World

Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan is a candidate for seven of eight national assembly seats up for grabs in a key by-election Sunday, a vote he says is “a referendum” on his popularity.

The by-election is the latest twist in political wrangling that began after Khan’s April 10 ouster via a parliamentary no-confidence vote. 

It comes as the nation grapples with the aftermath of devasting monsoon floods that affected more than 30 million people and left a third of the country under water.

Candidates can stand for multiple seats in Pakistan elections. If they win more than one they choose which to keep, and a separate vote must later be held for those forfeited.

It is rare, however, for a candidate to stand for as many seats as Khan is doing Sunday, and his disruptive move is clearly to gauge his popularity.

“This is not just a simple election, it’s a referendum,” he told a rally late Friday in Karachi, the bustling port city in the south of the nation of 220 million.

Khan has held dozens of rallies since being ousted — drawing crowds of tens of thousands — and has vowed soon to announce the date of a “long march” of his supporters on the capital, Islamabad.

He is demanding the coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif calls an immediate general election rather than wait until October next year.

“If he wins most of the seats, he will press the government more,” political analyst Hassan Askari Rizvi told AFP.

“But the government will reject the election call, claiming it doesn’t reflect the national will.”

Khan has already scored a string of recent by-election victories, with his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party seizing control in July of the state assembly in Punjab, the country’s most populous province.

– Emerged unscathed –

He has, so far, also emerged largely unscathed from a series of court cases against him and his party.

Pakistan’s courts are often used to tie up lawmakers in tedious and long-winding proceedings that rights monitors have criticised for stifling political opposition.

Khan blames the current government for soaring inflation, although most analysts agree Sharif inherited the country’s economic woes.

Catastrophic flooding this summer put one-third of Pakistan under water, displaced eight million people, and caused at least an estimated $28 billion in damage.

The United Nations has warned of a “second wave” of catastrophe, with the risk that deaths from water-borne disease and malnutrition will outstrip the 1,700 drowned and electrocuted in the initial cascade.

Khan rode to power in 2018 on a populist platform promising social reforms, religious conservatism and fighting corruption, overturning decades of rule by two feuding political dynasties interspersed with military takeovers.

But, under his tenure, the economy stagnated and he lost the support of the army, which was accused of helping to get him elected.

Sunday’s polls take place in eight constituencies of three provinces –- three each in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where Khan’s party holds sway, and two in Sindh.

“This is indeed a litmus test of his popularity provided elections are held in a free and fair atmosphere and they are not rigged,” said Imtiaz Gul of the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad.

“If he wins the majority of the seats, that will again be a testimony to the success of his narrative that he has built since his exit from power and that will obviously bring more pressure on the government.”

As China’s leaders gather for a crucial party congress, the country is expected on Tuesday to announce some of its weakest quarterly growth figures since 2020, its economy hobbled by Covid restrictions and a real estate crisis.

The figures for the third quarter, along with a salvo of other economic indicators, will be unveiled in the middle of the week-long political meeting that is expected to grant President Xi Jinping a historic third term in charge.

A group of experts interviewed by AFP said they expected an average GDP increase of 2.5 percent on last year’s July-September quarter.

In the previous quarter, growth in the world’s second largest economy collapsed to only 0.4 percent compared to the previous year, the worst performance since 2020. The country posted 4.8 percent growth in the first quarter of 2022.

Many economists think China will struggle to attain its growth target this year of around 5.5 percent, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has lowered its GDP growth forecast to 3.2 percent for 2022 and 4.4 percent for 2023.  

AFP’s panel of experts predicted average growth of three percent in 2022, a long way off the 8.1 percent seen in 2021. 

That would be China’s weakest growth rate in four decades, excluding 2020 when the global economy was hammered by the emergence of the coronavirus.

“The big policy challenge is accepting that the economy has reached a state of maturity that means growth numbers are likely permanently reset to the zero to 4.5 percent range for the coming decade,” Clifford Bennett, chief economist at ACY Securities, told AFP. 

– Zero-Covid –

Another factor that has had an enormous impact is Beijing’s zero-Covid policy. 

China is the last of the world’s major economies to continue to follow the strategy, which imposes tight travel restrictions, mass PCR testing and obligatory quarantines.  

