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A Pakistan court convicted former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi in a graft case on Friday, sentencing Khan to 14 years in prison.Khan, 72, has been held in custody since August 2023 charged in around 200 cases but his party claims the latest conviction was being used to pressure him into stepping back from politics.The conviction came a day after PTI leaders again met the government for talks aimed at easing political tensions. The PTI’s chairman also met the chief of the armed forces.”I will neither make any deal nor seek any relief,” Khan told reporters inside the courtroom after his conviction.The anti-graft court convened in the jail where Khan is being held near the capital Islamabad and convicted the couple for graft linked to the Al-Qadir Trust, a welfare foundation they established.”The prosecution has proven its case. Khan is convicted,” said Judge Nasir Javed Rana, announcing a 14-year sentence for Khan and seven years for Bibi.Faith healer Bibi, who was recently released on bail, was arrested at the court after the conviction, her spokeswoman Mashal Yousafzai said.Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said it would challenge the verdict.Ousted from power by a no-confidence vote in 2022, the former cricket star has since launched an unprecedented campaign in which he has openly criticised Pakistan’s powerful generals.Analysts say the military’s leaders are Pakistan’s kingmakers, although the generals deny interfering in politics.”The decision against Imran Khan was not made by any judicial judge but by a general,” PTI activist Qadir Nawaz said at a protest in Peshawar in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Khan’s powerbase.”Such decisions cannot scare Imran Khan or his workers,” the 54-year-old told AFP at the rally of around 150 people.  – Defiant Khan -Khan maintains all cases against him are politically motivated and designed to keep him from returning to power.He had been convicted four times since his arrest, with two convictions overturned and the sentences in the other two cases suspended.He remained in prison over the Al-Qadir Trust case, the longest running against him, and other charges related to inciting protests.The court’s announcement had been postponed three times, with analysts saying back-room negotiations were being held.Khan said in a statement posted by his team on social media this month that he was “indirectly approached” about the possibility of house arrest at his sprawling home on Islamabad’s outskirts.But he has remained defiant, firing off statements railing against the government and promising to fight his battles through the courts.”Imran Khan challenged the system that has been entrenched in this country,” 43-year-old PTI activist Ayesha Bano said at the Peshawar protest.”He was fighting a genuine battle for this country,” she said. “We will oppose Imran Khan’s sentencing on every front, no matter the cost.”Khan’s popularity continues to undermine a shaky coalition government that kept PTI from power in elections last year.A UN panel of experts found last year that Khan’s detention “had no legal basis and appears to have been intended to disqualify him from running for political office”.Khan was barred from standing in February’s election and his PTI party was hamstrung by a widespread crackdown.PTI won more seats than any other party but a coalition of parties considered more pliable to the military’s influence shut them out of power.

India’s cricket board has capped the amount of time players can spend with their families on tour after a string of Test defeats including a 3-1 drubbing in Australia this month.The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) issued new policies Thursday for the senior men’s team detailing guidelines to “promote discipline, unity and a positive team environment”.As part of the new guidelines, families will be allowed to stay with the players for a maximum of two weeks during overseas tours of 45 days or more.The guidelines, seen by AFP on Friday, also makes participation in domestic cricket “mandatory to be eligible for selection in the national team”.Non-compliance could result in disciplinary action including fines and a ban on participating in the lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL), Indian broadcaster NDTV reported.The new rules come on the heels of sharp criticism of the board, which critics have accused of allowing a “star culture” to thrive. “The cricket board needs to stop acting like admirers and put their foot down,” retired Indian batting great Sunil Gavaskar told news channel India Today earlier this month after the Australia tour.Top players, including captain Rohit Sharma and star batsman Virat Kohli, have not played in the domestic circuit in years. Both have come under fire for failing to deliver wins in recent bilateral series.Rohit, who missed the only India win in Australia because of the birth of his second child, managed 31 runs in three matches.Kohli scored one century but managed only 90 runs across his eight other innings. The new BCCI rules prohibit players from travelling separately to and from matches and practice sessions. “Separate travel arrangements are discouraged to maintain discipline and team cohesion,” the board said, adding that all team members were “required to stay for the entire duration of the scheduled practices”.”This rule ensures commitment and fosters a strong work ethic within the team,” said the board. India’s next Test tour is slated for June in England, where they will play five matches.

