Activists alarmed by plans to hand reclusive island tribe voter IDs

The Indian government has distributed voter ID cards for the first time to members of a reclusive Andaman Islands tribe, drawing concerns from activists that the event is a “publicity stunt” to distract from the imminent industrialisation of their fragile homeland.

The decision to issue identification documents that confirm an individual’s right to participate in elections is being promoted by the Narendra Modi government as a historic step towards the democratic evolution of the semi-nomadic Jarawa tribe.

Senior local administrative official Chandra Bhushan Kumar distributed these cards among 19 members of the tribe earlier this month in the federal territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Local officials said the enrolment process was designed to minimise disruption to their daily lives while maximising their understanding of their rights as Indian citizens.

Jarawas are one of five tribes inhabiting the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and are ranked as “particularly vulnerable” by the Anthropological Survey of India. The others are the North Sentinelese, Great Andamanese, Onge, and Shompen.

Jarawas have traditionally been reclusive, maintaining limited contact with the outside world. They live deep inside the forests on the western coasts of South and Middle Andaman Islands, which are known for their rich biodiversity. The tribes are thought to have inhabited their Indian Ocean homeland for as long as 55,000 years.

“This is a landmark achievement in India’s democratic evolution, symbolising the country’s commitment to ensuring inclusivity and equity for all citizens,” said local election official Arjun Sharma.

“We ensured that no aspect of the process would compromise the dignity of the Jarawa people,” Mr Sharma added.

However, activists working with the Jarawa complained that their enrolment in India’s voting process, presented as a step towards inclusivity, has been turned into a “publicity stunt by the administration”.

Activists argued that the process of voter enrolment undermined the dignity and privacy of the tribe while also distracting from a more pressing issue – the Indian government’s plans to implement a major development project that could threaten the land, rights, and survival of Indigenous communities.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are located in the Bay of Bengal, about 1,200km (745 miles) southeast of the Indian mainland. The archipelago is a federal territory comprising 836 islands, of which only 38 are inhabited.

Sophie Grig, Asia campaigns director at Survival International, told The Independent: “Of course the Jarawa should have the right to participate in the democratic process if they want to.

“But we are concerned that the Andaman and Nicobar administration is claiming to be enrolling the Jarawa in the electoral register in a way that respects their privacy and dignity, but in fact has turned the whole thing into a publicity stunt for the administration, which is the exact opposite of dignified and private.”

The Rs720bn (£6.83bn) Great Nicobar Island Development Project, which aims to transform the fragile biodiverse rich territory into an economic hub, was proposed by the Indian government in 2021 and involves building a cargo transit hub, airport, and power plant on the southern tip of Great Nicobar Island.

“Recognising and respecting the rights of the Indigenous peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as citizens of India is about far more than just adding them to the voter register,” Ms Grig said. “It is also about recognising and respecting their rights to their territories; their rights to life, to their ways of life and to choose how much or how little they wish to interact with the mainstream.

“This seemed to be deliberately designed to distract attention from the fact that the Indian government is planning to build a dangerous, and fundamentally undemocratic, mega project on the Shompen’s island, which experts have warned will lead to the genocide of the tribe,” she said.

Last year in February, a letter signed by genocide experts across the world called on India’s government to scrap the project.

“Should the government of India’s proposal to create an international container transhipment terminal, associated port and harbour facilities, airport, power plant, defence base, industrial zones, as well as major urban development, proceed, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide,” the letter read.

Activists said the island’s vulnerable tribes such as the Nicobarese and the Shompen face risks from exposure to external cultures and diseases.

The Independent reached out to senior officials of the Andaman and Nicobar administration and the chief electoral officer of the federal territory for comment.

Pankaj Sekhsaria, curator of The Great Nicobar Betrayal, a collection of essays on the project, told Down To Earth magazine: “The Directorate of Tribal Welfare of the Andaman and Nicobar Administration, the main body tasked with ensuring tribal welfare, is on record promising the project proponent all help in clearing regulatory processes, including for de-reservation of tribal reserve land, for the project. This is really unfortunate.”

He added that the Great Nicobar project should not proceed due to the ecological and human risks it allegedly poses. Besides the destruction of local ecosystems and Indigenous communities, he said the project site is in a highly tectonically active region, towards the periphery of the Pacific Ring of Fire.

“Earthquakes happen here on a weekly basis. The site of the project in Great Nicobar saw a permanent subsidence of 15ft (4.5m) in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake of December 26, 2004,” he said.

