National Briefs (3/12/12)

For 467 days, millions of Israelis were yearning for Wednesday’s announcement that Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire and hostage release deal. The agreement is expected to see 33 Israelis in Gaza freed in the first 42-day phase, which starts on Sunday. The rest will follow if a permanent end to the fighting comes in the second phase.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are eager to leave miserable tent camps and return to their homes if a long-awaited ceasefire agreement halts the Israel-Hamas war, but many will find there is nothing left and no way to rebuild. Israeli bombardment and ground operations have transformed entire neighborhoods in several cities into rubble-strewn wastelands, with blackened shells of buildings and mounds of debris stretching away in all directions.

ISLAMABAD — A Pakistani court on Friday sentenced the country’s already-imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife to 14 and seven years in jail after finding them guilty of corruption, officials and his lawyer said. It’s yet another blow for the former premier who has been behind the bars since 2023. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The couple are accused of accepting a gift of land from a real estate tycoon in exchange for laundered money when Khan was in power. Prosecutors say the businessman, Malik Riaz, was then allowed by Khan to pay fines that were imposed on him in another case from the same laundered money of 190 million British pounds ($240 million) that was returned to Pakistan by British authorities in 2022 to deposit to the national exchequer. Khan has denied wrongdoing and insisted since his arrest in 2023 that all the charges against him are a plot by rivals to keep him from returning to office. Bibi was taken into custody by prison officials after the announcement of the verdict, according to officials.

China’s population fell last year for the third straight year, its government said Friday, pointing to further demographic challenges for the world’s second most populous nation, which is now facing both an aging population and an emerging shortage of working age people. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] China’s population stood at 1.408 billion at the end of 2024, a decline of 1.39 million from the previous year. The figures announced by the government in Beijing follow trends worldwide, but especially in East Asia, where Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and other nations have seen their birth rates plummet.

The story of Samir Ahmadi’s journey to America could have been written by Charles Dickens. But its author is the 14-year-old Afghan boy who, one week after the Taliban walked into Kabul, found himself walking away from it, jammed with his family and tens of thousands of others on the road leading to Hamid Karzai International Airport.

The drive up to Phulari viewpoint snakes for three miles along dirt tracks flanked by flowering pyoli plants and murals of flaming phalluses, a traditional good-luck symbol here in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan. At the summit, the 1,000-sq.-mi. expanse of what will be Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC) materializes through fluttering prayer flags.