Pakistani former President Pervez Musharraf has died after a prolonged illness at a hospital in Dubai, Pakistani media reported on Sunday.

Pakistan’s military confirmed the death of Musharraf, 79, who was pushed from power in 2008. The former army chief had been in self-imposed exile in Dubai.

The chiefs of Pakistan’s army, navy and air force expressed condolences on his death, the public relations wing of the military said.

The former four-star general, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, oversaw rapid economic growth and attempted to usher in socially liberal values in the conservative Muslim country.

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The forced installation of costly prepayment meters must be stopped. Give low-income consumers a proper safety net instead

The poverty premium was a term coined decades ago to describe the grim reality that people living on the edge often end up paying some of the highest prices for essential goods and services. And nowhere is that gap more evident than in the energy market, where low-income households are far more likely to be on the prepayment meters that mean they end up with higher energy costs than their more affluent neighbours: a longstanding injustice that has never been addressed by government. Last week, an undercover Times investigation revealed the appalling practices being used by British Gas to forcibly install these meters in the homes of vulnerable people.

No vulnerable household should be forced to move on to a prepayment meter. These meters cause two kinds of detriment to low-income households. Energy costs more per unit than paying by direct debit, in part because of the relatively high daily standing charge. Additionally, any debt a customer owes an energy company is added as a surcharge on the per-unit cost, pushing up the effective per-unit outlay even further. If a customer cannot pay, their energy is cut off. But the daily standing charge continues to accrue and their power won’t be turned back on until this accrued charge is paid off. And this at a time when the global energy sector is raking in record profits as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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• The United States on Saturday shot down a balloon officials said was a Chinese surveillance device.
• The balloon had been spotted floating over the US and parts of Canada this week.
• Below is a timeline of the balloon’s journey over the country and what is known about the device.

The United States on Saturday shot down a balloon spotted floating over the nation and parts of Canada this week that officials said was a Chinese surveillance device.

While China maintains the balloon was a civilian airship “used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes,” Pentagon officials say it was “being used by the PRC in an attempt to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States.”

Though the balloon has since been shot down by F22 fighter jets, it captured the country’s attention for days with questions of national security and international relations. Below is a timeline of the balloon’s journey over the country and what is known about its mission.

On Tuesday, January 31, a massive, high-altitude balloon was spotted over the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.A map of North America with an arrow pointing to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, where the Chinese surveillance balloon was first spotted.

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President Joe Biden was briefed on the balloon on Tuesday. He was leaning toward taking down the balloon, NBC reported, but Pentagon officials, citing the risk to civilians on the ground, cautioned him against the move and continued to monitor the situation.

The Biden administration faced criticism from former President Donald Trump and other Republicans calling for the US to shoot down the balloon immediately, but national security experts told Insider that taking immediate action to shoot down the balloon would be “impulsive,” 

The balloon was equipped with a “large payload underneath the surveillance component,” Pentagon officials say.A balloon flies in the sky over Billings, Montana, on February 1, 2022.

Chase Doak/via REUTERS

While the exact dimensions and features of the balloon are unclear, it was spotted floating at approximately 60,000 feet — well above the range of civilian air traffic, according to the Pentagon.

Brigadier General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement emailed to Insider that the balloon had “a large payload underneath the surveillance component,” but noted that it presented “no physical or military threat to people on the ground.”

Though there were immediate calls to shoot down the device, officials cautioned that it’s not that simple, in part because fighter aircraft aren’t designed to target balloons.

When a weather balloon went rogue 25 years ago, two Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 fighter aircraft fired more than 1,000 rounds at it and couldn’t shoot it down.

 

On Wednesday, February 1, the balloon made its way across Canada, being spotted in Alberta and Saskatchewan.A map of North America, with arrows pointing to Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada, where the Chinese surveillance balloon was seen floating.

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The government of Canada on Thursday confirmed the device had been in its airspace and was coordinating with the United States military to track it.

Thursday, February 2 was the first time United States officials acknowledged they were tracking the balloon, which had been sighted floating over Billings, Montana.A map of North America, with arrows pointing to Billings, Montana where the Chinese surveillance balloon was seen floating.

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The United States scrambled a team of F22 fighter jets in response to the balloon sightings over rural Montana, near a US nuclear base housing 150 Minuteman ICBMs.

By Friday, February 3, the balloon had made its way across the central United States, being spotted in Kansas City, Missouri.A map of North America, with arrows pointing to Kansas City, Missouri where the Chinese surveillance balloon was seen on Friday

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As the balloon made its way across the states, over the state of Missouri, officials acknowledged balloon surveillance has been seen from China before.

“It is not the first time that you’ve had a balloon of this nature cross over the continental United States,” a senior US defense official told reporters on Thursday. “It’s happened a handful of other times over the past few years, to include before this administration. It is appearing to hang out for a longer period of time this time around, more persistent than in previous instances, so that would be one distinguishing factor.”

At least three balloons were discovered over the US during the Trump administration, AP reported. In 1957, China claimed it shot down what it identified as a “spy balloon,” though US Navy called it “a weather experiment that had blown off course,” according to the US Naval Institute. 

On Friday, a second balloon was spotted over Latin America, according to Pentagon officials.A map of Central America, with arrows pointing to Costa Rica and Colombia, where a second Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted Friday.

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A Department of Defense spokesperson confirmed to Insider that the second balloon was of Chinese origins, but declined to give additional details, such as where the second balloon was spotted.

Intelligencer reported the balloon had been seen floating over Costa Rica on Friday.

