Maldivian envoy summoned and flights suspended after insults about Indian PM’s visit to Lakshadweep islands
A row has erupted between India and the Maldives after the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, visited the Indian islands of Lakshadweep to promote tourism.
The visit was perceived by some in the Maldives as an attempt to draw tourists away from the archipelago in the Indian Ocean, whose economy is heavily dependent on tourism.
Continue reading...Turnout reportedly as low as 40% after opposition party called general strike over ‘sham election’
Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has won office for a fifth term, in an election that was overshadowed by a ruthless crackdown on the opposition and low voter turnout.
The election commission announced in the early hours of Monday that Hasina’s ruling Awami League had won a fourth consecutive term, winning almost 75% of the seats. It will be her fifth term as prime minister as she had previously ruled between 1996 and 2001, before coming back to power in 2009.
Continue reading...Already decimated by mass arrests, opposition parties have boycotted the ‘sham’ election, which will give victory to the ruling Awami League
Bangladesh began voting on Sunday in an election guaranteed to give a fifth term in office to rime minister Sheikh Hasina, after a boycott led by an opposition party she branded a “terrorist organisation”.
Hasina has presided over exceptional economic growth in a country once beset by grinding poverty, but her government has been accused of rampant human rights abuses and a ruthless opposition crackdown.
Continue reading...Four people also killed in suspected arson attack on a train, which police say was aimed at scaring people before vote
Polling booths have been set on fire in Bangladesh on the eve of general elections.
On Friday four people, including two children, died in an apparent arson attack on a train in Bangladesh. Police said they had arrested seven people in connection with the incident.
Continue reading...After four-month journey, Aditya-L1 will measure and observe sun’s outermost layers
India’s solar observation mission has entered the sun’s orbit after a four-month journey, the latest success for the space exploration ambitions of the world’s most populous country.
The Aditya-L1 mission was launched in September and is carrying an array of instruments to measure and observe the sun’s outermost layers.
Continue reading...Work permits to leave Nepal for those countries halted as 10 men killed and dozens more reported missing
The government of Nepal has banned its citizens from travelling to Russia or Ukraine for employment after 10 young men were killed and dozens more reported missing while fighting, predominately in the Russian military.
More than 200 Nepali soldiers are believed to have enlisted in the Russian army since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Nepal’s foreign ministry had said, and more than 100 of them have gone missing. A smaller number are believed to be fighting in the Ukrainian army.
Continue reading...The election has been branded a ‘sham’ designed to cement Hasina’s rule by exiled opposition leader Tarique Rahman
An opposition boycott looks set to usher prime minister Sheikh Hasina to a fourth straight term in the Bangladesh election this weekend.
The election has been described as a “sham” designed to cement Hasina’s rule by exiled opposition leader Tarique Rahman.
Continue reading...Afghan affiliate of IS claims responsibility for blasts in memorial crowd as Tehran tightens security on its eastern borders
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on a crowd in southern Iran marking the anniversary of the death of the senior Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Suleimani.
At least 84 people died when two blasts ripped through the crowd near Suleimani’s tomb in the city of Kerman, four years after he was killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad. Suleimani had been a staunch enemy of IS, which resents the damage he did to its cause in Iraq and Syria.
Continue reading...A diplomatic breakthrough has allowed 62 refugees to start a new life in America. Yet a million still remain in fear and poverty in the Bangladeshi camps
After 23 hours on his first international flight, it was only after stepping off the plane in the United States that Nurul Haque finally felt the relief of escaping the refugee camps of Bangladesh, where he was born.
Haque was among the first Rohingya refugees allowed to leave Bangladesh in more than a decade. The 62 people who have flown to the US since late last year might be few, but resettlement has given them hope of opportunity and security that was denied them in Bangladesh.
Continue reading...Photograph taken at wildlife reserve shows baby nestled with his mother after his return
A baby elephant who was separated from his mother and the rest of his herd in a wildlife park in Tamil Nadu, south India, has been reunited with them by park officials.
An aerial photograph taken by officials shows the mother and calf, three days later, enjoying a nap on a slight incline with the baby nestled in the nook of his mother’s chest.
Continue reading...Zomato rider resorts to horsepower in Hyderabad after truckers’ strike causes fuel shortage and traffic jams
An Indian food delivery driver frustrated by long queues for petrol has resorted to horsepower to make his deliveries.
