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IMF Chief says Ready to Support Pakistan after Meeting PM

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde on Sunday met Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and assured him that IMF stands ready to support his country.

The meeting took place on the sidelines of the World Government Summit in Dubai, hosted by the United Arab Emirates, both IMF and prime minister Imran Khan’s office said.

“I reiterated that the IMF stands ready to support Pakistan,” Lagarde said in a statement following meeting Khan.

A team from the International Monetary Fund visited Pakistan in November to discuss a possible bailout with officials, though the talks ended without agreement, but since then the government official said talks were still ongoing on a possible bailout.

Pakistan — which has gone to the IMF repeatedly since the late 1980s — is facing a balance of payments crisis.

“I also highlighted that decisive policies and a strong package of economic reforms would enable Pakistan to restore the resilience of its economy and lay the foundations for stronger and more inclusive growth,” said Lagarde, calling the meeting “good and constructive”.

Pakistan — a regular borrower from the IMF since the 1980s — last received an IMF bailout in 2013 to the tune of $6.6 billion.

Forecasts by the IMF and World Bank suggest the Pakistani economy is likely to grow between 4.0 and 4.5 percent for the fiscal year ending June 2019, compared to 5.8 percent growth in the last fiscal year.

Addressing the World Government Summit, prime minister Khan said his government has started a reform program and was trying to improve its economic policies.

“Reforms are painful but it is essential if we have to get out of our current problems,” Khan told the summit and said his government was making efforts to cut down the fiscal and current account deficit.

Khan hoped that the time has come that “Pakistan will take off”.

Khan has launched a highly publicized austerity drive since being sworn in, including auctioning off government-owned luxury vehicles and buffaloes, in addition to seeking loans from “friendly countries” and making overtures to the IMF.

The United Arab Emirates, Pakistan’s largest trading partner in the Middle East and a major investment sources, recently offered $3 billion to support Pakistan’s battered economy.

Islamabad also secured $6 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia and struck a 12-month deal for a cash lifeline during Khan’s visit to the kingdom in October.

It has also received billions of dollars in Chinese loans to finance ambitious infrastructure projects.

Despite the pledges, the ministry of finance said Pakistan would still seek broader IMF support for the government’s long-term economic planning.

In January, Pakistan launched a new investment certificate for overseas citizens, aimed at easing the country’s balance of payments crisis.

 

 

 

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Louvre Abu Dhabi introduces Rembrandt, Vermeer

The Louvre Abu Dhabi, the first museum to carry the famed name outside of France, announced Sunday it will roll out works by Dutch masters Rembrandt and Vermeer this month.

Works by the two artists are part of the gallery’s first exhibition this year, entitled “Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age: Masterpieces from The Leiden collection and the Musee du Louvre.”

The exhibit, on display in the United Arab Emirates capital from February 14 to May 18, is dedicated to Rembrandt, Vermeer and the famed “fijnschilders” — fine painters known for their detailed work — of the Netherlands.

“Rembrandt is a master of the Golden Age,” museum head Manuel Rabate told AFP.

“He’s a universal genius, he’s connected to the world.”

The exhibition features 95 works, including Vermeer’s “Young Woman Seated at a Virginal” alongside Rembrandt’s “Portrait of a Man” and “Study of the Head and Clasped Hands of a Young Man as Christ in Prayer”.

The museum has also acquired Rembrandt’s “Head of a young man, with clasped hands: Study of the figure of Christ” as part of its permanent collection.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi was inaugurated with great pomp in November 2017 — nearly five years behind schedule — by French President Emmanuel Macron and Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan.

It was marketed as “a universal museum” celebrating cultural exchange and tolerance.

The museum has reportedly cost the UAE around $1 billion, including upwards of $500 million to use France’s “Louvre” brand.

Officials have not confirmed the price tag.

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Economy & business
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Most Children Globally Lack Social Protection Coverage

A joint study by the International Labor Organization and U.N. Children’s Fund finds the vast majority of the world’s children lack effective social protection coverage. It says this dooms them to a life of extreme poverty, with negative implications for society.

The study finds only one third of children between zero and 14 years of age have any social protection. That means two-thirds, or 1.3 billion children live without a social safety net.

International Labor Organization Social Protection Department Director Isabel Ortiz says just slightly more than one percent of GDP is allocated to social protection for children. She says this huge under-investment gap needs to be covered.

