United News of Bangladesh

Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah agreed in Beijing to form a government together, the groups said Tuesday, in the latest attempt at resolving a longstanding rivalry that looms over any potential vision for the rule of Gaza after the war with Israel. Previous similar declarations have failed, raising doubts about whether the China-sponsored negotiations might lead to reconciliation between Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip for 17 years, and Fatah, the main force in the U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority that administers parts of the occupied West Bank. The two groups issued a joint statement announcing the deal but gave no details on how or when the government would be formed, saying only that it would be done “by agreement among the factions.” Both sides said the accord, which provided no guarantees, was only an initial step, and they promised to follow up on previous reconciliation agreements signed in 2011 and 2022. Israel swiftly denounced the pact. The U.S. and other Western countries have refused to accept any Palestinian government that includes Hamas unless it expressly recognizes Israel — a factor that has helped wreck past unity attempts, along with the factions' own competition for power. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV announced that the two sides and other, smaller Palestinian factions signed the declaration on “ending division and strengthening Palestinian unity.” The agreement offered only broad outlines for how they would work together. “There is an opportunity … but it is not big, because it lacks a specific timetable for implementation,” said Hani Al-Masry, an expert on Palestinian reconciliation affairs. The declaration comes at a sensitive time, as the war in Gaza rages into its 10th month and as Israel and Hamas are weighing an internationally backed cease-fire proposal that would wind down the war and free dozens of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. One of the thorniest issues is the question of who will run Gaza after the war. The unity efforts are motivated in part by Palestinians' desire to offer a scenario for postwar rule. But Israel vehemently opposes any role for Hamas, which it vowed to destroy after the militants' Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. It also has rejected U.S. calls for the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza after the fighting ends, though it has not presented a cohesive postwar vision of its own. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ’ Fatah has been deeply reluctant to share power with its longtime rival. Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. The following year, amid escalating tensions, Hamas routed forces loyal to Abbas in Gaza. It has ruled the impoverished coastal enclave ever since. During the current war, Hamas officials have said the group does not want to return to ruling Gaza and that it advocates for forming a government of technocrats to be agreed upon by the various Palestinian factions. That government would then prepare for elections in Gaza and the West Bank, with the intention of forming a unified government. Reacting to the announcement out of China, Israel’s foreign minister said no joint governance between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza will take place "because Hamas’ rule will be crushed.” The agreement also underscored China’s attempts to have a growing role in Middle East diplomacy, after its success in mediating the restoration of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. “To be sure, China is still in the process of trying to earn credibility as a global mediator,” said James Char, a research fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Officials from Fatah, Hamas and 12 other factions met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in talks that started Sunday, according to a post on social media platform Weibo from Chinese TV network CGTN. In the statement, all the factions including Hamas said they were committed to the creation of a Palestinian state on lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Hamas, whose original charter directly called for Israel’s destruction, has said it would accept a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 war borders but refuses to officially recognize Israel. The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, has recognized Israel and works within the framework of peace deals signed in the early 1990s. Those deals were supposed to lead to an eventual state in the West Bank and Gaza, but talks have been defunct for years, leaving the authority in charge of only isolated West Bank enclaves. Many Palestinians view the authority as corrupt, out of touch and a subcontractor for Israel because of their joint security coordination. The unity announcement is based on widening the membership of the Fatah-led Palestine Liberation Organization, including Hamas, said Jamal Nazzal, a Fatah spokesperson. “It’s a long way ahead, and most of it will be implemented after a possible cease-fire,” he added. Hamas members have never been part of the PLO, the umbrella group of Palestinian factions that undergirds the Palestinian Authority. Husam Badran, a Hamas political official based in Qatar, called the agreement a further “positive step towards achieving Palestinian national unity.” U.S. President Joe Biden's administration envisions a revamped Palestinian Authority ruling postwar Gaza and has sought reforms that might make it a viable presence in the war-ravaged territory. Israel rejected that idea. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group allied with Hamas, issued a statement after the talks saying it still “rejects any formula that includes recognition of Israel explicitly or implicitly” and that it demanded the withdrawal of the PLO's recognition of Israel.