Mr Sekhsaria said this raises concerns about the safety of the proposed investment and the potential danger to 300,000 settlers.

Japan likely to face a devastating megaquake in the next 30 years

The probability of a “megaquake” happening in Japan within the next 30 years has risen to over 80 per cent, the government’s earthquake investigation panel found.

A megaquake is defined as an earthquake with a magnitude of 8 or greater, bringing the potential for exceptional destructive power and a strong likelihood of generating a tsunami.

The most likely location for a megaquake in Japan is along the Nankai Trough, an 800km-long undersea trench near Japan’s Pacific coast, where the government panel said there was now more than 80 per cent probability of such an earthquake – up from a previous figure of 70-80 per cent.

Each year, the Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion updates the probability of earthquakes occurring along active faults and seabed areas around Japan, using data from 1 January.

“This probability is a number indicating that it would be no surprise if an earthquake were to happen at any time,” Naoshi Hirata, head of the expert panel and professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, said during a press conference.

“We’d like to ask people to continue to be prepared.”

The panel found that the likelihood of a megaquake in the Japan Trench and Chishima Trench has also increased, with a 20 per cent chance of an 8.6-magnitude quake off the coast of Tokachi.

The cause of the potential earthquake is the movement of two tectonic plates: the Philippine Sea plate is slowly slipping beneath the continental plate that Japan sits on. As these plates move, they get stuck against each other. Over time, this causes energy to build up. When the plates finally break free from their stuck position, this energy is suddenly released, which could result in a megaquake.

Megaquakes in the Nankai Trough have occurred every 100 to 200 years over the past 1,400 years, with the most recent one recorded in 1946, according to Japan’s Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion. The earthquake, which was felt throughout Japan, destroyed 36,000 houses in the southern part of Honshu alone.

In August last year, the Japan Meteorological Association issued its first megaquake advisory since the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, warning of an increased likelihood of a major earthquake along the Nankai Trough.

One year has passed since the 1 January earthquake on the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture last year. The panel also released an assessment report saying that the repeated occurrence of large earthquakes in the region over several years was “something Japan has never seen before”.

Japan is highly earthquake-prone due to its location on the “Ring of Fire”, where intense seismic and volcanic activity occurs.

“Japan sits on the boundaries of four tectonic plates, which makes it one of the most earthquake-prone areas in the world,” Shoichi Yoshioka, a professor at Japan’s Kobe University told CNN last year.

“About 10 per cent of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or higher occur in or around Japan, so the risk is much higher than in places like Europe or the eastern United States, where earthquakes are rare.”

The panel’s report, released on Wednesday, also mentions that regions with a high probability of experiencing a megaquake in the next 30 years include the coast off Nemuro in Hokkaido, along the Chishima Trench, and the coast of Miyagi Prefecture, along the Japan Trench.

The likelihoods for these areas are projected to be around 80 per cent and between 80 per cent and 90 per cent, respectively. The probability for Miyagi’s coast has risen from a range of 70 per cent to 90 per cent last year.

On 26 December 1707, all segments of the Nankai Trough ruptured simultaneously, causing an earthquake that remains Japan’s second-most powerful on record – referred to as the Hoei Earthquake – triggering the last eruption of Mount Fuji.

After World War II, Japan faced two megaquakes along the Nankai Trough in 1944 and 1946.

Not all experts are convinced by predictions of an imminent Nankai Trough megaquake, however. Robert Geller, a seismologist and professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, criticises the idea of issues regular warnings about a Nankai Trough quake, calling it a “made-up construct” and a “purely hypothetical scenario” in a CNN report last year.

He argued that earthquakes don’t follow predictable cycles and can occur unpredictably, making it pointless to forecast future quakes based on past ones. This view contrasts with the traditional scientific belief in the “stick-slip” process, where stress builds up along faults and is eventually released in earthquakes.

China’s population fell in 2024 for third year in a row

China’s population fell for the third consecutive year in 2024, authorities reported on Friday.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said China’s population declined by 1.39 million in 2024, reaching 1.408 billion, as deaths continued to surpass births.

Data released earlier in January 2024 had shown a 2.08 million decline in 2023, bringing the population to 1.409 billion. This decline was double the previous year’s, which marked the first population drop in 60 years in China.

