Submit your Article

US Former President Donald J Trump on Monday (local time) sued CNN, accusing the network of engaging in a smear campaign against him ahead of the 2024 presidential elections.  According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump is seeking more than $475m in damages. The lawsuit was filed in a federal court in southern Florida, alleging that CNN has sought to use its influence with viewers to spread false claims about Trump for the purpose of defeating him politically. As per The Wall Street Journal, Trump accused CNN of associating him with Adolf Hitler and portraying him as a Russian lackey and a racist.  The network, he alleged, has been escalating these efforts recently in the expectation that he may run for president again in 2024.  It is to be noted that over the course of his business and political career, Trump has frequently threatened to sue media organizations over news coverage. In 2020, his re-election campaign sued The New York Times and The Washington Post over opinion articles that linked the former US President to Russian interference in American elections, The New York Times reported. In 2019, Trump threatened CNN with a lawsuit over "unethical and unlawful attacks." CNN called that threat "a desperate PR stunt." A suit never materialized, as per The New York Times.  Meanwhile, following the day when Trump's legal team filed a lawsuit against CNN, the former US President threatened legal action against various news media outlets and the House select committee investigating the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol.  The Hill reported, Trump, however, did not specify what other media outlets he plans to sue but said he would file lawsuits against them for their "disinformation" about the 2020 election, which he lost to President Biden.  "In the coming weeks and months we will also be filing lawsuits against a large number of other Fake News Media Companies for their lies, defamation, and wrongdoing, including as it pertains to 'The Big Lie,' that they used so often in reference to their disinformation attack on Presidential Election of 2020," Trump wrote in his statement cited by The Hill.  The former president said he would target Jan 6. committee for not investigating his claims of election fraud. "The Unselect Committee has refused to acknowledge, as was done by the Biden Inspector General at the Department of Defense, and others, that days ahead of January 6th, I recommended and authorized thousands of troops to be deployed to ensure that there was peace, safety, and security at the Capitol and throughout the Country," Trump added. (ANI)

The Islamabad High Court on Monday dismissed a contempt case against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief and former Prime Minister Imran Khan after he agreed to apologize for his controversial remarks against a female judge at a rally.  A five-member bench, headed by IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah, said it was satisfied by Imran Khan's apology over the remarks against Additional District and Sessions Judge Zeba Chaudhry, Dawn reported.  During the court proceedings, the chief justice noted that prima facie this was a contempt of court case but it was being dismissed due to Imran Khan's conduct.  "We have read your affidavit. Is there anything else you would like to add?" Justice Minallah asked Imran Khan. "We take a lot of care in contempt of court cases," Justice Minallah added. He said the IHC was "discharging" the notice issued to Imran Khan, effectively ending contempt proceedings against the PTI chief, the report said. "This is the unanimous decision of the larger bench," Justice Minallah said. Imran Khan had submitted an affidavit in the IHC, assuring the court he would never do anything in future that would hurt the dignity of any court and the judiciary, especially the lower judiciary, The Express Tribune reported.  "I am ready to apologize if the judges think I have crossed a red line," he had said. On Sunday, IHC approved the pre-arrest bail of Imran Khan and directed him to appear before the court concerned before October 7 after he filed a petition with the Islamabad High Court through his counsel Babar Awan.  In the plea, Imran Khan said a terrorism case was initially filed against him, however, he added that the charges were later struck down by the high court and the case was transferred. Earlier, an arrest warrant was issued for the former premier in connection with the case.  Imran Khan had made some controversial remarks against Sessions Judge Zeba Chaudhry and other officials at a rally on August 20 in Islamabad. The PTI chief had criticized the female judge after she had approved an extension in the physical remand of his close aide Shahbaz Gill in a sedition case.  The PTI chief was booked in a terrorism case on the complaint of Islamabad Sadar Magistrate Ali Javed for threatening the female judge. The terrorism case was registered against Imran Khan in Margalla police station for allegedly using derogatory language and threatening the judge. (ANI)

Ahead of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), President Xi Jinping is pushing for a "new era" discourse to strengthen his personal power.  Hugo Jones, writing in The Diplomat said that the "new era"—connoting a fundamental historical shift—has been systematically fused with the persona of Xi in Chinese official discourse. Significantly, Xi calls Mao Zedong's time the 'revolution period,' Deng Xiaoping's the 'building period,' Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao's the 'reform period' while calling his term a 'whole new era.'  For the past five years, the term "new era" has appeared with increasing frequency in China's white papers, propaganda, official speeches, and public diplomacy.  From early on in his premiership, it was clear that Xi Jinping sought historical significance greater than that of his two immediate predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. This was also encouraged by growing Chinese nationalism, which predates Xi, reported The Diplomat. For Xi, while the "new era" is scalable from the local to the international context, it is ultimately all about China, "It will be an era that sees China moving closer to center stage and making greater contributions to mankind."  The discourse of a "new era" serves three functions. First, it bolsters the CCP's legitimacy in a domestic context. The "new era" is also used to provide the context for sensitive issues such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan, said Jones.  Second, the discourse of a "new era" is used to empower the CCP and challenge norms internationally. The strongest example was on February 4, when Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin released a joint statement on "International Relations Entering a New Era," a major foreign policy declaration that aligned China with Russia weeks before the invasion of Ukraine.  The discourse of a "new era" is also used to challenge the US, NATO, and Western countries that belong to the "old," unipolar era of global politics. The "new era" is presented by China as the just temporality of a multipolar, post-imperial world.  Third, the discourse of a "new era" serves to reinforce the idea that the government of China, and the governance of Xi, are always thinking in the long term, operating on fundamentally different time scales to the Western world. This reinforces certain orientalist tropes that China is inherently "better" at grand strategy, reported The Diplomat.  However, despite its popularity, this narrative disguises the reality that Xi and the CCP are often as short-sighted as other regimes—the chaotic "zero-COVID" policy is just one example. This reminds us that we should take the narrative of a "new era" with a fair degree of skepticism, said Jones. (ANI)

Former mayor of Itahari Sub-metropolitan Dwarika Lal Chaudhary has joined CPN (Maoist Center). Chairman of the Maoist Pushpa Kamal Dahal welcomed CPN-UML leaders and cadres along with Chaudhary on Sunday morning. Chaudhary, resident of Itahari-17, was involved in politics from the student wing of UML in 1985. He became the president of UML Sunsari district in 2015 and was elected mayor of Itahari sub-metropolitan city in the local elections of 2017.