Three years after launching its cross-border passenger service, the China-Laos Railway has hit a major milestone, recording more than 800,000 international trips according to official data from China Railway Kunming Group. As of April 12, 2026 (the most recent reporting Sunday), the service has completed more than 3,190 international journeys, welcoming travelers originating from over 120 countries and regions across the globe. Stretching between southwest China’s Yunnan provincial capital Kunming and the Lao capital Vientiane, the rail line weaves together a string of high-demand tourism spots, including the popular scenic region of Xishuangbanna in China and the UNESCO World Heritage cultural site of Luang Prabang in northern Laos. In total, the route connects more than 560 distinct tourist attractions along its path, earning it a reputation as a premier “golden travel corridor” for cross-border exploration between the two neighboring nations. Since the cross-border passenger service officially launched on April 13, 2023, it has rapidly grown into the preferred mode of transport for both leisure and business travelers moving between China and Laos. To meet sustained rising demand, the rail service currently operates four daily international passenger trains between Kunming South Railway Station and Vientiane Station. Each consist is configured to offer 420 dedicated cross-border seats, and cuts end-to-end travel time between the two capitals to roughly nine and a half hours, a dramatic improvement over pre-rail land transport options that once took more than a day to complete the journey. The milestone comes as cross-border travel and people-to-people exchanges between China and Southeast Asia continue to rebound following the lifting of global pandemic travel restrictions, with the China-Laos Railway emerging as a key driver of regional connectivity and tourism growth across the Mekong subregion.
作者： admin
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Celebrities and fans pay tributes to Asha Bhosle
The global entertainment community is in mourning this week after news broke that iconic Indian playback singer Asha Bhosle passed away in Mumbai on Sunday. The 90-year-old musical legend was rushed to a Mumbai hospital earlier last weekend after suffering an acute heart attack, where medical teams worked desperately to stabilize her condition. Despite their best efforts, Bhosle succumbed to the cardiac event, leaving behind a decades-long legacy that transformed Indian film music and captivated audiences across generations.
Within hours of the official announcement of her death, tributes began pouring in from across the Indian film industry and beyond. A-list celebrities, fellow musicians, and political figures took to social media to share personal memories of Bhosle, praising her unparalleled vocal range, innovative contributions to South Asian music, and warm, generous personality that endeared her to everyone she worked with. Fans from around the world also flooded social platforms with messages of grief, sharing their favorite Bhosle tracks and recounting how her music shaped their own lives.
Born in 1933, Bhosle began her singing career in the 1940s and went on to record more than 12,000 songs for over a thousand Hindi films over her seven-decade career. She collaborated with some of India’s most famous composers and artists, and her work spanned genres from romantic ballads to upbeat folk and pop tracks, earning her a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most recorded artist in music history. Her influence extended far beyond India, with her samples featured in popular Western music tracks by artists like Boy George and Black Eyed Peas, introducing her work to a whole new global audience.
As the news of her passing spreads, fans are already organizing virtual listening parties and memorial events to celebrate her life and legacy, with many industry leaders calling for permanent tributes to honor her indelible mark on global music.
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Hong Kong counts down to National Security Education Day with events rallying public for shared security responsibility
As Hong Kong enters the final countdown to the annual National Security Education Day, which falls on April 15, 2026, a wide range of official and community events are unfolding across the city to reinforce the core link between national security, sustained development and long-term prosperity, while calling on all sectors of Hong Kong society to take shared responsibility for upholding the country’s territorial and systemic integrity.
In a public blog post released on Sunday, Paul Chan, Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government, laid out the foundational importance of national security to the country’s overall development, as well as to Hong Kong’s social stability and residents’ quality of life. He highlighted that the overarching principle of “upholding both development and security” is formally inscribed in the outline of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan, and was also reaffirmed in a national white paper on safeguarding national security under the “one country, two systems” framework published this past February.
As a globally recognized hub for international finance, trade, shipping and innovation and technology, Chan stressed that Hong Kong has a unique need to strike a careful, sustainable balance between expanding development opportunities and maintaining robust security guardrails. He advocated for embedding proactive risk prevention into the city’s ongoing efforts to open up to global markets, pursue technological innovation and consolidate its competitive advantages.