Recent efforts by China to curb the declining birthrate have not succeeded in reversing the long-term trend, with the NBS acknowledging that the country is facing several challenges.

In its report released on Friday, the bureau said: “We must be aware that the adverse effects brought by the external environment are increasing, the domestic demands are insufficient, some enterprises have difficulties in production and operation, and the economy is still facing difficulties and challenges.”

The statistics bureau reported that China recorded 9.54 million births in 2024, up from 9.02 million in 2023. The birth rate increased to 6.77 births per 1,000 people in 2024, compared to 6.39 per 1,000 people in 2023. In 2023, marriages increased by 12.4 per cent compared to the previous year, following the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. This led to a short-lived rise in births in certain areas during the first half of 2024.

Last year was also the “Year of the Dragon” in China, which is considered auspicious in the country and is traditionally linked to a slight baby boom across Asia. However, experts indicate that the overall trend is declining.

The number of deaths decreased to 10.93 million in 2024, down from 11.1 million in 2023.

“In the medium and long term, the annual number of births in my country will continue to decline,” Ren Yuan, a professor at Fudan University’s Institute of Population Studies told The New York Times.

China’s birth rates have been declining for decades, driven by the “one-child policy” implemented from 1980 to 2015, along with rapid urbanisation.

The country officially ended its “one-child policy” in 2016, a measure that had been in place for decades to control the country’s population growth. However, the policy resulted in a skewed population due to a cultural preference for male children.

The high cost of childcare, education, job uncertainty, and a slowing economy have discouraged many young Chinese from marrying and starting families, demographers believe. They also point to gender discrimination and traditional expectations for women to manage the household as contributing factors to the declining birthrate.

“Much of China’s population decline is rooted in entrenched structural reasons: Without fundamental structural transformations – from enhancing the social safety net to eliminating gender discrimination – the trend of population decline cannot be reversed,” Yun Zhou, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan told Reuters.

In 2024, Chinese authorities introduced a series of measures to boost the birth rate. In December, they urged universities to incorporate marriage and “love education” into curricula to promote positive views on marriage, love, fertility, and family. In November, the state council called on local governments to allocate resources to address the population crisis and promote respect for childbearing and marriage at the “right age”.

The number of women of reproductive age in China is projected to fall by over two-thirds to under 100 million by the end of the century.

Meanwhile, China’s economy grew by 5 per cent in 2024, in line with government forecasts, but GDP growth is expected to slow further in the coming years.

In response to a demographic crisis, Beijing has introduced measures to gradually increase the mandatory retirement age, raising it from 60 to 63 for men, from 55 to 58 for women in managerial and technical roles, and maintaining the retirement age at 55 for all other women workers.

China is not alone in facing a demographic crisis; Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are also experiencing population declines due to similar factors, including restrictions on immigration.

Additional reporting with agencies.

Giant dinosaur discovered in Egypt after fossils destroyed in WW2

Scientists have identified a new giant horned dinosaur species that roamed across modern-day North Africa about 95 million years ago, despite its fossilised remains being destroyed during the Second World War.

The 10-metre-long predatory dinosaur species, named Tameryraptor markgrafi, was discovered based on archive photographs of the dinosaur’s skeleton from before 1944.

Its original skeleton was described in 1914 after it was excavated in the Bahariya Oasis in Egypt and then stored together with other Egyptian dinosaur fossils in the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Geology in Munich.

At the time, paleontologist Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach (1871-1952) assigned the fossil to the genus Carcharodontosaurus, meaning shark-toothed lizard.

Measuring about 10 metres long, it is one of the largest known land-based carnivores ever to have roamed the Earth – comparable in size to the slightly younger Tyrannosaurus rex from North America.

However, a large part of the dinosaur fossil collection in Munich, including those from Egypt, fell victim to bombing during the Second World War.

The only remnants of this 10-metre giant were Dr Stromer’s notes, illustrations of its bones, and some photos of the original skeletons.

Archived pictures show the original skeleton from Egypt, including parts of the dinosaur’s skull, spine and hind limbs before its destruction.

“What we saw in the historical images surprised us all. The Egyptian dinosaur fossil depicted there differs significantly from more recent Carcharodontosaurus found in Morocco,” said Maximilian Kellermann, the study’s first author.

“Stromer’s original classification was thus incorrect. We identified a completely different, previously unknown predatory dinosaur species here and named it Tameryraptor markgrafi,” Dr Kellermann said.

