”, Xinhua said. Two of his fellow researchers were also sentenced. Zhang Renli was handed a two-year jail term and fined one million yuan while Qin Jinzhou was given 18 months, suspended for two years, and fined 500,000 yuan. The trio had not obtained qualifications to work as doctors and had knowingly violated China’s regulations and ethical principles, acco

KARACHI: Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari publicly offered the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan partnership in the Sindh government provided the latter quit the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf-led coalition government — a move the MQM-P did not reject outright, but described it as a “non-serious attempt”. Mr Bhutto-Zardari surprised everyone when he while speaking at a programme to inaugurate four development projects in Karachi addressed Karachi Mayor Wasim Akhtar, who is also a central leader of the MQM-P, and offered him PPP’s full support if the MQM-P broke off its alliance with the PTI to oust the federal government. “Bring down, bring down...bring Imran’s government down and save Karachi,” he said. Amid loud cheering from the audience, he continued: “We will support you one hundred per cent. For the sake of the people of Karachi, we are ready to provide an equal number of ministries [in Sindh] to the MQM but the [only] condition is that it sends Imran packing.”

ISLAMABAD: The main opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has called for the release of all those opposition members being detained by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for no reason after the promulgation of the new ordinance which has curtailed certain powers and limited jurisdiction of the accountability watchdog. In a statement on Monday, PML-N’s information secretary Marriyum Aurangzeb also asked Prime Minister Imran Khan and NAB chairman retired Justice Javed Iqbal to apologise to the nation for holding its elected representatives “hostage through illegal abductions”. The government had last week promulgated the National Accountability (Second Amendment) Ordinance 2019, providing relief not only to bureaucrats and business community, but also to the politicians from across the aisle. The two major opposition parties — the PML-N and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) — are critical of the government’s move to curtail powers of NAB, alleging that the prime ministe

AFTER having fought a flawed war in Afghanistan for 18 years — termed by scholars Samuel Moyn and Stephen Wertheim as “the infinity war” — the US is now looking for a flawed peace. The ongoing US-Afghan Taliban talks appear to be less about Afghanistan’s peace than about the end of America’s war. The prospective deal may lend credibility to Trump’s claim that he has fulfilled his campaign promise to end America’s endless wars, and give the insurgents a nod of legitimacy. It could also help avoid an immediate meltdown in Afghanistan. But peace will remain elusive. With both Kabul and the Taliban aspiring for full power, a sliver of which each may be willing to share with the other, the conflict is bound to continue. How should Pakistan address this challenge? First, it has to face some truths. Pakistan may not have been a party to the Afghan conflict but it has been a part of it. It may not have been part of America’s failure but has certainly been part of the Taliban’s success. This

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan witnessed a nearly 31 per cent reduction in terror and counterterrorism-related fatalities in 2019, according to data released by the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) on Monday. According to the research, only two militant outfits — Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) splinter groups and the militant Islamic State (IS) group — claimed responsibility for 12 and one attacks, respectively, but their own ranks depleted by nearly 30pc. Civilian fatalities declined by about 36pc. The report observed a 30.71pc drop in fatalities in 2019 (from 980 in 2018 to 679 in 2019). If Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) are counted as separate regions, Balochistan still remains most affected by militancy and insurgency. The largest drop in fatalities was observed in Balochistan (44.2pc), followed by Fata (39pc), Sindh (19pc), and Punjab (11.8pc). No drone attack happened during outgoing year Nearly 370 terrorist atta