World
Israeli PM Netanyahu hospitalised
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday was rushed to a hospital, where he was assessed to be in “good condition” as he underwent a medical evaluation, his office said. Initial tests determined the Israeli leader was suffering from dehydration.
Read: Israeli forces kill 2 wanted Palestinians in shootout in the occupied West Bank
A statement from Netanyahu’s office said that he had spent Friday enjoying Israel’s Sea of Galilee at a time of high summer temperatures. It said he felt dizzy and his doctor instructed him to go to Sheba Hospital, near the coastal city of Tel Aviv.
Read: Israel presses on with hunt for West Bank militants. The death toll rises to 10 and civilians flee
The statement said initial tests found everything to be sound, and that it appeared Netanyahu was suffering from dehydration. It said doctors had ordered further tests.
No respite from heat, with 3rd wave bringing record temperature in Italy
Italy's third heatwave of the summer is set to arrive on Sunday, bringing record temperatures and immediately replacing the second to deny the nation a moment of respite.
The new heatwave is forecast to peak on Tuesday, when temperatures in areas of southern Sardinian may reach 48° Celsius, according to forecasts.
Read: Nearly 100 die as India struggles with a sweltering heatwave in 2 most populous states
The temperature in Rome is forecast to reach 41°C on Monday and 43° on Tuesday, beating the record of 40.7° set last summer.
Exceptionally high temperatures are also forecast for the rest of the country.
On Saturday 15 major Italian cities are on red alert, meaning that the heat is so intense it poses a threat to the whole population, not just groups such as the elderly, the clinically vulnerable and very young children.
Read: Heatwaves to impact almost every child by 2050: UNICEF report
They are Bologna, Campobasso, Florence, Frosinone, Latina, Perugia, Pescara, Rieti, Rome, Viterbo. Bari, Cagliari, Catania, Civitavecchia and Messina.
Palermo will join them on Sunday.
A study coordinated by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and published in the Nature Medicine journal this week estimated that over 18,000 people died in Italy due to the intense heat the nation endured last summer.
Scientists say the climate crisis caused by human greenhouse gas emissions is making extreme weather events such as heat waves, drought, supercharged storms and flooding more frequent and more intense.
Vegas could break heat record as tens of millions across US endure scorching temperatures
Visitors to Las Vegas on Friday stepped out momentarily to snap photos and were hit by blast-furnace air. But most will spend their vacations in a vastly different climate — at casinos where the chilly air conditioning might require a light sweater.
Meanwhile, emergency room doctors were witnessing another world, as dehydrated construction workers, passed-out elderly residents and others suffered in an intense heat wave threatening to break the city’s all-time record high of 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47.2 degrees Celsius) this weekend.
Few places in the scorching Southwest demonstrate the surreal contrast between indoor and outdoor life like Las Vegas, a neon-lit city rich with resorts, casinos, swimming pools, indoor nightclubs and shopping. Tens of millions of others across California and the Southwest, were also scrambling for ways to stay cool and safe from the dangers of extreme heat.
“We’ve been talking about this building heat wave for a week now, and now the most intense period is beginning,” the National Weather Service wrote Friday.
Climate: 18,000 killed by heat in Italy last summer - study
Nearly a third of Americans were under extreme heat advisories, watches and warnings. The blistering heat wave was forecast to get worse this weekend for Nevada, Arizona and California, where desert temperatures were predicted to soar in parts past 120 degrees Fahrenheit (48.8 degrees Celsius) during the day, and remain in the 90s F (above 32.2 C) overnight.
Sergio Cajamarca, his family and their dog, Max, were among those who lined up to pose for photos in front of the city’s iconic “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign. The temperature before noon already topped 100 F (37.8 C).
“I like the city, especially at night. It’s just the heat,” said Cajamarca, 46, an electrician from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.
His daughter, Kathy Zhagui, 20, offered her recipe for relief: “Probably just water, ice cream, staying inside.”
