Thailand: early elections set for 8 February

Today'sheadlines: Bondi Beach, the Philippines emerges as a possible link to ISIS: the attackers were in the archipelago in November; India has charged two militant groups based in Pakistan with the attack on tourists in Kashmir in April; The last two pandas in Japan will return to China in January; Israel is stepping up demolitions in the West Bank.

THAILAND

Thailand will hold early elections on 8 February. The announcement comes just days after Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul dissolved the national parliament because the opposition was preparing to call a vote of no confidence over a constitutional amendment. The elections are likely to pit Anutin's conservative Bhumjaithai party against the progressive People's Party, with the backdrop of the populist Pheu Thai party of the Shinawatra family, which was ousted from government last summer in a crisis intertwined with the conflict with Cambodia. The election date comes as the war that reignited on 7 December with Phnom Penh shows no sign of stopping, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced.

AUSTRALIA - PHILIPPINES

According to the authorities, the perpetrators of the attack on Bondi Beach - Sajid Akram, 50, and his son Naveed, 24 - were inspired by ISIS and had travelled to the Philippines in November, Australian police said. The father had an Indian passport and the son an Australian passport. The reasons for and purpose of the trip are ‘under investigation,’ police said. It is known that networks linked to the Islamic State operate in the Philippines: in 2017, the city of Marawi in Mindanao was captured by militants for five months.

INDIA - PAKISTAN

India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) has charged two Pakistan-based militant groups and six individuals with the attack on tourists in Kashmir last April, which killed 26 people. The massacre in the tourist town of Pahalgam brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war. The Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a terrorist organisation according to the UN, and the Resistance Front (TRF) were accused of “planning, facilitating and executing” the attack.

JAPAN - CHINA

The two giant panda cubs born at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo are expected to return to China at the end of January 2026, leaving Japan without pandas for the first time since 1972. Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei were born in 2021 and are currently the only ones in the country. Tokyo is reportedly seeking to borrow more pandas from China. Sources close to the Tokyo metropolitan government have said that “it is impossible considering the current situation”, due to Sanae Takaichi's statements on Taiwan. This brings to an end a series that dates back to the formalisation of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

ISRAEL - PALESTINE

Israel is launching raids across the occupied West Bank, while Palestinians in Gaza suffer from the winter cold. Israeli soldiers carried out a pre-dawn demolition in the village of Deir Qadis, west of Ramallah, intensifying their campaign of house destruction across the occupied West Bank. In addition, the Israeli army will demolish 25 residential buildings in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the northern West Bank at the end of this week.

TAJIKISTAN - UZBEKISTAN

Tajikistan's rather critical energy supply situation is improving thanks to the help of neighbouring Uzbekistan, as announced by the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources in Dushanbe, with a delivery of 2 million kilowatts per day, with forecasts for growth, and also thanks to preliminary delivery agreements with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, which will begin after technical issues have been resolved.

VATICAN - UKRAINE - RUSSIA

The President of the Verkhovnaja Rada, Ruslan Stefanchuk, met with Pope Leo XIV in Rome to discuss humanitarian issues, the return to Ukraine of children deported to Russia and the release of military and civilian prisoners of war. He informed the pontiff about consultations between Ukraine and the United States and European partners, affirming “the importance of coordinated positions and maintaining unity at the international level”.