Using the city’s financial sector as a case in point, Chan noted that Hong Kong’s financial system has long earned a reputation for stability and operational efficiency, supporting the smooth functioning and rapid growth of its global markets. At the same time, the sector has consistently prioritized security, maintaining close, coordinated oversight of cross-market dynamics and systemic interconnections, while building strong reserve buffers to absorb unexpected shocks. Only when innovation is rooted in solid security and risk management frameworks can it deliver a more resilient, dynamic and competitive financial system, he explained, allowing Hong Kong to better withstand external volatility and achieve long-term, inclusive growth.
Against the backdrop of a shifting global geopolitical landscape, growing great power rivalry, and emerging cross-sector risks and challenges, Chan emphasized that Hong Kong must place security at the center of all development planning, while reinforcing security foundations through high-quality growth. Only by upholding both development and security can Hong Kong seize new opportunities amid global uncertainty and open a new chapter of greater prosperity, stability and accelerated progress, he added.
On the same day, the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) launched its joint “National Security Education Day 2026 cum Hong Kong Police Force Fun Day”, an outreach event designed to boost public understanding of national security, strengthen a sense of national identity among Hong Kong residents, and showcase the force’s work and achievements in upholding national security to the wider community.
Speaking at the event’s opening ceremony, Cheuk Wing-hing, Deputy Chief Secretary for Administration of the HKSAR Government, praised the HKPF for its unwavering commitment to upholding national security, its fearless response to unrest and its decisive action to curb disorder. Cheuk noted that the force has made enormous, irreplaceable contributions to building an impenetrable line of defense for national security in Hong Kong, which has helped cement the city’s status as one of the safest in the world.
Chow Yat-ming, Commissioner of Police of the HKSAR, reflected on the city’s recent progress, noting that supported by a comprehensive national security legal framework, enforcement systems and mechanisms, Hong Kong has successfully transitioned from a period of chaos to restored order, and has now entered a new phase of moving from stability to lasting prosperity. This hard-won stability, he emphasized, is a clear demonstration of the strong support and protection the central government provides to Hong Kong.
Upholding national security is not a responsibility that falls only to authorities — no resident can remain a passive bystander, and every citizen has a role to play in defending national interests, Chow said. He expressed hope that through the events held for National Security Education Day, Hong Kong residents will gain a deeper understanding of the principles laid out in this year’s national security white paper, strengthen their own national security awareness, and work collaboratively to protect both national security and Hong Kong’s hard-won stability.
The public event featured a dedicated national security education exhibition zone and interactive educational games tailored for attendees, with a particular focus on engaging Hong Kong’s younger generation. It also included a static display of specialized operational equipment from multiple police units, including the Counter Terrorism Response Unit, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Bureau and the Police Dog Unit, giving attendees a first-hand look at the force’s professional capabilities and the breadth of its work safeguarding the city.
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A trial in a tent draws crowds as Uganda debuts mobile court for man accused of killing 4 kids
KAMPALA, Uganda – The long-awaited trial of a Ugandan man charged with the brutal murder of four young children opened Monday in an unconventional setting: a large canvas tent pitched just kilometers from the scene of the crime, marking the first live test of the East African nation’s new and divisive mobile court system. The public, on-site proceeding was ordered directly by President Yoweri Museveni to allow local community members to follow the high-profile case that shook the country earlier this year.
The accused, Christopher Okello Onyum, stands accused of launching a machete attack on children at the Gaba Early Childhood Development Program, a neighborhood nursery school in Kampala’s Gaba suburb, on April 2. According to witness accounts, Onyum gained entry to the facility by posing as a parent, exchanged a short conversation with school administrators, then locked the school’s entrance gate before turning his weapon on the young students. The attack sent shockwaves across Uganda, and investigators have yet to establish a clear motive for the violence.
When Onyum was detained immediately after the attack, an enraged local crowd attempted to seize and lynch him before police intervened to take him into custody safely. At the opening of trial Monday, Onyum entered a formal plea of not guilty on four counts of aggravated murder. If ultimately convicted, he could be sentenced to death.