“And, of course, the numbers worsen as we go by region. In Africa, for instance, children represent 40 percent of the African population overall. However, only 0.6 percent is actually invested in social protection for children,” she said.

The report finds children fare best in Europe and Central Asia where 87 percent have social protection coverage, followed by children in the Americas with 66 percent. Asia and Africa have the worst records. The report says no data is available on the Arab States.

The report highlights the impact extreme poverty has upon the lives of children and the societies in which they live. Chief of the U.N. Children’s Fund Child Poverty and Social Protection Unit, David Stewart, says 385 million children are living on under $1.90 a day.

“I think one of the most striking statistics, which emerges is that children are two times as likely to be living in poverty as adults,” he said. “Now, for children it is particularly concerning because poverty can have a lifetime implication for children. You do not have a second chance at nutrition, at health care, and education.”

Stewart says this has negative implications for children, and for societies and economies as well.

The ILO and UNICEF recommend the rapid expansion of social protection for children including the consideration of universal cash grants to children. Authors of the report say evidence clearly shows cash transfers play a vital role in breaking the vicious cycle of poverty and vulnerability.

 

 

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Arts & Entertainment
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Wikitongues Helps Bring Languages Back to Life

Some 6,000 languages are spoken in the world, and nearly half of them are endangered, according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger.

One of them is Theron Musuweu Kolokwe’s native tongue, Subiya, a Bantu language spoken by more than 30,000 people along the Zambezi River in Namibia, Zambia and Botswana.

“I think in my language,” he said. “I dream in my language. It’s the language that I was born into. I didn’t have the choice to speak it.”

That’s because, like other educated young people in Windhoek, the 33-year-old speaks a number of other languages on a daily basis, especially English and Afrikaans.

Two years ago, Kolokwe started documenting Subiya. The idea came to him while he was watching YouTube.

“Randomly, a video of someone speaking their native tongue popped up,” he recalled. “Then, when I opened it, it caught my curiosity. Then, I was like, I want to also hear my tongue and languages from my country and southern Africa in particular.”

Kolokwe is one of dozens of volunteers working with Wikitongues, a nonprofit in New York City that helps people from around the world preserve native languages that have been disappearing.

​Colorful vs. gray

When a language becomes extinct, says Wikitongues co-founder Daniel Bogre Udell, a culture disappears and a community loses its identity. That’s happening more often than many can imagine.

Udell, however, says language loss is not a natural culmination of progress.

“That’s really not an accident of history,” he explained. “It’s because, over the 1800s and 1900s, roughly every country in the world relentlessly worked to forcefully assimilate minorities’ cultures. I think no one would suggest that we need to be religiously or culturally or ethnically homogeneous. So, why would we be linguistically homogeneous? It’s a question about what kind of a world we want to live in: a colorful one or a gray one?”

The volunteer-based group began in 2016 as an open internet archive of every language in the world. Nearly 1,000 volunteers have submitted videos in more than 400 languages and dialects on Wikitongues’ YouTube channel. Some, like English, Farsi and Mandarin, are spoken by hundreds of millions of people. Others are unfamiliar, like Bora, spoken by a few thousand people in the Amazonian regions of Peru and Colombia, and Iraqw, spoken in Tanzania.

Inspiration and hope

The vision behind Wikitongues is simple and clear. It’s all about providing the tools and support people need to save their languages.

“Language revitalization at the end of the day is something that has to be done by the community, from the ground up,” Udell said. “There is no way an outsider organization can save someone’s language for them. We’ve had over 1,500 contributors and videos from 70 different countries. We have people from India who record dozens of languages, which is beyond their own. We have another volunteer from Scotland who is one of the last speakers of a variety of Scottish dialects. He’s in the process of reclaiming them, revitalizing, (and) building a dictionary for them.”

Wikitongues is also where volunteers from around the world can be inspired by the proof that reviving disappearing indigenous languages is possible. Hebrew is a good example.

“Hebrew went extinct in the 4th century BC, and was revived in the 1800s and now once again it’s the mother tongue of half of the world’s Jewish population,” Udell said. “One of our tribe partners here in the U.S., the Tunica-Biloxi tribe in Louisiana, has over the past couple of years built a really lively language revival on their community. Their language went extinct in the 1940s. We’ve had contributors from the Cornish community whose language went extinct in the 1700s and was brought back in the 1900s. Their movement really got geared up when the internet arrived and new generations of Cornish speakers find each other online and use the language on a daily basis.”