Former prime minister Imran Khan, who was sentenced to 14 years for graft on Friday, may be locked away in jail but he remains Pakistan’s dominant political personality.The former cricket star enjoyed popular support when he became premier in 2018 but fell out with the king-making military establishment and was booted from power in a 2022 no-confidence vote.He then waged a risky and unprecedented campaign of defiance against the top brass before swiftly becoming embroiled in a legal saga in which he has been accused of wrongdoing in around 200 cases.Khan says the charges have been trumped up to prevent his comeback and his battle in the courts has become the nation’s defining political drama, spurring mass protests and unrest.The 72-year-old’s sentencing on Friday is among his biggest setbacks since he was first jailed in August 2023. His wife and spiritual guide Bushra Bibi was convicted alongside him.However, Pakistan’s politics frequently see leaders return to high office after serving time in jail and, as a former national cricket captain, Khan has delivered victory in the face of seemingly impossible odds before.”A cricket captain, to be leader, has to lead by example — he has to show courage if he wants his team to fight,” Khan wrote in his 2011 memoir.”In times of crisis, he must have the ability to take the pressure.”- All-rounder -Khan was voted in by millions of Pakistanis who grew up watching him play cricket, where he excelled as an all-rounder and led the nation to a World Cup victory in 1992.He ended decades of political dominance by dynastic parties and envisioned a national welfare state modelled on the Islamic golden age of the seventh to 14th centuries, a flourishing period in the Muslim world.But his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party made little headway improving the country’s finances, with galloping inflation, crippling debt and a feeble rupee undermining economic reform.Many prominent opposition figures were jailed during his tenure and rights groups decried a crackdown on media freedoms, with TV channels unofficially barred from airing his opponents’ views.With the tables now turned, he faces many of those same curbs alongside his wife Bibi — a reclusive faith healer who married Khan shortly before he was elected.Khan was shot and wounded in a November 2022 assassination bid he accused top military officers of plotting, crossing what analysts say was a red line in a country ruled by generals for decades.His first short-lived arrest the following May sparked nationwide unrest, some of which targeted military facilities and which sparked a widespread crackdown against PTI.Khan was barred from standing in February 2024 elections and was hit by a trio of fresh convictions just days before a poll marred by rigging allegations.Bibi was also convicted in two of the cases, found guilty of graft and of marrying too soon after her divorce in breach of an Islamic law intended to leave no doubt about paternity in case of a pregnancy.The convictions have been overturned or the sentences suspended in all those cases.While Khan has languished in jail, his wife walked free in October and into the limelight in her attempts to have her husband released.She appeared atop a convoy during protests in November, shattering her behind-the-scenes image. – ‘Till the last ball’ -Khan, the Oxford-educated son of a wealthy Lahore family, had a reputation as a playboy until he retired from international cricket.He has developed a more pious image as a politician, regularly clutching a string of prayer beads as he makes public remarks.Khan also busied himself for years with charity projects, raising millions to build a cancer hospital to honour his mother.He tiptoed into politics and for years held the PTI’s only parliamentary seat.The party grew during the military-led government of General Pervez Musharraf and the civilian government that followed, becoming a force in 2013 elections before winning a majority five years later.Often described as impulsive and brash, Khan still trades on the charismatic persona he crafted on the pitch.”I fight till the very last ball,” he said in one TV interview.