Police found traces of cyanide in the cups of six Vietnamese and American guests at a central Bangkok luxury hotel and one of them is believed to have poisoned the others over a bad investment, Thai authorities said Wednesday. The bodies were found Tuesday in the Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok, a landmark at a central intersection in the capital busy with malls, government buildings and public transit. The six had last been seen alive when food was delivered to the room Monday afternoon. The staff saw one woman receive the food, and security footage showed the rest arriving one by one shortly after. There were no other visitors, no one was seen leaving and the door was locked. A maid found them Tuesday afternoon when they failed to check out of the room. Lt. Gen. Trairong Piwpan, chief of the Thai police force's forensic division, said there were traces of cyanide in the cups and thermoses that police found in the room, but initial results of an autopsy were expected later Wednesday. Bangkok police chief Lt. Gen. Thiti Sangsawang identified the dead as two Vietnamese Americans and four Vietnamese nationals, and said they were three men and three women. Their ages ranged from 37 to 56, according to Noppasin Punsawat, Bangkok deputy police chief. He said the case appeared to be personal and would not impact the safety of tourists. A husband and wife among the dead had invested money with two of the others, suggesting that money could be a motive, said Noppasin, citing information obtained from relatives of the victims. The investment was meant to build a hospital in Japan and the group might have been meeting to settle the matter. Bangkok police chief Lt. Gen. Thiti Sangsawang said Tuesday that four bodies were in the living room and two in the bedroom. He said two of them appeared to try to reach for the door but collapsed before they could. Noppasin said Wednesday that a seventh person whose name was part of the hotel booking was a sibling of one of the six and left Thailand on July 10. Police believe the seventh person had no involvement in the deaths. The Vietnamese and United States embassies have been contacted over the deaths, and the American FBI was en route, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said. He said the case would likely not affect a conference with Russian Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev at the hotel later Wednesday. “This wasn’t an act of terrorism or a breach in security. Everything is fine," he said. Trairong said a mass suicide was unlikely because some of the victims had arranged future parts of their trip, such as guides and drivers. He added that the bodies being in different parts of the hotel room suggested they did not knowingly consume poison and wait for their deaths together. U.S. State Dept. spokesman Matthew Miller in Washington offered condolences to the families of the victims. He said the U.S. is closely monitoring the situation and would communicate with local authorities. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his Thai counterpart on Tuesday, but Miller said he thought that call happened before the deaths were reported and he didn’t know if it came up in their conversation. In 2023, Thailand was rocked by reports of a serial killer who poisoned 15 people with cyanide over a span of years. Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn, or “Am Cyanide” as she would later be called, killed at least 14 people who she owed money to and became the country’s first female serial killer. One person survived.

Heavy rains in eastern Afghanistan have killed at least 40 people and injured nearly 350 others, Taliban officials said Tuesday. Among the dead in Monday's storm were five members of the same family when the roof of their house collapsed in Surkh Rod district, according to provincial spokesperson Sediqullah Quraishi. Four other family members were injured. Sharafat Zaman Amar, a spokesperson for the Public Health Ministry, said the 347 injured people had been brought for treatment to the regional hospital in Nangarhar from Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, and nearby districts. About 400 houses and 60 electricity poles were destroyed across Nangarhar, Quraishi said. Power was cut in many areas and there were limited communications in Jalalabad city, he said. The damage was still being assessed. Abdul Wali, 43, said much of the damage occurred within an hour. “The winds were so strong that they blew everything into the air. That was followed by heavy rain,” he said. His 4-year-old daughter received minor injuries, he said. Aid organizations rushed supplies and mobile teams. International Rescue Committee Afghanistan Director Salma ben Aissa said her group was conducting assessments and providing emergency health services. “The continuation of climate-induced disasters in Afghanistan ought to be cause for grave concern: decades of conflict and economic crisis has meant that the country has faced setback after setback as it tries to find its feet. The sad reality is that without a massive increase in support from donors and the international community, many more will lose their lives,” she said in a statement. In May, exceptionally heavy rains killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of houses, mostly in the northern province of Baghlan, according to the World Food Program. Separately, the official Taliban news agency Bakhtar reported that at least 17 people were killed and 34 others injured when a bus overturned Tuesday morning on the main highway linking Kabul and Balkh in northern Baghlan province. The cause of the accident wasn't immediately clear, but poor road conditions and careless driving are often blamed for such incidents in the country.

