Foreign News
Pakistan’s election chaos casts shadow on next IMF deal
As Pakistan grapples with the aftermath of controversial elections, political chaos is threatening to cloud its $3bn deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which analysts say is key to the country’s economic stability.
On Thursday, the global lender said Pakistan’s interim government had “maintained” economic stability. The IMF’s communications chief, Julie Kozack, said the interim government had managed to achieve fiscal targets while also “protecting” the social safety net. “We look forward to working with the new government on policies to ensure macroeconomic stability and prosperity for all of Pakistan’s citizens,” Kozack said.
But the comments from the IMF come at a time when Pakistan is about to swear in a new government after this month’s general election, which has been marred by widespread allegations of rigging and manipulation.
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan the founder of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, drew a link between these allegations and the IMF loan in a statement from prison, asking the international body to carry out an audit of the elections before proceeding with the deal.
“Imran Khan will issue a letter to IMF. The charter of IMF, EU and other organisations stipulates that they can function or provide loan to a country only if there’s good governance,” Khan’s lawyer and Senator Ali Zafar told journalists after meeting the ex-premier at Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail on Thursday. Khan is in jail over a series of convictions in cases involving a range of charges — from corruption to leaking secret documents.
Pakistan signed a nine-month standby agreement with the IMF last year. It will expire early next month, and securing another long-term plan is seen as a priority for the next government.
The February 8 elections in Pakistan saw a split mandate with PTI-backed candidates winning 93 seats in the National Assembly while the party’s main rivals, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) secured 75 and 54 seats, respectively.
The PMLN, PPP and smaller allies have agreed to form a coalition government, whose members are expected to take oaths next week.
The PTI was denied its electoral symbol — a cricket bat — weeks before the elections and was forced to field candidates as independents. The party also faced a nationwide crackdown that impeded its campaign but still beat the odds when its candidates won the highest number of seats. Khan was removed from office in 2022 after a no-confidence motion. Many analysts believe he came to power in 2018 with the support of Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, but they eventually fell out.
The PTI has alleged widespread manipulation in the counting and results and has said it will continue both street protests and legal cases to reclaim what it insists is a stolen mandate.
Lahore-based economist Hina Shaikh, however, said this political uncertainty wouldn’t affect the IMF’s approach. With the IMF already signalling its willingness to work with the new government, “any effort by Khan would not bear any fruit,” she said.
“Firstly, it would have no official ramifications, and secondly, it would not be in the interest of Pakistan nor IMF to end financial support. Pakistan has several payments due in the next two months and needs IMF support to stay afloat and continue leveraging other sources of revenue,” the economist told Al Jazeera.
Extending the IMF deal is critical for Pakistan, economists said. A failure on the part of the government to tackle the country’s massive economic challenges could send the nation of 241 million people into a default.
Pakistan’s foreign reserves currently stand at about $8bn, just enough to cover eight weeks of imports. The Pakistani rupee has lost more than 50 percent of its value against the US dollar over the past two years.
Inflation, which hit a record high of almost 38 percent last year, is currently nearly 30 percent, and high tariffs for electricity and gas along with other essential commodities are draining household incomes.
The looming debt obligations mean that Pakistan must be able to negotiate a new plan with the IMF as soon as the new government comes in. A recent report by Tabadlab, an Islamabad-based think tank, called Pakistan’s debt obligations “unsustainable”, saying its total external and internal debt totals up to $271bn.
A United States Institute of Peace report from last year concluded that the country needs to “repay $77.5 billion in external debt” by June 2026. “For a $350 billion economy, this is a hefty burden,” the report stated.
Pakistan’s central bank says it needs more than $6bn to service its debt obligations by June 30, the end of current fiscal year.
Emphasizing the need for a continuation of the IMF loan programme, Uzair Younus, principal at the US-based advisory firm The Asia Group, said Pakistan’s economy cannot afford politics when it comes to the next IMF deal. “Any delays due to politics or a staring contest between the next finance minister and the IMF is likely to rapidly fuel economic uncertainty, pressure on the currency and heightened default risk,” he told Al Jazeera.
(Aljazeera)
Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, who snapped one of the most famous photographs taken in outer space, has died at the age of 90.
Officials say a small plane he was flying crashed into the water north of Seattle, Washington.
Anders’ son Greg confirmed that his father was flying the small plane, and that his body was recovered on Friday afternoon. “The family is devastated. He was a great pilot. He will be missed,” a statement from the family reads.
Anders – who was a lunar module pilot on the Apollo 8 mission – took the iconic Earthrise photograph, one of the most memorable and inspirational images of Earth from space.
Taken on Christmas Eve during the 1968 mission, the first crewed space flight to leave Earth and reach the Moon, the picture shows the planet rising above the horizon from the barren lunar surface.
Anders later described it as his most significant contribution to the space programme.
The image is widely credited with motivating the global environmental movement and leading to the creation of Earth Day, an annual event to promote activism and awareness of caring for the planet.
Speaking of the moment, Anders said: “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing that we discovered was the Earth.”
Officials said on Friday that Anders crashed his plane around 11:40PDT (1940BST).
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the 90-year-old was flying a Beechcraft A A 45 – also known as a T-34. The agency said that the plane crashed about 80ft (25m) from the coast of Jones Island.
