World
Official: 17 people killed in bus-truck crash in NW Pakistan
A head-on collision between a passenger bus and a speeding truck trailer near a tunnel in northwest Pakistan overnight killed at least 17 passengers, including women and children, a rescue official said early Friday.
The crash happened in Kohat district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to the local emergency official and state-run media.
“We have transported all the dead and injured to a hospital in Kohat,” rescue official Rehmat Ullah said.
TV footage showed images of the destroyed bus.
Azam Khan, the caretaker chief minister in the province, has expressed his deep sorrow and grief over the tragic accident.
Read more: Passenger bus in Pakistan crashes, catches fire killing 40
On Sunday, a passenger bus crashed into a pillar and fell off a bridge in Baluchistan province, catching fire and killing 40 people.
Deadly accidents are common in Pakistan due to poor road infrastructure and a disregard for traffic laws.
With Philippine pact, US steps up efforts to counter China
The Philippines said Thursday it was allowing U.S. forces to broaden their footprint in the Southeast Asian nation, the latest Biden administration move bolstering an arc of military alliances in the Indo-Pacific to better counter China, including in any future confrontation over Taiwan.
Thursday’s agreement, which gives U.S. forces access to four more military camps, was announced during a visit by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. He has led efforts to strengthen America’s security alliances in Asia in the face of China’s increasing assertiveness toward Taiwan and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
“It’s a big deal,” Austin said at a news conference, while noting the agreement did not mean the re-establishment of permanent American bases in the Philippines.
In a televised news conference with his Philippine counterpart, Carlito Galvez Jr., Austin gave assurances of U.S. military support and said the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, which obligates the U.S. and the Philippines to help defend each other in major conflicts, “applies to armed attacks on either of our armed forces, public vessels or aircraft anywhere in the South China Sea.”
“We discussed concrete actions to address destabilizing activities in the waters,” Austin said. “This is part of our effort to modernize our alliance, and these efforts are especially important as the People’s Republic of China continues to advance its illegitimate claims in the West Philippine Sea.”
American leaders have long sought to reorient U.S. foreign policy to better reflect the rise of China as a significant military and economic competitor, as well as to better deal with the lasting threat from North Korea.
The tensions between China and Taiwan will be high on the agenda next week when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to meet with China’s new foreign minister, Qin Gang.
China claims the self-ruled island as its own territory — to be taken by force if necessary — and Beijing has sent warships, bombers, fighter jets and support aircraft into airspace near Taiwan on a near-daily basis, sparking concerns of a potential blockade or military action.
The announcement from the Philippines follows a U.S.-Japan declaration on Jan. 11 that those two countries’ militaries would be updating and strengthening their defense posture, as well as other earlier pledges of greater military cooperation from Indo-Pacific partners stretching as far south as Australia.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswomen Mao Ning responded Thursday by accusing the United States of pursuing “its selfish agenda.”
“The U.S. has adhered to a Cold War zero-sum mentality and strengthened military deployment in the region,” Mao told reporters at a daily briefing. “This is an act that escalates tensions in the region and endangers regional peace and stability.”
U.S. and Philippine officials also said that “substantial” progress has been made in projects at five Philippine military bases, where U.S. military personnel were earlier granted access by Filipino officials. Construction of American facilities at those bases has been underway for years but has been hampered by unspecified local issues.
China and the Philippines, along with Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan, have been locked in increasingly tense territorial disputes over the busy and resource-rich South China Sea. Washington lays no claims to the strategic waters but has deployed its warships and fighter and surveillance aircraft for patrols that it says promote freedom of navigation and the rule of law but have infuriated Beijing.
Austin thanked President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., whom he briefly met in Manila, for allowing the U.S. military to broaden its presence in the Philippines, Washington’s oldest treaty ally in Asia.
“I have always said that it seems to me that the future of the Philippines and for that matter the Asia-Pacific will always have to involve the United States simply because those partnerships are so strong,” Marcos told Austin.
Galvez said there was a need for more consultations, including with local officials in provinces where visiting U.S. forces would establish a presence in Philippine military camps.
