Asia
Who is Bushra Bibi, Imran Khan’s mysterious third wife?
The mysterious and enigmatic persona of Bushra Bibi, third wife of former Pakistani Prime Minister and cricket legend Imran Khan, has come under heightened scrutiny, particularly following their recent conviction in a corruption case.
In stark contrast to Khan’s two previous high-profile marriages with British socialite Jemima Goldsmith and journalist Reham Khan, Bushra has maintained a veiled and low-profile existence, emphasizing her intellect and character rather than her appearance, as disclosed by Khan in 2018, reports BBC.
Apart from her discreet personal life, it is Bushra’s “mystical” attributes that have fueled widespread speculation. Recognized as a faith healer with a small following, she garnered respect as a spiritual adviser, rooted in the Sufi tradition that emphasizes the inner quest for God and detachment from worldly concerns, it said.
The marriage of Khan and Bushra in 2018 marked a departure from his previous grand unions, with the ceremony influenced by their shared interest in Sufism and conducted with minimal fanfare. Rumors circulate that Khan sought advice from Bushra after encountering her at a 13th-century Sufi shrine, where she purportedly dreamt that their union would pave the way for Khan to become the prime minister. Subsequently, they married, and six months later, Khan assumed office.
Read: Pakistan's imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan is convicted again, days before elections
Bushra, however, binned the claim.
The subsequent years of Imran Khan’s tenure were marked by economic challenges, rising living costs, political oppression, curtailed media freedoms, and human rights violations.
His political downfall ensued, culminating in his ousting in 2022 through a vote of no confidence and subsequent arrests. The recent corruption case resulting in imprisonment and fines for both Khan and Bushra has raised questions about her role in the alleged illegal selling of state gifts, valued at over RS 140 million ($501,000; £395,000), the report said.
Facing a 14-year sentence, Bushra also contends with legal challenges from her former husband, Khawar Maneka – a civil servant and son of a well-known politician – filed a complaint alleging fraudulent marriage and fornication.
Under Muslim family law, women are prohibited from remarrying for a few months after their husband dies or they are divorced. It is alleged that Bushra married Imran Khan before the completion of the stipulated time following her divorce from Khawar Maneka.
As Bushra Bibi navigates through these legal complexities, a government notice suggests she will be placed under house arrest in Islamabad until further orders.
The intriguing narrative surrounding Imran Khan’s mysterious third wife continues to unfold, leaving many unanswered questions about her role and influence in the tumultuous political landscape.
Read more: Jinnah House attack case: Imran called for quizzing
520 killed in 6-month violent attacks in Myanmar
A total of 520 people have been killed in violent attacks in Myanmar in nearly six months from Aug. 1 last year to Jan. 29 this year, the official Myanmar News Agency reported on Thursday.
The victims included three Buddhist monks, 438 civilians and 79 civil servants, the media report said.
During the period, 11 electric and communications towers, 97 bridges and toll gate buildings, six healthcare buildings, 13 schools and educational buildings were also damaged in the attacks, it said.
Read: Out of options, Rohingya fleeing Myanmar and Bangladesh by boat despite soaring death toll
The People's Defence Force (PDF) has reportedly carried out the attacks across the Southeast Asian country.
Starting from Feb. 1, 2021, when Myanmar declared a state of emergency, to Jan. 29 this year, a total of 6,880 people have been killed in violent attacks across the country, the media report added.
Pakistan's imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan is convicted again, days before elections
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was found guilty of corruption on Wednesday and sentenced to 14 years, yet another blow to the imprisoned populist leader days before his political movement attempts a return to power in parliamentary elections.
It was his second conviction in as many days and the harshest yet, and was seen as part of the long-running struggle between civilian leaders and the powerful military in the troubled Western ally.
Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi — who was also convicted Wednesday — were accused of retaining and selling state gifts in violation of government rules when he was in power. In addition to his prison term, Khan was disqualified from holding any public office for 10 years.
His lawyer, Babar Awan, dismissed the conviction as a violation of Khan's basic rights, and said the former premier was convicted and sentenced in such a hurry that the judge did not wait for the arrival of his legal team.
