分类： bharat

India is reportedly poised to invite Pakistani PM Imran Khan to an annual Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit – hosted in New Delhi this year – where the bloc’s leaders will sit down for a rare face-to-face encounter.
The SCO, the world’s largest multinational defense alliance, will convene for its yearly Heads of Government meeting in the Indian capital later this year, the first such gathering hosted by India, a relative newcomer to the organization. Despite ongoing tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, however, New Delhi looks forward to welcoming Khan, and the ball is apparently now in Islamabad’s court, at least according to Indian officials cited by the Hindustan Times.

“According to protocol and convention, an invitation will be extended to the Pakistani Prime Minister,” an official familiar with the invitation procedure told the outlet.

The world’s largest retailer, Walmart, has laid off about a third of the executives at its Indian headquarters in Gurgaon as it struggles to boost its business in the country.
The company fired a total of 56 people, including eight with senior management positions and others in middle and lower management, Krish Iyer, the president and CEO of Walmart India, said in a statement released to the media on Monday. The cuts reportedly amount to around one percent of the total staff working for the company in India.

“We are also looking for ways to operate more efficiently, which requires us to review our corporate structure to ensure that we are organized in the right way,” he said, adding that all the dismissed employees will be offered enhanced severance benefits and outplacement services.

An earlier report claimed that a second wave of dismissals is expected in April as the company may leave the wholesale segment in the country as it has failed to turn a profit. Walmart rebuffed the claims as “baseless and incorrect,” adding that its sales in the country rose 22 percent in 2019. The rise in sales, however, does not automatically mean that it did not sustain losses.