The UK government announced Thursday a “rapid” national review of the extent of sexual exploitation of children by grooming gangs, recently the subject of a row between US billionaire Elon Musk and Prime Minister Keir Starmer.Interior minister Yvette Cooper also said several new local inquiries into cases of abuse would be launched, bowing to political pressure for further action but stopping short of demands for a new nationwide inquiry. The issue was at the centre of a political firestorm earlier this month when the Tesla boss posted a series of incendiary comments about Starmer on his X platform.The Labour leader then hit out at those spreading “lies and misinformation” online, in a thinly veiled rebuke of Musk.The row relates to sex offences going back decades against primarily white British girls by men of mostly South Asian origin in various northern English towns.The issue has long been seized upon by far-right UK figures, including notorious agitator Tommy Robinson, but has been adopted by the Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK party.They and other more centrist critics, including whistleblowers, have argued child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs remains ongoing. Cooper told MPs that she had ordered a three-month “rapid audit of the current scale and nature of gang-based exploitation across the country” to be led by Baroness Louise Casey.The review will look at “cultural and societal drivers” of child sex abuse and “properly examine ethnicity data and the demographics of the gangs involved and their victims”, she added.Previous inquiries have found that the authorities and the police shied away from taking victims’ claims seriously, in part to avoid seeming racist and for fear of raising community tensions.Cooper announced that several new local reviews would also be launched.”As we have seen, effective local inquiries can delve into far more local detail and deliver more locally relevant answers, and change, than a lengthy nationwide inquiry can provide,” she added.Thousands of girls and young women are believed to have been abused over several decades in towns across England, although the toral number of victims is unknown.Gangs of men, often from Pakistani backgrounds, targeted mostly white girls from disadvantaged backgrounds, some of whom lived in children’s homes. The gangs operated in several English towns and cities, notably in Rotherham and Rochdale in the north, but also in Oxford and Bristol, for almost four decades.- Shocking abuse –  In Rotherham, a town of 265,000 inhabitants, a gang drugged, raped and sexually exploited at least 1,400 girls over a 16-year period from 1997, a public inquiry concluded in 2014.  The Jay Report from the inquiry severely criticised police and local authorities over the scandal, which shocked the country. It has also prompted some, particularly on the political right, to argue there is a “two-tier” justice system that treats ethnic minority communities differently.Other local inquiries were held in Rochdale and Oldham, near Manchester, as well as Telford, northwest of Birmingham.The National Crime Agency launched Operation Stovewood, the largest of its kind in the UK, to probe the Rotherham gangs and has so far secured long prison terms for around 30 individuals.Musk and opponents of Labour see the issue as a way of trying to weaken Starmer, who was chief state prosecutor between 2008 and 2013, which coincided with the scandals.Starmer says he dealt with the problem “head-on” as a prosecutor and oversaw “the highest number of child sexual abuse cases being prosecuted on record”.The Conservative Party have called for a new national inquiry with the power to compel witnesses to testify.Labour, which ousted the Tories from power last July, says a new inquiry would be costly and time-consuming and its focus is on implementing the almost two dozen recommendations made by the Jay report a decade ago.Last week, Cooper announced new curbs to crack down on child abuse including prosecuting professionals who fail to report claims of sexual abuse against children. 