For the third time this week, Earth sets an unofficial heat record
Meteorologists in Las Vegas warned people not to underestimate the danger. “This heatwave is NOT typical desert heat due to its long duration, extreme daytime temperatures, & warm nights. Everyone needs to take this heat seriously, including those who live in the desert," the National Weather Service in Las Vegas said in a tweet.
Phoenix marked the city’s 15th consecutive day of 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 degrees Celsius) or higher temperatures on Friday, hitting 116 degrees Fahrenheit (46.6 degrees Celsius) by late afternoon, and putting it on track to beat the longest measured stretch of such heat. The record is 18 days, recorded in 1974.
Muslims at Hajj pilgrimage brave intense heat to cast stones at pillars representing the devil
“This weekend there will be some of the most serious and hot conditions we’ve ever seen,” said David Hondula the city's chief heat officer. “I think that it's a time for maximum community vigilance.”
The heat was expected to continue well into next week as a high pressure dome moves west from Texas.
“We’re getting a lot of heat-related illness now, a lot of dehydration, heat exhaustion,” said Dr. Ashkan Morim, who works in the ER at Dignity Health Siena Hospital in suburban Henderson.
Morim said he has treated tourists this week who spent too long drinking by pools and became severely dehydrated; a stranded hiker who needed liters of fluids to regain his strength; and a man in his 70s who fell and was stuck for seven hours in his home until help arrived. The man kept his home thermostat at 80 F (26.7 C), concerned about his electric bill with air conditioning operating constantly to combat high nighttime temperatures.
Regional health officials in Las Vegas launched a new database Thursday to report “heat-caused” and “heat-related” deaths in the city and surrounding Clark County from April to October.
The Southern Nevada Health District said seven people have died since April 11, and a total of 152 deaths last year were determined to be heat-related.
Besides casinos, air-conditioned public libraries, police station lobbies and other places from Texas to California planned to be open to the public to offer relief at least for part of the day. In New Mexico’s largest city of Albuquerque, splash pads will be open for extended hours and many public pools were offering free admission. In Boise, Idaho, churches and other nonprofit groups were offering water, sunscreen and shelter.
Temperatures closer to the Pacific coast were less severe, but still made for a sweaty day on picket lines in the Los Angeles area where actors joined screenwriters in strikes against producers.
In Sacramento, the California State Fair kicked off with organizers canceling planned horseracing events due to concerns for animal safety.
Employers were reminded that outdoor workers must receive water, shade and regular breaks to cool off.
Pet owners were urged to keep their animals mostly inside. “Dogs are more susceptible to heat stroke and can literally die within minutes. Please leave them at home in the air conditioning,” David Szymanski, park superintendent for Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the wildfire season was ramping up amid the hot, dry conditions with a series of blazes erupting across California this week, Wade Crowfoot, secretary of the Natural Resources Agency, said at a media briefing.
Global climate change is “supercharging” heat waves, Crowfoot added.
Stefan Gligorevic, a software engineer from Lancaster, Pennsylvania visiting Las Vegas for the first time said he planned to stay hydrated and not let it ruin his vacation.
“Cold beer and probably a walk through the resorts. You take advantage of the shade when you can,” Gligorevic said. “Yeah, definitely.”
Record monsoon rains have killed more than 100 people in northern India over two weeks
Schools and colleges were closed after record monsoon rains led to massive waterlogging, road caves-in, collapsed homes and gridlocked traffic in large parts of northern India, killing more than 100 people over two weeks, officials said Thursday.
At least 88 people died, 42 of them in the past five days, and more than 100 were injured in the worst hit-mountainous Himachal Pradesh state where cars, buses, bridges and houses were swept away by swirling flood waters, a state government statement said. The region is nearly 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of New Delhi.
Also read: New Delhi schools close after monsoon floods kill at least 15, Pakistan on alert for more flooding
Twelve people have died of rain-related incidents since Wednesday in Uttar Pradesh state, said Shishir Singh, a state government spokesman.