It also involves sudden and strict lockdowns — including of businesses and factories — which has disrupted production and weighed heavily on household consumption.

But despite the impact on the economy, “there is no clear sign of a significant easing of the zero-Covid strategy”, Nomura’s Ting Lu said, noting that so far the opposite had happened. 

In the week leading up to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress, state media have published multiple editorials warning the policy should not be relaxed, and officials have pounced on outbreaks across the country over the last week with increased curbs.

Some lockdown restrictions have returned to major financial hub Shanghai, prompting some to fear a repeat of earlier this year when the city was shut down for two months. 

Meanwhile, China is also battling an unprecedented crisis in its real estate sector — historically a driver of growth in the economy and representative of more than a quarter of the country’s GDP when combined with construction. 

Following years of explosive growth fuelled by easy access to loans, Chinese authorities launched a crackdown on excessive debt in 2020.

Property sales are now falling across the country, leaving many developers struggling and some owners refusing to pay their mortgages for unfinished homes.

– ‘Modern economy’ –

Despite the problems, “many economic indicators have actually recovered reasonably well from the mass lockdowns of March and April”, according to analyst Thomas Gatley from Gavekal Dragonomics.

Car sales held strong in September, driven by strong demand for electric clean vehicles.

August exports increased by 7.1 percent compared to the previous year, and Beijing has invested in infrastructure to support activity.

However, “those pillars of growth are becoming more fragile”, Gatley said. 

And “the Chinese economy faces more fundamental problems” of transformation, sinologist Jean-Louis Rocca told AFP. 

After decades of growth fueled by investment and exports, he said China “no longer wants to be ‘the world’s factory'” — instead it aspires to be a “modern economy”, geared towards new technology and consumption — and the transition is still ongoing. 

Another worry for the CCP, which draws a large part of its political legitimacy from its economic success, is that this type of modern economy does not create very many jobs, Rocca said — which has serious implications for China’s growing middle class. 

Rescuers desperately searched for signs of life on Saturday after a methane blast at a coal mine in northern Turkey killed at least 28 people and trapped dozens of others hundreds of metres underground.

Updating the death toll, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca also tweeted that 11 others pulled out alive were being treated in hospital after one of Turkey’s deadliest industrial accidents in years struck Friday at sunset.

“We are facing a truly regretful situation,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters earlier after urgently flying to the small coal mining town of Amasra on Turkey’s Black Sea coast.

“In all, 110 of our brothers were working (underground). Some of them came out on their own, and some of them were rescued.”

Soylu also confirmed early reports that nearly 50 miners remained trapped in two separate areas between 300 and 350 metres (985 to 1,150 feet) below ground.

Television images showed anxious crowds — some with tears in their eyes — congregating around a damaged white building near the entrance to the pit in search of news for their friends and loved ones.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would cancel all his other arrangements and fly to the scene of the accident on Saturday.

“Our hope is that the loss of life will not increase further, that our miners will be found alive,” Erdogan said in a tweet.

“All of our efforts are aimed in this direction.”

Most initial information about those trapped inside was coming from workers who had managed to climb out relatively unharmed.

But Amasra mayor Recai Cakir said many of those who survived suffered “serious injuries”.

The blast occurred moments before sunset and the rescue effort was being impeded by the dark.

Turkey’s Maden Is mining workers’ union attributed the blast to a build-up of methane gas.

But other officials said it was premature to draw definitive conclusions over the cause of the accident.

– 2014 disaster –

Rescuers sent in reinforcements from surrounding villages to help search for signs of life.

Television images showed paramedics giving oxygen to the miners who had climbed out, then rushing them to the nearest hospitals.

The local governor said a team of more than 70 rescuers had managed to reach a point in the pit some 250 metres below.

It was not immediately clear if the rescuers would be able to come any closer to the trapped workers or what was blocking their further passage.

Turkey’s AFAD disaster management service said the initial spark that caused the blast appeared to have come from a malfunctioning transformer.

It later withdrew that report and said methane gas had ignited for “unknown reasons”.

The local public prosecutor’s office said it was treating the incident as an accident and launching a formal investigation.