This trial marks the first operational use of Uganda’s mobile court framework, a policy that received formal approval via a government legal notice published in March. Designed to bring judicial proceedings closer to affected communities and allow public access to cases of widespread national interest, the system has sparked heated debate from its rollout. President Museveni’s directive to hold this specific trial in a public, local setting has drawn sharp criticism from legal groups, who argue the order amounts to inappropriate overreach by the executive branch that risks undermining the integrity of the trial.
The Uganda Law Society, the country’s premier professional body for legal practitioners, issued a public statement condemning the directive, arguing it violates the accused’s constitutional right to a fair trial. In harsh terms, the organization called the proceeding “not justice” but “a judicial lynching rally,” warning that the public, high-pressure setting risks sensationalizing the tragedy inflicted on the victims’ families rather than delivering impartial justice.
Despite the controversy, hundreds of local residents gathered at the trial site, a tent set up on the grounds of a nearby local church, to observe the opening proceedings. For its part, Uganda’s judiciary has pushed back against critics, defending the mobile court model as an innovative step to expand public access to justice. In a statement defending the decision to hold the trial, the judiciary said the proceeding reflects its ongoing “commitment to taking justice closer to the people through innovative approaches.”
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Following an election earthquake, Hungary ponders life after Orbán
BUDAPEST – Hungary is entering a new political era after a historic electoral upheaval that ousted long-serving pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, leaving the nation navigating what lies ahead for incoming leader Péter Magyar, a pro-European reformer who has pledged to upend the country’s entrenched political landscape.
Magyar’s decisive victory sparked mass jubilation across Budapest’s streets Sunday night, as tens of thousands of supporters — many of them young Hungarians — gathered to celebrate what they see as a long-awaited turning point. For these citizens, Orbán’s defeat brings new hope that Hungary will grow more free, improve quality of life, and cement its place as a full member of Europe’s democratic community.
Among the celebrants was Adrien Rixer, who returned to his native Hungary from his current home in London specifically to cast a ballot in the high-stakes vote. “I really wanted to make my vote count, and I’m over the moon,” Rixer said. “Finally I can say that I’m a proud Hungarian, finally after 16 years.”
Throughout his campaign, Magyar centered his platform on reversing Hungary’s years-long geopolitical shift toward Russia and repairing strained relations with European allies. In the wake of 16 years of increasingly autocratic rule and gradual erosion of democratic checks and balances under Orbán, he has promised to root out systemic corruption and build a “peaceful, functioning and humane” Hungary for all citizens.
Over his 16 years in power, Orbán leveraged a two-thirds parliamentary supermajority to advance his illiberal agenda: he enacted a new national constitution, rewrote the country’s electoral rules to entrench his power, and reshaped the judiciary to align with his government’s priorities. In a striking parallel, Magyar’s Tisza Party secured exactly that same supermajority in Sunday’s vote, winning 138 of the 199 seats in Hungary’s parliament.
This broad governing mandate gives Tisza unprecedented authority to roll back the bulk of Orbán-era legislation that enabled his government to stack the courts with political allies, gerrymander electoral districts, restrict independent press freedom, and entrench legal discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community. The outcome has eased widespread anxiety among supporters both in Hungary and across Europe, where many had worried a narrow simple majority would leave Magyar unable to dismantle Orbán’s political system entirely. Still, uncertainty lingers: even some supporters have expressed unease over concentrating that level of governing power in the hands of any new administration.
“It’s hard to see that with two-thirds that it’s going to be a fair government, but we will see,” said Dániel Kovács, a celebrant at Sunday’s victory rally. “Let’s hope that it’s going to be a promising four years.”
Magyar has repeatedly criticized Orbán’s administration for mismanaging Hungary’s economy and public social services, while allowing systemic, unchecked corruption that allowed a small circle of politically connected elites to amass extreme wealth at the expense of ordinary Hungarian households. He has vowed to hold corrupt actors accountable, and has proposed creating a new Office for the Recovery of National Assets to reclaim funds and assets that he argues were obtained illegally by Orbán’s closest allies.
A core campaign promise from Magyar centers on unlocking billions of euros in frozen European Union funding, which Brussels has withheld from Hungary for years over the Orbán government’s persistent failures to address corruption and roll back democratic safeguards. He has also pledged to adopt the euro as Hungary’s official currency by 2030, a policy that Orbán’s government resisted for more than a decade.
