Saturday, 20, April, 2024

World

The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, who released reams of secret documents that embarrassed the United States government, was arrested by the British police on Thursday at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he had lived since 2012, after Ecuador withdrew the asylum it had granted him.

Unhealthy diets are responsible for 11m preventable deaths globally per year, more even than smoking tobacco, according to a major study.

A report presented today jointly by the European Union, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) finds that around 113 million people in 53 countries experienced acute food insecurity in 2018, compared to 124 million in 2017.

President Ashraf Ghani on Sunday met the visiting Uzbek delegation, led by Uzbekistan’s Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov, and discussed the peace process, regional connectivity, infrastructure projects and economic ties between the two countries, the Presidential Palace said in a statement.

The next meeting of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS Ministerial Council) will be held in Moscow on April 5, the CIS Executive Committee reported.

The U.S. Department of Labour (DOL) has removed the cotton from Uzbekistan from the List for Prohibition of Acquisition of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor (E.O. List).

Facebook removed 2,632 Pages, Groups and accounts that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram, the company said in a statement.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, said on Tuesday that he was resigning as the leader of Kazakhstan after three decades in power.

Against the backdrop of uncertain trade relations between the United States and China, senior government officials from across Asia and the Pacific gathered in Bangkok this week to re-iterate their commitment to strengthening regional trade and investment.

Moscow-based Mobile TeleSystems PJSC (MTS), the largest mobile telecommunications company in Russia and an issuer of publicly traded securities in the United States, and its wholly owned Uzbek subsidiary, KOLORIT DIZAYN INK LLC (KOLORIT), have entered into resolutions with the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and agreed to pay a combined total penalty of $850 million to resolve charges arising out of a scheme to pay bribes in Uzbekistan.  In addition, charges were unsealed today against a former Uzbek official who is the daughter of the former president of Uzbekistan and against the former CEO of Uzdunrobita LLC, another MTS subsidiary, for their participation in a bribery and money laundering scheme involving more than $865 million in bribes from MTS, VimpelCom Limited (now VEON) and Telia Company AB (Telia) to the former Uzbek official in order to secure her assistance in entering and maintaining their business operations in Uzbekistan’s telecommunications market.

Uzbekistan has ranked as the 16th most polluted country in the world in 2018 with 34.3 score, with the air in 2018 was classified as “moderate”.

A Russian telecommunications company agreed to pay $850 million to resolve federal bribery charges, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday.

The Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant elaborated on his planned trade mission to Uzbekistan in the autumn as part of the burgeoning ties between the U.S. and Uzbekistan, the Asia Times said.

Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov met with the head of the Taliban delegation Baradar Akhund in Doha Sunday and discussed with him the process of peaceful settlement of the Afghan crisis, as well as economic assistance to Afghanistan, said Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid.

The Amritsar-bound Boeing 767 plane of Uzbekistan Airways, which departed today from Tashkent returned to the capital and landed at 12:35 at the Tashkent airport, the company said in a statement.

Three former executives of telecom company Telia were acquitted Friday of paying bribes in Uzbekistan, with the Swedish court citing lack of evidence.

Since at least the early ’80s, the world has been getting greener. Satellite data show plants cover more and more land every year, the researchers report Tuesday in the journal Nature Sustainability.

The United States is trying to enable countries in Central Asia to have options in obtaining US military equipment rather than relying on military procurement from Russia, but the cost of US weapons will continue to be an issue, Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Gen. Joseph Votel said in a congressional testimony on Tuesday.

The Freedom House published “Freedom in the World 2019” report, which offered a special assessment of the state of democracy  in 195 countries of the world. Of the 195, 86 (44 percent) were rated as Free, 59 (30 percent) - Partly Free, and 50 (26 percent) - Not Free.

Juan Guaido, head of the Opposition-run Congress, took an oath swearing himself in as Venezuela's interim president on Wednesday, as hundreds of thousands marched to demand the end of socialist leader Nicolas Maduro's government.