Nine of them drowned, two died after being struck by lightning and one was killed by a snake bite, Singh said.
One person died in New Delhi and four were killed in the Indian-controlled section of Kashmir, officials said.
Authorities used helicopters to rescue nearly 300 people, mostly tourists, who were stranded in the Chandertal area in Himachal Pradesh state since Saturday. They included seven sick people who were airlifted on Tuesday, the government said.
Also read: At least 34 dead from heavy rain in India's Uttar Pradesh in 24 hours
Nearly 170 houses have collapsed and another 600 were partially damaged by heavy rains and landslides in the state, the state emergency operation center said.
In New Delhi, residential areas close to the Jamuna River were flooded, submerging roads, cars and homes, leading to the evacuation of thousands of people from low-lying areas.
Dozens of cars were blocked by sheets of water, throwing the movement of vehicles into disarray during the morning rush hour in New Delhi on Thursday.
The water level of the Jamuna River flowing through the Indian capital topped a 40-year record and reached 207.71 meters (681.5 feet) on Wednesday evening, according to a statement by the office of New Delhi's top elected official, Arvind Kejriwal.
Also read: Heavy rains cause flooding and mudslides in southwest Japan, leaving 2 dead and at least 6 missing
Authorities have moved nearly 30,000 people to relief camps and also converted some schools into relief camps in the badly hit areas, the statement said. Hundreds of people with their livestock also have taken shelter under overhead road bridges in the eastern parts of the Indian capital.
Rajesh Singh, a factory owner, was stuck with his motorbike for hours with floodwater blocking both sides of the road near the river bank. "I have never seen anything like this in the past 22 years."
"New Delhi hasn't seen a lot of rain in the past two days, but the river level has risen due to abnormally high levels of water discharge from Hathni Kund barrage in neighboring Haryana state," Kejriwal said.
India's weather agency has forecast more heavy rains in northern parts in the coming days. It said monsoon rains across the country have already brought about 2% more rainfall than normal.
India regularly witnesses severe floods during the monsoon season, which runs between June and September and brings most of South Asia's annual rainfall. The rains are crucial for rain-fed crops planted during the season but often cause extensive damage.
Scientists say monsoons are becoming more erratic because of climate change and global warming, leading to frequent landslides and flash floods in India's Himalayan north.
Only 37% of Americans voted in three recent national elections, says Pew report
Only 37 percent of eligible American citizens voted in the three most-recent national general elections, despite those elections witnessing some of the greatest turnout in decades, according to a Pew Research Centre analysis issued on Wednesday (July 12, 2023).
The study, which followed individual Americans’ voting decisions for the previous six years, emphasises both the small percentage of the population that regularly votes and the extent to which swings in turnout may alter the electoral landscape. When combined with other, often contradictory sources of electoral data, the findings assist to create a more complete image of the 2022 electorate, reports CNN.
According to the study, almost one-third of eligible US citizens voted in only one or two of the past three elections, while 30 percent did not vote in any of these elections, it said.
Also read: Biden, Trump to make final appeals ahead of crucial midterms
Consistent voters in the previous three elections were about evenly divided between those who supported the Democratic Party (49 percent) and those who supported the Republican Party (50 percent). In contrast, the political composition of less consistent voters changed with each election.
There was also substantial demographic variance in which groups regularly voted, with older and White Americans being more inclined to do so, the report also said.
Regardless of what motivates an individual’s decision to vote in a particular election, turnout volatility can have a significant influence on political outcomes. According to the Pew study, changing turnout was significantly more important than changing minds in the last two midterm elections, the report added.
Also read: US midterm election: Democrats repel Republicans backed by Trump in several left-leaning states
“Voters who were more favorable to Republican candidates turned out at higher rates compared with those who typically support Democrats,” the report’s authors write. “Shifting preferences among individual voters – though likely consequential in some races – was a much smaller factor in the 2022 midterms compared with turnout.”