Read: The bodies of 9 Pakistanis killed by unknown gunmen in Iran have been repatriated
Khan — who in the waning days of his premiership began to challenge the country's military — was ousted from power in a no-confidence vote in April 2022. He now has more than 150 legal cases hanging over him.
Still, the former cricket star remains intensely popular. Pakistan saw violent demonstrations — including ones that targeted military installations — after Khan’s arrest last year.
Authorities have since cracked down on his supporters and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, making further rallies unlikely, and many of his party's candidates have been disqualified from contesting the Feb. 8 parliamentary elections.
Pakistan has a history of arresting former prime ministers or sidelining them ahead of elections if they are deemed to pose a challenge to the security establishment — which has long held significant sway in civilian politics. More than two-thirds of its civilian rulers have been arrested, convicted or disqualified since the country gained independence from Britain in 1947.
But even given this history, analyst Azim Chaudhry said the rapid succession of Khan’s convictions — three in about six months — was unusual.
“The message is Imran Khan will remain behind bars for a longer time if he does not change his rhetoric against the country’s institutions,” said Chaudhry, who is an independent, Islamabad-based analyst.
With Khan fighting legal battles, his rival, three-time premier Nawaz Sharif, has a clear path to a fourth term in office. Sharif himself was hobbled by legal cases and prison sentences, but the Supreme Court and other courts have acquitted him on all charges and scrapped a lifetime ban on politicians with criminal convictions from contesting elections.
Read: Pakistani court sentences former Prime Minister Imran Khan to 10 years for revealing state secrets
Sharif's party succeeded Khan's after his ouster, and currently a caretaker government headed by Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-haq Kakar is running day-to-day affairs.
Though Kakar has said he would ensure free and fair elections in a peaceful environment, there have been isolated attacks at election rallies. A candidate from Khan's party, Rehan Zeb, was shot and killed Wednesday in northwestern Pakistan's Bajur district. A day earlier, four people died when a roadside bomb went off near rally participants from Khan's party in the southwestern Baluchistan province.
Khan and Bibi were indicted three weeks ago on charges that they bought gifts — including jewelry and watches from Saudi Arabia’s government — at reduced prices and sold them at market value. They pleaded not guilty.
In Pakistan, government leaders are allowed to buy gifts received from foreign dignitaries and heads of state, but they aren’t usually then sold. If they are, the earnings must be declared. The prosecution said Khan did not correctly disclose his income after selling gifts.
In addition to the prison terms, the couple was fined 787 million rupees ($2.8 million) each.
Khan is already serving a three-year sentence on a corruption conviction, and he got a 10-year term on Tuesday after being found guilty of revealing state secrets; all three sentences will be served concurrently.
In a statement, Zulfiqar Bukhari, the chief spokesperson for Khan’s party, said Wednesday's ruling was “another sad day in our judicial system history which is being dismantled.”
Awan, the lawyer, said the latest ruling would be challenged in higher courts.
Bibi was absent when the judge announced the verdict but later went to the court to avoid being arrested. She will be handed over to prison officials to serve her sentence.
Khan briefly attended Wednesday's hearing but left the courtroom when the judge was about to read the verdict. He said he could not remain there without his lawyer and asked the judge to wait. His request was denied.
Muhammad Ali, an Islamabad-based political analyst, noted that Khan's legal team has frequently skipped court hearings as part of a strategy to delay the trial.
Gohar Khan, the head of the PTI, disputed the idea that Imran Khan’s political career was over after this latest conviction.
“He is not gone and I appeal to our supporters to vote for the candidates of PTI to ensure that we win the election, and this is the best way to avenge (him),” he said.
Analysts, however, have said Khan's party will struggle in upcoming elections, with no one able to match his charisma.
Out of options, Rohingya fleeing Myanmar and Bangladesh by boat despite soaring death toll
Across a treacherous stretch of water, the Rohingya came by the thousands, then died by the hundreds. And though they know the dangers of fleeing by boat, many among this persecuted people say they will not stop — because the world has left them with no other choice.
