The general election is the first since gen-Z protests forced Nepal’s then-prime minister to quit
Nearly six months after a wave of unprecedented youth-led protests forced Nepal’s then prime minister to quit, people have began voting in a general election that is shaping up as a high-stakes showdown between the entrenched old guard and a powerful youth movement.
Key figures contesting the election include the Marxist former prime minister seeking a return to office, a rapper-turned-mayor bidding for the youth vote, and the newly elected leader of the powerful Nepali Congress party.
Among the generally drab lineup of mostly middle-aged men in suits who make up the nearly 3,000 delegates to the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s parliament, a few stand out.
There are delegates from China’s 55 official ethnic minority groups, who often arrive dressed in traditional outfits rather than western-style suits. There are military members, identifiable by their uniforms. And then there is Yao Ming, the 7ft and 6in tall retired basketball player who, towering over every other person in the Great Hall of the People, is hard to miss.
Exclusive: Prime minister also presented Melania Trump with a $3,000 Paspaley pearl pendant
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, gave Donald Trump a gift of a model nuclear submarine with golden plates and finishes, internal documents reveal, during his visit to the White House last year which sealed the president’s support for the Aukus pact.
The prime minister also presented the US first lady, Melania Trump, with a A$3,000 Paspaley pearl pendant.
Weapons amnesty and buyback scheme will run until August as PM James Marape says illegal guns ‘destroying families and villages’
Papua New Guinea has asked residents to surrender illegal firearms in a bid to remove tens of thousands of weapons from the country, as it grapples with escalating violence and tribal fighting in the Highlands region.
The police minister, Sir John Pundari, said the national gun amnesty and buyback scheme started on 27 February and it would run until late August.
Corporation proposes sweeping changes intended to protect its independence and shore up its future
The BBC is to call for an end to political appointments to its board as part of sweeping changes designed to protect its independence.
The corporation will also demand that its royal charter be put on a permanent footing in an attempt to end the existential threat posed by having to negotiate with ministers over its future every 10 years.
Visiting PM tells Australia’s parliament ‘middle power’ countries must work together on defence, trade and AI
Canada and Australia will be stronger negotiating together with superpowers including Donald Trump’s America, acting as “strategic cousins” rather than competitors, Mark Carney has told the Australian federal parliament.
In a major address in Canberra on the last full day of his visit to Australia, the Canadian prime minister called for enhanced cooperation on critical minerals, defence and trade and announced Australia would join the G7 critical minerals alliance, the largest grouping of democratic countries with major reserves in the world.
US study suggests GLP-1s, used to treat type 2 diabetes, could also reduce risk of people already using substances from overdosing
Weight loss drugs could help people avoid getting addicted to alcohol, tobacco and drugs such as cannabis and cocaine, a study has found.
They could also reduce the risk of people already addicted to illicit substances having an overdose, ending up in hospital or dying, according to research published in the British Medical Journal.
Top military officials told lawmakers in a closed door briefing on Tuesday that they may not be able to shoot down every Iranian drone being launched against US military installations and assets in retaliatory attacks, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The officials, led by the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, said Iran has been deploying thousands of one-way attack drones and while they have capacity to take down the vast majority but not all of the barrage.
OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, told employees on Tuesday that his company does not control how the Pentagon uses their artificial intelligence products in military operations. Altman’s claims on OpenAI’s lack of input come amid increased scrutiny of how the military uses AI in war and ethics concerns from AI workers over how their technology will be deployed.
“You do not get to make operational decisions,” Altman told employees, according to reports by Bloomberg and CNBC.
Lawyer for Peters says he expects Jared Polis to commute nine-year sentence over voting breach in 2020 election
A lawyer representing Tina Peters said he expects the DemocraticColorado governor Jared Polis to commute her nine-year prison sentence, a move that could release the only person serving a sentence related to trying to overturn the 2020 election from prison.
Peters was the county clerk in western Colorado’s Mesa county in 2020 and allowed an unauthorized person to use a security badge and access her county’s voting equipment. Passwords and other sensitive information related to the county’s election equipment later became public and was used by election deniers to try to question the 2020 election results.
Eddie Howe accepts his Newcastle side are at their best when they create chaos and no one in black and white is better at conjuring it than Will Osula.