Even a modest adjustment in voting preference can be significant in close elections, and the report adds that some groups, such as rural voters and White voters without a college degree, were disproportionately prone to switch sides.
The biggest change, though, was who did not vote last year. People who voted in 2018, but not in 2022, favoured Democrats by an almost 2-to-1 ratio, 64% to 33%, according to the research. In contrast, 2022 voters who had not voted in the previous four years favoured the Republican Party.
Also read: Trump looking to defy history with 3rd run for president
The Pew Research Centre utilised the nationally representative American Trends Panel to interview 11,377 US individuals in November 2022, including 7,041 adult citizens who were 18 or older in 2018 and for whom credible statistics on turnout and vote choice are available for the previous four general elections. In November 2020, it interviewed 11,818 individuals, and in November 2018, it surveyed 10,640 adults.
3 soldiers, 2 insurgents killed in shootout in southwest Pakistan, officials say
Assailants attacked Pakistani soldiers conducting an operation in a restive southwestern province, and three of the soldiers and two insurgents were killed, local officials and the military said Thursday.
The military said in a statement the shootout happened Wednesday in the Baluchistan district of Sui, where the country’s main pipelines of natural gas are located. It was unclear who was behind the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on local separatist groups who have been blamed for previous such attacks.
Also read: Official: 17 people killed in bus-truck crash in NW Pakistan
Local officials said an operation to arrest those insurgents who fled after the shootout was underway.
The violence in Sui came hours after five militants attacked a security post in Zhob district in Baluchistan, killing nine soldiers. The military said those five attackers were killed.
Also read: 15 killed in clash between 2 tribes over coal mine in NW Pakistan
Baluchistan has been the scene of a low-level insurgency by small separatist groups for more than two decades. Baluch nationalists initially wanted a share of the provincial resources, but later they initiated an insurgency for independence.
Also read: 3 killed in clash with police in Pakistan's Karachi
Though Pakistan says it has quelled the insurgency, the violence has continued in the province.
Kim vows to boost North Korea's nuclear capability after observing new ICBM launch
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to further bolster his country’s nuclear fighting capabilities as he supervised the second test-flight of a new intercontinental ballistic missile designed to strike the mainland U.S., state media reported Thursday.
Kim’s statement suggested North Korea would ramp up weapons testing activities to expand its arsenal in response to recent U.S. steps to enhance its security commitment to ally South Korea.
“The present unstable situation in which the security environment on the Korean peninsula is being seriously threatened by the hostile forces every moment,” Kim said, according to state media. “(That) requires more intense efforts to implement the line of bolstering nuclear war deterrent.”
The U.N. Security Council scheduled an open meeting late Friday afternoon to discuss the ICBM launch at the request of the United States, Albania, France, Japan, Malta and the United Kingdom.
The Korean Central News Agency reported Kim's comments a day after the launch of the Hwasong-18, which was first test-fired in April and which Kim has called the most powerful weapon of his nuclear forces.
The road-mobile ICBM has built-in solid propellant, which makes it more difficult to detect in advance than liquid-fueled missiles.
Kim says North Korea’s 1st spy satellite is ready for launch
KCNA said the launch was meant to reconfirm the technical credibility and operational reliability of the missile. Kim called the launch “another important stride” in efforts to boost the North’s strategic forces, KCNA said.
Kim supervises N. Korean troops simulating attack on South
According to KCNA, the missile was launched on a high angle to avoid neighboring countries. It flew 74 minutes and a distance of 1,001 kilometers (622 miles) at a maximum altitude of 6,648 kilometers (4,130 miles) before landing in a targeted area in the open waters off the North’s east coast.
The missile’s flight time is the longest recorded by any weapon launched by North Korea. If launched on a standard trajectory, the missile could fly to the mainland U.S. though some experts say North Korea still has some technologies to master to acquire functioning nuclear-armed missiles.