Last year, nearly 4,500 Rohingya — two-thirds of them women and children — fled their homeland of Myanmar and the refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh by boat, the United Nations’ refugee agency reported. Of those, 569 died or went missing while crossing the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, the highest death toll since 2014.
The numbers mean one out of every eight Rohingya who attempted the crossing never made it, the UNHCR said last week.
Yet despite the risks, there are no signs the stream of Rohingya is ebbing. On Thursday, Indonesian officials said another boat carrying Rohingya refugees landed in the country’s northern province of Aceh.
Not a good time for Rohingya repatriation, UN Resident Coordinator says
Fishermen provided food and water to 131 Rohingya, mostly women and children, who had been on board, said Marzuki, the leader of the local tribal fishing community, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
Some passengers told officials they had been at sea since last month and their boat's engine had broken down, leaving them adrift, said Lt. Col. Andi Susanto, commander of the navy base in Lhokseumawe.
“Southeast Asian waters are one of the deadliest stretches in the world and a graveyard for many Rohingya who have lost their lives,” says Babar Baloch, UNHCR’s spokesman for Asia and the Pacific. “The rate of Rohingya who are dying at sea without being rescued — that’s really alarming and worrying.”
Inside the squalid refugee camps in Bangladesh, where more than 750,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims fled in 2017 following sweeping attacks by Myanmar’s military, the situation has grown increasingly desperate. Not even the threat of death at sea is enough to stop many from trying to traverse the region’s waters in a bid to reach Indonesia or Malaysia.
“We need to choose the risky journey by boat because the international community has failed their responsibility,” says Mohammed Ayub, who is saving up money for a spot on one of the rickety wooden fishing boats traffickers use to ferry passengers 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) from Bangladesh to Indonesia.
Global indifference toward the Rohingya crisis has left those languishing in the overcrowded camps with few alternatives to fleeing. Because Bangladesh bans the Rohingya from working, their survival is dependent upon food rations, which were slashed last year due to a drop in global donations.
Returning safely to Myanmar is virtually impossible for the Rohingya, because the military that attacked them overthrew Myanmar’s democratically elected government in 2021. And no country is offering the Rohingya any large-scale resettlement opportunities.
Meanwhile, a surge in killings, kidnappings and arson attacks by militant groups in the camps has left residents fearing for their lives. And so, starving, scared and out of options, they continue to board the boats.
Ayub has lived in a sweltering, cramped shelter for more than six years in a camp where security and sanitation are scarce, and hope even scarcer. There is no formal schooling for his children, no way for him to earn money, no prospects for returning to his homeland and no refuge for his family amid spiraling gang violence.
World must find an end to Rohingya crisis for their return to Myanmar: PM Hasina tells UK MPs
“Of course I understand how dangerous the boat journey by sea is,” Ayub says. “We could die during the journey by boat. But it depends on our fate. ... It’s better to choose the dangerous way even if it’s risky, because we are afraid to stay in the camps.”
Two hundred of the people who died or went missing at sea last year were aboard one boat that left Bangladesh in November. Eyewitnesses on a nearby boat told The Associated Press that the missing vessel, which was crowded with babies, children and mothers, broke down and was taking on water before it drifted off during a storm as its passengers screamed for help. It has not been seen since.
It was one of several distressed boats that the region’s coastal countries neglected to save, despite the UNHCR’s requests for those countries to launch search and rescue missions.
“When no action is taken, lives are lost,” says UNHCR’s Baloch. “If there is no hope restored in Rohingya lives either in Myanmar or in Bangladesh, there are no rescue attempts, (then) sadly we could see more desperate people dying in Southeast Asian seas under the watch of coastal authorities who could act to save lives.”
Six of Mohammed Taher’s family members were aboard the boat that vanished in November, including his 15-year-old brother, Mohammed Amin, and two of Taher’s nephews, aged 3 and 4. Their ultimate destination was Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country where many Rohingya seek relative safety.
Taher and his parents now struggle to sleep or eat, and spend their days agonizing over what became of their loved ones. Taher’s mother saw a fortune teller who said her relatives were still alive. Taher, meanwhile, dreamed that the boat made it to shore, where his relatives took refuge in a school and were able to bathe in warm water. But he remains unconvinced their journey ended so happily.