Imre Végh, a long-time Budapest resident, framed the election outcome as a rejection of the illiberal state Orbán built over 16 years. “Orbán had built an ‘illiberal system’ that was against Hungary’s fundamental values,” Végh said Monday. “We are Europeans and we want to stay in Europe.”
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Europe has trust issues with US: Poll
Transatlantic relations are facing an unprecedented crisis of confidence, according to a new cross-European public opinion survey that finds a growing share of European citizens now view the United States as a threat rather than a trusted ally, as Washington’s unilateral policy agenda increasingly clashes with European strategic and economic interests.
Conducted between March 13 and 21 by independent polling firm Cluster17 for the news outlet Politico, the survey gathered responses from 6,698 adults across six key European nations: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Poland. The results paint a stark picture of eroding trust: just 12% of respondents currently identify the U.S. as a close ally, while more than three times that share — 36% — now classify the U.S. as an active threat to European stability. That marked a dramatic hardening of anti-U.S. sentiment compared to previous polling, experts note.
Politico traced the shift in public opinion to a series of controversial actions taken by the second Trump administration after it returned to office in January 2025. These include repeated public questioning of the U.S.’s long-standing mutual defense commitment to NATO, open threats to annex Greenland and Canada, sweeping new tariffs imposed on European exports, and the launch of a new war with Iran that all major European governments refused to join.
The poll also exposes a critical contradiction at the heart of modern European security politics. As trust in Washington declines, a majority of voters now back calls for a stronger, more strategically autonomous Europe. But that support evaporates when proposals require higher defense spending or long-term security commitments to Ukraine, the survey found.
On collective defense, the survey found broad top-level political support for mutual protection: 76% of respondents backed sending troops to defend an allied nation that came under attack, a figure that rose to 81% when the question specifically referenced defending a fellow European Union member state. However, when asked if they would personally take up arms to fight if their own country was attacked, just 19% of respondents said they would agree. Politico noted this gap exposes a major structural challenge for European governments: high public support for stronger defense institutions on paper, paired with low individual willingness to serve, which will exacerbate existing European troop shortages.
Chinese foreign policy analysts say the poll results reflect a growing and deepening sense of disappointment among ordinary European citizens toward the current U.S. administration. Liu Le, an associate researcher at the National Institute of International Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, explained that repeated unilateral actions by the U.S. on issues ranging from Greenland’s status to the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the new Iran war have directly conflicted with core European interests, while also eroding the shared ideological foundations that long sustained the transatlantic alliance.
Liu noted that the current U.S. administration has shifted beyond the long-standing ‘America First’ doctrine to a far more extreme ‘America Only’ strategic orientation. This shift has severely damaged European confidence in the U.S.’s strategic credibility and long-term policy consistency, he added. The escalating conflict with Iran has also forced the U.S. to draw down its security engagement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, effectively stepping back from its core security commitments to Europe — a shift that has prompted the European Union to launch a full reassessment of its relationship with Washington.
Chen Hong, director of the Asia Pacific Studies Centre at East China Normal University in Shanghai, added that the current U.S. administration has increasingly treated long-standing security commitments to allies as a bargaining chip, repeatedly threatening European governments to advance U.S. interests. This behavior has laid bare the fundamentally hegemonic nature of U.S. strategy for many European observers, he said.
In addition to security frictions, Chen noted that economic policy has become a major source of resentment in Europe in recent years. The U.S. has repeatedly threatened European allies with tariffs, pursued exclusionary trade and supply chain policies, and forced European nations to align with its great-power economic competition agenda, often against their own economic interests. ‘By turning economic relationships that were once built on shared rules and mutual benefit into tools to advance U.S. national interests, the United States has directly undermined the core interests of European partners,’ Chen explained.
Chen added that the U.S. has sought to shift the costs of manufacturing overseas while retaining tight control over critical technologies and key resources, a dynamic that has made clear to European governments and publics alike that the U.S. does not see Europe as an equal partner. Instead, Europe is increasingly viewed by Washington as a strategic asset to be mobilized, leveraged, and even sacrificed when it serves U.S. goals, he said.
