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From London, Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif blames ex-army chief for his 2017 ouster

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:31 GMT

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is claiming that the country’s former powerful military and spy chiefs orchestrated his ouster in 2017, when he was forced to step down after being convicted of corruption. Sharif spoke on Monday to leaders of his Pakistan Muslim League party via a video link from London, where he has been living in self-imposed exile since 2019. At the time — and though convicted on corruption charges, which he has always denied — Sharif was permitted to leave Pakistan for medical treatment abroad by the government of Imran Khan, who succeeded him as prime minister. After Sharif later failed to return, a court declared him a fugitive from justice. Sharif’s party said on Tuesday he will return next month ahead of parliamentary elections. After Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote in April 2022, Sharif’s younger brother Shehbaz Sharif served as a prime minister until August, when he stepped down to allow an interim government to run da...

US defense chief urges nations to dig deep and give Ukraine more much-needed air defense systems

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:31 GMT

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany (AP) — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin urged allied defense leaders Tuesday to “dig deep” and provide more air defense systems for Ukraine, to help the country block increasing barrages of Russian missiles. But while the allies said they will discuss how they can best help Ukraine’s counteroffensive, they appeared no closer to commitments on the longer-range missiles that Kyiv’s leaders insist they need.“Air defense is saving lives,” Austin said as he opened the meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein air base in Germany. “So I urge this group to continue to dig deep on ground-based air defense for Ukraine. We must continue to push hard to provide Ukraine with air-defense systems and interceptors.”The group is made up of the defense and military leaders from more than 50 nations and is the main forum for raising contributions of weapons, other equipment and training for Kyiv’s war effort. It meets about once a month, in pe...

Spain to allow lawmakers to speak Catalan, Basque and Galician languages in Parliament for 1st time

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:31 GMT

MADRID (AP) — Spain’s Parliament is set to allow its national legislators to use the country’s minority languages of Catalan, Basque and Galician in national Parliament for the first time on Tuesday.The reform of the linguistic policy of Spain’s lower chamber was a demand of Catalan separatist parties to support the appointment of a Socialist as the new Parliamentary Speaker last month following inconclusive national elections in July.The right to speak languages other than Spanish in the national Parliament is a long-held objective of smaller parties from the regions in Spain’s north that have bilingual populations.The Parliament will provide simultaneous translation with earpieces for the 350 members of the chamber.The conservative opposition was against the reform, saying it would make debating more difficult.Spain’s government is also trying to have Catalan, Basque and Galician recognized as languages that can be used in the European Union.This support of Spain’s minority ...

Libyan leader says flooded city has been divided to create buffers in case of disease outbreaks

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:31 GMT

DERNA, Libya (AP) — The prime minister of Libyan’s eastern administration said Tuesday that authorities have divided the flood-stricken city of Derna into four sections to create buffers in case of disease outbreaks, a day after thousands of angry protesters demanded the city’s rapid reconstruction.Last week, two dams collapsed during Mediterranean storm Daniel, sending a wall of water gushing through Derna. Government officials and aid agencies have given death tolls ranging from about 4,000 to 11,000.“Now the affected areas are completely isolated, the armed forces and the government have begun creating a buffer out of fear of the spread of diseases or epidemics,” Prime Minister Ossama Hamad said in a telephone interview with Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV. No further details were given.On Monday, the United Nations warned that a disease outbreak could create “a second devastating crisis.” Libyan protesters gathered in central Derna on Monday in the first mass d...

A bus coach crashes in Austria, killing a woman and injuring 20 others

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:31 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — A bus coach traveling through Austria on Tuesday went off the road and crashed on its side, killing a woman and injuring 20 other passengers, Austria’s APA agency reported.The accident took place near the village of Micheldorf in Carinthia state in central Austria. The coach was on its way from Berlin via Linz in Austria to Trieste in northern Italy, Austrian broadcaster ORF reported.Passengers on the double-decker bus included citizens from Austria, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Italy and Ukraine, APA reported.Most of the injured were taken to a hospital in Friesach, and one seriously injured was transferred to a hospital in Klagenfurt.According to the Red Cross, the bus probably hit a concrete guardrail and overturned, APA reported.The Associated Press

Foreign firms in China say vague rules and tensions with Washington hurting business, survey shows