Nepal’s Supreme Court has scrapped controversial laws allowing hydropower and hotel projects in protected nature reserves, a lawyer said Thursday, calling it a win for the Himalayan republic’s conservationists.A fifth of Nepal’s lands are designated as protected areas. But both hydropower projects and tourism are major earners, and the government passed laws last year to allow infrastructure projects in national parks, forests and other conservation areas, except in highly sensitive zones.”The controversial decision was made with deception,” environmental advocate Padam Bahadur Shrestha, one of the petitioners challenging the changes to the law, told AFP.”It clearly shows how our government is working just to appease investors because it lacks farsightedness.”Shrestha said that the verdict, which was issued on Wednesday, offers “justice to preserve ecology and biodiversity”.Kathmandu has been praised worldwide for its efforts to protect wildlife, allowing it to bring several species back from the brink of local extinction, including tigers and rhinos. Nepal’s protected habitat laws have helped to triple its tiger population to 355 since 2010 and to increase one-horned rhinoceros from around 100 in the 1960s to 752 in 2021.After decades of rampant logging, Nepal also nearly doubled its forest cover between 1992 and 2016.”The laws should have never been passed,” said Rampreet Yadav, former chief conservation officer of Chitwan National Park, Nepal’s most important conservation area.”If development projects are allowed in protected areas, it will destroy our nature, it will destroy the habitats of animals.”Nepal is eager to develop its hydropower industry after a dam-building spree in the past two decades that has given it an installed capacity of more than 2,600 megawatts.It signed deals with India and Bangladesh last year to export thousands of megawatts of hydroelectricity.Tourism is also a major earner for Nepal, which saw a million foreign visitors last year after a post-pandemic bounceback, with the government pumping investments into infrastructure including airports.

Pakistan and West Indies vowed a strong finish when they meet in the first Test in Multan on Friday despite dragging up the rear of the World Test Championship.Pakistan are currently eighth in the 2023-25 cycle of the WTC, with their rivals in last place far behind finalists Australia and South Africa.Skipper Shan Masood said the two-test series was significant for Pakistan, who finished sixth and seventh in the first two WTC cycles.”This cycle is finishing so this series is significant for us as we want to become a better team by being unbeaten in home conditions,” he told reporters on Thursday.Pakistan ended a winless stretch of 11 home Tests by beating England 2-1 in October and Masood wants his team to keep winning at home despite a 2-0 defeat in South Africa this month.”We won against England so it will be important we keep that momentum against the West Indies,” Masood said.West Indies finished eighth in both previous WTCs and skipper Kraigg Brathwaite wants to end on a positive note this time.”I think this series is very important with two Tests left in this cycle… so we want to start the year strong and that is our focus,” Brathwaite said.He said his players are ready for Pakistan’s spin assault led by Noman Ali and Sajid Khan, who took 39 wickets between them against England.”We have played in spin conditions in Bangladesh and these conditions are similar, so you have to be disciplined and be brave against any bowler,” Brathwaite said.Pakistan deployed industrial fans and patio heaters to dry out the Multan pitch and secure their series win against England after heavy rain.They are ready to use the same tactic again if needed, with the second Test also to be played in Multan from January 25.The tourists had a taste of those conditions in their drawn three-day practice game in Islamabad, where Alick Athanaze hit half centuries in both innings and newcomer Amir Jangoo scored an unbeaten 63.West Indies used a three-prong spin attack of Kevin Sinclair, Jomel Warrican and Gudakesh Motie in that match but will be without pace spearhead Kemar Roach, who is unwell.Wicketkeeper-batter Joshua Da Silva was overlooked.- Test split -Title-holders Australia and South Africa will play the championship final at Lord’s in June.However, WTC bottom-dwellers such as Pakistan and West Indies will be wary of reports that leading nations such as India, Australia and England favour a two-tier system of promotion and relegation.That plan could mean lower-ranked teams won’t get to play Tests against top-tier nations.”If there is a two-tier system then it has to be exciting,” said Masood. “There should be relegation and promotion of teams and every team should get more Tests.”We want more and more Test cricket. The setback for most of the countries is that they are playing just four to five Tests a year and this is hurting.”