Researchers found from the images that the dinosaur had distinct symmetrical teeth and a prominent nasal horn.

Its genus name “Tamery” refers to the ancient name for Egypt and the species name honors Dr Stromer’s fossil collector Richard Markgraf, who excavated the dinosaur’s remains.

This species is related to the North African and South American Carcharodontosaurus and to a group of predatory dinosaurs from Asia, the Metriacanthosaurs, scientists say.

The findings suggest dinosaurs of North Africa were much more diverse than previously thought.

“This work shows that it can be worthwhile for paleontologists to dig not only in the ground, but also in old archives,” said Oliver Rauhut, another author of the study.

“However, a more comprehensive assessment of the Cretaceous predatory dinosaur fauna from the Bahariya Oasis would require the recovery of more fossils from the site,” Dr Rauhut said.

NewJeans: Why one of K-pop’s biggest bands is being sued by own label

The entertainment agency that manages NewJeans is taking legal action to prevent the Korean girl group from signing advertising deals independently amid a fierce contract dispute.

Ador announced on 13 January that they had filed an injunction request to the Seoul Central District Court both to reestablish their position as the management agency of NewJeans and to stop members from pursuing advertising contracts and activities without approval.

Ador said the band of five had been pursuing advertisers to sign independent brand deals despite the ongoing contract dispute, South Korean state news agency Yonhap reported.

“This decision was made to prevent confusion and potential harm to third parties, including advertisers,” Ador said in a statement.

The agency said in their injunction application that the group’s unilateral contract termination could have implications for South Korea’s music industry.

“Allowing unilateral terminations of exclusive contracts and independent activities without legal procedures could undermine investment in the entertainment industry and destabilise the K-pop sector,” Yonhap quoted the application as saying.

Ador and NewJeans have been embroiled in a feud since last year. The dispute escalated after the group held a press conference where they declared their contract invalid, accusing the agency of mistreatment and bullying.

The company maintained their contract “remains in full effect” and filed a lawsuit to confirm it.

The dispute has since grown to involve other K-pop groups like Illit, Le Sserafim, BTS, and Aespa, and even led to a parliamentary hearing on workplace bullying.

Here is a breakdown of the dispute involving a band of young, emerging stars and one of the biggest multinational entertainment companies in the world.

NewJeans is a girl group composed of Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin, and Hyein, all aged 16 to 20. The group was formed in 2022, with their debut single “Attention” becoming an almost instant hit. The group’s 90s and early aughts aesthetic and sound became popular not just in Korea, but internationally.

In 2023, NewJeans became the fastest K-pop act to reach one billion streams on Spotify, and entered the Billboard Hot 100 five times the same year with the singles “Super Shy”, “OMG”, “ETA”, “Ditto”, and “Cool With You”.

Their sophomore EP Get Up debuted on the Billboard 200 at No 1 in 2023, pushing out the Barbie soundtrack.

It was formed by Min Hee Jin, who was already well known in the industry for her work as a creative director at SM Entertainment, one of South Korea’s biggest entertainment companies.

In 2019, Min moved to Big Hit Entertainment, which was later restructured into a multinational company called Hybe Corporation.

Hybe owns several sublabels like Ador.

Min is credited with developing the fuss-free, nostalgic vibe and look that NewJeans is known for and for training and debuting the group under Ador, which she created.

She was made CEO of Ador and given 18 per cent stake in the company, with Hybe owning 80 per cent.

In April 2024, Hybe announced a formal audit of Ador and asked Min to step down. The company said they had found evidence that she was trying to take the label independent.

Min responded to the audit claiming Hybe had plagiarised her NewJeans concept to launch Illit, a five-member girl group under subsidiary Belift Labs, whose styling and choreography had been pointed out by fans as being similar.

Min held a two-hour teary press conference on 25 April, denying Hybe’s claim that she had attempted a corporate takeover and alleging that the company had instead “used me to the fullest, sucked me dry”, The Korea Times reported.

Min said Hybe was trying to dismiss her because she had raised plagiarism concerns; Hybe said she had plotted to take the label independent long before Illit’s debut.

After months of legal tussles, suits and countersuits, Hybe said Min would not keep her position as CEO, but stay on as internal director at Ador and producer of NewJeans—roles she would resign from in November.

NewJeans members have steadfastly backed Min. In a letter Min posted on social media, Danielle thanked her for “always being dedicated to the work” and giving support for the “hardship” she was undergoing, according to a translation by Korea JoongAng Daily.

