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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”.

Indian Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan underwent surgery Thursday after he was repeatedly stabbed in an apparent burglary at his home in Mumbai, his public relations team said.Khan, 54, who has appeared in more than 70 movies and television series, is married to top star Kareena Kapoor.”There was an attempted burglary at Mr Saif Ali Khan’s residence,” his team said, urging “fans to be patient”.Kapoor told local media that “Saif had an injury on his arm for which he is in hospital”.”The rest of the family is doing fine,” she added.Khan is the son of former Indian cricket captain Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, and Bollywood actress Sharmila Tagore.His acting credits include the 2001 hit Dil Chahta Hai, and the popular Netflix crime series Sacred Games.Niraj Uttamani, a top official at Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital, told The Hindustan Times newspaper the actor had six injuries, including two that are deeper.The Press Trust of India news agency broadcast images of police carrying out forensic examinations of Khan’s residence in Mumbai.

The ancient game of kho kho is enjoying a resurgence in India, with organisers of the first international tournament hoping their efforts will secure the sport’s place in the Olympics.Kho kho, a catch-me-if-you-can tag sport, has been played for more than 2,000 years across southern Asia but only saw its rules formalised in the early 20th century.It was played as a demonstration sport at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin but did not gather enough support to be included in the Summer Games and since then has been largely eclipsed by India’s ferocious love of cricket.Nearly a century later, enthusiasts have sought to raise its profile with the inaugural Kho Kho World Cup featuring teams from 23 nations competing in India’s capital New Delhi. The tournament’s opening ceremony saw a gala of song, dance and an Olympic-style team parade, reflecting the aspirations of organisers and athletes to take the sport global. “My elder sister played the sport, but was not able to pursue her dreams,” Indian women’s team player Nasreen Shaikh, 26, told AFP.”We have crossed the first barrier of playing in a World Cup. The next big step would be an entry in the Olympics.”Kho kho is traditionally played outside on a rectangular court, divided in two by a line that connects two poles at either end of the field.Teams switch between attack and defence, with the former chasing and tagging defending players around the field.Only one player can give chase at a time and attacking players can only move in one direction around the court, forcing them to tag in team-mates crouched on the centre line to take over pursuit.The match is won by whichever team can gain the most points, primarily by tagging defenders faster than the opposing team.- ‘Mud to mat’ -The franchise-based Ultimate Kho Kho League, founded in 2022, brought the sport off grassy fields and onto indoor mats, also boosting its profile with a television audience.Since then the league has become the third most-watched non-cricket sports tournament in the world’s most populous country after the Pro Kabaddi League — another ancient Indian tag sport — and the Indian Super League football competition.”The turning point was when it transitioned from mud to mat. It made it into a global game,” Kho Kho Federation of India president Sudhanshu Mittal told AFP.”Today we are in 55 countries… Native players in countries like Germany, Brazil, and Kenya are embracing the game because of its speed, agility and minimal equipment required.”Mittal said he expected the sport to gain a foothold in dozens more countries by the end of the year, giving it a strong claim to be featured in the Olympics in the coming decade. That would coincide with India’s audacious bid to host the 2036 Games in the city of Ahmedabad, 100 years after kho kho last appeared at the Olympics.The United States, England and Australia are among the nations competing in this week’s World Cup in New Delhi, with expatriate Indians heavily represented after taking the game to foreign shores. But Pakistan is a glaring omission from the competition despite the sport being popular there — a reflection of the deep animosity between the nuclear-armed archrivals.World Cup organisers have refused to comment on the absence, which has failed to dim the sense of optimism at this week’s competition that the sport is destined to thrive. “There has been a sea change in the sport,” Indian men’s team captain Pratik Waikar, 32, told AFP.”Cricket has a rich history and they developed it well by going live on TV, and now our sport has also gone live,” he said. “In the next five years it will be on another level.”

For pilgrims at the largest gathering of humanity, ritual bathing in India’s holy rivers includes a key challenge — finding your family and clothes after the chilly dip.Millions of people are expected to attend the Kumbh Mela festival in northern India, a six-week-long Hindu celebration of prayer and bathing that began before dawn on Monday.Each morning, densely-packed crowds of men, women and children undress side-by-side in the foggy pre-dawn gloom along the wide floodplains around the confluences of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.Sushila, a housewife in her sixties, who had travelled more than 500 kilometres (300 miles) from Bihar state, roamed the crowds in despair in wet clothes, looking for her daughter.”I know she is somewhere close by,” she said, peering through the tight-packed crowds, where a constant stream of pilgrims came to bathe. “I just can’t see her”.The line of bathers stretches for several kilometres (miles), with the crowds surging forward to dunk their heads beneath the cold grey waters.Devotees believe the dip brings them salvation.But with many people without a phone — or leaving it while they bathe with a friend they then lost — finding your companions afterwards is a tough task.The sheer size of the crowds is so great that even a single distracted moment can cause you to lose track of your fellow travellers.Organisers boast that they are expecting a mind-boggling 400 million people to take part before its conclusion on February 26.Loudspeakers mounted on poles boom repeatedly with desperate pleas of people searching for those with whom they had left their dry clothes.An old man broke down on the microphone lamenting that he had nothing to wear — urging his son to immediately meet him at the lost and found centre.- ‘Scared’ -Organising authorities issued a phone app boasting “multilingual AI voice assistance”, but that is of no use to those without phones at all.A network of “Lost and Found” centres are set up for pilgrims to reunite with their families, offering blankets to the pilgrims who arrive wet, shivering and nearly naked. Temperatures before dawn hover around 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit).Shyama, aged 60, who uses only one name, said her companion from her same farming village disappeared in the crowd. She has not been traced for over a day.”I think she has left me and gone,” said a distressed Shyama, her eyes welling up with tears, as she waited at a shelter for lost people.”I have no money, know no one here, how will I ever go back home?”Maiku Lal tracked down his wife Makhana after hours of searching, finally hearing her location broadcast over the loudspeakers.”She scared us so much,” said Lal, sporting a wide smile and holding his wife’s hand.Sandhya Sarkar, 45, said being lost in a strange place where she did not speak the local language made her regret her decision to come from her village in West Bengal, around 700 kilometres away. “I would have never come had I known the fair was this crowded,” she said. “My family must be going mad looking for me. It is a nightmare.” But many said that the effort to bathe in the holy waters was worth it.”I felt tremendous peace — despite the crowds,” said Gopal Devi Shanti Gujjar, who had come from the western state of Rajasthan.