South Korea, Japan and the United States criticized North Korea over the launch that they said posed a threat to regional and international peace. Adam Hodge, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, said in a statement that the U.S. will take all necessary steps to ensure the security of the American homeland and South Korean and Japanese allies.
Kim wants N. Korea to make more nuclear material for bombs
Kim set for unspecified tasks for the North’s national defense sector, saying North Korea will take “a series of stronger military offensive” until the U.S. and South Korea “admit their shameful defeat of their useless hostile policy toward (North Korea) in despair and give up their policy.”
That signals Kim will intensify his push to modernize his missile arsenals with sophisticated weapons like the Hwasong-18. Other weapons on Kim’s publicly stated wish list are a multi-warhead missile, a hypersonic weapon, a spy satellite and a nuclear-powered submarine.
North Korea has been focusing on reinforcing its nuclear capability after Kim’s high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with then President Donald Trump collapsed in 2019 due to disputes over U.S.-led sanctions on North Korea.
KCNA accused the U.S. and South Korea of recently taking “frantic confrontation attempts” and bringing “a new chain of nuclear crises” on the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea often issues such harsh, warlike rhetoric in times of tensions with its rivals. The KCNA dispatch cited a U.S.-South Korean agreement to strengthen the allies’ deterrence capabilities such as the periodic docking of a U.S. nuclear-armed submarine in South Korea and the establishment of a new bilateral nuclear consultative group, whose inaugural meeting is slated for next week in Seoul.
The United States has expanded military drills with South Korea and taken steps to enhance "regular visibility” of U.S. strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula in response to the North’s advancing nuclear arsenal. North Korea conducted about 100 missile tests since the start of last year. Experts say Kim eventually aims to use his enlarged arsenal to win greater concessions in future diplomacy with the United States.
Wednesday’s ICBM launch came two days after Kim’s sister and senior adviser, Kim Yo Jong, threatened “shocking” consequences to protest what she called provocative United States reconnaissance activity near its territory. The U.S. and South Korean government dismissed the North’s accusation groundless and urged it to refrain from escalatory actions.
More people can't afford nutritious food and 148 million children are stunted by hunger, UN says
The U.N. delivered grim news on global food security Wednesday: 2.4 billion people didn’t have constant access to food last year, as many as 783 million faced hunger, and 148 million children suffered from stunted growth.
Five U.N. agencies said in the 2023 State of Food Security and Nutrition report that while global hunger numbers stalled between 2021 and 2022 many places are facing deepening food crises. They pointed to Western Asia, the Caribbean and Africa, where 20% of the continent’s population is experiencing hunger, more than twice the global average.
“Recovery from the global pandemic has been uneven, and the war in Ukraine has affected the nutritious food and healthy diets,” Qu Dongyu, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement. “This is the `new normal’ where climate change, conflict, and economic instability are pushing those on the margins even further from safety.”
FAO chief economist Maximo Torero said the FAO food price index has been declining for about 15 months, but “food inflation has continued.” But he said not knowing if the deal that has enabled Ukraine to ship 32 metric tons of grain to world markets and is trying to overcome obstacles to Russian grain and fertilizer shipments will be renewed when it expires on July 17 “is not good for the markets.”
UN warns its development goals for 2030 are in trouble and 575 million people will remain very poor
If it isn’t renewed immediately “you will have a new spike for sure” in food prices, but how much and for how long will depend on how markets respond, he said.
According to the report, people’s access to healthy diets has deteriorated across the world.
More than 3.1 billion people – 42% of the global population – were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2021, an increase of 134 million people compared to 2019, it said.
Torero told a news conference launching the report that reducing the number of people eating unhealthy diets “is a big challenge, because it’s basically telling us that we have substantially to change the way we use our resources in the agricultural sector, in the agri-food system.”
