On Sunday, Indian PM Narendra Modi congratulated Japanese PM Fumio Kishida for the first soft Moon landing of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Further, he said that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) looks forward to cooperating with JAXA in space exploration. Japan became the fifth country in the world to soft-land a spacecraft on the Moon, with its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) touching down in its target area near the Shioli crater on Saturday.
Indian Home Minister Amit Shah said on Sunday that the Union government will soon fence the 1,643 km long India-Myanmar border. Shah announced that India is considering ending the free movement regime (FMR) agreement with Myanmar. FMR, which was put into effect in 2018 as part of India’s Act East Policy, permits border-dwelling citizens of both nations to enter the other country’s territory up to 16 km without a visa.
Former Pakistani PM and ex-cricketer Imran Khan has warned that a lack of fairness in the conduct of the upcoming 8 February general elections in Pakistan could lead to “instability and uncertainty” in the country. During an informal media interaction at the Adiala Jail on Saturday, Khan said that his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party was facing issues during its election campaign, with restrictions preventing it from holding public gatherings. During Khan’s virtual event on Saturday, different social media platforms in the country faced several disruptions. PTI accused the government of being behind the internet outage.
On Sunday, hackers launched waves of denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Monobank, Ukraine’s largest mobile-only bank, the company’s co-founder and CEO, Oleh Horokhovskyi, stated. Horokhovskyi claimed that Monobank was targeted with 580 million service requests in one attack. “I think today Monobank is one of the most attacked IT targets in the country,” he added. Horokhovskyi did not specify who he believed was responsible for the attacks, but earlier threats have been linked to Russian hackers.
Speaking at the 19th meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement on Sunday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has destroyed more than 70% of the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s war with Hamas, which has now gone on for more than 100 days. “Almost 2 million of Palestinians have become displaced, half of them being children. During over 100 days, Israeli troops killed about 10,000 children,” the minister stated.
On Friday, US President Joe Biden and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu had a phone conversation wherein they discussed ongoing efforts to secure the release of all remaining hostages held by Hamas. Biden reiterated Israel’s responsibilities to reduce civilian casualties and defend the innocent while maintaining military pressure on Hamas. The leaders also discussed the situation in Gaza regarding ensuring direct maritime delivery of assistance.