Millions of pilgrims hoping to cleanse their sins by ritual baths at India’s Kumbh Mela festival rely on key lavatory workers to clear up behind them — those born on the lowest rung of the Hindu caste system.The millennia-old sacred show of religious piety and ritual bathing, which began on Monday and runs until February 26 in the north Indian city of Prayagraj, is this year predicted to be the biggest yet, and the largest ever gathering of humanity.Organisers expect a staggering 400 million pilgrims will bathe during the six-week-long festival in the confluences of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, holy waters for Hindus. That creates a waste removal and public health challenge of epic proportions, with 150,000 temporary toilets installed across packed riverbank campsites covering an area greater than 2,000 football pitches.Critical to the festival’s running are the 5,000 workers hired just to clean the toilets — and nearly all of them belong to the lower rungs of an age-old rigid social hierarchy that divides Hindus by function and social standing.”I clean and clean, but people make a mess of it in barely 10 minutes,” said Suresh Valmiki, hosing a spattered latrine piled high with faecal matter.Cleaning the next stinking toilet cubicle was his 17-year-old son Vikas Valmiki.Official data shows that nine in every 10 workers cleaning urban sewers and septic tanks come from the marginalised castes, a vast majority of them from the Dalits, once known as “untouchables”.- Discrimination -Five years ago, when the festival was last held in Prayagraj, Prime Minister Narendra Modi washed the feet of five such workers.Observers said Modi’s symbolic gesture, months before he was due for re-election, was part of a strategy of appealing to pan-Hindu unity, overriding caste differences. Caste remains a crucial determinant of one’s station in life at birth, with higher castes the beneficiaries of ingrained cultural privileges and lower castes suffering entrenched discrimination.But sanitation workers say deep-rooted attitudes of contempt towards them remain the same, and many people refuse to clean up after using the toilets. “People say it’s our job to clean the toilets, so why should they bother?” said Geeta Valmiki, who travelled nearly 200 kilometres (125 miles) to work at the festival for a daily wage of just over four dollars.Making the job tougher is the lack of water connections in the latrines.That was a deliberate choice, organisers said, because otherwise the septic tanks would have to be suctioned every couple of hours. Instead, users must fill a bucket from a tap outside — with one servicing every 10 toilets.But with buckets often in short supply, people use water bottles which they then dump inside the toilet after finishing their business, cleaners say.”My voice has gone hoarse telling people not to take bottles inside,” said Suresh Kumar, a cleaning supervisor for a cluster of toilets. “Nobody listens.”- ‘Big people’ -Workers have been provided with jet spray machines to avoid manual cleaning, but many said the water pressure is not strong enough.Organisers say modern tools have been brought in to tackle the waste.Akanksha Rana, the festival’s special executive officer, said “250 suction vehicles” have been deployed to stop septic tanks from filling up, dumping the sludge in three specially constructed temporary sewerage treatment plants.”We continuously do operations to ensure that there is no overflow of septic tanks and no choking of toilets,” Rana said.But the workers manning the lines of portable toilet cabins say that still requires them to get down and dirty.Rana said that the 1,500 volunteers have been tasked with inspecting the toilets, each with a QR code scannable by phone.”Whenever a volunteer visits the toilets, they have to scan the QR code, and then fill the questionnaire related to service level benchmarks,” said Rana, adding inspections take place every three hours.But latrine after latrine AFP visited, particularly in the toilets close to the bathing areas, overflowed with faeces.Covering their noses with scarves to avoid the stench, sanitation workers periodically spritzed water to clean the mess.With the relentless crowds, it seemed like a losing battle. “Big people come, shit, and we have to clean so that we can eat,” said 30-year-old Sangeeta Devi. “That is life.”