On 11 September, the five members went live on a newly created YouTube channel “nwjns” and, in a 27-minute video titled “What NewJeans Wanted To Say”, expressed their support for Min. She was “integral to NewJeans’ identity”, they said, and the members “all feel that she is irreplaceable.”

The band described several instances of a toxic work environment – with Hanni claiming the manager of another girl group under the label had specifically asked its members to ignore her as they passed her – and that concerns raised by Min, the members and their families had all been ignored by Hybe.

The livestream ended with the members issuing an ultimatum to Hybe: Min must be reinstated by 25 September and “our working environment returned back to normal the way it was before”.

As their demands went unmet, NewJeans called a press conference on 28 November announcing that they were terminating their exclusive deals with Ador due to breach of contract.

Ador denied the band’s accusations and maintained that they had “not violated the terms of the agreement”. They also argued that a “unilateral claim of a breach of trust does not constitute valid grounds for terminating the contract”. The company added that the “exclusive agreement between Ador and the NewJeans members remains in full effect”.

Ador filed a lawsuit in December to confirm the validity of their contract with NewJeans, claiming this was necessary to “ensure its continued legal enforcement”.

NewJeans insisted in response they had the right to terminate their contract and argued that they had returned “profits exceeding the investment to Ador and Hybe”.

The contract that NewJeans signed with Ador was set to last seven years, expiring in 2027.

According to Korea JoongAng Daily, if the court sides with NewJeans and declares the contract terminated, the members would be able to join another agency but not own the NewJeans name.

However, to leave a valid contract, the members might need to pay up to 300 billion won (£168m) as the terms state artists must pay the group’s average monthly revenue over the previous two years multiplied by the number of months left on the contract.

Additionally, Hanni, who is Vietnamese-American, could face deportation since the work visa that allows her to perform in South Korea is entirely contingent on an exclusive contract with a registered agency.

Kim Jong Un using nuclear weapons as ‘insurance policy’, Rubio says

Kim Jong Un has been using the development of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme as his “insurance policy” to stay in power, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, said.

There was a serious need to lower the risk of “an inadvertent war” between North and South Korea since the breakdown of Pyongyang’s talks with Washington, the Florida senator said at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s nomination hearing.

Mr Rubio, 53, a foreign policy hawk and an outspoken critic of China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, is expected to comfortably win confirmation as the nation’s top diplomat as he enjoys bipartisan support.

On Wednesday he addressed major international issues as he faced a a friendly hearing before a committee in which he has served for 14 years.

“I think there has to be an appetite for a very serious look at broader North Korean policies,” he said, adding that America has to prevent a crisis without encouraging other nation states to pursue their own nuclear weapons programme.

Mr Rubio, who was once a rival to the president-elect for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, acknowledged he was initially skeptical about Mr Trump’s engagement with Mr Kim which he said helped in calming the situation a bit.

“I’ll be frank. I was one of the people very skeptical about it, but (Trump) sort of reached out to Kim Jong Un, walked away from negotiations twice and ultimately did not reach something enduring. But here’s what he was able to achieve in that engagement,” he said.

“He stopped testing the missiles. That didn’t stop the development of the programme but at least calmed the situation quite a bit.”

He said Mr Trump’s strategy did not have a lasting impact even though it led to three in-person meetings with Mr Kim, including the first-ever summit in Singapore in 2018.

“You have a 40-something-year-old dictator who has to figure out how to hold on to power for the rest of his life,” Mr Rubio said.

“He views nuclear weapons as his insurance policy to stay in power. It means so much to him that no amount of sanctions has deterred him from developing that capability,” he added.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula worsened since 2022 after experts said Mr Kim used Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a distraction to accelerate the growth of his nuclear weapons and missile programme.

Mr Kim has blamed South Korea for raising tensions with its military cooperation with the US, conducting military training and drills in the Korean waters. North Korea has also flaunted its military nuclear programme in recent months, testing various missile systems and disclosing a secretive facility for producing weapons-grade uranium last year in September.

In his wide-ranging comments on North Korea, China, Russia and Iran, Mr Rubio mentioned security challenges from “rogue states”.

“In Moscow, in Tehran, in Pyongyang, dictators and rogue states now sow chaos and instability, and align with and they fund radical terror groups, and they hide behind their veto power at the UN Security Council or the threats of nuclear war,” he said.