Such revival success stories give volunteers like Theron Musuweu Kolokwe hope that his efforts can save Subiya and other African languages from extinction. Kolokwe’s goal is to create a dictionary, and a curriculum so it can be taught in school.

“I want the world to know about my language,” he sais. “I want to promote it, so that generations to come can speak it fluently because there is a huge influx of Western languages around here, especially in Namibia. We all learn [English] in school. It’s the business language, the language of government, and people are neglecting their native languages. So, I want to promote it so more and more people can speak it. And children can be proud of where they come from.”

With awareness and technology, Wikitongues puts people in a better position to save and revive their native languages, making the world more colorful and culturally diverse.

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Grammy Awards to Showcase Girl Power

Rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake may lead the nominations, but Sunday’s Grammy Awards looks set to be a showcase for girl power.

Outspoken rapper Cardi B, whose music and personal life has dominated pop culture for the past two years, leads the charge on music’s biggest night with a live performance and five Grammy nominations, including for album and record of the year.

R&B singer Alicia Keys will host the Grammys for the first time, while Miley Cyrus, Janelle Monae, Camila Cabello and Kacey Musgraves are also among the performers at the Los Angeles ceremony.

Adding to the star power, Motown legend Diana Ross will take the stage to mark her 75th birthday in March, and hopes are high that Lady Gaga will perform her Grammy- and Oscar-nominated song “Shallow” from the movie “A Star is Born.”

​Eyes on Cardi B

Yet Cardi B is likely to grab most of the attention. The 26-year-old New York artist is one of only a handful of female rappers and has captured attention with her message of female empowerment, on and off marriage to rapper Offset, and a string of hit records and collaborations, including “I Like It,” “Girls Like You” and “Taki Taki.”

“Cardi B is a very strong woman who is in control of her career. She is really talented and has something to say and she is just fun. She is like a breath of fresh air,” said Melinda Newman, West Coast editor for Billboard magazine.

“Between Alicia Keys and all the female nominees, I think we will have a very female-leading show. That’s not necessarily by design, that’s just how it’s shaking out this year,” Newman added.

Uproar in 2018

It is a far cry from 2018, when the dearth of female nominees and performers caused a media uproar and prompted the Recording Academy, whose members choose the Grammy winners, to expand the number of nominees in the top four categories to eight from five.

This year five of the eight nominees for the coveted album of the year award are women: Cardi B’s “Invasion of Privacy”; Janelle Monae’s “Dirty Computer”; folk singer Brandi Carlile’s “By the Way, I Forgive You”; country artist Kacey Musgraves’ “Golden Hour”; and R&B newcomer H.E.R.’s self-titled “H.E.R.”

Six of the eight musicians competing for best new artist are also women, including “New Rules” British singer Dua Lipa, Chloe & Halle, Bebe Rexha and H.E.R.

While the show may give the impression that girls run the world, there is no guarantee how many will take home a Grammy.

Lamar leads with eight nods, many of them for writing most of the “Black Panther” movie soundtrack album, which is up for album of the year. Drake, the most commercially successful artist of 2018, follows with seven nominations, including for his album “Scorpion” and single “God’s Plan.”

It is not yet known whether either of the rappers will perform on Sunday.

The Grammy Awards take place in Los Angeles, Feb. 10, and will be broadcast live on CBS television at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT (0100 GMT).

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Arts & Entertainment
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Ice Harvesting Tradition Continues for 120-Plus Years

Americans have not needed iceboxes to keep food cold for nearly a century, ever since refrigerators became widely available. But that doesn’t stop folks in Holderness, N.H., from carrying out a winter task that’s been done for more than 120 years — harvesting ice for the summer months. Faith Lapidus reports.

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Silicon Valley & Technology
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Smart Watch Fights Flu and Diabetes, Helps Couples Get Pregnant

Scientists are helping patients fight flu, diabetes and other maladies with the help of a smart watch that monitors body chemistry for blood sugar, sweat and other data. Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas say it can also help couples get pregnant by tracking the stress. Mariia Prus traveled to Texas to learn more. Joy Wagner narrates her report.

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Arts & Entertainment
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Bridging Ethnic Divides, Olympic Spirit Back in Sarajevo, East Sarajevo

When Sarajevo hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, it was a moment of pride for all of what was then Yugoslavia. Thirty-five years later, the post-war capital of what is now Bosnia hopes to rekindle that flame as it hosts the European Youth Olympics Winter Festival next week. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.

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