Anders also served as the backup pilot to the Apollo 11 mission, the name of the effort that led to the first Moon landing on July 24, 1969.
Following Anders’ retirement from the space programme in 1969, the former astronaut largely worked in the aerospace industry for several decades. He also served as US Ambassador to Norway for a year in the 1970s.
But he is best remembered for the Apollo 8 mission and the iconic photograph he took from space.
“In 1968, during Apollo 8, Bill Anders offered to humanity among the deepest of gifts an astronaut can give. He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped all of us see something else: ourselves,” Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
Mark Kelly, a former astronaut who now serves as a US Senator for the state of Arizona, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that Anders “inspired me and generations of astronauts and explorers. My thoughts are with his family and friends”.
[BBC]
A Chinese spacecraft carrying rock and soil samples from the far side of the Moon has lifted off from the lunar surface to start its journey back to Earth, according to state media.
The achievement on Tuesday is a world first and the latest leap for Beijing’s decades-old space programme, which aims to send a crewed mission to the Moon by 2030.
The Xinhua News Agency, citing the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said that the ascender of the Chang’e-6 probe took off at 7:38am local time on Tuesday (23:38 GMT) and entered a preset orbit around the moon.
It described the move as “an unprecedented feat in human lunar exploration history”.
The Chang’e-6 probe was launched last month and its lander touched down on the far side of the Moon on Sunday. It used a drill and robotic arm to dig up soil on and below the Moon’s surface, according to Xinhua.
After successfully gathering its samples, the Chang’e-6 unfurled China’s national flag for the first time on the far side of the Moon, it said.
The agency cited the CNSA as saying that the spacecraft stowed the samples it had gathered in a container inside the ascender of the probe as planned.
[Aljazeera]
China says its uncrewed craft has successfully landed on the far side of the Moon – an unexplored place almost no-one tries to go.
The Chang’e 6 touched down in the South Pole-Aitken Basin at 06:23 Beijing time on Sunday morning (22:23 GMT Saturday), the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said.
Launched on 3 May, the mission aims to collect precious rock and soil from this region for the first time in history. The probe could extract some of the Moon’s oldest rocks from a huge crater on its South Pole.
The landing was fraught with risks, because it is very difficult to communicate with spacecraft once they reach the far side of the Moon. China is the only country to have achieved the feat before, landing its Chang’e-4 in 2019.
After launching from Wenchang Space Launch Center, the Chang’e 6 spacecraft had been orbiting the Moon waiting to land. The lander component of the mission then separated from the orbiter to touch down on the side of the Moon that faces permanently away from Earth.
During the descent, an autonomous visual obstacle avoidance system was used to automatically detect obstacles, with a visible light camera selecting a comparatively safe landing area based on the brightness and darkness of the lunar surface, the CNSA was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua news agency.
The lander hovered about 100m (328ft) above the safe landing area, and used a laser 3D scanner before a slow vertical descent. The operation was supported by the Queqiao-2 relay satellite, the CNSA said.
Chinese state media described the successful landing as an “historic moment”. The state broadcaster said “applause erupted at the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center” when the Chang’e landing craft touched down on the Moon early on Sunday morning.
The lander should spend up to three days gathering materials from the surface in an operation the CNSA said would involve “many engineering innovations, high risks and great difficulty”. “Everyone is very excited that we might get a look at these rocks no-one has ever seen before,” explains Professor John Pernet-Fisher, who specialises in lunar geology at the University of Manchester.
He has analysed other lunar rock brought back on the American Apollo mission and previous Chinese missions. But he says the chance to analyse rock from a completely different area of the Moon could answer fundamental questions about how planets form.
Most of the rocks collected so far are volcanic, similar to what we might find in Iceland or Hawaii. But the material on the far side would have a different chemistry . “It would help us answer those really big questions, like how are planets formed, why do crusts form, what is the origin of water in the solar system?” the professor says.
The mission aims to collect about 2kg (4.4lb) of material using a drill and mechanical arm, according to the CNSA.
The South Pole–Aitken basin, an impact crater, is one of the largest known in the solar system.
From there, the probe could gather material that came from deep inside the lunar mantle – the inner core of the Moon – Prof Pernet-Fisher says.
The Moon’s South Pole is the next frontier in lunar missions – countries are keen to understand the region because there is a good chance it has ice.
The capsule in the last Chinese moon mission, Chang’e 5, brought back soil and rocks in 2020 (BBC)
Access to water would significantly boost the chances of successfully establishing a human base on the Moon for scientific research.
If the mission succeeds, the craft will return to Earth with the precious samples on board a special return capsule.
The material will be kept in special conditions to try to keep it as pristine as possible.
Scientists in China will be given the first chance to analyse the rocks, and later researchers around the world will be able to apply for the opportunity too.
This is the second time China has launched a mission to collect samples from the Moon.
In 2020 Chang’e 5 brought back 1.7kg of material from an area called Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon’s near side.
China is planning three more uncrewed missions this decade as it looks for water on the Moon and investigates setting up a permanent base there.
Beijing’s broader strategy aims to see a Chinese astronaut walk on the moon by around 2030.
The US also aims to put astronauts back on the moon, with Nasa aiming to launch its Artemis 3 mission in 2026.
(BBC)
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