According to the latest research, he said, between 691 million and 783 million people were chronically undernourished in 2022, an average of 735 million which is 122 million more people than in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Eliminate legal barriers to women owning land: UN chief
Torero said U.N. projections for 2030 indicate that 600 million people will still be suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2030, far from the U.N. development goal of achieving “Zero Hunger” by that date.
In the report’s foreword, the heads of FAO, the World Food Program, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and the World Health Organization wrote that achieving Zero Hunger “poses a daunting challenge.” They called for redoubled efforts “to transform agri-food systems and leverage them” to reach the target.
As for children, the report says they are continuing to suffer from malnutrition, with not only 148 million younger than 5 stunted but 45 million too thin for their height or “wasted,” while 37 million youngsters were overweight.
Torero said the five agencies also looked at increased urbanization and found that people in rural and semi-urban areas are also consuming mass market products.
“Normally, we used to believe that rural people will consume what they produce, but that’s not the case,” he said, explaining that in rural areas about 30% of the family’s food basket is purchased from the market, and in semi-urban and urban areas it is higher, which has implications for nutrition because of the consumption of more processed foods.
WFP chief economist Arif Husain told reporters in a virtual briefing that in 2022 when the war in Ukraine was ongoing the food situation didn’t get worse because the donor community stepped up with about $14.2 billion, and the agency was able to provide aid to 160 million people, up from 97 million in 2019.
Stop targeting truth, truth-tellers: UN Chief on World Press Freedom Day
“My concern is that moving forward we are looking at huge funding cuts,” he said, citing WFP donations of just $4.2 billion by last week, 29% lower than at the same time last year.
Thailand's parliament is set to choose a prime minister, but it might not be the election winner
Thai lawmakers are gathering Thursday to select a new prime minister, a process whose outcome is far from certain even though the country's most progressive party won both the popular vote and the most seats in the House of Representatives in the most recent election.
Thailand's May 14 election was regarded as a major political turning point. The reformist Move Forward Party's victory appeared to spell an end to nine years of unpopular army-supported rule. Two months later, it is unclear if that mandate for change will be honored.
Parliament is due to vote on whether to make Move Forward's leader, 42-year-old businessman Pita Limjaroenrat, the country's prime minister. His party captured 151 of the 500 House seats but has assembled a coalition government-in-waiting. The eight parties in the coalition won 312 seats combined, a healthy majority.
“This is a party leading a coalition, and they’ve won the election,” Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, said. “In most other countries, they would be in office by now.”
One of several potential roadblocks to Pita taking power is that the prime minister is elected through a joint vote of the House and the 250-seat Senate, whose members owe their positions to the military-backed regime established by a 2014 coup. Pita, or any other candidate, therefore needs a minimum of 376 votes to become head of government.
Thailand's prime minister, who seized power in a 2014 coup, quits politics after losing election
The biggest bone of contention between the liberals backing Move Forward and the deeply conservative Senate is the campaign pledge of Pita’s party to amend a law that makes defaming the royal family punishable by three to 15 years in prison.
The monarchy is sacrosanct to members of Thailand’s royalist establishment, and even minor reforms that might improve and modernize the monarchy’s image are anathema to them. Move Forward’s coalition partners also have not endorsed the proposed legal change, and other parties ruled out joining the coalition because of the idea.
Thitinan thinks that given the massive voter support for Move Forward and the Pheu Thai Party, its top partner and political ally, Pita stands a good chance “because of mounting public pressure on the senators. It will depend on the will, the resilience and the intransigence of the royalist conservative establishment.”
But if Pita cannot win over enough senators, his options appear nil. The options for the eight-party coalition as a whole appear more viable.
One is for the Pheu Thai Party to put forward one of its members as a candidate for prime minister, a possibility that once would have been unthinkable.
Pheu Thai used to be the royalist establishment’s public enemy No. 1. The party is closely affiliated with former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire populist who was ousted in a 2006 military coup, in part because his popularity rubbed royalists the wrong way.
