Brussels is devising a list of conditions on ending the Ukraine conflict, the foreign policy chief has said The EU intends to demand restrictions on the size of the Russian armed forces as part of any settlement of the Ukraine conflict, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, indicated on Tuesday. The EU is not part of US-mediated Russia-Ukraine peace talks and has long refused diplomatic engagement with Moscow. Kallas, however, told reporters that she is drafting a list of demands and believes Brussels will shape the conflict’s outcome. “Everybody around the table, including the Russians and the Americans, needs to understand that you need Europeans to agree,” she said, as quoted by news agencies. “And for that, we also have conditions. And we should put the conditions not on Ukrainians… but on the Russians.” “The Ukrainian army is not the issue. It’s the Russian army. It’s the Russian military expenditure. If they spend so much on the military they will have to use it agai...
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Why we should stop obsessing over the Doomsday Clock When people talk about the threat of nuclear war, American popular culture inevitably creeps in. More than in almost any other field, the language, imagery and mythology surrounding nuclear apocalypse were created in the United States. Along with the weapons themselves. One immediately thinks of Billy Joel’s song We Didn’t Start the Fire. In fact, we didn’t start the arms race either. We didn’t invent the logic of global instability, nor did we build the cult that surrounds it. That entire worldview was born in the United States. It was there, after all, that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded, and it was its editors who invented the Doomsday Clock: the now-famous symbol showing how close humanity supposedly is to nuclear annihilation. They created it immediately after the United States developed the atomic bomb and dropped two of them, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What is less often mentioned is that when the Doomsd...
Along with a reduced tariff for most exports, clothes made in the South Asian country with American cotton will get a duty waiver The US and Bangladesh have agreed a trade deal that allows reduced tariffs for most of the South Asian nation’s exports. The deal provides for a tariff rate of 19% for exports to the US, 1% lower than the 20% set in August, according to reports. Washington has committed to establishing a mechanism for certain textile and apparel goods from Bangladesh using US-produced cotton and man-made fiber to receive a zero tariff in the US market, Muhammad Yunus, the chief adviser of the interim government, said in a post on X. Neighboring India finalized a trade agreement with the US earlier this month, which provides an 18% rate, but without a similar concession for apparel exports. Bangladesh, US sign reciprocal tariff agreement WASHINGTON DC, February 9: The Agreement on Reciprocal Tariff between Bangladesh and the United States was signed on Monday. On the...
The general elections and referendum will sway the South Asian country’s future governance, regional power equations, and trade trajectory General elections will be held in Bangladesh on February 12, the first voting after a violent uprising, led by Gen Z protesters , in 2024 that ousted the government of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The polls will be a pointer to the trajectory of a nation in flux, its governance in the future, and the power equilibrium in its South Asian neighborhood. The Hasina-led Awami League had ruled Bangladesh for 15 years from 2009 until August 2024, when the former prime minister and many ministers of her government had to flee the country. Now, the party is banned from participating in the election, raising questions over polling legitimacy. In a country with a population of around 173 million, there are 127.7 million registered voters, according to Election Commission figures. About 56 million, 44% of the electorate, are between 18 and...
The prospects “cannot be good” for Libya after the assassination of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the British journalist has said The British and French intelligence services played a role in the assassination of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, British journalist Afshin Rattansi has said, citing sources. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was killed last week by four gunmen at his residence in the city of Zintan in northwestern Libya. The 53-year-old politician had intended to run for president of the North African country, which remains divided between rival governments and has been plagued by intermittent civil war since his father was deposed and murdered in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011. Rattansi told RT on Sunday that after the assassination of Gaddafi’s eldest son, “sources immediately... told me that... indeed, it was [British military intelligence service] MI6 and a local proxy” that were behind it. “There were hints... that there was French involvement a...
The Hungarian foreign minister has called Kiev’s mobilization drive an “open manhunt” Ukraine’s forced mobilization has become an “open manhunt,” with civilians being detained and forced into military service against their will, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said. Commenting on the detention in Ukraine of a Hungarian citizen who allegedly attempted to help a group of Ukrainians cross the border, Szijjarto said people were “fed up with the fighting.” “The Ukrainian people do not want to die, yet every day there are images of violence playing out like a series – open manhunts unfolding on the streets of Ukrainian cities,” he wrote on Facebook on Sunday. The Ukrainian authorities recently reported detaining a Hungarian national accused of helping five Ukrainian men cross into Hungary. The country’s consulate general in Beregovo provided immediate consular protection and would assist him during police proceedings, the minster said. Ukraine’s recruitment drive ...