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A former Pakistani state minister was arrested on sexual assault charges relating to young girls in the UK, but he contested an election in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) while on police bail, according to a British media report on Wednesday. Rukhsar Ahmed was reportedly "re-elected" in the PoK polls last week, after being out of office for five years. Ahmed was arrested at Manchester Airport back in July 2024 on suspicion of rape and trafficking children in care as part of a grooming gang scandal, The Guardian newspaper reported. "Ahmed was arrested at Manchester airport on 18 July 2024 in relation to past child sexual abuse allegations linked to the Rusholme area of the city, where he lived for many years," the report said. The 62-year-old was expected to report to the Greater Manchester Police under his bail conditions last month, but reportedly failed to oblige. According to the UK media report, British police wanted to restrict Ahmed's ability to travel abroad as part of his
Andy Burnham begins his first full day as UK prime minister on Tuesday, after entering 10 Downing Street on a wave of enthusiasm and a mountain of challenges ahead. The pressing issues look familiar. They were the same ones his predecessor, Keir Starmer, faced: a sluggish economy, a cost-of-living crisis, overstretched public services, and foreign policy that includes wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and managing relations with US President Donald Trump. Burnham became prime minister after spending most of the past decade running Greater Manchester as mayor of a northwest England region with 3 million residents, before winning his ticket back to Parliament in a special election last month. Leading a national government delivering services for 70 million people is a monumentally larger task with problems on a larger scale. These are some of the main issues confronting Burnham: Boosting the economy and decentralising ...
Strategic experts forecast that the strength of the India-UK partnership will stay the course under incoming British prime minister Andy Burnham, who clinched the Labour Party leadership in the same week as the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) entered into force. Burnham, 56, was elected unopposed on Friday and will take over from Keir Starmer at Downing Street on Monday after the formal choreography of the handover of power is completed. While much is expected to change, given the former mayor of Greater Manchester's pledge to do things differently, the one major constant in terms of foreign policy is expected on the India front. "Over this past year, we have valued close engagement with the Greater Manchester authorities, particularly Mr Andy Burnham, whose energy and warm support has done much to strengthen India-North-England ties," Vishakha Yaduvanshi, the Consul General of India in Manchester, told PTI. As the first head of India's new diplomatic mission in t
The United States, United Kingdom and a dozen other Western and Asian countries reasserted on Sunday that China's expansive claims in the South China Sea are illegal based on a 2016 arbitration ruling. A joint statement issued by the nations said they rejected "destabilising" actions in the disputed waters that threaten regional peace. The announcement commemorated a July 12, 2016, arbitration ruling by a tribunal established in The Hague under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, saying the landmark decision is "a significant milestone and is final, legally binding and definitive." China refused to join the arbitration initiated by the Philippines in 2013 after a tense standoff in the contested waters a year earlier that ended with Beijing effectively seizing a disputed shoal. Beijing rejected the 2016 ruling and continues to defend its claims to virtually the entire sea passage, a key global trade route that has long been feared as one of Asia' most active ...