Thailand eyes deeper ties with Bangladesh: Thai Envoy
Thaksin-backed parties finished first in every election from 2001 until this past May but were blocked or forced from power each time. The 2014 coup, for example, seized power from a government that Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, had formed.
Pheu Thai enrolled three of its members as potential prime minister candidates this year, including Thaksin’s daughter. Paetongtarn Shinawatra. It is a measure of the shift in political winds that Pheu Thai is now regarded as a party that royalists can deal with, compared with Move Forward, which they dismiss as radical.
Paetongtarn’s colleague, real estate developer Srettha Thavisin, is considered more likely to have his name put forward if Pita isn't election, at least partly as reassurance to the business community. But the possibility that any proposed coalition including Move Forward won’t be approved complicates the numbers game.
The departure of Move Forward would probably require Pheu Thai to enlist allies from among military-friendly parties, which it vowed, with hedging, not to do. In the long run, seeking such an alliance could erode Pheu Thai's credibility with supporters who stuck by the party and boost support for Move Forward while it's in opposition.
Another cost could involve ceding the prime minister’s seat to a newly enlisted coalition partner, the key one being the Bhumjaithai Party, which polled third in the May election and secured 71 House seats. The party's leader, Anutin Charnvirakul, was health minister in the outgoing government and has made no secret of his political ambitions.
If Pita and Move Forward somehow prevail -- and it could take several votes over a period of weeks -- their political survival still would sit on a knife’s edge.
There have been fears that Thailand’s conservative ruling establishment would use what its political opponents consider to be dirty tricks to cling to power. For a decade and a half, it has repeatedly utilized the courts and supposedly independent state agencies to issue questionable rulings to cripple or sink political opponents.
On Wednesday, the Election Commission said it concluded there was evidence that Pita had violated election law, and referred his case to the Constitutional Court for a ruling. If the court accepts the case and finds him guilty, he could lose his House seat, get kicked out of politics and face a prison sentence.
The alleged violation involves undeclared ownership of media company shares, which are banned for Thai lawmakers. Political scientist Thitinan describes the charge and other legal complaints against Pita as “bogus” and something many people, especially voters who backed him, would be unwilling to tolerate.
“It all depends on how far the royalist conservative establishment wants to go after Pita and prevent a democratic outcome,” he said.
Depending how they are resolved, the efforts to block Pita and Move Forward could prove dangerous and cause Thailand unnecessary pain, said Michael Montesano, a Thai studies expert who is an associate senior fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute.
“At the end of the day, the political system and those who would dominate need to move into closer correspondence with the realities of Thai society and with the aspirations of its younger, well educated members,” Montesano said. “The biggest question is whether this transition will be painful and even violent, or whether it will be constructive and thus serve the country’s future prospects."
Turkey's parliament won't ratify Sweden's NATO membership bid before October, Erdogan says
Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Wednesday that Sweden’s NATO membership bid would not be ratified by Turkey’s parliament before October.
He said at a news conference at the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, that the process would have to wait until after lawmakers return from a summer recess.
Read: NATO summit boosted by Turkey's decision to end opposition to Sweden's bid to join alliance
“The parliament is not in session for the upcoming two months … but our target is to finalize this matter as swiftly as possible,” he said.
Turkey on Monday withdrew its objections to Sweden joining the alliance, a step toward the unity that Western leaders have been eager to demonstrate in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The decision by Erdogan was a significant move toward Sweden’s membership and came after days of intensive meetings.
Read: Biden’s upcoming European trip is meant to boost NATO against Russia as the war in Ukraine drags on
Finland has already become the 31st member of the alliance, and Sweden is on deck to become the 32nd. Both Nordic countries were historically nonaligned until the war increased fears of Russian aggression.
Read more: NATO again extends Stoltenberg's mandate, happy with a safe pair of hands as the war drags on