A few dozen leftist activities held a noisy protest Thursday and set a mock U.S. flag ablaze outside the main military camp where Austin held talks with his Philippine counterpart. While the two countries are allies, leftist groups and nationalists have resented and often protested boisterously against the U.S. military presence in this former American colony.
The country used to host two of the largest U.S. Navy and Air Force bases outside the American mainland. The bases were shut down in the early 1990s after the Philippine Senate rejected an extension, but American forces later returned for large-scale combat exercises with Filipino troops.
The Philippine Constitution prohibits the permanent basing of foreign troops and their involvement in local combat. The countries’ Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement allows visiting American forces to stay indefinitely in rotating batches in barracks and other buildings they construct within designated Philippine camps with their defense equipment, except nuclear weapons.
Philippine military and defense officials said in November the U.S. had sought access to five more local military camps mostly in the northern Philippine region of Luzon.
Two of the camps where the U.S. wanted to gain access are in Cagayan province near Luzon island’s northern tip, across a sea border from Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait and southern China. Other camps that would host American forces are along the country’s western coast, including in the provinces of Palawan and Zambales, which face the disputed South China Sea.
“The Philippine-US alliance has stood the test of time and remains ironclad,” the allies said in their statement. “We look forward to the opportunities these new sites will create to expand our cooperation together.”
Austin is the latest high-ranking American official to travel to the Philippines after Vice President Kamala Harris visited in November, in a sign of warming ties after a strained period under Marcos’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte.
Duterte had nurtured cozy ties with China and Russia and at one point threatened to sever relations with Washington, eject American forces and abrogate the Visiting Forces Agreement that allows thousands of American forces to come each year for large-scale combat exercises.
“I am confident that we will continue to work together to defend our shared values of freedom, democracy and human dignity,” Austin said. “As you heard me say before, the United States and the Philippines are more than just allies. We’re family.”
Read more: US, Philippines agree on larger American military presence
Targeting Iran, US tightens Iraq's dollar flow, causing pain
For months, the United States has restricted Iraq’s access to its own dollars, trying to stamp out what Iraqi officials describe as rampant money laundering that benefits Iran and Syria. Iraq is now feeling the crunch, with a drop in the value of its currency and public anger blowing back against the prime minister.
The exchange rate for the Iraqi dinar has jumped to around 1,680 to the dollar at street exchanges, compared to the official rate of 1,460 dinars to the dollar.
The devaluation has already sparked protests. If it persists, analysts said, it could challenge the mandate of the government formed in October after a yearlong political stalemate.
The dinar’s deterioration comes even though Iraq’s foreign currency reserves are at an all-time high of around $100 billion, pumped up by spiking global oil prices that have brought increasing revenues to the petroleum-rich nation.
But accessing that money is a different story.
Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraq’s foreign currency reserves have been housed at the United States' Federal Reserve, giving the Americans significant control over Iraq’s supply of dollars. The Central Bank of Iraq requests dollars from the Fed and then sells them to commercial banks and exchange houses at the official exchange rate through a mechanism known as the “dollar auction.”
In the past, daily sales through the auction often exceeded $200 million per day.
Ostensibly, the vast majority of the dollars sold in the auction are meant to go to purchases of goods imported by Iraqi companies, but the system has long been porous and easily abused, multiple Iraqi banking and political officials told The Associated Press.
U.S. officials confirmed to the AP that they suspected the system was used for money laundering but declined to comment in detail on the allegations or the new restrictions.
For years, large quantities of dollars were transferred out of the country to Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Lebanon through “gray market trading, using fake invoices for overpriced items," a financial adviser to the Iraqi prime minister said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The inflated invoices were used to launder dollars, with most of them sent to Iran and Syria, which are under U.S. sanctions, leading to complaints from American officials, he said.
In other cases, the currency is smuggled across land borders under the protection of armed groups that take a cut of the cash, said Tamkeen Abd Sarhan al-Hasnawi, chairman of the board of Mosul Bank and first deputy of the Iraq Private Banks League. He estimated that as much as 80% of the dollars sold through the auction went to neighboring countries.
“Syria, Turkey, and Iran used to benefit from the dollar auction in Iraq,” he said.
A member of one of Iraq’s Iran-backed militias, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject, said the majority of Iraqi banks are owned indirectly by politicians and political parties that have also used the dollar auction to their benefit.