A video clip shows the man trotting through the busy streets of Hyderabad in southern India on a bay horse with the distinctive red bag of the food delivery app Zomato (the Indian equivalent of Deliveroo) dangling behind his back.
Continue reading...There was outrage when the vice-president was mocked last month by an opposition MP, but social commentators say India is increasingly a country that cannot take a joke
It is rare for India’s politicians to laugh at themselves, but a row over an act of mimicry has exposed the extent of the lack of humour and intolerance of satire in the country’s political and public life.
Over the past two weeks, politicians have traded insults over an impersonation of India’s vice-president, Jagdeep Dhankhar, by the opposition MP Kalyan Banerjee.
Continue reading...Prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has accused 83-year-old of ‘sucking blood’ from poor people
The Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus has been convicted of violating Bangladesh’s labour laws in a trial decried by his supporters as politically motivated.
The 83-year-old, credited with lifting millions out of poverty with his microfinance bank, Grameen, has earned the enmity of Sheikh Hasina, the longtime prime minister, who has accused him of “sucking blood” from poor people.
Continue reading...Former prime minister is barred from standing in elections after being jailed for unlawfully selling state gifts while in office
Pakistan’s election body has rejected former prime minister Imran Khan’s nomination to contest the 2024 national elections in two constituencies, officials and his party’s media team said on Saturday.
The 71-year-old former cricket star has been embroiled in a tangle of political and legal battles since he was ousted as prime minister in April 2022. He has not been seen in public since he was jailed for three years in August for unlawfully selling state gifts while in office from 2018 to 2022.
Continue reading...Turkey also affected by fog, with 10 killed and 57 injured in serious road crash involving three buses
During the Christmas period, parts of South America experienced intense showers and thunderstorms, resulting in substantial rainfall in various regions. On Monday, more than 100mm of rain fell in the Catamarca province in Argentina, which led to flash floods. A sudden surge in river water levels then caused the collapse of a pedestrian bridge, which was the only link between the towns of Rincón and Pomán. While many other roads in the region were damaged and houses were flooded, no casualties were reported.
The unique topography of Catamarca aided the formation of a near-stationary convective shower over Pomán, unleashing several hours of torrential rain and causing catastrophic flooding.
Continue reading...Border officers say most drones carry opium and heroin, fuelling a drugs crisis in Punjab, while others drop weapons
Indian border security have said they are battling an unprecedented “drone menace” infiltrating the border with Pakistan, fuelling the drugs crisis in the state of Punjab and raising serious security issues.
Officials from India’s border security force (BSF) in the border state of Punjab told the Guardian they had intercepted 90 drones from Pakistan so far in 2023, the highest on record. They said the number was “increasing every month”.
Continue reading...Cloud seeding improves air quality in city of Lahore but experts say practice is not a sustainable solution
Artificial rain has been used in an attempt to lower pollution levels in Lahore, Pakistan.
The capital city of the eastern province of Punjab, near the Indian border, has some of the worst air quality in the world and has become extremely polluted because of a growing population of more than 13 million people.
Continue reading...Opposition politicians excluded from rest of winter session for protesting against parliament security breach
More than 140 Indian opposition politicians have been suspended from parliament, the largest number in history, after protesting against a recent security breach at the parliamentary premises.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government was accused of a direct attack on democracy and creating “anarchy” after 141 MPs from 11 different opposition parties, who sit in the lower and upper houses of parliament, were suspended for the rest of the winter session.
Continue reading...PTI party uses ‘voice clone’ of imprisoned opposition leader to give impassioned speech in ‘virtual rally’
Artificial intelligence allowed Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan to campaign from behind bars on Monday, with a voice clone of the opposition leader giving an impassioned speech on his behalf.
Khan has been locked up since August and is being tried for leaking classified documents, allegations he says have been trumped up to stop him contesting general elections due in February.
Continue reading...At least 38 people, including a new mother, have died in the month after the earthquake struck, among 40,000 people living under tarpaulin
At least 38 people who survived an earthquake in Nepal have died after spending more than a month living in tents in freezing temperatures. Among the dead is a woman who gave birth two days after the earthquake struck the west of the country on 3 November.
More than 40,000 people are now living under sheets of tarpaulin, according to the directorate of health for Karnali province.
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