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:31 GMT

Foreign companies operating in China say tensions with Washington over technology, trade and other issues and uncertainty over Chinese policies are damaging the business environment and causing some to reassess their plans for investing in the giant market. The results of surveys released Tuesday by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China largely concurred in appealing for greater certainty and clarity over China’s stance toward foreign businesses. “For decades, European companies thrived in China, benefitting from a stable and efficient business environment. However, after the turbulent past three years, many have reevaluated their basic assumptions about the Chinese market,” Jens Eskelund, the EU Chamber’s president said, in a letter that accompanied the report. Eskelund said that predictability and reliability had been undermined by “erratic policy shifts,” hurting confidence in China’s growth prospects.“At t...

Southeast Asia nations hold first joint navy drills near disputed South China Sea

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:31 GMT

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The Association of Southeast Asian Nations began its first joint naval exercise on Tuesday at a time when several member countries are responding more strongly to increasing Chinese assertiveness in the area.The non-combat drills, named ASEAN Solidarity Exercise, include joint maritime patrol operations, search and rescue operations, and humanitarian and disaster relief, Indonesian military chief Adm. Yudo Margono said.He said the five-day exercise in Indonesia’s Natuna waters aims to boost military ties among the ASEAN nations and enhance interoperability. The drills also involve civilian groups involved in humanitarian relief and disaster prevention.ASEAN nations have taken part in naval exercises before with other countries — including both the United States and China — but this week’s drills are the first involving just the bloc and are being read by many as a signal to China.China’s “nine-dash line,” which it uses to demarcate its claim to most o...

At UN, Biden looks to send message to world leaders – and voters – about leadership under his watch

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:31 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden will use his annual address before the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday to make the case to world leaders — and the 2024 U.S. electorate — that he’s reestablished U.S. leadership on the world stage that he says was diminished under former President Donald Trump.White House officials said Biden would make a robust case to members of the world body to continue to back Ukraine’s effort to repel a nearly 19-month old Russian invasion that has no end in sight.Biden previewed his thinking in a pair of fundraisers on Monday evening, telling supporters that he stood up to Vladimir Putin’s invasion, and questioning whether Trump, the 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner, would have even attempted to help Ukraine stop the Russian land grab if he were in power.“I will not side with dictators like Putin. Maybe Trump and his MAGA friends can bow down but I won’t,” Biden told supporters at a Broadway fundraiser.There will be notable absences as the president...

Hermoso criticizes Spanish soccer federation and accuses it of threatening World Cup-winning players

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:31 GMT

MADRID (AP) — The player in the middle of the controversy that engulfed Spanish soccer after she was kissed on the lips by an official has accused the country’s soccer federation of trying to intimidate the World Cup-winning players by picking them for the national team even though they asked not to be called up.Jenni Hermoso, who said she did not consent to the kiss by former federation president Luis Rubiales during the World Cup awards ceremony last month, said in a statement early Tuesday that the federation’s decision to call up nearly half of the 39 players who said they would not play for the national team as a protest was “irrefutable proof” that “nothing has changed.”The players had said they wouldn’t come back until their demands for deep reforms and new leadership in the federation were met, but new coach Montse Tomé on Tuesday picked 15 of the players who helped Spain win its first Women’s World Cup last month.Tomé left Hermoso off the list “as a ...

Former Belarusian operative under Lukashenko goes on Swiss trial over enforced disappearances

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:48:31 GMT

GENEVA (AP) — A former member of Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko’s special security forces was going on trial Tuesday in Switzerland over the enforced disappearances of political opponents in the late 1990s — seen as a landmark case of international justice. Yuri Harauski, a former member of a military unit known as SOBR, exited a tinted-window van wearing a hood as he entered the courthouse in the northern city of St. Gallen. Activists have said the two-day trial marks a pivotal moment in international justice that could trigger prosecutions abroad of other Belarusian officials — including Lukashenko. The court case was brought under a rarely applied legal principle known as universal jurisdiction, under which foreign courts can prosecute severe crimes that happened in other countries.Harauski will be tried over the enforced disappearances of Yuri Zakharenko, a former interior minister who was fired by Lukashenko in 1996; opposition leader Viktor Gonchar; and publisher A...