The maverick Denmark Under-21 striker is, to say the least, unpredictable. No one, least of all Osula himself, ever seems quite sure what he will do at any given moment. Here though he stepped off the substitutes’ bench to score a fabulous, virtuoso 90th-minute winner for a home team reduced to 10 men by Jacob Ramsey’s controversial 45th-minute sending off for a perceived dive.
Senate Republicans on Wednesday voted down an attempt to require Donald Trump receive Congress’s permission before continuing the war with Iran, batting aside concerns from Democrats that the campaign is illegal and risks plunging the United States into a prolonged conflict.
The 47-53 vote on a war powers resolution introduced by Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine broke largely along party lines. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the sole Democrat to vote against the measure, while Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only member of the Republican majority to support the resolution.
Experts say backing Iran’s ethnic communities could ‘open up a hornet’s nest’ and increase risk of chaotic civil war
Intense waves of airstrikes have hit dozens of military positions, frontier posts and police stations along northern parts of Iran’s border with Iraq in what appears to be preparation by US and Israel for a new front in their war.
A US official with knowledge of the discussions between Washington and Kurdish officials said the US was ready to provide air support if Kurdish peshmerga fighters crossed the border from northern Iraq.
Arsenal did not come to see the seaside. There were not here to make friends – which was just as well. It was purely about the points. Mission Eyes On The Prize. They accomplished it and then some.
There were 78 minutes on the clock when the travelling support got wind of Nottingham Forest’s equaliser at Manchester City. How they belted out their anthems at that point – about previous title-winning glories – and when it was all over, there was plenty more from them.
The musician reflected on the death of his former One Direction bandmate in an interview with Zane Lowe to promote his new album
Harry Styles has reflected on the death of his One Direction bandmate Liam Payne in a new interview with Zane Lowe.
“It’s so difficult to lose a friend,” Styles said. “It’s difficult to lose any friend, but it’s so difficult to lose a friend who is so like you in so many ways.”
As these teams emerged for kick-off, the Holte End displayed a tifo proudly flaunting Aston Villa’s deck of cards, chiefly an ace of clubs. By the end, however, their upper hand in the race for the Champions League felt rather hollow, if not diminished. Chelsea had dismantled Unai Emery’s side to move within three points of Villa, João Pedro scoring a hat-trick to take his tally to 17 goals for the season.
The Brazil striker was in the mood for a fourth and tried his luck with an audacious overhead kick, while Emiliano Martínez prevented Alejandro Garnacho from adding a bruising fifth late on. For Villa and their grand aspirations, it was a sobering evening, even if Manchester United’s late defeat by Newcastle surely softened the blow.
“Vamos, vamos!” screamed Rodri in his native Spanish following a 62nd-minute header that seemed to grab a precious victory for Manchester City. But the title chasers’ 2-1 lead lasted only 14 minutes as Phil Foden allowed Elliot Anderson to run off him and the Nottingham Forest midfielder, from range, curled a sublime equaliser beyond Gianluigi Donnarumma that silenced City’s faithful.
Before Anderson’s leveller Erling Haaland was denied a penalty by the referee, Darren England, and the video assistant referee, for a coming together with Matz Sels, the visiting No 1. Bernardo Silva did not agree. “I just watched it,” City’s captain said afterwards. “It’s a penalty. We’re used to it this season, all the 50-50s have gone against us.”
The US defence secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed that a US submarine sank an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka, marking the first US attack on Iranian forces outside of the Middle East. More than 80 people were killed.
In a press briefing at the Pentagon, Hegseth declared that “America is winning” and suggested that in under a week the US and Israel “will have complete control of Iranian skies”. Hegseth said the US is able to continue the military action against Iran “for as long as we need to” and Iran “can no longer shoot the volume of missiles they once did”.
Hegseth also said that the leader of the Iranian covert unit that planned to assassinate Trump in 2024 had been killed in the strikes.
Dan Caine, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, who also spoke at the briefing, said more than 20 Iranian naval vessels have been destroyed and that the US had “effectively neutralised Iran’s major naval presence”.
The US and Israel’s airstrikes against Iran continued, with the Israeli military announcing a “broad wave of strikes” against Tehran’s security forces. In turn, Iran upped its retaliatory strikes against Israeli and US targets across the region, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait all announcing Iranian attacks on Wednesday.
Lebanon’s health ministry said on Wednesday that Israeli strikes on two towns south of Beirut killed six people and wounded eight. Aramoun and Saadiyat are both towns outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds. Meanwhile, the Israeli military issued an “urgent warning” to residents of a large swathe of southern Lebanon, urging them to evacuate to the north of the Litani River. At least 30,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon, according to the UN, after heavy Israeli airstrikes.