Late last year, the Fed began imposing stricter measures.
Among other steps, at the request of the U.S., the Central Bank of Iraq started using an electronic system for transfers that required entering detailed information on the intended end-recipient of the requested dollars. One hundred Central Bank employees were trained by the Fed to implement the new system, the prime minister’s financial adviser said.
“This system started rejecting transfers and invoices that used to be approved by the central bank,” he said. “Around 80% of transactions were being rejected.”
The amount of dollars sold daily in the auction plummeted to $69.6 million on Jan. 31, from $257.8 million six months earlier, according to Central Bank records. Far fewer of the dollars are going toward buying imports as well, down to around 34% from 90%.
Even when transactions are approved, it takes banks up to 15 days to get the funds rather than two or three days, Hasnawi said.
Unable to get dollars at the official price through banks, he said, traders turned to the black market to buy dollars, causing the price to rise.
In November, the Central Bank of Iraq added four new banks to the list of those banned from dealing in dollars. Two U.S. officials confirmed that the Fed requested the four banks be blocked because of suspected money laundering. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the case.
A spokesperson for the New York Fed declined to discuss the specific measures taken with regards to Iraq. But the Fed said in a statement that it enforces “a robust compliance regime” for the accounts it holds. The statement said that this regime “evolves over time in response to new information, which we gather in the regular course of monitoring transactions and events that may impact an account and in communication with other relevant U.S. government agencies.”
The system of keeping Iraq’s oil revenues at the Fed was originally imposed by U.N. Security Council resolutions after the 2003 ouster of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein by the U.S-led invasion. Later, Iraq chose to maintain the system to protect its revenues against potential lawsuits, particularly in connection to Iraq’s 1990s invasion of Kuwait.
The new U.S. restrictions come at a time of increased tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Negotiations over a nuclear deal are floundering. Washington has imposed new sanctions and condemned Iran for cracking down on protesters and providing drones for Russia to use in Ukraine.
Also, in Iraq, allegations came to light in October that over $2.5 billion in Iraqi government revenue was embezzled by a network of businesses and officials from the country’s tax authority
The case “brought (U.S.) attention to the scale of corruption in Iraq” and how the corruption can benefit Iran and other parties hostile to the U.S., said Harith Hasan, head of the Iraq unit at the Emirates Research Center, an Abu Dhabi-based think tank.
The new Iraqi prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who came to power via a coalition of Iranian-backed parties, does not have a strong relationship with the U.S. that could have enabled him to soften the implementation of the new financial measures, Hasan said.
Al-Sudani has downplayed the current devaluation as “a temporary issue of trading and speculation.” He replaced the Central Bank governor and instituted measures intended to ensure a supply of dollars at the official rate.
Al-Hasnawi said the government's recent measures will not stop the financial bleeding. If the current situation persists, he said, “within one year, most banks will declare bankruptcy” and there is likely to be mass civil unrest.
“This U.S. pressure impacts the Iraqi street in a clear manner, and we do not see clear solutions until now,” he said.
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AP staff reporters Samya Kullab in Baghdad and Christopher Rugaber in Washington contributed to this report. Sewell reported from Beirut.
US, Philippines agree on larger American military presence
The United States and the Philippines announced an agreement Thursday to expand America's military presence in the Southeast Asian country, with U.S. forces granted access to four more Philippine military camps, effectively giving Washington new ground to ramp up deterrence against China.
The agreement between the longtime treaty allies under a 2014 defense pact was made public during the visit of U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who has led efforts to strengthen America’s security alliances in Asia amid China’s increasing assertiveness toward Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea.
The allies also said in a joint statement that “substantial” progress has been made in projects at five Philippine military bases, where U.S. military personnel were earlier granted access by Filipino officials under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or EDCA. Construction of American facilities in the camps has been underway for years but has been hampered by unspecified local issues.
Austin thanked President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., whom he briefly met in Manila, for allowing the U.S. military to broaden its presence in the Philippines.
“I have always said that it seems to me that the future of the Philippines and for that matter the Asia-Pacific will always have to involve the United States simply because those partnerships are so strong,” Marcos told Austin.