South Korea’s spy agency said Tuesday that a North Korea diplomat based in Cuba has fled to South Korea, the latest in a series of defections by members of the North's ruling elite in recent years. The National Intelligence Service said media reports on the defection of a North Korean counselor of political affairs in Cuba were true. A brief statement by the NIS public affairs office gave no further details. South Korea’s mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported earlier Tuesday that diplomat Ri Il Kyu fled to South Korea with his wife and children last November. Chosun Ilbo cited Ri as telling the newspaper that he had decided to defect because of disillusionment with North Korea’s political system. But Yonhap news agency, citing a South Korean unidentified government source, reported that Ri decided to flee after conflicts with North Korean Foreign Ministry officials about his job evaluations. In 2016, Tae Yongho, then a minister at the North Korean Embassy in London, defected to South Korea. He told reporters in Seoul that he decided to flee because he didn’t want his children to live “miserable” lives in North Korea and he fell into “despair” after watching North Korean leader Kim Jong Un execute officials and pursue development of nuclear weapons. North Korea has called him “human scum” and accused him of embezzling government money and committing other crimes. Tae was elected to South Korea’s parliament in 2020. In 2019, North Korea’s acting ambassador to Italy, Jo Song Gil, arrived in South Korea. Also in 2019, North Korea's acting ambassador to Kuwait arrived in South Korea with his family. Lawmakers in 2021 cited the NIS as telling them the diplomat changed his name to Ryu Hyun-woo after arriving in South Korea. South Korea’s unification and foreign ministries said they couldn’t confirm reports about Ri’s defection. It’s unusual for a member of the North’s ruling elite to defect to South Korea. Last year, about 10 North Koreans categorized as members of the North's elite arrived in South Korea, according to Yonhap. About 34,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea to avoid economic hardship and political suppression since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. A majority of them are women from the North's poorer northern regions.

Rescuers have recovered a total of seven bodies from the river that two buses full of people were swept into by a landslide, officials said Monday. Rescuers were able to find the bodies in different locations on the riverbanks as the search continues for the missing buses and people on board. Government administrator Khima Nanda Bhusal said the bodies were identified and relatives contacted. Three of the dead are Indians and the remaining four are Nepali nationals. The buses were on the key highway connecting Nepal’s capital to southern parts of the country when they were swept away Friday morning near Simaltal, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Kathmandu. The first body was recovered Sunday some 50 kilometers (31 miles) from where the buses fell. Weather conditions improved Saturday and search teams were able to cover more ground in the hunt for the missing buses and passengers. Heavy equipment had cleared much of the landslides from the highway, making it easier to reach the area as rescuers expanded their scope toward the southern region from where the first body was found, Bhusal said. The government has imposed a ban on passenger buses traveling at night in the areas where weather warnings are posted, according to the Home Ministry.

Recently renewed combat in northeastern Myanmar between troops of the military government and ethnic minority militias has in the past few days become more complicated, as two minority groups not previously involved in the fighting stepped into the fray, claiming to act as a third force for stability. The intervention of the powerful fighting forces of the United Wa State Army and the Shan State Army-North highlights tensions among the various ethnic minority guerrilla groups who have been fighting for decades for greater autonomy from Myanmar’s central government. While many of the groups have alliances with the pro-democracy resistance forces that arose to fight military rule after the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, they prioritize their own goals, which include control over territory. The focus of every group is now on Lashio, which is about 210 kilometers (130 miles) northeast of Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city and headquarters of the northeastern military command of Myanmar’s ruling generals. Two ethnic armed groups, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, or MNDAA, last week had been advancing on Lashio, the biggest city in northern Shan state. The TNLA represents the Ta’ang or Palaung ethnic minority, and the MNDAA is a military force of the Kokang minority, who are ethnic Chinese. The two groups had been part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance, which last October had launched a surprise offensive that succeeded in seizing large tracts of territory along the border with China. The current fighting that began last month had marked an end to a Chinese-brokered cease-fire that nominally stopped fighting between the army and the alliance. Myanmar's army is reportedly emptying villages in a western state to boost defenses against rebels But the United Wa State Army and the Shan State Army-North, who were not involved in the October offensive, late last week moved their own soldiers to the Lashio area, apparently impeding the offensive by the TNLA and MNDAA. The United Wa State Army announced it had sent about 2,000 troops on Thursday into Tangyan, a township bordering Lashio, which had been under attack by the TNLA. Tangyan is believed to be home to a large number of ethnic Wa. The Wa military is the biggest and strongest ethnic armed organization in Myanmar, with an army of approximately 30,000 well-equipped