PAKISTAN
Court denies Khan bail
The Islamabad High Court yesterday declined bail to detained former prime minister Imran Khan, who has been indicted on charges of leaking state secrets, his lawyer Naeem Panjutha said, adding that they would challenge it. The charge is related to a classified cable sent to Islamabad by the Pakistani ambassador in the US last year, which Khan is accused of making public. The former cricket star said the contents of the cable had appeared in the media from other sources. Khan has said the cable he has been accused of leaking was proof of a US conspiracy to push the military to oust him in last year’s parliamentary vote, because he had visited Moscow just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The US and the Pakistani military denied that.
THAILAND
Pheu Thai elects leader
The ruling party yesterday elected the daughter of jailed ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra as its leader. Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thaksin’s youngest daughter, was voted unopposed to become Pheu Thai’s new leader, two years after entering politics. “The new administrative body of Pheu Thai must improve itself to lead the party to becoming number one for the people again,” Paetongtarn, 37, told party members and reporters. Political analyst Yuttaporn Issrachai said the announcement follows the pattern of Pheu Thai’s “family-run style.” “It is an effort to modernize the party, but in the end, the core of the party is still the same. It belongs to the Shinawatra clan,” he said.
SAN SALVADOR
Bukele seeks re-election
President Nayib Bukele on Thursday filed paperwork to run for re-election in February, despite concerns over his constitutional eligibility to seek a consecutive term. Bukele, 42, enjoys strong public support and last year announced he would contest the election. While critics question his eligibility, citing a constitutional prohibition, the nation’s top court in 2021 ruled he could run. The judges on the court were appointed by Congress, which is controlled by the president’s New Ideas party. A recent poll conducted by the Center for Citizen Studies at Francisco Gavidia University gave New Ideas nearly 70 percent support, versus just over 4 percent for its closest competitor.
UNITED STATES
Arctic Norway mission opens
The nation was yesterday to open its northernmost diplomatic station in the world, a symbol of the arctic’s increased importance in Washington. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June said the opening of the station in Tromsoe, northern Norway, was a means for the nation to have a “diplomatic footprint above the arctic circle.” Called a “presence post,” it will not offer consular services. “It is a gesture that showcases just how much more important the US sees the arctic now than only five or 10 years ago,” said Andreas Oesthagen, a senior research fellow at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute.
MALDIVES
Troop talks with India starts
The nation has started negotiations with India to remove its military presence, president-elect Mohamed Muizzu said in an interview published by Bloomberg yesterday, calling the talks “very successful already.” Removing Indian troops was a key campaign pledge by Muizzu, who ousted Ibrahim Solih as president last month. About 70 Indian military personnel maintain New Delhi-sponsored radar stations and surveillance aircraft. Indian warships help patrol the Maldives’ exclusive economic zone.
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
EYEING A SOLUTION: In unusually critical remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said he was ‘destroying Russia by not making a deal’ US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war. Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term. “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other
In Earth’s upper atmosphere, a fast-moving band of air called the jet stream blows with winds of more than 442kph, but they are not the strongest in our solar system. The comparable high-altitude winds on Neptune reach about 2,000kph. However, those are a mere breeze compared with the jet stream on a planet called WASP-127b. Astronomers have detected winds howling at about 33,000kph on the large gaseous planet in our Milky Way galaxy approximately 520 light-years from Earth in a tight orbit around a star similar to our sun. The supersonic jet-stream winds circling WASP-127b at its equator are the fastest of their kind
RSS