In a televised news conference later with his Philippine counterpart, Carlito Galvez Jr., Austin gave assurances of U.S. military support and said the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, which obligates the U.S. and the Philippines to help defend one another in major conflicts, “applies to armed attacks on either of our armed forces, public vessels or aircraft anywhere in the South China Sea.”
“We discussed concrete actions to address destabilizing activities in the waters,” Austin said without elaborating. “This is part of our effort to modernize our alliance and these efforts are especially important as the People’s Republic of China continues to advance its illegitimate claims in the West Philippine Sea.”
Austin and Galvez declined to provide more details on the agreement. The U.S. defense chief said it did not mean the re-establishment of permanent American bases but noted that “it’s a big deal.”
Galvez said there was a need for more consultations, including with local officials in provinces where visiting U.S. forces would establish a presence in Philippine military camps.
China claims the self-ruled island of Taiwan as its own territory, to be taken by force if necessary, and Beijing has sent warships, bombers, fighter jets and support aircraft into airspace near Taiwan on a near-daily basis, sparking concerns of a potential blockade or military action.
Philippine military and defense officials said in November the U.S. had sought access to five more local military camps mostly in the northern Philippine region of Luzon.
Also Read: Philippines seeks to cleanse police force of drug ties
Two of the additional camps where the U.S. wanted to gain access are in Cagayan province near Luzon island’s northern tip, across a sea border from Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait and southern China. Other camps that would host American forces are along the country’s western coast, including in the provinces of Palawan and Zambales, which face the disputed South China Sea.
China and the Philippines, along with Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have been locked in increasingly tense territorial disputes over the busy and resource-rich South China Sea. Washington lays no claims in the strategic waters but has deployed its warships and fighter and surveillance aircraft for patrols that it says promote freedom of navigation and the rule of law but have infuriated Beijing.
“The Philippine-US alliance has stood the test of time and remains ironclad,” the allies said in their statement. “We look forward to the opportunities these new sites will create to expand our cooperation together.”
The Philippines, Washington’s oldest treaty ally in Asia, used to host two of the largest U.S. Navy and Air Force bases outside the American mainland. The bases were shut down in the early 1990s after the Philippine Senate rejected an extension, but American forces returned for large-scale combat exercises with Filipino troops under a 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement and the EDCA pact.
The Philippine Constitution prohibits the permanent basing of foreign troops and their involvement in local combat. The EDCA pact allows visiting American forces to indefinitely stay in rotating batches in barracks and other buildings they construct within designated Philippine camps with their defense equipment, except nuclear weapons.
Austin is the latest high-ranking American official to travel to the Philippines after Vice President Kamala Harris visited in November in a sign of warming ties after a strained period under Marcos’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte.
Duterte had nurtured cozy ties with China and Russia and at one point threatened to sever relations with Washington, eject American forces and abrogate the Visiting Forces Agreement that allows thousands of American forces to come each year for large-scale combat exercises.
“I am confident that we will continue to work together to defend our shared values of freedom, democracy and human dignity,” Austin said. “As you heard me say before, the United States and the Philippines are more than just allies. We’re family.”
___
Associated Press journalists Joeal Calupitan in Manila, the Philippines and Kiko Rosario in Bangkok, Thailand contributed to this report.
Sunak marks 100 days as UK prime minister as problems mount
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has angry unions to the left of him, anxious Conservative Party lawmakers to the right and, in the middle, millions of voters he must win over to avert electoral defeat.
It’s a daunting situation for Sunak, who on Thursday marks 100 days in office, more than twice the number of his ill-fated predecessor, Liz Truss. Installed as Conservative leader after Truss’ plan for huge tax cuts sparked panic, the 42-year-old Sunak calmed financial markets and averted economic meltdown after he assumed the post of prime minister on Oct. 25.
Next, Britain’s youngest leader for two centuries — and its first prime minister of South Asian heritage — has promised to tame soaring inflation, get the sluggish economy growing, ease pressure on the overburdened health care system and “restore the integrity back into politics” after years of scandals under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Easier said than done.
“The things that happened before I was prime minister, I can’t do anything about,” Sunak told a group of health workers this week. “What I think you can hold me to account for is how I deal with the things that arise on my watch.”
Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government think tank, said Sunak had succeeded in overcoming the impression that the U.K. “had a completely lunatic government.”
Also read: UK’s Sunak vows to halve inflation, tackle illegal migration
“You would chalk that up as the first thing that he had on his to-do list,” she said. “Otherwise, it’s slightly hard to see concrete achievements.”
Sunak is a former U.K. Treasury chief, and his top priority has been the country's economic malaise. Gross domestic product remains smaller than it was before the coronavirus pandemic, and the International Monetary Fund forecast this week that the U.K. will be the only major economy to contract this year, shrinking by 0.6%.
Sunak blames global forces — disruption from the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Critics say the elephant in the room is Brexit, which has led to a sharp reduction in trade between the U.K. and the European Union.
Sunak, a longtime advocate of Britain’s departure from the bloc, insisted Wednesday that the cost-of-living crisis had “nothing to do with Brexit.”
Whatever the causes, Sunak has little economic room to maneuver. Annual inflation hit a four-decade high of 11.1% in October and remained at a painful 10.5% in December. The U.K. is in the midst of its biggest wave of strikes in decades as nurses, paramedics, teachers, border agents and other workers seek pay increases to offset the soaring cost of living and the stresses of holding a job in an increasingly threadbare public sector.
Meanwhile, a faction inside the Conservative Party is pushing for immediate tax cuts to encourage growth, despite the damage done by “Trussonomics” just months ago.
“We need growth or our debts will get bigger,” lawmaker Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative leader, said this week. “Targeted tax reductions will help achieve that.”
Sunak is resisting both labor unions and tax-cutting Tories. He argues that double-digit public sector pay raises would drive inflation even higher and that “the best tax cut right now is a cut in inflation.”
Economists say U.K. inflation will likely fall during 2023, allowing Sunak to meet one of his key pledges. Other goals are likely to be harder to achieve.
He is seeking to improve relations with the 27-member EU, and both sides have made progress toward resolving a dispute over Northern Ireland trade rules that has burdened businesses and shuttered the regional government in Belfast.
But any agreement will anger Conservative euroskeptics, who are likely to see rapprochement with Brussels as a betrayal of Brexit. A compromise also faces opposition from Northern Ireland’s British unionists, who say post-Brexit customs checks undermine Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.
Sunak also has struggled to rid the Conservative Party of its reputation for scandal and sleaze. A member of his Cabinet, Gavin Williamson, quit in November over bullying claims. On Sunday, Sunak fired party chair Nadhim Zahawi for failing to come clean about a multimillion-dollar tax dispute. Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab is being investigated over allegations he bullied civil servants, which he denies.
The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, alleged Wednesday that Sunak was “too weak” to tackle bad behavior.
U.K. voters haven't yet had their say on Sunak, who was chosen as party leader by the 357 Conservative members of Parliament. The government doesn't have to call a national election until late 2024, so Sunak may have time on his side.
Or, he may not. The Conservatives are trailing 20 or more points behind Labour in opinion polls, and poor results in May's local elections could spur calls for another change of leader.
Some Conservatives hanker for the return of Johnson, whose final words to Parliament as prime minister — “Hasta la vista, baby” — hinted at a comeback.
Some analysts say it may be too late for any Conservative leader to avoid defeat. An Ipsos poll released this week, considered accurate to within 4 percentage points, found 66% of respondents wanted a change of governing party. Only 10% thought the Conservatives had done a good job.
Steven Fielding, emeritus professor of politics at the University of Nottingham, likened the mood to the final years of Prime Minister John Major’s government, wiped away by Tony Blair's Labour election landslide in 1997 that ended 18 years of Conservative rule.
“People are just waiting for them to go,” Fielding said. “And the longer they are there, the more irritated (voters) are with them.”
He said Sunak “is trying his best. But people aren’t listening.”
Israeli settler population in West Bank surpasses 500k
Israel's West Bank settler population now makes up more than half a million people, a pro-settler group said Thursday, crossing a major threshold. Settler leaders predicted even faster population growth under Israel's new ultranationalist government.