soldiers and sophisticated weaponry including heavy artillery and helicopters from China, with which it maintains close relations Nyi Rang, a liaison officer for the group, told The Associated Press in a message on Friday that the move was meant to prevent the armed conflict from spreading to the town. He said the Wa group had negotiated with the military government at the request of residents before deploying its troops. The Shan State Army-North sent more than 1,000 troops on Friday and Saturday into the nearby township of Mongyai, where the MNDAA has been fighting the Myanmar military, The Shan consider Mongyai to be in their sphere of influence, which should not be taken over by another group. The group issued a statement through its affiliate media on Facebook stating that it had sent troops for the stability of the region and the security of the people. Myanmar's ethnic rebels say they captured an airport in a new setback for the military government “It is the region we had dominated,” Col. Sai Su, the group’s spokesperson, was quoted in the report as saying. “That’s why we did that to prevent the town from falling into the hands of the other organizations and to keep it under the administration of the Shan State Army. People also requested us to protect them.” Two Mongyai residents, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, told the AP on Sunday that their area was calm after the Shan troops were deployed. One said Wa troops were also stationed nearby. All the ethnic armed groups involved in the situation in Shan state maintain close relations with China. It's widely believed that last October's offensive had Beijing’s tacit approval because of its growing dissatisfaction with the military government's seeming indifference to the burgeoning drug trade along its border and the proliferation of centers in Myanmar at which cyberscams are run, with workers trafficked from China and elsewhere in the region. Beijing has made clear it strongly backed a crackdown on scammers. Tens of thousands of employees of scam operations were repatriated to China, while the MNDAA, which assisted that effort, was allowed to retake a major border city it had once controlled. However, China's overriding interest in the area is maintaining stability, which is endangered by the new fighting. so it is likely to back efforts such as the Wa and the Shan are carrying out to restrain the TNLA and MNDAA.

The leader of the Nepal's largest communist party, Khadga Prasad Oli, was named the Himalayan nation's new prime minister on Sunday following the collapse of a previous coalition government. A statement issued by the president's office said Oli will take his oath of office on Monday. Oli will be leading a coalition government made up of his Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) and the Nepali Congress party, the two largest parties in Nepal. It is his fourth time as Nepal's prime minister. The last government headed by Pushpa Kamal Dahal collapsed on Friday after Oli's party, which had been a part of the coalition, withdrew its support to join the new partnership. Oli would have to seek vote of confidence in parliament to continue in office within a month. The two parties in the new alliance have more than half the members in parliament required to prove their majority. Oli, 72, was born in a village in east Nepal and has been involved in politics since he was young. He has a kidney illness and has had kidney transplant surgeries. He has made regular trips abroad for medical treatment.

When Maksim Kolker's phone rang at 6 a.m., and the voice on the other end said his father had been arrested, he thought it was a scam to extort money. A day earlier, he had taken his father, prominent Russian physicist Dmitry Kolker, to the hospital in his native Novosibirsk, when his advanced pancreatic cancer had suddenly worsened. The phone kept ringing and Kolker kept hanging up until finally his father called to confirm the grim news. The elder Kolker had been charged with treason, the family later learned, a crime that is probed and prosecuted in absolute secrecy in Russia and punished with long prison terms. Treason cases have been rare in Russia in the last 30 years, with a handful annually. But since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, they have skyrocketed, along with espionage prosecutions, ensnaring citizens and foreigners alike, regardless of their politics. That has brought comparisons to the show trials under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in the 1930s. The more recent victims range from Kremlin critics and independent journalists to veteran scientists working with countries that Moscow considers friendly. These cases stand out from the crackdown on dissent that has reached unprecedented levels under President Vladimir Putin. They are investigated almost exclusively by the powerful Federal Security Service, or FSB, with specific charges and evidence not always revealed. The accused are often held in strict isolation in Moscow's notorious Lefortovo Prison, tried behind closed doors, and almost always convicted, with long prison sentences. In 2022, Putin urged the security services to "harshly suppress the actions of foreign intelligence services, promptly identify traitors, spies and saboteurs." The First Department, a rights group that specializes in such prosecutions and takes its name from a division of the security service, counted over 100 known treason cases in 2023, lawyer Evgeny Smirnov told The Associated Press. He added there probably were another 100 that nobody knows about. The longer the war goes on, "the more traitors" the authorities want to round up, Smirnov said. Treason cases began growing after 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in the eastern part of the country and fell out with the West for the first time since the Cold War. Two years earlier, the legal definition of treason was expanded to include providing vaguely defined "assistance" to foreign countries