The opposition politician told The Guardian that the country’s army chief holds a “personal grudge” against him
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has reportedly accused the country’s army chief of having him and seven senior members of his political party arrested because of a personal vendetta, reflecting the military’s unaccountable and “undemocratic” grip on power in Islamabad.
“Without any doubt, the military is behind my arrest,” Khan told The Guardian on Sunday in an interview at his home in Lahore. “Pakistan is now being run by the army chief. The crackdown on us is by the army chief.”
Khan was released on Friday, after Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that his arrest on Tuesday was “invalid and unlawful.” The Islamabad High Court granted him two weeks bail. His detention on corruption charges triggered massive protests across the country, which resulted in at least 11 deaths, dozens of injuries, and the arrests of more than 3,000 demonstrators.......more below
China has suspended several 2025 export controls on strategic materials — including rare earths, superhard materials, and lithium batteries – for a year. Is this a concession to the US, or a move in a far more complex game?
"The first aim of China’s export controls was to consolidate its leverage in negotiations. The second was to establish a long-term framework for managing such controls," says Yana Leksyutina, deputy director at the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).
Сhina could activate this mechanism at any moment, and now everyone knows it’s a lever it holds, she explains to Sputnik.
Balancing the Mineral Market
"The moratorium on export bans to the US essentially resets the rare earth market to where it was previously," Jeff J. Brown, author of 'The China Trilogy' and founder of Seek Truth From Facts Foundation, tells Sputnik.
In the meantime, there will be a global rush by the US and its NATO allies to acquire as many rare earth ...
The Israeli regime has reportedly signed contracts worth millions of dollars in recent months to sway American public opinion as part of attempts to launder the occupying entity’s genocidal war crimes against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Friday that the multimillion-dollar campaign aimed to reshape US public opinion, both online and offline, through coordinated influence operations combining digital marketing, AI, geotagging, and religious messaging.
The contracts, signed between the Israeli regime and firms linked to US President Donald Trump, reveal a “hasbara [propaganda] campaign” and schemes to target millions of US churchgoers, deploy bots, hire influencers, and try to make ChatGPT more pro-Israel.
The largest contract, worth $6 million, was signed with Clock Tower X, owned by Trump’s former digital campaign chief Brad Parscale, to produce and distribute roughly 100 core pieces of pro-Israel content per month and thousands......