And so he has vowed to tell everyone to stay off the boats, no matter how unbearable life on land has become.
“I will never leave by boat on this difficult journey,” Taher says. “All the people who reached their destination are saying that it’s horrific traveling by boat.”
Yet such warnings are often futile. Ayub is now preparing to sell his daughter’s jewelry to help pay for his spot on a boat. While he is frightened by the stories of those who didn’t make it, he is motivated by the stories of those who did.
“Nobody would consider taking a risk by boat on a dangerous journey if they had better opportunities,” he says. “Fortunately, some people did reach their destination and got a better life. I am staying positive that Allah will save us.”
FM hopeful of Rohingya repatriation soon
The bodies of 9 Pakistanis killed by unknown gunmen in Iran have been repatriated
The bodies of nine Pakistani laborers killed by gunmen in Iran last week were repatriated to their home country Thursday.
It was still unclear who was behind the attack Saturday in a home in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province. Three Pakistanis wounded in the attack were still being treated at an Iranian hospital.
Read: 5 killed as blast hits political rally in SW Pakistan
Tehran handed over the bodies of the slain men at the Taftan border crossing, local government administrator Waqar Kakar said. He said the bodies were being flown to the city of Multan and will be sent from there to their hometowns.
The killings occurred as tensions erupted between Pakistan and Iran after Pakistan launched retaliatory strikes inside Iran that were said to be targeting militant hideouts and killed at least nine people. An Iranian attack against alleged militant hideouts inside Pakistan killed two children in southwestern Baluchistan province.
Read: Pakistan launches retaliatory airstrikes on Iran
Following the tit-for-tat attacks, both sides agreed Monday to improve their security cooperation.
The attacks appeared to target two Baluch militant groups with similar separatist goals. The two countries have accused each other of providing safe haven to the groups in their respective territories.
Myanmar extends state of emergency for 6 more months
Myanmar's National Defense and Security Council (NDSC) on Wednesday extended the state of emergency in the Southeast Asian country for six more months, the council's information team said.
According to media report, Acting President U Myint Swe declared the extension of the state of emergency for six months during the NDSC's meeting on Wednesday.
The extension was made in accordance with the Section 425 of the State Constitution due to unusual circumstances in the country, the report said.
The meeting also discussed matters on combating telecom frauds, development of the country and promotion of education sector, preparation for the general election and preparation for national census, the report said.
Myanmar declared the state of emergency in February 2021 for one year and then extended it four times until Jan. 31 this year.
5 killed as blast hits political rally in SW Pakistan
At least five people were killed and five others injured when a blast went off near a political rally in Pakistan's southwest Balochistan province on Tuesday, official sources said.
Pakistani court sentences former Prime Minister Imran Khan to 10 years for revealing state secrets
The incident happened around 5:35 p.m. local time (1235 GMT) when explosive materials fixed at a motorbike exploded in Sibi district of the province, the sources told Xinhua.
Pakistani court sentences former Prime Minister Imran Khan to 10 years for revealing state secrets
A Pakistani court on Tuesday sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan and one of his party deputies to 10 years in prison each, after finding them guilty of revealing official secrets.
The verdict was another blow to Khan, a former cricket star turned Islamist politician, who was ousted through a no-confidence vote in Parliament in April 2022 and is currently serving a three-year prison sentence in a graft case.
According to Zulfiqar Bukhari, spokesman for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, the court announced the verdict at a prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Authorities said Khan and his deputy who also received a 10-year sentence, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, have the right to appeal Tuesday’s ruling in the case, popularly known as the Cipher case.
Read: India's Modi is set to open a controversial temple in Ayodhya in a grand event months before polls
The ruling comes ahead of the Feb. 8 parliamentary elections in Pakistan — a vote that Khan is barred from running in because of his previous criminal conviction.
Although Khan will not be on the ballot for the February election, he remains a potent political force because of his grassroots following and anti-establishment rhetoric. He says the legal cases against him were a plot to sideline him ahead of the vote.