Turkey suffered its deadliest coal mining disaster in 2014 when 301 workers died in a blast in the western town of Soma.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was “doing everything right” in its nearly eight-month invasion of Ukraine despite a string of embarrassing defeats against Kyiv’s forces, who will receive $725 million in new US military assistance.

Putin’s comments Friday came hours after Kremlin-installed officials in the southern Kherson region urged residents to leave as Kyiv said its soldiers were advancing on the oblast’s main city.

Moscow also hinted at the extent of the damage dealt to the Crimea bridge — the sole land connection between its mainland and the annexed Ukrainian peninsula — following a blast last Saturday, saying it could take many months to complete repairs.

“What is happening today is not pleasant. But all the same, (if Russia hadn’t attacked in February) we would have been in the same situation, only the conditions would have been worse for us,” Putin told reporters after a summit in the capital of Kazakhstan.

“So we’re doing everything right,” he insisted.

He did, however, acknowledge that Russia’s ex-Soviet allies were “worried.”

Putin said there was no need for further massive strikes against Ukraine at present and claimed the Kremlin did not intend to destroy its pro-Western neighbour.

“There is no need now for massive strikes. There are other tasks. For now,” he said.

He spoke days after Russia unleashed a wave of missile strikes on cities across Ukraine that left at least 20 civilians dead.

Putin said the strikes were in retaliation for the explosion on the Crimea bridge, which he has described as a “terrorist act”.

The bridge is a logistically crucial transport link for moving military equipment to Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine.

– New US military aid –

Washington on Friday announced an additional $725 million in military assistance to Kyiv, including more ammunition for the Himars rocket systems that have been used by Ukraine to wreak havoc on Russian targets.

The aid comes “in the wake of Russia’s brutal missile attacks on civilians across Ukraine” and “mounting evidence of atrocities by Russia’s forces,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

It brings the total US military assistance to Ukraine to $17.6 billion since the Russian invasion on February 24.

“We will continue to stand with the people of Ukraine as they defend their freedom and independence with extraordinary courage and boundless determination,” Blinken said.

Separately, Elon Musk said his SpaceX would not be able to pay indefinitely for the Starlink satellite internet vital to Ukraine’s communications in the fight against Russian invaders.

The US military confirmed it was communicating with the billionaire’s company about funding for the key network.

Ukraine, which is clawing back territory in both the east and south, feted its first Defenders Day public holiday since the start of Moscow’s invasion, pledging victory.

“On October 14, we express our gratitude… gratitude to everyone who fought for Ukraine in the past. And to everyone who is fighting for it now. To all who won then. And to everyone who will definitely win now,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address to mark the occasion.

“The world is with us, more than ever. This makes us stronger than ever in history,” Zelensky said, referring to unprecedented Western aid.

Saudia Arabia announced $400 million in humanitarian aid for Ukraine, the official SPA news agency reported early Saturday, adding that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had made a phone call to Zelensky.

Saudi Arabia last month played an unexpected role in facilitating a prisoner-of-war swap between Moscow and Kyiv.

The kingdom has however come under growing criticism from Washington after the Saudi-led OPEC group of oil exporters agreed on a drastic production cut with Russia and other allies, which could send energy prices soaring even higher.

– Advance on Kherson –

In southern Ukraine, Kyiv’s forces have been pushing closer and closer to Kherson, the main city in the region of the same name just north of Crimea.

On Friday, Moscow-installed authorities renewed a call for residents to temporarily leave.

“The bombardment of the Kherson region is dangerous for civilians,” Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the pro-Russian regional administration said, and urged residents to take a trip for “rest and recreation” elsewhere.

Kyiv, which announced its counter-offensive in the south in August, said it has already recaptured more than 400 square kilometres (155 miles) in the Kherson region in under a week.

But in the east, pro-Russian forces said they were closing in on the industrial city of Bakhmut after reporting the capture of two villages on the city’s outskirts this week.

An official of the so-called Lugansk People’s Republic, a pro-Kremlin breakaway region in east Ukraine, said “active hostilities were under way” within Bakhmut.

“Our forces are confidently marching and liberating this settlement,” the official, Andriy Marochko, was quoted as saying by Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.