The report, by WestBankJewishPopulationStats.com and based on official figures, showed the settler population grew to 502,991 as of Jan. 1, rising more than 2.5% in 12 months and nearly 16% over the last five years.
“We’ve reached a huge hallmark," said Baruch Gordon, the director of the group and a resident of the Beit El settlement. “We’re here to stay.”
The milestone comes as Israel’s new government, made up of ultranationalist parties who oppose Palestinian statehood, has placed expanding settlements at the top of its priority list. Already the government has pledged to legalize wildcat outposts that have long enjoyed tacit government support and to ramp up approval and construction of settler homes around the West Bank.
“I think that in the coming years of this government there will be more building than there has been in the last 20 years of governments,” Gordon said.
Settlements have flourished under every Israeli government, including at the height of the peace process in the 1990s. Even Israel's short-lived previous government, which included parties supporting Palestinian statehood along with those opposing it, continued to build settlements.
The report also comes as a new spasm of violence is shaking the region and days after a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who pledged support for an independent Palestinian state. The settler population has continued to grow under the Biden administration, despite renewed American appeals to rein in construction following years of President Donald Trump's hands-off approach.
Also Read: Israeli-Palestinian cauldron tests US as Blinken visits
The settler population report does not include annexed east Jerusalem, home to more than 200,000 settlers. The West Bank and east Jerusalem are together home to some 3 million Palestinians.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for an independent state.
Although Israel withdrew troops and several thousand settlers from Gaza in 2005, it has charged ahead with settlement building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Dozens of settlements dot the territory, some as small as a few mobile homes and others sprawling cities, with malls and public transport of their own.
Much of the international community views the settlements as illegitimate and an obstacle to peace. The Palestinians see them as a land grab that undermines their chances to establish a viable, contiguous state.
Also Read: Israel to 'strengthen' settlements after shooting attacks
“All settlements are illegal. There is no legitimacy for settlements or the presence of settlers in the Palestinian territories,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “The increase in the number of settlers is the result of Israeli government policies that do not believe in the two-state solution,” which would create an independent Palestinian state next to Israel.
Israel claims the West Bank is disputed territory, rather than occupied, saying that terminology denies the Jewish people's historical presence in the land. It argues that the fate of settlements should be part of negotiations to bring about an end to the conflict.
Peace efforts have been moribund for nearly 15 years, while Israel continued to establish facts on the ground with more settlement construction and a Palestinian political rivalry complicated peacemaking.
The settlers and their many supporters in government view the West Bank as the biblical and historical heartland of the Jewish people and are opposed to any partition.
Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank live under a two-tiered legal system that grants settlers special status and applies much of Israeli law to them including the right to vote in Israeli elections and the ability to access certain public services. Palestinians live under Israeli military rule and they do not enjoy the legal rights and protections afforded to settlers.
The open-ended military occupation has led three well-known human rights groups to conclude that Israel is committing the international crime of apartheid by systematically denying Palestinians equal rights. Israel rejects those accusations as an attack on its very existence as a Jewish-majority state and points to the achievements of its citizens of Palestinian origin to counter the argument.
The increasingly authoritarian and unpopular Palestinian Authority, established through agreements with Israel in the 1990s, administers parts of the West Bank, while the Islamic militant group Hamas controls Gaza, which is under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade.
Militant who killed 101 at Pakistan mosque wore uniform
A suicide bomber who killed 101 people at a mosque in northwest Pakistan this week had disguised himself in a police uniform and did not raise suspicion among guards, the provincial police chief said on Thursday.
Moazzam Jah Ansari said the bomber had been identified and police were close to arresting members of the network that was behind Monday's attack, one of the deadliest ever in Peshawar, the capital in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“We will avenge the martyrdom of each and every policeman," Ansari told a news conference.
The blast collapsed the roof of the 50-year-old mosque, killing 101 people, mostly policemen. Two hundred twenty-five people were injured.
Ansari spoke a day after dozens of police officers in a rare move joined a peace march organized by the members of civil society groups in Peshawar, demanding protection for themselves.
Also read: Pakistan blames 'security lapse' for mosque blast; 100 dead
Hours after the bombing, Pakistan's Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif accused the Pakistani Taliban, known by the acronym TTP, of carrying out the attack, saying they were operating from neighboring Afghan territory. Pakistan wants the Afghan Taliban to take action against the TTP group.