Sri Lanka has secured its biggest-ever foreign investment after signing a deal with Chinese state-run oil giant Sinopec, officials said on Thursday.Sinopec has agreed to invest $3.7 billion to construct a “state-of-the-art oil refinery” with a capacity of 200,000 barrels in the southern Hambantota region, according to the Sri Lanka president’s media division.”During President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s four-day state visit to China, Sri Lanka marked a significant milestone by securing the largest foreign direct investment to date,” it said.A “substantial portion” of the refinery’s output would be earmarked for export as part of efforts to shore up Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange earnings, a statement said.”This major investment from China is expected to bolster Sri Lanka’s economic growth while uplifting the livelihoods of low-income communities in the Hambantota area,” it added.The port of Hambantota was handed to a Beijing company on a 99-year lease for $1.12 billion in 2017 after Sri Lanka was unable to repay a huge Chinese loan, a controversial decision which raised questions about Chinese investments in the country.Sri Lanka also defaulted on its foreign borrowings in 2022 during a crisis that caused months of food, fuel and medicine shortages.China accounted for more than half the country’s bilateral debt at the time of the economic crash.Leftist Dissanayake came to power in September and consolidated his position after his party won by a landslide in snap parliamentary polls last November.His four-day visit to China comes after he was given a red-carpet welcome to India by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his first overseas trip as premier in December.In a meeting with Dissanayake on Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the two countries “face a historical opportunity to build on the past and forge ahead”.The two sides should see ties from “a strategic perspective and build a China-Sri Lanka community with a shared future”, Xi said, according to state media.Sri Lanka had originally awarded the refinery project in 2019 to an Indian family-owned company based in Singapore, but terminated the agreement after the firm failed to start construction.Officials signalled in 2023 that they would award the contract to Sinopec after another bidder pulled out.Sri Lanka sits astride the world’s busiest shipping route, which links the Middle East and East Asia, giving its maritime assets strategic importance.

India docked two satellites in space Thursday, a key milestone for the country’s dreams of a space station and manned Moon mission, the space agency said.The satellites, weighing 220 kilograms (485 pounds) each, blasted off in December on a single rocket from India’s Sriharikota launch site. Later they separated.The two satellites were manoeuvred back together on Thursday in a “precision” process resulting in a “successful spacecraft capture”, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said, calling it a “historic moment”.India became the fourth country to achieve the feat — dubbed as SpaDeX, or Space Docking Experiment — after Russia, the United States and China.The aim of the mission was to “develop and demonstrate the technology needed for rendezvous, docking, and undocking of two small spacecraft”, ISRO said.Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Indian scientists for the successful docking.”It is a significant stepping stone for India’s ambitious space missions in the years to come,” he said on social media.Two earlier docking attempts by ISRO were postponed due to technical issues.ISRO said the technology is “essential” for India’s Moon mission, and comes after Modi announced plans last year to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2040.The world’s most populous nation has flexed its spacefaring ambitions in the last decade with its space programme growing considerably, matching the achievements of established powers at a much cheaper price tag.It became just the fourth nation to land an unmanned craft on the Moon in August 2023.

The World Bank plans to loan cash-strapped Pakistan $20 billion over the coming decade to nurture its private sector and bolster resilience to climate change, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said.Pakistan came to the brink of default in 2023, as a political crisis compounded shock from the global economic downturn and drove the nation’s debt burden to terminal levels.It was saved by a $7 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and has enjoyed a degree of recovery, with inflation easing and foreign exchange reserves increasing.Sharif said the World Bank funding would be used for “child nutrition, quality education, clean energy, climate resilience, inclusive development and private investment”.The deal “reflects the World Bank’s confidence in Pakistan’s economic resilience and potential,” he said on social media platform X on Wednesday.Pakistan has for decades grappled with a chronically low tax base and mammoth amounts of external debt, which swallow up half its annual revenues.The IMF deal — Pakistan’s 24th since 1958 — came with stern conditions that the country improve income tax takings and cut popular power subsidies, cushioning costs of the inefficient sector.The World Bank said the new $20 billion scheme would begin in the fiscal year 2026 and last until 2035.”The economy is recovering from the recent crisis as the government has launched an ambitious programme of fiscal, energy and business environment reforms,” said a summary of the plan released by the World Bank.But it warned that a “track record of past stop-and-go reform episodes handicaps the government’s credibility”, meaning that new investment may be “slow to materialise”.The World Bank therefore plans for “more selective, stable, and larger investments in areas critical for sustained development and that require time and persistence for impact”, it said.The World Bank’s Pakistan director Najy Benhassine said in a statement the deal “represents a long-term anchor” that will “address some of the most acute development challenges facing the country”.