Elon Musk said Friday that SpaceX would not be able to pay for Starlink satellite internet in Ukraine indefinitely, while the US military confirmed it was communicating with the billionaire’s company about funding for the key network.

The discussions come as Musk has been embroiled in public spats with Ukrainian leaders who were angered by his controversial plan for de-escalating the conflict, which included acknowledging Russian sovereignty over Crimea.

Starlink, a constellation of more than 3,000 small satellites in low Earth orbit, has been vital to Ukraine’s communications as it fights against Russia’s invasion, with SpaceX donating some 25,000 ground terminals, according to an updated figure given by Musk last week.

In a series of tweets, the world’s richest man appeared to confirm a report by CNN saying he had written to the Pentagon warning that his financial contributions would come to an end, and that the military would need to foot the bill.

“SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households,” he tweeted. 

“This is unreasonable.”

Musk said the operation has already cost SpaceX $80 million and is projected to exceed $100 million by the end of the year.

But CNN said SpaceX figures shared with the Pentagon show about 85 percent of the first 20,000 terminals in Ukraine were paid at least in part by countries such as the United States, Poland, or other entities, which also paid for about 30 percent of internet connectivity.

Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said Friday that the US Department of Defense is in contact with Musk about the funding issue.

“We can confirm the department received correspondence from SpaceX about the funding of… their satellite communications product in Ukraine. We remain in communication with SpaceX about this and other topics,” Singh said in a statement.

– ‘Helped us survive’ –

She had earlier told journalists that there are potential alternatives to Starlink, but declined to provide specifics.

“There are certainly other SATCOM capabilities that exist out there. I’m not going to show our hand right now on exactly what those are or who we’re talking to,” Singh said, referring to satellite communications.

In overnight replies on Twitter Friday, Musk expanded on the logistics of the operation. 

“In addition to terminals, we have to create, launch, maintain & replenish satellites & ground stations & pay telcos for access to Internet via gateways,” he said.

“We’ve also had to defend against cyberattacks & jamming, which are getting harder. Burn is approaching ~$20M/month.”

Musk has recently been in a spat with Ukrainian officials including President Volodymyr Zelensky after suggesting a peace deal that involved re-running controversial referendums in Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine — an idea welcomed by Moscow.

Kyiv’s ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, weighed in on Twitter, telling Musk to “fuck off.”

In a Friday tweet that included the shrug emoji, Musk said: “We’re just following his recommendation.”

Singh declined to comment on whether Musk had decided to scrap the Starlink service in response to the ambassador’s remark, saying it was a question for SpaceX.

Musk later seemed to confirm that Starlink remained operational on the frontlines, tweeting: “Starlink is only comms system still working at warfront – others all dead.”

The US Agency for International Development, in a statement Friday evening, also said that “to our knowledge, SpaceX has not withdrawn service to Ukraine’s civilian government agencies and critical infrastructure operators.”

The Financial Times had earlier reported Starlink outages had hit Ukrainian forces on the frontline, hindering their ability to recapture Russian-controlled areas in the east of the country, but said the situation later improved.

A senior Ukrainian presidential aide, Mykhaylo Podolyak, acknowledged the importance of Starlink in a tweet on Friday.

“Like it or not, @elonmusk helped us survive the most critical moments of war,” Podolyak wrote, adding that Ukraine “will find a solution to keep #Starlink working.”

Rescuers desperately searched for signs of life on Saturday after a methane blast at a coal mine in northern Turkey killed at least 25 people and trapped dozens of others hundreds of metres underground.

Updating the death toll, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca also tweeted that 11 others pulled out alive were being treated in hospital after one of Turkey’s deadliest industrial accidents in years struck Friday at sunset.

“We are facing a truly regretful situation,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu told reporters earlier after urgently flying to the small coal mining town of Amasra on Turkey’s Black Sea coast.

“In all, 110 of our brothers were working (underground). Some of them came out on their own, and some of them were rescued.”

Soyli also confirmed early reports that nearly 50 miners remained trapped in two separate areas between 300 and 350 metres (985 to 1,150 feet) below ground.