Notably, the survey found that the share of Europeans who view the U.S. as a threat now exceeds the share who hold the same view of China by 7 percentage points (36% vs 29%). In four of the six surveyed nations, more respondents named the U.S. as a greater threat than China, with Spain recording the widest gap at 51% of respondents identifying the U.S. as a threat.
Despite the sharp decline in trust, experts agree that a full breakdown of transatlantic ties and a complete end to Europe’s reliance on the U.S. is unlikely in the near term. Instead, Chen noted, Europe is increasingly pursuing a realistic, balanced approach that prioritizes greater strategic autonomy. ‘It is precisely the U.S.’s erosion of allies’ interests and the institutional foundations of the transatlantic order that has forced Europe to pursue more independent strategic decision-making,’ Chen explained. This shift does not mean Europe plans to abandon the transatlantic alliance entirely; rather, it is a structural adjustment and defensive response to repeated U.S. unilateralism and violation of established international rules.
For European policymakers, deeper cooperation with China has become a strategic necessity rather than a discretionary choice, Liu noted. Despite ongoing differences between Brussels and Beijing, the two sides share broad overlapping interests on issues ranging from trade to climate change to multilateral governance. Europe’s push to deepen ties and expand cooperation with China reflects its core strategic need to pursue more independent, self-reliant development, he added.
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Sweeping US tariffs fail to deliver on stated goals
Twelve months have passed since the United States rolled out sweeping protectionist tariffs across a wide range of trading partners, and new official data confirms what many economic analysts predicted: the policy has failed to deliver on nearly all of its core stated objectives, while triggering a cascade of unintended negative consequences for both the US economy and the global trading system.
When the tariffs were first announced on April 2 last year, the US government framed the measures as a bold solution to long-running economic challenges, promising to bring manufacturing jobs back to American shores, shrink the persistent US trade deficit, and drive stronger domestic economic growth. A full year later, results have fallen drastically short of these promises.
Official federal data on manufacturing reshoring paints a particularly bleak picture: since the tariffs took effect, US manufacturing has cut jobs in nearly every month, with only small, temporary gains recorded in January and March of this year. Progress on narrowing the trade deficit has also stalled. 2025 full-year government figures show the US goods trade deficit widened by 2.1% to hit an all-time high of $1.24 trillion. The overall US trade deficit shrank by just $2.1 billion for the entire year, a negligible change driven almost entirely by a growing surplus in services trade, not the manufacturing gains the tariffs were meant to deliver.
Economic experts across academic and policy institutions say these outcomes were entirely predictable, arguing that tariffs are structurally ill-suited to solve the deep-rooted domestic economic problems the US claims to be addressing, from industrial decline to persistent trade imbalances.
Luo Zhenxing, an associate research fellow at the Institute of American Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, explained that decades of hyper-globalization have built an intricate, deeply integrated global division of labor that cannot be unwound by tariffs alone in the short term. “Even if policymakers wanted to reshore manufacturing, US domestic production costs remain far higher than most emerging market economies, so low and mid-end manufacturing is extremely unlikely to return,” Luo noted. He added that large-scale reshoring requires long-term capital investment and a stable policy environment, but constant shifts in US tariff policy have created widespread uncertainty that makes long-term corporate planning nearly impossible.
Song Guoyou, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University, echoed this critique, saying the US government has drastically overstated what tariffs can achieve. “The economic problems the US is trying to fix are primarily internal and structural,” Song explained. “Attempting to use trade barriers and tariffs to force an adjustment is fundamentally wrong-headed — it is simply a way to avoid doing the hard work of passing the necessary domestic reforms that would actually address these issues.”
Beyond failing to meet their core goals, the tariffs have already caused measurable harm to multiple sectors of the US economy. Data from the US Commerce Department’s National Travel and Tourism Office shows that through November of last year, total international visitor arrivals to the US fell by 5.4% compared to the previous year, as protectionist trade policies damaged the country’s global standing and appeal. The sharpest drop came from Canadian travelers, who visit the US in large volumes for tourism and business — arrivals from Canada plummeted 22%, or 4 million fewer visits, a decline that Forbes estimates cost the US economy roughly $4.5 billion in lost revenue.