On Saturday, Colombian officials confirmed in a statement that the balloon had been seen in its airspace hovering at 55,000 feet. The Colombian Air Force followed the object until it left the country.

It is unclear where the second balloon is currently located.

The first balloon ultimately made it to the Atlantic coast, near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where it was shot down on Saturday, February 4.A map of North America, with arrows pointing to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina where the Chinese surveillance balloon was shot down on Saturday.

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The balloon was shot down by F22 jets on Saturday after it reached the Atlantic Ocean, near the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

“I ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down on Wednesday as soon as possible,” Biden said. “They decided that the best time to do that was when it got over water within a 12-mile limit.”

Officials are seeking to recover the debris from the wreckage to determine what additional information can be learned from the device. It is unclear what exactly China was searching for with the balloons. 

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

• Republicans are criticizing the Biden administration’s response to the Chinese spy balloon.
• “Would Trump have let China fly a spy balloon over our country?” Rep. Jim Jordan tweeted.
• Chinese spy balloons were sighted three times during the Trump administration, US officials said.

A balloon US officials are calling a Chinese surveillance tool spent days flying over the continental United States before it was shot down by an F-22 fighter jet on Saturday. 

Pentagon leaders advised President Joe Biden against immediately shooting the flying orb out of the sky due to safety concerns for civilians as the high-altitude object was large enough to create a large debris field, a senior defense official who spoke on background told reporters Thursday.

The dayslong spectacle saw many Republicans criticize the Biden administration for what they viewed as a slow response to the foreign object, while some conservative leaders and pundits took the opportunity to pick at confidence under the Biden administration in general as they claimed no other leader such as Donald Trump would have let a Chinese spy balloon fly over the US.

“Would Trump have let China fly a spy balloon over our country?” Rep. Jim Jordan wrote on Twitter. “Would Reagan? JFK? Truman? No, no, and no.”

—Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 3, 2023

But senior Pentagon officials said on Saturday that suspected Chinese surveillance balloons crossed into the US at least three times during the Trump administration and once earlier in the Biden administration, the Associated Press reported.

The senior defense official who spoke on background also said “a balloon of this nature” crossed over the continental US before the Biden administration but declined to specify when.

“It’s happened a few times in recent years to include before this administration. But beyond that, I’m not going to go into the details,” the official said.

It’s also unclear if balloons spotted during the Trump administration were shot down. A Pentagon spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the AP that Chinese surveillance balloons were sighted several times in the past five years. Some of them have been spotted near US military bases in Hawaii, he said, though he did not specify when.

Trump on Thursday shared a post on Truth Social from rightwing activist Jack Posobiec, who claimed without evidence that the Pentagon was saying “the quiet part out loud. The CCP [Chinese Communist Party] can send spy balloons over our nuclear silos and we will do nothing.”

In a statement to Fox News, Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker claimed that “if press reports are correct, the Biden Administration hoped to hide this incident from the American people.”

However, the times when suspected surveillance balloons crossed into the US under the Trump administration were never made public until this past week’s incident.

South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott also chimed in and tweeted that “the balloon should have been shot down before it crossed the continental United States, not after,” adding that the incident was a “dereliction of Biden’s duty.”

—Tim Scott (@SenatorTimScott) February 4, 2023

It’s unclear what information the suspected Chinese spy balloon could have gleaned from its various positions. The Montana area the balloon flew over houses the Malmstrom Air Force Base which has intercontinental ballistic missiles.

US officials said the balloon poses little threat in terms of what intelligence it might gather.

The specific dimensions of the device were not disclosed to the public, but one senior official told ABC News that it was estimated to be the size of three buses.

A differing factor in this past week’s balloon incident that the senior defense official did acknowledge is the length of time the object has been around.

“It is appearing to hang out for a long period of time this time around, more persistent than in previous instances. So that would be one distinguishing factor,” he said.

A famed California mountain lion was celebrated at a sold-out event at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles on Saturday, with thousands of fans honoring the big cat’s life and contribution to urban wildlife.

The mountain lion, called P-22 and thought to be about 12 years old, became a Los Angeles celebrity after living in the shadow of the Hollywood Hills for over a decade, traversing busy highways to take up residence in and around Griffith Park.

P-22, famously photographed prowling past the landmark Hollywood sign, had become a popular symbol of campaigns to save California’s threatened population of mountain lions, also known as cougars or pumas.

The animal was euthanized in December because of severe health problems following a suspected vehicle strike.

“Around his death, the global outpouring of support was immense. He was trending on Twitter. He was in Rolling Stone magazine,” National Wildlife Federation California Executive Director Beth Pratt, a lifelong advocate for wildlife who had championed P-22 for a decade, told Reuters.

“So we did this as a way for the community of L.A., but also the world, to be able to kind of grieve together.”

Among the crowds who attended the celebration, many sporting P-22 memorabilia, Los Angeles resident Paul Aguayo recounted an encounter with P-22 near Burbank in 2012.

“I was going up this trail and I heard a little snap, a little movement. And I looked around and we locked eyes for about two, four seconds. He turned around and just dashed down the canyon. I saw his tail,” Aguayo told Reuters.

Mountain lions like P-22 are threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, with highway deaths taking an increasing toll. Officials and advocates have called for the construction of more wildlife crossings in urban areas and well-planned spaces for them to roam.

“Across the world, people now look at how to coexist with their wild neighbors differently because of him,” said Pratt.

“And wildlife crossings are nothing new. But he elevated the wildlife crossing calls into public discourse in a way that it hadn’t been before. So not bad for this cat who was just roaming Griffith Park.”