Shortly after the bombing, a TTP commander claimed responsibility, but more than 10 hours after the attack the chief spokesman for the group distanced the TTP from the carnage, saying it was not its policy to attack mosques.
On Wednesday, Afghanistan’s Taliban-appointed foreign minister, however, had asked Pakistani authorities to look for the reasons behind militant violence in their country instead of blaming Afghanistan. The comments from Amir Khan Muttaqi came after Pakistani officials said the attackers who orchestrated Monday’s suicide bombing were using Afghan soil to target civilians and security forces.
More than 300 worshippers were praying in the Sunni mosque, with more approaching, when the bomber set off his explosives vest. Ansari said the attacker was not searched because guards assumed that he was one of their colleagues.
“Yes, I admit that it was a security lapse and I take responsibility for it," Ansari said.
Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif visited a hospital in Peshawar after the bombing and vowed “stern action” against those behind the attack. Pakistan, which is mostly Sunni Muslim, has seen a surge in militant attacks since November when the Pakistani Taliban ended a cease-fire with government forces.
The violence has increased in Pakistan since the Afghan Taliban seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO troops pulled out of the country after 20 years of war.
The TTP is separate from but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban.
___
Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed contributed to this story from Islamabad
Adani cancels a $2.5 billion share offer after stock fraud allegations
NEW DELHI (AP/UNB) — Embattled Indian billionaire Gautam Adani said Thursday his conglomerate will review its plans for raising capital after calling off his flagship company’s $2.5 billion share offering following the loss of tens of billions of dollars in market value due to claims of fraud by a U.S.-based short-selling firm.
Adani Enterprises canceled the share sale late Wednesday, citing “market volatility.” Stocks in the coal mines to ports empire sank after Hindenburg Research, which has a track record of sending stock prices of its targets tumbling, accused the group of “brazen” stock market manipulation and accounting fraud, among other financial abuses.
The share sale was seen as a crucial test of investor confidence in Adani, whose net worth shot up about 2,000% in recent years as share prices for his listed companies soared.
By the time trading closed Wednesday, Adani Enterprises was down by a whopping 28%. But the share offering had drawn nearly 51 million bids, exceeding the 45.5 million offered to the public. Stock in six of Adani’s other listed companies sank between 2% and 19%.
Early Thursday, Adani Enterprises was down by 5%. Stocks in four of Adani’s other listed companies were down by 10% and two others sunk between 5% and 8%.In a video address Thursday, Adani said the decision to scrap the share offering was made “to insulate the investors from potential losses.”
“For me, the interest of my investors is paramount and everything else is secondary,” he said.
Adani Enterprises said in a statement that it would withdraw the transaction and return the money to its investors. The decision would not “have any impact on our existing operations and future plans,” it said, adding that the group’s balance sheet was “very healthy” with strong cashflows and secure assets.
Adani made a vast fortune mining coal as energy-hungry India grew swiftly after its economy was liberalized in the 1990s. Adani companies operate airports in major cities, build roads, generate electricity, manufacture defense equipment, develop agricultural drones, sell cooking oil and run a media outlet.
Hindenburg said it was betting against the group, accusing it of “pulling the largest con in corporate history.” It said it judged the seven key Adani listed companies to have an “85% downside, purely on a fundamental basis owing to sky-high valuations.”
Most of the allegations involved concerns about the group’s debt levels, activities of top executives, use of offshore shell companies to artificially boost share prices and past investigations into fraud. It listed 88 questions for the group to answer.
Adani Group dismissed Hindenburg’s allegations, and called its report a “calculated attack on India, the independence, integrity and quality of Indian institutions, and the growth story and ambition of India.” On Sunday, it issued a 413-page report that rejected its questions, saying none were “based on independent or journalistic fact finding.”
Adani’s response included documents and data tables. It said the group has made all necessary regulatory disclosures and abided by local laws.
The stock losses on Wednesday cost Adani his title as the richest man in Asia and in India. Adani also slid from a ranking of being the world’s third richest man to the 13th as his fortune plummeted to $72 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index. Prior to the Hindenburg report, his net worth was about $120 billion.