Television images showed anxious crowds — some with tears in their eyes — congregating around a damaged white building near the entrance to the pit in search of news for their friends and loved ones.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would cancel all his other arrangements and fly to the scene of the accident on Saturday.

“Our hope is that the loss of life will not increase further, that our miners will be found alive,” Erdogan said in a tweet.

“All of our efforts are aimed in this direction.”

Most initial information about those trapped inside was coming from workers who had managed to climb out relatively unharmed.

But Amasra mayor Recai Cakir said many of those who survived suffered “serious injuries”.

The blast occurred moments before sunset and the rescue effort was being impeded by the dark.

Turkey’s Maden Is mining workers’ union attributed the blast to a build-up of methane gas.

But other officials said it was premature to draw definitive conclusions over the cause of the accident.

– 2014 disaster –

Rescuers sent in reinforcements from surrounding villages to help search for signs of life.

Television images showed paramedics giving oxygen to the miners who had climbed out and then rushing them to the nearest hospitals.

The local governor said a team of more than 70 rescuers had managed to reach a point in the pit some 250 metres below.

It was not immediately clear if the rescuers would be able to come any closer to the trapped workers or what was blocking their further passage.

Turkey’s AFAD disaster management service said the initial spark that caused the blast appeared to have come from a malfunctioning transformer.

It later withdrew that report and said methane gas had ignited for “unknown reasons”.

The local public prosecutor’s office said it was treating the incident as an accident and launching a formal investigation.

Turkey suffered its deadliest coal mining disaster in 2014 when 301 workers died in a blast in the western town of Soma.

“We love you princess,” reads the inscription on the fresh grave of a three-year-old girl among dozens of people killed by a devastating landslide in a Venezuelan town last week.  

Gravediggers have had their hands full at the cemetery of Las Tejerias, a town of some 50,000 people laid to waste by a torrent of mud, stones and trees that followed hours of heavy rains. 

Venezuelan authorities have confirmed 50 deaths so far, of whom 16 have been buried. Dozens remain missing. 

“This has been sad,” said one of the gravediggers, who asked not to be named.

“That belongs to a three-year-old girl who was wrenched from her mother’s arms,” by the landslide, he said pointing to a blue-tiled grave.

A few meters away, a fresh pile of soil with a bouquet of flowers marked the grave of an elderly couple.  

Two more funerals were scheduled for later Friday.

Unusually heavy rains last Saturday caused a major river and several streams to overflow and gush through the town nestled in the mountains near Caracas.

The muddy torrent washed away cars, parts of homes, businesses and telephone wires, and felled massive trees after a month’s worth of rain fell in just eight hours.

Interior Minister Remigio Ceballos told the Telesur channel on Thursday the confirmed death toll stood at 50.

He offered no update on the number of missing, which by Tuesday was 56 people now also presumed dead.

President Nicolas Maduro said earlier in the week that the toll from Venezuela’s worst natural disaster in decades was likely to reach 100. 

– UN aid expected –

Work continued Friday to clear town streets of a thick layer of mud and debris and restore electricity as residents battled to save what they could from their flooded homes.

Tankers were delivering drinking water, and some shops had reopened, though many areas of the town remain inaccessible. 

On Wednesday, military helicopters had dropped food parcels with small parachutes in some of the more isolated areas of the mountainous region.

The government has opened shelters and announced it will relocate families to social housing complexes elsewhere in the country.

Vice President Delcy Rodriguez has said 317 houses were destroyed and hundreds more were damaged.

A UN commission also visited the town Friday to make supplies and technical help available to support the authorities.

“Just right away we have supplies that we are going to make available,” Abubacar Sultan, a UNICEF representative leading the delegation, told reporters.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said Thursday it had donated “medicines and healing material for 5,000 people” and 10,000 tablets that are each able to purify 10 liters of water.

The rains had caused damage to several Venezuelan states.

San Timoteo, a fishing village on Lake Maracaibo in the country’s west, was hit by an eight-hour storm that destroyed 20 modest stilt homes.

“The bridges were the first to came down and then the houses,” Eli Rodriguez, a resident of the community of about 7,000 people, told AFP.

Crisis-hit Venezuela is no stranger to seasonal storms, but this was the worst so far this year following historic rain levels that caused dozens of other deaths in recent months.