Clerics in Iran said they were close to choosing a successor to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to state media. It has been widely suggested that his second son, Mojtaba Khamenei, could replace him.
The funeral ceremony for Khamenei that was supposed to take place on Wednesday night in Tehran has been postponed. State media, citing officials, reported that the funeral was delayed to allow time for expanded infrastructure because of “overwhelming demand”. No timeframe was given for when the funeral would take place.
The death toll in Iran has reached 1,045, according to Iranian officials. Iran’s foundation of martyrs and veteran affairs said the death toll represented the number of bodies that had been identified and prepared for burial, state media reported.
Five Republicans on the House oversight committee joined with Democrats to subpoena the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, as part of the ongoing investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
The House oversight committee voted 24-19 to approve a motion introduced by Republican representative Nancy Mace to compel Bondi to testify. In addition to Mace, Republican representatives Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Michael Cloud of Texas, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania voted for the motion.
Twitter investors allege the billionaire publicly derided the social network to sink its stock price and buy it at a bargain
Elon Musk took the stand on Wednesday in a trial brought by Twitter investors, who allege the billionaire committed securities fraud as he was buying the social media company in 2022. The class-action lawsuit alleges Musk agreed to buy Twitter but then waffled for months, attacking the company with the goal of bringing down the stock price to get a better bargain.
After contentious legal wrangling, Musk did eventually buy Twitter for $54.20 a share, his original offer, totalling around $44bn. Musk testified on Wednesday that he didn’t realize his attacks on the company, mostly done via tweet on Twitter itself, would lower the company’s stock price or hurt its investors.
Mixed doubles wheelchair event started on Wednesday
The theft of two curling stones due to be used at the Milano Cortina Winter Paralympics is being investigated, World Curling has confirmed.
Action in Italy got under way on Wednesday night with the round robin of the inaugural mixed doubles wheelchair competition, but the drama started earlier when it was discovered the rocks, believed to be worth about £750, were missing from Cortina’s curling stadium.
The actor has a blast as bride to Christian Bale’s lonely creature in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s darkly comic and gleefully bizarre reimagining of the 1935 film
Did you know that “Frankenstein” isn’t the name of the monster, but the mad scientist who created him? The answer is almost certainly yes. But that’s no thanks to the 1935 film The Bride of Frankenstein, which appears to have created this monstrous misconception – because let’s face it, the idea of a middle-aged Swiss scientist getting married isn’t all that shocking. In that sensational Frankenstein sequel with Boris Karloff returning as the monster, Elsa Lanchester was his bride and Mary Shelley, a doubling that may have inspired this new riff on the monster’s other half from writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal. There’s another barnstorming performance from Jessie Buckley as the sinister spouse, leaving savage bite marks all over the scenery and on her gallant co-star Christian Bale. It’s her name, not the title, that deserves the exclamation mark..
This new monster’s-wife tale is a rackety, violent black comedy with twists of Rocky Horror and extended homages to the top-hat-and-tails sophistication of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. It’s also a gangster joyride from the roaring 20s and 30s with Mr and Mrs F-M reimagined as a kind of post-death Bonnie and Clyde. It takes as its premise the idea that Mary Shelley is an angry ghost, spewing out into the shadowy netherworld her patrician contempt for the mediocre menfolk that surrounded her in life, and longing for a suitable living woman to insinuate herself back into.
The Arctic Metagaz burst into flames before sinking after what the Russian president described as a terrorist attack
Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of carrying out a terrorist attack on one of Russia’s liquefied natural gas carriers which exploded into flames and sank in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya.
The Arctic Metagaz had been sanctioned by the US and EU for being part of Moscow’s “shadow fleet” of ageing tankers that carry its oil and gas around the world, skirting Western restrictions.
A torpedo fired by a US submarine sank an Iranian warship off the south coast of Sri Lanka as the Trump administration followed through on its threats to destroy Tehran’s military and political leadership.
At least 87 Iranian sailors were killed in the attack on the Iris Dena on Wednesday. The frigate was sailing in international waters as it returned from a naval exercise organised by India in the Bay of Bengal. The torpedo strike prompted questions from former US officials about whether Washington’s aim of eliminating all of Iran’s military breached international law.
Connexion