or organizations, effectively exposing to prosecution anyone in contact with foreigners. The move followed mass anti-government protests in 2011-12 in Moscow that officials claimed were instigated by the West. Those changes to the law were heavily criticized by rights advocates, including those in the Presidential Human Rights Council. Faced with that criticism at the time, Putin promised to look into the amended law and agreed "there shouldn't be any broad interpretation of what high treason is." And yet, that's exactly what began happening. In 2015, authorities arrested Svetlana Davydova, a mother of seven in the western region of Smolensk, on treason charges in accordance with the new, expanded definition of the offense. She was charged over contacting the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow in 2014 to warn officials there that she thought Russia was sending troops into eastern Ukraine, where the separatist insurgency against Kyiv was unfolding. The case drew national attention and public outrage. Russia at the time denied its troops were involved in eastern Ukraine, and many pointed out that the case against Davydova contradicted that narrative. The charges against her were eventually dropped. That outcome was a rare exception to the multiplying treason and espionage cases in subsequent years that consistently ended in convictions and prison terms. Paul Whelan, a United States corporate security executive who traveled to Moscow to attend a wedding, was arrested in 2018 and convicted of espionage two years later, and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He denied the charges. Ivan Safronov, an adviser to the Roscosmos space agency and a former military affairs journalist, was convicted of treason in 2022 and sentenced to 22 years in prison. His prosecution was widely seen as retaliation for his reporting exposing military incidents and shady arms deals. "It's a very good cautionary tale case for them that journalists shouldn't write anything about the defense sector," his fiancee and fellow reporter Ksenia Mironova told AP. The FSB also went after scientists who study aerodynamics, hypersonics and other fields that could be used in weapons development. Such arrests swelled after 2018, when Putin in his annual state-of-the-nation address touted new and unique hypersonic weapons that Russia was developing, according to Smirnov, the lawyer. In his view, it was the security services' way of showing the Kremlin that Russian scientific advances, especially those used to develop weapons, are so valuable that "all foreign intelligence services in the world are after it." He stressed that all the arrested scientists were civilians, and that "they practically never go after military scientists." Many of the scientists denied the charges. Their families and colleagues insisted they were implicated over something as benign as giving lectures abroad or working with foreign scientists on joint projects. Kolker, the son of the detained Novosibirsk physicist, said that when the FSB searched his father's apartment, they looked for several presentations he had used in lectures given in China. The elder Kolker, who had studied light waves, gave presentations that were cleared for use abroad and also were given inside Russia, and "any student could understand that he wasn't revealing anything (secret) in them," Maksim Kolker said. Nevertheless, FSB officers yanked the 54-year-old physicist from his hospital bed in 2022 and flew him to Moscow, to the Lefortovo Prison, his son said. The ailing scientist called his family from the plane to say goodbye, knowing he was unlikely to survive prison, the son said. Within days, the family received a telegram informing them he had died in a hospital. Other cases were similar. Valery Golubkin, a 71-year-old Moscow physicist specializing in aerodynamics, was convicted of treason in 2023. His state-run research institute was working on an international project of a hypersonic civilian aircraft, and he was asked by his employer to help with reports on the project. Smirnov of the First Department group, which was involved in his defense, says the reports were vetted before they were sent abroad and didn't contain state secrets. Golubkin's daughter, Lyudmila, said the 2021 arrest came as a shock. "He is not guilty of anything," she said. His 12-year sentence was upheld despite appeals, and his family now hopes he will be released on parole. Other scientists working on hypersonics, a field with important applications for missile development, also were arrested on treason charges in recent years. One of them, Anatoly Maslov, 77, was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison in May. The Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in Novosibirsk wrote a letter supporting Maslov and two other physicists implicated over "making presentations at international seminars and conferences, publishing articles in highly rated journals (and) participation in international scientific projects." Such activities, the letter said, are "an obligatory component of conscientious and high-quality scientific activity," both in Russia and elsewhere. Two other recent high-profile cases involved a prominent opposition politician and a journalist. Vladimir Kara-Murza, a journalist who became an activist, was charged with treason in 2022 after giving speeches in the West that were critical of Russia. After surviving what he believed were attempts to poison him in 2015 and 2017, Kara-Murza was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison, where his family fears for his deteriorating health. In his closing statement at trial, Kara-Murza alluded to the USSR's dark legacy of prosecutions, saying the country has gone "all the way back to the 1930s." The Wall Street Journal's Evan Gershkovich was arrested in 2023 on espionage charges, the first American reporter detained on such charges since the Cold War. Gershkovich, who went on trial in June, denies the charges, and the U.S. government has declared him to be wrongfully detained. Russians reportedly have been charged with treason — or the less-severe charges of "preparing for treason" — for acts including donating money to Ukrainian charities or groups fighting alongside Kyiv's forces, setting military enlistment offices in Russia on fire, and even private phone conversations with friends in Ukraine about moving there. Ksenia Khavana, 33, was arrested in Yekaterinburg in February on treason charges, accused of collecting money for Ukraine's military. The dual Russian-U.S. citizen had returned from Los Angeles to visit family, and the First Department said the charges stem from a $51 donation to a U.S.