ISLAMABAD: Wielding batons and firing rounds of tear gas, Pakistani riot police on Friday clashed with stone-throwing supporters of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan who rallied in the capital in defiance of a government-imposed ban on demonstrations.
The clashes erupted as supporters of Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf opposition party tried to make their way toward his residence in Islamabad for a rally he had called for the previous evening.
The violence prompted Khan to announce he will go head will a planned “million men” march on Wednesday in Islamabad to force the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to resign.
Khan said he was not afraid of arrest.
“Even if you send me to jail, I will come back to lead rallies against you,” he said, addressing Sharif. According to Khan, police were not allowing him to leave his residence.
There were also skirmishes between Khan’s supporters and police in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, Karachi and Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province. Police detained dozens of Khan party activists across Pakistan. No injuries were reported in the Friday’s clashes.
Public pressure has mounted on Sharif to step down since his family members were named as holders of offshore bank accounts in leaked financial documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
Sharif, serving his third term as prime minister, has refused to quit but says he’ll face an investigation to prove he and his family were not involved in corruption.
The Supreme Court has reportedly settled on a panel of judges who will hear the case on Sharif’s family offshore accounts next week. Khan’s party is one of the five petitioners requested the court look into the scandal. The top court has asked Sharif to issue a response to the allegations against him.
Khan in 2014 held months-long rallies in Islamabad to force Sharif to quit and claimed the premier had rigged the 2013 elections. The former cricket star suspended his party’s protests after a Taliban attack in December that year in Peshawar killed 150 people, mostly school children.
Pakistani police, opposition supporters clash in Islamabad
Pakistani police, opposition supporters clash in Islamabad
Kremlin says no date yet for next round of Ukraine peace talks
They have made no progress toward a ceasefire
MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Thursday there was no progress yet toward setting a date for the next round of peace talks with Ukraine, Interfax news agency reported.
Another agency, TASS, quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying Russia was in favor of continued US efforts to mediate.
Resuming negotiations after a gap of more than three years, Russia and Ukraine held face-to-face talks in Istanbul on May 16 and June 2 that led to a series of prisoner exchanges and the return of the bodies of dead soldiers.
But they have made no progress toward a ceasefire which Ukraine, with Western backing, has been pressing for.
16 dead, thousands of businesses destroyed after Kenya protests
- The marches had been called to mark one year since anti-tax demonstrations
- “What unfolded yesterday was not a protest. It was terrorism disguised as dissent,” Kipchumba Murkomen, interior cabinet secretary, said
NAIROBI: At least 16 people died in protests across Kenya on Wednesday, Amnesty International said Thursday, as businesses and residents were left to clean up the devastation in the capital and beyond.
The marches had been called to mark one year since anti-tax demonstrations that peaked when a huge crowd stormed parliament and dozens were killed by security forces.
The anniversary marches began peacefully Wednesday but descended into chaos as young men held running battles with police, lit fires, and ripped up pavements to use as projectiles.
“What unfolded yesterday was not a protest. It was terrorism disguised as dissent,” Kipchumba Murkomen, interior cabinet secretary, said in a televised speech.
“We condemn the criminal anarchists who in the name of peaceful demonstrations unleashed a wave of violence, looting, sexual assault and destruction upon our people,” he added.
In Nairobi’s business district, the epicenter of the unrest, AFP journalists found entire shopping centers and thousands of businesses destroyed, many still smoldering.
At least two banks had been broken into, while businesses ranging from supermarkets to small electronics and clothing stores were reduced to ashes or ransacked by looters.
“When we came we found the whole premise burnt down,” said Raphael Omondi, 36, owner of a print shop, adding that he had lost machines worth $150,000.
“There were guys stealing, and after stealing they set the whole premises on fire... If this is what protest is, it is not worth it.”
“They looted everything... I do not know where to start,” said Maureen Chepkemoi, 32, owner of a perfume store.
“To protest is not bad but why are you coming to protest inside my shop? It is wicked,” she added.
Several business owners told AFP that looting had started in the afternoon after the government ordered TV and radio stations to stop broadcasting live images of the protests.
Amnesty International’s Kenya director Irungu Houghton said the death toll had risen to 16.
Rights group Vocal Africa, which was documenting the deaths and helping affected families at a Nairobi morgue, said at least four bodies had been brought there so far.
“All of them had signs of gunshots, so we suspect they all died of gunshot wounds,” its head Hussein Khalid told AFP.
“We condemn this excessive use of force,” he said. “We believe that the police could have handled themselves with restraint.”
“You come out to protest police killings, and they kill even more.”
A coalition of rights groups had earlier said at least 400 people were wounded, with 83 in serious condition in hospital. It recorded protests in 23 counties around Kenya.
Emergency responders reported multiple gunshot wounds, and there were unconfirmed local media reports that police had opened fire on protesters, particularly in towns outside the capital.
There is deep resentment against President William Ruto, who came to power in 2022 promising rapid economic progress.
Many are disillusioned by continued economic stagnation, corruption and high taxes, as well as police brutality after a teacher was killed in custody earlier this month.
