El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, on Sunday declared himself the winner of the country’s national elections in a landslide, claiming that he won more than 85% of the vote — even though no official results have been released yet. Bukele added that his New Ideas party also captured at least 58 seats in the country’s 60-seat legislative assembly, citing unspecified information that he had access to.
On Saturday, a Pakistani court sentenced former PM Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, to seven years in prison for violating the law with their 2018 marriage. The prosecution argued that they breached the rule requiring a woman to wait three months before remarrying. This represents Khan’s fourth conviction since 2022, with a cumulative sentence of 34 years to be served concurrently.
On Friday, India formally launched the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, making France the first European nation to accept the payment method. On the occasion, Indian PM Narendra Modi congratulated France, calling the move a wonderful example of encouraging digital payments and strengthening ties. He said that it’s a big step towards making UPI international. NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) has partnered with Lyra, a French e-commerce and proximity payment company, to guarantee that the UPI is accepted throughout France, beginning with the Eiffel Tower.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel will not accept any deal for the release of Hamas’ hostages. “The efforts to free the hostages are continuing at all times,” Netanyahu remarked before a cabinet meeting. “As I also emphasised in the Security Cabinet — we will not agree to every deal, and not at any price,” he stressed. “Many things are being said in the media, as if we had agreed to them, such as regarding the release of terrorists, we will simply not agree to them.”
The US destroyed or damaged 84 out of 85 targets in its massive airstrikes on Syria and Iraq, CNN reported on Sunday, citing two US defence officials. All but one of the 85 targets were “destroyed or functionally damaged,” the officials stated, citing an initial battlefield damage assessment. A detailed post-strike investigation is still ongoing, but one official stated that there are no indications that members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were killed as a result of the operations.