200: Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were indicted on Thursday on charges of unlawfully selling state gifts, including jewelry, at undervalued prices. They pleaded not guilty the same day, calling the charges politically motivated amid nearly 200 cases Khan has faced since his 2022 ouster. Khan and Bibi received 14-year sentences before this year’s election, but those terms were suspended on appeal following a prior three-year sentence in a related case.
1: India’s cabinet has approved legislation for simultaneous national and state elections, the first step in advancing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “One Nation One Election” plan. Supporters say it would put a stop to India’s state of “perpetual elections,” but critics argue it would favor the national ruling party, Modi’s BJP, in local races.
160,000,000: In its latest crackdown on Big Tech, Australia will charge social media giants like Meta and Google millions if they don’t pay local media for news content. All platforms with revenue over AU$160 million will be obliged to pay up, but charges will be offset by any commercial agreements voluntarily struck between the platforms and news media businesses.
1,000,000: Nothing says sorry quite like cold hard cash. Meta announced on Wednesday that it's donating $1 million to the inaugural fund of President-elect Donald Trump, and Amazon.com, not to be outdone, plans to do the same. The moves appear to be fence-mending gestures – or, as critics are calling them, attempts to curry favor. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg's relationship with the president-elect soured after Facebook and Instagram suspended Trump’s accounts in 2021 for his praise of the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, and Trump has been critical of Jeff Bezos for owning the Washington Post -- and the newspaper's political coverage.
