PAKISTAN
Ex-PM Khan barred from vote
Jailed former prime minister Imran Khan and most of his supporters have been rejected as candidates for the Feb. 8 election, party officials said yesterday, after nominations for the ballot closed. Khan has been in prison since August, facing trial over a slew of cases he says were orchestrated to prevent him from contesting the election as the figurehead of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI). The Election Commission disqualified him from office over a graft conviction, but his party turned in nomination regardless. “Nomination papers of almost all national and provincial leaders of PTI, including Imran Khan, have been rejected,” PTI spokesman Raoof Hasan said. “Ninety to 95 percent of our candidates’ papers have been rejected.”
SRI LANKA
Officer killed in drug raid
A police officer was killed and another critically wounded yesterday, when troops opened fire on an undercover unit during a drug raid at a hotel, local police said. The undercover officers were at a beach hotel in Weligama, a popular surf spot on the island nation’s southern coast, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Army troops deployed to reinforce local police in the anti-drugs campaign rushed to the area to investigate an unrelated shooting and opened fire at a van speeding away from the scene, the officer said. “They did not realize that there were officers from the Colombo Crime Division in the van leaving the hotel,” the officer said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Actor Tom Wilkinson dies
Two-time Oscar-nominated actor Tom Wilkinson, who starred in The Full Monty, a film about a group of unemployed steel workers who launch new careers as strippers, died on Saturday aged 75. The British actor’s death was confirmed in a statement released by his agent on behalf of his family. “It is with great sadness that the family of Tom Wilkinson announce that he died suddenly at home on December 30. His wife and family were with him.” Among his numerous accolades was an Academy Award nomination for In the Bedroom in 2001 and another for a supporting role in Michael Clayton in 2007.
NICARAGUA
Priests arrested
Authorities have arrested at least 12 priests since Dec. 20, opposition figures and news reports said on Saturday. Eleven of those arrested appear on a list given to Agence France-Presse by lawyer Martha Molina, an expert on Nicaraguan church affairs, who is exiled in the US. La Prensa also reported that Jader Hernandez, pastor of a church in Managua, was detained. President Daniel Ortega has locked horns with the Catholic Church, shuttering the local office of the Franciscans in October last year.
UNITED STATES
Paula Abdul sues Lythgoe
Grammy-award-winning artist and US television star Paula Abdul has accused a producer on the singing contest show American Idol of sexual assault, a California lawsuit says. Abdul, whose 1988 album Forever Your Girl was the most successful debut in history at the time, accused Nigel Lythgoe, a producer on the show and a judge on So You Think You Can Dance, of sexually assaulting her twice, the complaint filed on Friday showed. Lythgoe, who is English, has denied the accusations, media reports said. In the suit, the 61-year-old singer said she was harassed by Lythgoe and other executives on American Idol, where she was a judge from 2002 to 2009.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
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