"2026 is going to be about how we deliver RMK13," YB Akmal Nasrullah Mohd Nasir told Fortune ahead of the Forum Ekonomi Malaysia summit on Feb. 5. "It's a higher chance of success compared to trying to come up with a new policy direction," he added later. "Two years is quite a short runway." Malaysia must hold general elections no later than February 2028, where voters will decide whether to extend the mandate of current Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and his Pakatan Harapan governing coalition.
Voters in Thailand were heading to polling stations across the country on Sunday to elect a new parliament. The vote is seen as a three-way race between the reformist People's Party, the conservative Bhumjaithai Party of incumbent Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, and Pheu Thai, the party backed by the waning but still influential Shinawatra family. Analysts predict a close race that is unlikely to yield an outright winner, with difficult coalition negotiations expected to follow the election.
There are few sports as evocatively named as the snowboard event known as Big Air. It's big. It's in the air. High, high in the air. On Saturday, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, Kira Kimura of Japan won the men's Big Air competition at the Livigno Snow Park in Valtellina, Italy. His best run was his third, a switch backside 1980 weddle five and a half full horizontal rotations.
The Winter Olympics are officially upon us, so naturally, it felt like the perfect time to turn it into a quiz. Some Olympic sports are obvious. Others sound like someone completely made them up. In this quiz, you'll see 20 weird-sounding sports, and your job is simple: decide whether each one is actually in the Olympics or absolutely not.
United States forces have transported a third group of ISIL (ISIS) detainees from Ghwayran prison in Syria's Hasakah province to Iraq by land, as activity around a US military base in the region points to possible operational changes, an Al Jazeera correspondent reports. The transfer on Saturday forms part of a trilateral arrangement, which has emerged as part of a painstaking ceasefire after deadly clashes involving the Syrian government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
"It will be the first Board of Peace meeting and a fundraising conference for Gaza reconstruction," a U.S. official said. The plans for the summit meeting are in early stages and could still change. The White House declined to comment. Between the lines: The unveiling of the board last month was met with widespread skepticism. Most Western allies didn't join, in part because the charter gives the board a broad mandate and Trump sole the veto over its decisions.
The United States has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach an agreement to end the nearly four-year war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said. The Americans are proposing the parties end the war by the beginning of this summer and will probably put pressure on the parties precisely according to this schedule, Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv on Friday, in comments embargoed until Saturday.
Cricket's global governing body hopes to persuade Pakistan to reverse decision to boycott India T20 World Cup fixtures. The International Cricket Council is in talks with the Pakistan Cricket Board to resolve the boycott of its T20 World Cup 2026 fixture against India on February 15. Any clash between archrivals India and Pakistan is one of the most lucrative in cricket, worth millions of dollars in broadcast, sponsoring and advertising revenue.
India's form over the last two years has made them the most feared side in world cricket but for a while as they got their World Cup campaign under way the only dread was being experienced by their own fans as the USA threatened a humiliating upset. But for some missed chances, a hugely unfortunate injury and the brilliance of Suryakumar Yadav it might well have happened.
Demonstrations across Malawi's four main cities during the past week have achieved a delay in the introduction of a new tax regime that business owners claim will cripple their livelihoods. Tens of thousands had signed petitions which this week were presented to tax officials and on Monday thousands of small traders shut up shops and businesses to hold protest marches in Blantyre, Lilongwe, Zomba and Mzuzu.
Syria and Saudi Arabia have signed a major investment package spanning aviation, energy, real estate and telecommunications as Damascus's new leadership seeks to rebuild after a devastating 14-year civil war. Syrian Investment Authority chief Talal al-Hilali announced a swath of deals on Saturday, including the development of a new international airport in Aleppo, the launch of a low-cost Syrian-Saudi airline, and a telecommunications project called SilkLink aimed at turning the country into a regional hub.
Pakistani authorities said four people have been arrested in connection with the suicide bomb attack that killed at least 32 people at a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in the capital, Islamabad, as they observed Friday Prayers. Interior Ministry Moshin Naqvi on February 7 said the four are suspected of having helped the suicide bomber in the attack, which also injured some 170 worshippers in Tarlai, a suburb of Islamabad. Mosques across the Muslim world are traditionally crowded during Friday Prayers.
After Pakistan announced their boycott of the forthcoming T20I World Cup match against India, the International Cricket Council (ICC) was quick to lament the position the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) had put fans in. [Pakistan's] decision is not in the interest of the global game or the welfare of fans worldwide, the ICC said in a release, before going on to make special mention of millions in Pakistan, who will now have no India fixture to anticipate.
One journalist, who spoke anonymously out of fear that being named would place more pressure on my family, said their father had been detained and warned by security forces that they were monitoring overseas journalists. They knew everything about me somehow, the journalist said. They said they know where I live. They even gave my father the address, the telephone number, where I'm sitting exactly in the newsroom.
Amid the commotion, Aamer Iqbal, a 50-year-old banker, took a deep breath and asked his daughter to let go of the kite she was helping to launch. It was the first time in nearly two decades that Iqbal was able to engage in an activity that had defined his childhood: the simple act of flying a kite.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
The Winter Oympics opening ceremony arrived shrouded in mystery. There wasn't a lot of advance publicity about what might happen, beyond a list of musical performers, heavier on popular classical names including Andrea Bocelli and Lang Lang than pop stars and a quote from the event's creative lead and executive producer, Marco Balich, that it would eschew hi-tech and bling.
[Illegal ebikes] are a total menace on the road, the health minister, Mark Butler, said on Friday. Kids have done stupid things on bikes ever since the penny-farthing [but] the injuries that are coming into our hospital emergency departments are absolutely devastating. We've got to make sure we stop these things coming into the country [and] police are given the powers to crack down, to take them away, to crush them, to destroy them.
Five bronze towers soar 400 feet above Saadiyat Island, the ever-expanding cultural district just off the coast of Abu Dhabi. The structures-which recall the wings of a falcon, a highly prized symbol in the United Arab Emirates-are the architectural signature of the Zayed National Museum, which opened in December. Two weeks before, another vastinstitution, the Natural History Museum, debuted. They will be followed later this year by the most ambitious of all-the late Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
When one of the world's most secretive and far-reaching organizations offers to share how it sees the world, it's worth taking a peek. That's the thought I had when I dove into the CIA World Factbook for the first time as a young editor at CNN International in the early 2000s. If journalists aim to write the first draft of history, I figured, then the Factbook, culling data from Cabinet agencies and other official outlets, could be a reliable primary source.