Pakistan has seen violent demonstrations since after Khan’s May 2023 arrest. Authorities have cracked down on his supporters and party since then.
Pakistan’s independent human rights commission has said there is little chance of a free and fair parliamentary election next month because of “pre-poll rigging.” It also expressed concern about authorities rejecting the candidacies of Khan and senior figures from his party.
The Cipher case is one of more than 150 cases pending against Khan. Other charges range from contempt of court to terrorism and inciting violence.
In the secrets case, Khan is alleged to have waved a confidential document — a classified cable — at a rally after he was toppled. The document — dubbed Cipher — has not been made public by either the government or Khan’s lawyers but was apparently diplomatic correspondence between the Pakistani ambassador to Washington and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad.
During the speech, Khan claiming the document was proof he was being threatened and that his ouster was a U.S. conspiracy, allegedly executed by the military and the government in Pakistan. Washington and Pakistani officials have denied the claim.
Read: Iranian soldier kills 5 comrades in southeastern city where IS attack killed dozens, state TV says
Tuesday's verdict comes weeks after Khan and Qureshi were indicted in the case.
During the trial, Khan’s party and supporters had feared he could be sentenced to death for treason. Khan has maintained his innocence and says he didn’t disclose the exact contents of the cable. Qureshi was accused of manipulating the contents of a diplomatic cable to gain political advantage.
Political analyst Syed Muhammad Ali said the latest verdict was expected. The two “indeed damaged Pakistan’s diplomatic ties with the United States, and they also embarrassed the then-Pakistani Ambassador Asad Majeed to the United States,” he said.
South China Sea tensions and Myanmar violence top agenda for Southeast Asian envoys meeting in Laos
China’s growingly assertive posture in the South China Sea and escalating violence in Myanmar topped the agenda for Southeast Asian diplomats meeting in Laos on Monday.
The gathering is the first high-level meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations since Laos took over the rotating chairmanship.
The diplomats for the 10 nations with a combined population of nearly 650 million and GDP of more than $3 trillion will work to strategize on issues of regional peace, security and stability. They were also discussing economic cooperation and other issues under the year’s theme “enhancing connectivity and resilience.”
Of the ASEAN member nations, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Brunei and Laos, several have competing maritime claims in the South China Sea with China.
China claims virtually the entire South China Sea, through which an estimated $5 trillion in international trade passes each year, which has led it into direct confrontations, most notably with the Philippines and Vietnam.
Read: Two survivors rescued after landslide buried homes in freezing weather in southwest China, 11 died
The ASEAN meeting in the historic city of Luang Prabang comes on the same day that Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, was to be meeting with top officials in Hanoi, among other things to discuss the ongoing tensions in the South China Sea.
The Philippines has been looking for more support from its ASEAN neighbors, amid increasingly tense hostilities with China, primarily off of the Second Thomas Shoal, which many worry could escalate into a broader armed conflict that could involve Washington, Manila’s longtime treaty ally.
The Philippine government protested the Chinese coast guard’s use of water cannon, a military-grade laser and dangerous blocking maneuvers that had caused minor collisions off the Philippine-occupied shoal.
China and ASEAN agreed in 2012 to a declaration on conduct in the South China Sea, seeking to “enhance favorable conditions for a peaceful and durable solution of differences and disputes,” but there has been little sign of adherence to that in recent years.
Under last year's chair, Indonesia, ASEAN agreed with China on guidelines to accelerate negotiations for a South China Sea code of conduct, but that has yet to produce results.
With communist Laos' close ties with neighboring China, and the fact that it is landlocked so has no South China Sea claims of its own, many have been skeptical that it will be able to achieve any breakthrough during its year as ASEAN chair.
A draft copy of Laos' final statement to be issued later Monday, obtained by The Associated Press, makes no direct mention of China's claims, but does stress several times the need to respect the United Nations convention on the law of the sea.
Under that convention, a U.N.-backed tribunal ruled in 2016 that China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea on historical grounds were invalid and that Beijing had violated the right of Filipinos to fish in the shoal.
Read: Myanmar Supreme Court rejects ousted leader Suu Kyi's special appeal in bribery conviction
China has refused to participate in the arbitration, rejected its outcome and continues to defy it.
