Speaking to the European Parliament, Prime Minister Mark Carney said the alliance would help to secure sovereignty and independence for his country.

The move would prevent Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of two governing Palestinian groups, from traveling to the United States next week for the United Nations General Assembly.

At Clash at the Quays in Dublin, rappers and grime M.C.s trade superkicks and story lines, and the crowd goes wild.

Buying interest was observed at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), with the benchmark KSE-100 Index gaining nearly 900 points during the trading session on Thursday.

At 12pm, the benchmark index was hovering at 169,303.71, up by 1,281.91 points or 0.76%.

Buying was observed in key sectors, including automobile assemblers, cement, commercial banks, oil and gas exploration companies, OMCs, power generation and refinery. Index-heavy stocks, including LUCK, MCB, MEBL, NBP, UBL, MARI, OGDC, PPL, POL and ARL, traded in the green.

On Wednesday, the PSX remained firmly under selling pressure as elevated international oil prices and persistent regional geopolitical tensions dented investor sentiment, prompting widespread profit-taking across key sectors.

Concerns over macroeconomic stability, external account pressures and the risk of prolonged disruption in global oil markets weighed on the market throughout the session.

The benchmark KSE-100 Index plunged 1,370.52 points, or 0.81%, to close at 168,021.80 points.

Internationally, shares edged up in Asia on Thursday as investors bet the Federal Reserve is finally getting the jump on ​inflation, delivering its first rate hike in more than three years and calming a global bond selloff that had ‌sent long-term yields soaring.

The US dollar hit a seven-week high against its major peers, underpinned by a jump in short-term Treasury yields as markets ramped up wagers that the Fed may have to lift rates again, with a move by December fully priced in. That proved a headwind for commodities, with oil prices giving back ​ground.

The focus now shifts to the Bank of England, which is widely expected to leave interest rates steady later in the day, ​but all eyes will be on any hint about whether high energy prices could force it to hike ⁠in November. The Bank of Japan, by contrast, is all but certain to lift interest rates on Friday.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside ​Japan rose 0.4% while Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.5%. Chinese blue-chips slipped 0.4%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.9%.

Nasdaq futures gained 0.6%, and ​S&P 500 futures bounced 0.5%, after small declines on Wall Street.

As widely expected, the Fed raised interest rates by a quarter point overnight, but the unanimous decision tilted to the hawkish side, with the board signalling one more rate hike this year. Goldman Sachs now expects the Fed to hike rates again in October.

This is an intraday update

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The gathering in Scotland brings together industry leaders amid a growing debate about the safety risks of unchecked artificial intelligence.

The North Korean leader’s financial and diplomatic leverage rests on the brutal exploitation of his own people, from coal miners to diplomats, at home and abroad.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday leveled his most pointed — though still indirect — criticism ​yet at his hand-picked Federal Reserve chief, fuming on social media over the central bank’s move to raise interest rates in a bid to calm persistent inflation.

“Interest ‌Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR,” he wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform.

“LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!” he concluded.

It was the closest Trump has come yet to leveling one of his broadsides directly at Kevin Warsh, though he later told reporters he still had confidence in the man he picked earlier this ​year to take over the Fed from Jerome Powell, a figure the president frequently derided for not delivering the dramatic rate cuts Trump has routinely demanded.

“I … talked to Kevin,” ​Trump said, appearing to confirm an interaction with the Fed chief that Warsh himself has so far declined to corroborate. “And I said you might ⁠as well vote with the board because it’s not going to matter. The board is very hostile. They’re very political. They’re doing the wrong thing.”

Trump, as he has in recent social media ​posts, also appeared to connect persistent US trade deficits with the borrowing costs set by the central bank, even though the two are largely unrelated. Trump had previously threatened to cut off all ​trade from countries with which the US had trade deficits if the Fed did not cut interest rates.

Hawkish Fed lifts dollar to seven-week high as focus turn to BOJ

“The word “Deficit” is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are “carrying” almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer,” Trump posted on Wednesday.

Trump’s screed came shortly after Fed policymakers unanimously agreed on Wednesday to raise rates by 25 basis points to 3.75%-4.00%, an action that Warsh described at a subsequent press conference ​as “a sober decision, serious decision, responsible decision.”

“The plain fact is that inflation is too high and has been for too long,” Warsh said.

And rates are likely going still higher. New policy projections showed ​16 of 18 policymakers anticipate at least one more quarter-percentage-point hike by the end of this year, with only two of them seeing rates remaining stable from here. Warsh said again Wednesday that he is ‌opposed to sharing ⁠forward guidance and did not submit a projection.

Trump tapped Warsh in January to succeed Powell, whom Trump nicknamed “too late” for taking a more cautious approach to rate cuts last year than Trump wanted. Warsh, for his part, took office with a pledge to maintain the Fed’s independence on setting monetary policy while at the same time working in greater concert with the White House on other matters.

Since Warsh took office in June — after a Senate confirmation that was nearly derailed by a federal investigation into Powell and renovations of the Fed headquarters building — he initially steered Fed officials to ​holding rates steady, although not all policymakers agreed ​with the approach in the face of ⁠inflationary pressures. On Wednesday, he said the time had come for the central bank to take action.

“This summer’s inflation readings do not tell me that underlying trends have improved,” he told reporters.

Asked at his press conference if he planned to meet with Trump to explain the Fed’s decision, Warsh ​demurred.

“I don’t have anything for you on discussions with the president,” he said.

Oil prices extend losses as fears of Middle East supply disruptions ease

Trump’s post was the second time this week he’d taken aim ​at his own appointees. ⁠After the Supreme Court struck down his attempt to regulate how states issue mail ballots, Trump wrote of the three justices he appointed:

“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves.”

White House officials spent much of the week publicly pressuring the Fed to hold rates steady. One former White House official told Reuters the ⁠president’s social media ​post about the Fed was a tame response in the context of that campaign.

“The president is making clear he ​disagrees with the policy without explicitly saying Warsh is personally to blame, giving him a nickname, or threatening retaliatory action against the Fed,” said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak ​publicly. “Instead he’s redirecting his ire toward trading partners, which have little to do with the monetary policy decision.”