He said China “has repressed and lied and cheated and hacked and stolen their way to global superpower status” at the expense of the US.

He said he is planning to revisit some of the Biden administration’s policies on these countries.

On concerns of China invading the self-governing island, Taiwan, Mr Rubio said the US has to “deal with this before the end of this decade”.

That is only if there are no “dramatic changes, like an equilibrium, where they conclude that the costs of intervening in Taiwan are too high”.

Yoon Suk Yeol sits silently through 10 hours of questioning

South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol sat silently through several hours of interrogation after his dramatic arrest on Wednesday.

Mr Yoon, 64, the country’s first sitting president to be arrested, was detained to answer insurrection charges for briefly imposing martial law on 3 December.

He, however, refused to cooperate with investigators and cited health reasons for not attending further questioning, local media reported on Thursday.

Investigators from the Corruption Investigation Office were expected to resume his questioning at 2pm local time but Mr Yoon’s lawyer said he could not attend.

“President Yoon is not well and fully explained his position yesterday so there is nothing more to be interrogated about,” Yoon Kab Keun told the state news agencyYonhap.

A large force of police and investigators breached Mr Yoon’s heavily guarded compound on Wednesday, bypassing bus barricades, cutting through barbed wire and scaling ladders to gain entry and arrest him.

A previous attempt to arrest him had been abandoned after police and investigators were prevented from entering the compound by the president’s security and supporters.

As the Constitutional Court considers the impeached president’s removal from office, potentially prompting a fresh election, the country is deeply divided with Mr Yoon’s opponents rejoicing and his supporters staging fervent protests.

According to The Chosun Daily, Mr Yoon’s interrogation centred on the circumstances of the martial law declaration, the drafting and announcement of a public address, and the deployment of military and police to the National Assembly and other locations in the country on 3 December.

Mr Yoon stayed silent and declined to answer any question. “The president did not invoke his right to remain silent,” a CIO official was quoted as saying, “he simply refused to speak.”

The CIO had prepared a 200-page questionnaire, the paper reported, but Mr Yoon’s refusal to speak cast doubts on whether the interrogators would get meaningful answers within the 48-hour detention period.

Mr Yoon also reportedly did not review or sign transcripts of the interrogation, and without his signature the records cannot be used in court.

The Korea Times reported on Wednesday that Mr Yoon faced around 10 hours of questioning by multiple prosecutors from the CIO but he consistently refused to make any statement.

The president is being held at the Seoul Detention Center in Gwacheon of Gyeonggi province. His cell has basic amenities like a bed, bedding, television, and underfloor electric heating.

Mr Yoon said on Wednesday he cooperated with the investigators to prevent “bloodshed”, but he did not acknowledge the legality of the investigation.

Meanwhile, it was reported that officials were working to obtain a new warrant to extend his detention beyond the initial 48 hours.

Pakistan investigates advert showing plane flying towards Eiffel Tower

Prime minister Shehbaz Sharif has ordered an investigation following criticism over a Pakistan International Airline advert showing a plane flying towards the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

The national carrier had advertised its resumption of flights to Europe in January, starting with Paris, after the EU aviation regulator lifted a ban on it.

The airline’s authorisation to operate in the EU was suspended in 2020 over concerns about the ability of Pakistani civil aviation authorities to ensure compliance with global standards. The suspension came after Islamabad began investigating a scandal over the validity of pilot licences in the wake of a plane crash that killed 97 people.

The advert showed a civilian aircraft flying towards the Eiffel Tower with the caption declaring: “Paris, we’re coming today”. The unfortunate resemblance of the poster with the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, US, drew criticism on social media.

Ishaq Dar, the finance minister, called the advert “stupidity” and said the prime minister had ordered an investigation. “The prime minister has directed to investigate who conceived this ad,” he told a parliamentary session.

He also expressed concern about the caption, Geo TV reported.

Omar Quraishi, a former political media adviser, said he was “truly speechless” that the advert was approved. “Did the airline management not vet this?” he asked on X.

“Is this advertisement or threat,” asked an X user. “I guess you are going for no publicity is bad publicity,” said another person.

The US suffered its worst terrorist attack when terrorists crashed passenger jets into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington DC, killing nearly 3,000 people.

The alleged mastermind of the attack, al Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, was arrested in Pakistan in 2003. The leader of Al Qaeda at the time, Osama bin Laden, was killed in a 2011 American military operation in Pakistan.