Australian banknotes will no longer feature the British monarchy
Australia is removing the British monarchy from its bank notes.
The nation's central bank said Thursday its new $5 bill would feature an Indigenous design rather than an image of King Charles III. But the king is still expected to appear on coins.
The $5 bill was Australia’s only remaining bank note to still feature an image of the monarch.
The bank said the decision followed consultation with the government, which supported the change. Opponents say the move is politically motivated.
The British monarch remains Australia's head of state, although these days that role is largely symbolic. Like many former British colonies, Australia is debating to what extent it should retain its constitutional ties to Britain.
Australia's Reserve Bank said the new $5 bill would feature a design to replace a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, who died last year. The bank said the move would honor “the culture and history of the First Australians.”
“The other side of the $5 banknote will continue to feature the Australian parliament," the bank said in a statement.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the change was an opportunity to strike a good balance.
“The monarch will still be on the coins, but the $5 note will say more about our history and our heritage and our country, and I see that as a good thing,” he told reporters in Melbourne.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton likened the move to changing the date of the national day, Australia Day.
“I know the silent majority don’t agree with a lot of the woke nonsense that goes on but we’ve got to hear more from those people online,” he told 2GB Radio.
Dutton said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was central to the decision for the king not to appear on the note, urging him to “own up to it."
The bank plans to consult with Indigenous groups in designing the $5 note, a process it expects will take several years before the new note goes public.
The current $5 will continue to be issued until the new design is introduced and will remain legal tender even after the new bill goes into circulation.
The face of King Charles III is expected to be seen on Australian coins later this year.
One Australian dollar is worth about 71 cents in U.S. currency.
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After rocket fired, Israeli jets strike Hamas in Gaza
Israeli aircraft carried out several raids at a militant site in the Gaza Strip early Thursday, the Israeli military said, hours after Palestinian militants fired a rocket into Israel's south, raising already heightened tensions under the country’s new ultranationalist government.
The Israeli military said the airstrikes targeted a rocket production workshop for the militant Hamas group, which controls Gaza. It said the site contained raw chemical materials.
There were no reports of casualties.
Late Wednesday, Israeli air defenses intercepted a rocket from Gaza, the army said. Last week, Gaza militants and Israel broke months of cross-border calm by exchanging rockets and airstrikes after Israel killed 10 Palestinians in a military operation in the West Bank.
Also read: Israel, Gaza fighters trade fire after deadliest West Bank raid in two decades
In Israel, local residents reported hearing explosions. Israel’s rescue service said it received no reports of injuries except for a 50-year-old woman who slipped and fell while running to a shelter.
The action came after Hamas threatened Israel over the combative stance of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has promised harsh treatment of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. From the occupied West Bank to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, many Palestinians revere prisoners as heroes for the Palestinian cause.
Ben-Gvir said the new rocket fire from Gaza won’t stop him from implementing his punitive policies against Palestinian detainees. He called for an urgent Security Cabinet meeting to discuss a response.
Israeli-Palestinian violence has spiked in recent days as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited with a call for calm.
Most of the 10 killed during the Israeli raid on a militant stronghold in the West Bank city of Jenin last week were militants. The next day, a Palestinian shooting attack in an east Jerusalem Jewish settlement killed seven people. A separate east Jerusalem shooting over the weekend by a 13-year-old Palestinian wounded two Israelis.
Following the unrest, Israel approved a series of punitive steps against the Palestinians.
Hamas issued a statement Tuesday condemning alleged assaults by prison guards against Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons, specifically female detainees.
The Israeli Prison Service said the problems started last Friday when it placed dozens of Palestinian prisoners in solitary confinement after they celebrated the deadly Palestinian attack outside the synagogue in east Jerusalem. A female Palestinian detainee who was punished with isolation tried to set fire to her cell in protest, the prison service said. In an unrelated move, the prison service removed televisions from three cells in Israel’s Ofer Prison near the city of Ramallah.
Amani Srahneh from the Palestinian Prisoners Club, a group representing former and current prisoners, said the “escalatory measures and this new Israeli government’s policy of inciting against prisoners” was creating “a very tense situation.”