-based charity that helps Ukraine. Several factors are motivating authorities to pursue more treason cases, experts say. One is that it sends a clear message that the unwritten rules have changed, and that conferences abroad or work with foreign peers is no longer something scientists should do, says Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist and expert on the security services. It's also easier to get higher authorities to allocate resources to a treason case, like surveillance or wiretaps, he says. According to Smirnov, the spike in prosecutions came after the FSB allowed its regional branches in 2022 to pursue certain kinds of treason, and officials in those branches sought to curry favor with their superiors to advance their careers. Above all, Soldatov said, is the FSB's genuine and widespread belief of "the fragility of the regime" at a time of a political turmoil — either from mass protests, as in 2011-12, or now during the war with Ukraine. "They sincerely believe that it can break," he said, even if it's really not the case. Mironova, the fiancee of the imprisoned journalist Safronov, echoed that sentiment. FSB investigators think they're catching "traitors" and "enemies of the motherland," even when they know they don't have evidence against them, she said.

Thousands of supporters of a Pakistani radical political party rallied near the capital, Islamabad, on Saturday, denouncing Israeli strikes in Gaza and urging the government to send more aid to the Palestinians. The protesters also demanded that Pakistan declare Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a terrorist.” There was no immediate response from the government following the rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Pakistan has no diplomatic relations with Israel. Pakistan has been calling for a cease-fire in the nine-month Israel-Hamas war, and in recent months has sent relief items for the Palestinians in Gaza. Pakistani court acquits Imran Khan, wife, in marriage case, paving way for possible release Saad Rizvi, head of the Islamist Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan party, which led the rally, said the sit-in at the protest would continue as long as its demands are not accepted by the government. Hundreds of police were deployed near the rally, which took place as militant attacks have surged in Pakistan. Israeli attack on southern Gaza kills 71 people, said to target head of Hamas' military wing

A Pakistani court on Saturday overturned the conviction and seven-year prison sentence of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife in the case of the couple’s alleged 2018 unlawful marriage case, removing the last known hurdle in the way of his release nearly a year after he was jailed, lawyers said. Naeem Panjutha, one of Khan's lawyers, said the court announced the verdict in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where the former premier is being held. The acquittal comes two weeks after another appeals court upheld the Feb. 5 conviction and sentence of Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi. The court in its brief order said if the couple is not wanted in any other case, they should be released. Bibi is Khan's third wife and a spiritual healer. She was previously married to a man who claimed that they divorced in November 2017, less than three months before she married Khan. Islamic law, as upheld by Pakistan, requires a three-month waiting period before a new marriage. Bibi has said they divorced in August 2017 and the couple insisted during the trial that they did not violate the waiting period. An appeals court in Pakistan upholds conviction of Imran Khan and his wife for unlawful marriage It was unclear how the government would respond to the court order. Authorities have registered multiple cases against Khan since 2022 when he was ousted from power through a vote of no-confidence in the parliament. The latest development came a day after Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that the party of Khan was improperly denied at least 20 seats in parliament, in a significant blow to the country’s fragile governing coalition. Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party was previously excluded from a system that gives parties extra seats reserved for women and minorities in the National Assembly, or lower house of the parliament. Though the verdict was a major political win for Khan, it would not put his party in a position to oust the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who came into power following a Feb. 8 election that Khan allies say was rigged. Hundreds of people suffer heatstroke in Pakistan, and dangerous heat is forecast to stay a while Khan has been embroiled in more than 150 legal cases, including inciting violence, since his arrest in May 2023. During nationwide riots that followed that, Khan’s supporters attacked the military and government buildings in various parts of the country and torched a building housing state-run Radio Pakistan in the northwest. The violence subsided only when Khan was released by the Supreme Court. Khan was again arrested in early August 2023 after a court handed him a three-year jail sentence for corruption. Since then, Khan has been given bail by different courts in all the cases in which he has been convicted.