In its statement, Laos says ASEAN discussed concerns “of the land reclamations, activities, serious incidents in the area, including actions that put the safety of all persons at risk,” and “emphasized the importance of non-militarization and self-restraint in the conduct of all activities by claimants.”
Laos is the first ASEAN country that shares a border with Myanmar to serve as chair since the military seized control of the country in February 2021 from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
ASEAN has developed a “Five-Point Consensus” plan for peace, which calls for the immediate cessation of violence, a dialogue among all concerned parties, mediation by an ASEAN special envoy, provision of humanitarian aid through ASEAN channels, and a visit to Myanmar by the special envoy to meet all concerned parties.
The military leadership in Myanmar has so far ignored the plan. At the same time, a humanitarian crisis is growing, with more than 2.6 million people forced from their homes due to escalating violence, according to the United Nations.
Laos has already sent its special envoy to Myanmar for meetings with the head of the ruling military council and other top officials in an attempt to make progress on the five-point consensus.
Myanmar has been prohibited from sending its foreign minister or any political representative to the ASEAN meetings since the end of 2021 when it blocked the group's envoy from meeting with Suu Kyi. It is represented in Luang Prabang by a non-political Foreign Ministry official instead.
In the draft of its final statement, Laos called Myanmar an “integral part of ASEAN” and said the group was committed to “assisting Myanmar in finding a peaceful and durable solution to the ongoing crisis” through the implementation of the five-point consensus.
Sri Lanka passes bill allowing government to remove online posts and legally pursue internet users
Sri Lanka’s parliament on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved an internet regulation bill that was highly criticized as a move to stifle speech in an election year while the Indian Ocean island nation copes with an economic crisis that required an international bailout.
The Online Safety bill would allow the government to set up a commission with a wide range of powers, which includes ordering people and internet service providers to remove online posts deemed “prohibited statements." It can also legally pursue people who publish such posts.
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The government led by President Ranil Wickremesinghe submitted the bill for debate on Tuesday, after which it was passed in the 225-member house, where the ruling coalition enjoys majority. Only 62 lawmakers voted against the bill.
Opposition lawmakers criticized the bill for creating “a very oppressive environment.” Media, internet and civil rights groups had asked the government to withdraw the bill, saying it would undermine freedoms.
Sri Lanka's central bank governor reflects on keeping economy afloat during year of turmoil
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the bill would create a repressive law with broad and vague "speech-related offenses punishable by lengthy prison terms."
The Asia Internet Coalition, which has Apple, Amazon, Google and Yahoo as members, said the bill “would undermine potential growth and foreign direct investment into Sri Lanka’s digital economy."
The secretary of the Sri Lanka Professional Web Journalists Association, Kalum Shivantha, said the bill would severely impact how they do their job. "Online journalists might resort to self-censorship and even our news websites might get shut down,” he said.
World Bank forecasts Sri Lankan economy to grow by 1.7% in 2024
However, Public Security Minister Tiran Alles, who introduced the bill in Parliament, said it would address problems related to online fraud, abuse and false statements that threaten national security and stability. He said more than 8,000 complaints were filed last year related to online crimes, including sexual abuse, financial scams, cyber harassment, and data theft.
Alles added that the bill was not drafted to harass media or political opponents.
Sri Lanka is still reeling from its worst economic crisis, which hit the island nation two years ago. The country declared bankruptcy in 2022 with more than $83 billion in debt, more than half of it to foreign creditors.
The crisis caused severe shortages of food, fuel and other necessities. Strident public protests led to the ouster of then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
The IMF agreed last year to a $2.9 billion bailout package for the hard-hit country.
After Rajapaksa fled, then-Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was appointed as president by parliament. The shortages of necessities have largely decreased over the past year, but public dissatisfaction has spiked after the government imposing new high taxes on professionals and businesses and raised energy bills.
Rights groups say Wickremesinghe has moved to stifle dissent, by cracking down on anti-government protests and arresting protestors and activists.
Sri Lanka’s presidential election is set to be held later this year.
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