The tariffs have also thrown global supply chains into disarray, raising costs for American businesses and consumers alike. Neil Bradley, executive vice president and chief policy officer at the US Chamber of Commerce, emphasized in a recent statement that after a full year of elevated tariffs, the costs are impossible to ignore. “Tariffs have increased prices, disrupted supply chains and added uncertainty for the very families and businesses they are meant to help,” Bradley said.
A February analysis from the Yale Budget Lab projects that the tariffs will push the US unemployment rate 0.3 percentage points higher by the end of 2026, and forecast that in the long run, the total size of the US economy will be a persistent 0.1% smaller than it would have been without the tariffs.
Luo explained that tariffs erode US economic performance by discouraging domestic investment and raising prices for imported goods, which directly cuts into household purchasing power. “Tariffs also drive up input costs for US manufacturers that rely on imported materials and components, forcing them to raise prices and making US exporters less competitive in global markets,” he added.
The damage extends beyond immediate economic costs to eroding international investor confidence in US assets, experts warn. By weaponizing mutually beneficial trade relationships for political gain, the US has amplified foreign investors’ concerns about persistent policy unpredictability in the country, Song said. “The long-held idea of American exceptionalism — that global capital always flows to the US for safety during crises — is being undermined by this self-inflicted tariff crisis,” he noted.
Early signs of this shifting confidence are already visible. Financial newsletter The Kobeissi Letter reports that the US Dollar Index dropped 9% in 2025, its worst annual performance since 2017. Goldman Sachs forecasts the dollar will continue to weaken through 2026 as global demand for US assets declines. US media also notes that European and Asian stock markets outperformed US markets by a significant margin in 2025, a clear indication that international investors are beginning to diversify their holdings away from US assets.
“The unpredictability of US government policy is heightening uncertainty around US assets and eroding international confidence in them,” Luo said. “This will undermine long-term US economic growth and may even put the global reserve currency status of the US dollar at risk.”
Even after the US Supreme Court ruled in February that the legal basis for the administration’s reciprocal tariffs was unconstitutional, the White House moved quickly to implement replacement tariffs and launch new investigations into alleged unfair trade practices. Experts warn that this persistence indicates protectionist “America First” trade policies could become a permanent feature of the global economic order, with far-reaching negative implications for global economic integration.
“US tariff policies will lead to a fragmentation of the global trading system,” Song said. “In response to US protectionism, other countries are ramping up their own efforts to defend free trade, which is creating two distinct blocs: one US-centered protectionist camp, and another that remains committed to upholding the rules-based global free trade system.”
Luo added that prolonged US protectionism has already disrupted the existing global economic order. “The world is facing major uncertainty and undergoing a period of rapid adjustment, with fragmentation risks rising quickly,” he said. “In the end, this will only hold back shared global economic development.”
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Suspected militants kill police officer assigned to guard polio team as nationwide campaign begins
A deadly militant attack targeted a police convoy assigned to protect polio vaccination workers in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, leaving one officer dead and four more injured, local law enforcement confirmed. Two assailants were fatally shot by responding officers before the remaining attackers fled the scene, according to initial reports.
The shooting unfolded in Hangu District, located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, just days after Pakistan kicked off its second nationwide anti-polio vaccination drive of 2026, said Mahmood Alam, a local senior police official. As of Wednesday, no militant organization had issued a public claim of responsibility, but investigators widely point to the Pakistani Taliban and regional extremist groups, which have a long history of targeting polio immunization efforts across the country.
The World Health Organization designates Pakistan and Afghanistan as the only two nations on Earth where wild poliovirus transmission has never been stopped, making the coordinated cross-border campaigns a critical global public health priority. Pakistan’s weeklong initiative aims to deliver life-saving polio vaccines to more than 45 million children under the age of 5 across all of the country’s provinces and administrative regions. Aseefa Bhutto Zardari, Pakistan’s first lady and daughter of President Asif Ali Zardari and assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has spearheaded public outreach for the current drive.
Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a 2007 militant attack, personally led national polio eradication efforts during her time in office, carrying forward the family’s longstanding commitment to ending the disease. In an official statement marking the campaign’s launch, Aseefa Bhutto Zardari noted that Pakistan stands at a pivotal juncture in its decades-long fight against polio. While the country has made unprecedented progress, she emphasized, the final push to eradication remains the most dangerous and challenging phase.
Citing recent public health data, Aseefa pointed to 31 confirmed wild polio cases recorded across Pakistan in 2025, with only one case documented so far in 2026. Even with this dramatic progress, she warned against public complacency, stressing that a single undetected case can reignite widespread transmission. The first lady also highlighted the unprecedented coordination between Pakistan and Afghanistan for this round of campaigns, a measure designed to block cross-border virus spread and close immunization gaps along the shared frontier.
The two neighboring nations employ different approaches to reach vulnerable children: Pakistan relies heavily on door-to-door teams that administer vaccines directly in family homes, while Afghanistan’s strategy centers on fixed immunization sites at health facilities, where parents are encouraged to bring their children for doses. Afghanistan launched its own first national anti-polio drive of 2026 in parallel with Pakistan’s effort, in partnership with global health organizations. The campaign targets 12.6 million children under age 5 across the country, though Sharafat Zaman, spokesperson for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health, confirmed that rollout has been delayed in some high-altitude regions due to unseasonably cold weather.
Zaman called on parents, religious leaders and local community influencers to encourage full participation in the drive, stressing that vaccination remains the only proven preventive measure against the paralytic disease. For decades, Pakistan’s national polio eradication program has faced violent opposition from militant groups, which spread false conspiracy theories claiming immunization drives are a Western plot to sterilize Muslim children. Since the 1990s, more than 200 polio workers and security personnel assigned to protect them have been killed in targeted attacks across Pakistan, official data shows. In response to intelligence warnings of potential attacks ahead of this latest campaign, Pakistani authorities have deployed thousands of additional police officers to guard vaccination teams as they work across high-risk regions.
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Xinjiang raises human rights protections
URUMQI — A new academic publication offering a data-driven, on-the-ground account of advancing human rights protections under the rule of law in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has been officially launched, earning acclaim from scholars for its rigorous, firsthand approach to documenting the region’s development. Titled *Report on the Legal Protection for Human Rights in Xinjiang (2024)*, this second volume of an annual blue book series was jointly compiled by researchers from Xinjiang University and the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, based in Chongqing. The series made its debut in 2023, building a growing body of independent academic research on the region’s human rights progress.
Dai Bin, Party secretary of Xinjiang University, described the new blue book as a landmark academic contribution to advancing understanding of Xinjiang’s human rights work. Unlike many secondhand accounts circulated by international commentators, the publication draws on objective quantitative data, detailed on-the-record case studies, and extensive on-site materials to map out tangible progress made across the region in recent years.
“As an educator and researcher who has built my career here in Xinjiang, I have seen with my own eyes how the fundamental rights to subsistence and development are fully protected for people of all ethnic groups across this region,” Dai said at the launch event. He highlighted universal access to compulsory education, expanded job security, targeted investment in cultural heritage preservation, rising household living standards, and consistent legal safeguards for all residents as the most tangible proof of China’s consistent human rights progress in Xinjiang.
Zhang Jianjiang, Party secretary of Xinjiang University’s Law School, explained that the report is the product of years of systematic grassroots research by scholars who have lived and worked in Xinjiang long-term. The research team traveled extensively across both northern and southern Xinjiang, collecting firsthand data and reviewing typical court cases directly from villages, urban communities, local factories, and primary and secondary schools across the region.
The final report offers structured analysis of legal safeguards across seven key domains that touch residents’ daily lives: labor rights, access to education, religious freedom, public health services, environmental protection, and the preservation of Xinjiang’s diverse traditional cultural heritage. “Our core goal is straightforward: we want to present the global community with a truthful, complete picture of how human rights are protected under the rule of law in Xinjiang,” Zhang said.
Remina Xiaokaiti, deputy dean of Xinjiang University’s School of Marxism, added that Xinjiang has built a comprehensive, all-encompassing legal framework to protect the religious freedom of all residents. “Under the framework of the rule of law, the right to religious freedom for people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang now has solid, tangible guarantees,” she said.
