Pakistan human rights advocate dies
LAHORE • Leading Pakistani human rights advocate Asma Jahangir has died, a family member said yesterday, in a blow to the nation's embattled rights community. She was 66.
The lawyer and former United Nations special rapporteur died of cardiac arrest, according to her sister Hina Jilani, also a prominent rights activist. Ms Jahangir received France's highest civilian award in 2014 and Sweden's alternative to the Nobel Prize for her decades of rights work.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Ex-Thai PMs spotted in Beijing
BANGKOK • Fugitive Thai former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra has been spotted with her brother Thaksin, also a fugitive former prime minister, apparently buying chestnuts in the Chinese capital Beijing.
The siblings were captured in a photo published on Saturday on the Matichon Online website, which reported that the two were at a mall in Beijing as the city prepares for Chinese New Year celebrations on Feb 16.
THE NATION/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
Lankan polls: Ruling alliance crushed
COLOMBO • Sri Lanka's ruling alliance was humiliated in local elections seen as a test of its leadership and the party of former president Mahinda Rajapakse was on track for a shock landslide victory, early results showed yesterday.
Official results showed Mr Rajapakse's Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna - SLPP or People's Front - had won 160 of the 241 councils counted so far, out of a total of 340.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's United National Party was a distant second with 30 councils, while President Maithripala Sirisena's Freedom Alliance languished with just 10.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