Vehicle hits pedestrians near school in Beijing: Chinese police
- A grey SUV wedged against a tree as several people and clothing were seen in the road
- “On June 26, 2025, at around 13:00, a traffic accident occurred near the intersection of Yucai Road and Dongmen Street in Miyun district,” local police wrote
BEIJING: A vehicle crashed into pedestrians in an “accident” near a school in Beijing on Thursday, Chinese police said, with footage shared online appearing to show young people lying injured in the street.
Videos geolocated by AFP to an intersection in Miyun district in the northeast of the capital showed a grey SUV wedged against a tree as several people and clothing were seen in the road.
In one clip a bloodied young person was seen being given first aid by somebody in white overalls.
“On June 26, 2025, at around 13:00, a traffic accident occurred near the intersection of Yucai Road and Dongmen Street in Miyun district,” local police wrote in an online statement.
A 35-year-old man surnamed Han “collided” with people “due to an improper operation,” it said, adding those injured were taken to hospital.
It did not give the number of injured.
“The accident is under further investigation,” the statement said.
China has seen a string of mass casualty incidents — from stabbings to car attacks — challenging its reputation for good public security.
Last year a man who plowed his car into a crowd of mostly school children in central China was handed a suspended death sentence with a two-year reprieve.
In November 2024 the attacker named as Huang Wen repeatedly rammed his car into a crowd outside a primary school in Hunan province.
When the vehicle malfunctioned and stopped, Huang got out and attacked bystanders with a weapon before being apprehended.
Thirty people, including 18 pupils, sustained minor injuries.
Some analysts have linked the incidents to growing anger and desperation at the country’s slowing economy and a sense that society is becoming more stratified.
In November last year, a man killed 35 people and wounded more than 40 when he rammed his car into a crowd in the southern city of Zhuhai, the country’s deadliest attack in a decade.
And in the same month, eight people were killed and 17 wounded in a knife attack at a vocational school in the eastern Chinese city of Yixing.
Lavrov says NATO spending increase won’t significantly affect Russia’s security
- NATO allies on Wednesday agreed to raise their collective spending goal to 5% of GDP over the next decade
MOSCOW: NATO’s decision to increase defense spending will not significantly affect Russia’s security, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.
NATO allies on Wednesday agreed to raise their collective spending goal to 5 percent of gross domestic product over the next decade, citing what they called the long-term threat posed by Russia and the need to strengthen civil and military resilience.
“As for the impact of this 5 percent goal on our security, I don’t think it will be significant,” Lavrov told a press conference.
“We know what goals we are pursuing, we don’t hide them, we openly announce them, they are absolutely legal from the point of view of any interpretation of the principles of the UN Charter and international law, and we know by what means we will always ensure these goals.”
NATO adopted the higher spending target in response to pressure from US President Donald Trump for European members to pull their weight, and also to European fears that Russia poses a growing threat to their security following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Russia, which is spending more than 40 percent of this year’s budget on defense and security, denies any intention to attack a NATO state.
The Kremlin accused the alliance this week of portraying Russia as a “fiend of hell” in order to justify its “rampant militarization.”
Myanmar burns confiscated drugs worth around $300 million
- The destroyed drugs included opium, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana, ketamine and the stimulant known as ice
- Myanmar has a long history of drug production linked to political and economic insecurity caused by decades of armed conflict
YANGON: Officials in Myanmar’s major cities destroyed about $300 million worth of confiscated illegal drugs Thursday.
The destroyed drugs included opium, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana, ketamine and the stimulant known as ice, or crystal meth, Yangon Police Brig. Gen. Sein Lwin said in a speech at a drug-burning ceremony.
The drug burnings came nearly a month after UN experts warned of unprecedented levels of methamphetamine production and trafficking from Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle region, where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet, and Myanmar’s eastern Shan State in particular.
The production of opium and heroin historically flourished there, largely because of the lawlessness in border areas where Myanmar’s central government has been able to exercise only minimum control over various ethnic minority militias, some of them partners in the drug trade.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a May report that the political crisis across the country after the military takeover in 2021 — which led to a civil war — has turbocharged growth of the methamphetamine trade.
In the country’s biggest city, Yangon, a massive pile of drugs worth more than $117 million went up in a blaze, Sein Lwin said.
Similar events to mark the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking also occurred in the country’s second-largest city of Mandalay, and in Taunggyi, the capital of eastern Myanmar’s Shan state, all areas close to where the drugs are produced.
A police official from the capital Naypyitaw told The Associated Press that the substances burned in three locations were worth $297.95 million. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information has not yet been publicly announced.
Myanmar has a long history of drug production linked to political and economic insecurity caused by decades of armed conflict. It has been a major source of illegal drugs destined for East and Southeast Asia, despite repeated efforts to crack down.
That has led the flow of drugs to surge “across not only East and Southeast Asia, but also increasingly into South Asia, in particular Northeast India,” the UN said last month. Drugs are increasingly trafficked from Myanmar to Cambodia, mostly through Laos, as well as through maritime routes linking Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, with Sabah in Malaysia serving as a key transit hub, it added.
The UN agency labeled Myanmar in 2023 as the world’s largest opium producer.