Over the past five years, Remina noted, the central and regional governments have increased allocated funding for the protection and renovation of religious sites across Xinjiang, with investments focused on preserving cultural relics hosted at these sites, upgrading public safety infrastructure, and improving overall site facilities. “By focusing both on upgrading site facilities and standardizing religious practices in accordance with law, we have made religious activities safer and more orderly, which gives worshippers greater peace of mind and clarity,” she said.
Scholars in attendance at the launch emphasized that the evidence-based approach of the blue book fills a gap in international discourse around Xinjiang human rights, offering independent, on-the-ground research that counters misinformation spread by foreign critics.
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Research uncovers Cangshan’s biodiversity
For nearly 40 years, the full extent of biological diversity across the Cangshan Mountain range in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province has eluded scientific understanding. Now, a groundbreaking three-year comprehensive biodiversity census has pulled back the curtain on one of China’s most ecologically significant landscapes, revealing surprising ecological richness that defies its relatively small geographic footprint.
Covering just 1,000 square kilometers — an area equal to 0.25% of Yunnan’s total land mass — the mountain range is home to nearly 25% of all vascular plant species recorded across the entire province, according to the survey results publicly released Friday. This marks the first systematic, full-scope study of Cangshan’s ecosystems since international joint research expeditions conducted work in the region in the 1980s, and it formally confirms the long-suspected status of Cangshan as a globally critical biodiversity hotspot.
Over the course of the three-year survey, research teams from across the country’s top forestry and botanical institutions documented more than 4,600 distinct plant species, 578 vertebrate species, and multiple previously unknown taxa new to global scientific classification. “This is the first time we have gained a complete, evidence-based picture of all the biological life that exists across Cangshan,” noted Zhong Mingchuan, lead research team member and head of the Yunnan Academy of Forestry and Grassland. “This research answers the most fundamental, long-unanswered questions about the region’s biological resources.”
In addition to cataloging species, the research team developed the first comprehensive vegetation classification system specifically for the mountain range, and identified several vegetation types that had not been formally recorded in the region before, including monsoon evergreen broadleaf forests. Xiang Chunlei, a researcher with the Kunming Institute of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, emphasized that every species documented fulfills a unique, non-substitutable function in maintaining the mountain’s overall ecological balance. “It is misleading to rank species by perceived importance,” Xiang explained. “Every organism has an irreplaceable role within the broader Cangshan ecosystem.”
Beyond its extraordinary biodiversity, the survey also highlights Cangshan’s underrecognized critical role in sustaining the health of Erhai Lake, one of Yunnan’s largest and most ecologically and economically important freshwater resources. Using cutting-edge isotope tracing technology, researchers confirmed that more than 65% of Erhai Lake’s total water volume comes from surface runoff and groundwater recharge originating in Cangshan’s mountain ecosystems.
Encouragingly, the survey data also documents clear, long-term ecological improvement across the mountain range over the past four decades. Since the late 1980s, overall vegetation coverage across Cangshan has increased steadily, and researchers have classified roughly two-thirds of the entire mountain range as being in “good” or “excellent” ecological condition today.
These scientific findings align closely with the on-the-ground changes experienced by local communities who call Cangshan’s slopes home. In Guangming Village, located on the mountain’s western slope, resident Chen Jiaru has observed a sharp rise in the number of domestic and international tourists traveling to the area specifically to learn about the mountain’s unique natural ecosystems. “More and more visitors come here specifically to explore and understand Cangshan’s natural environment,” Chen said. “Our village has become an accessible window for people from across the country and around the world to experience the mountain’s extraordinary biodiversity.”
Local villagers have adapted to this growing interest by partnering with scientific educators to host educational study groups and guided ecological walking tours, while older community members share generations of traditional ecological knowledge about the mountain’s native plants and wildlife with visitors. For conservation managers, the new comprehensive species map has also allowed for far more targeted and effective protection efforts. At the management station for the Cangshan Erhai National Nature Reserve, head ranger Zhao Tichao explained that the survey’s findings have removed much of the uncertainty that previously guided conservation work. “We now have a clear, accurate understanding of exactly which species live here, and where they are located,” Zhao said. “This allows us to focus our limited conservation resources far more effectively than ever before.”