AFP : Survivors reported having to kick down doors and leap out of windows to escape the inferno that swept through a centre packed full of young people enjoying games, including bowling, Indian media reported on Sunday. Lines of bodies draped in white cloths were laid out before being taken away from the centre in Rajkot, a city in the western state of Gujarat. The four children reported dead were all aged under 12, said police, who warned that many...
International
Al Jazeera : Eighteen-year-olds will have to perform a mandatory national service if the Conservative Party is voted back to power in the United Kingdom’s July 4 election, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced. The UK has “generations of young people who have not had the opportunities they deserve”, and this measure would help unite society in an “increasingly uncertain world”, Sunak said on Saturday. The prime minister’s plan would entail young people being given a choice between a full-time...
Al Jazeera : The International Organization for Migration has increased its estimate of the death toll from a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea (PNG) to more than 670. Serhan...
BBC : They were shadow people, moving beyond the light of small fires on a winter dawn. There was no hint then that I was about to encounter one of the most extraordinary sights of my time in South Africa. In this part of the country, winter is a cold, dry season that burns the veld brown. The ground is hard like flint and when the wind blows across the plains, dust covers the squatters and all that they carry....
AFP : China has ended two days of military drills around Taiwan that saw jets loaded with live munitions and warships practise seizing and isolating the self-ruled island. The exercises simulated strikes targeting Taiwan’s leaders as well as its ports and airports to “cut off the island’s ‘blood vessels'”, Chinese military analysts told state media. Beijing considers the democratic island part of its territory and has not ruled out using force to bring it under its control. The war games...
Reuters : More than 300 people and over 1,100 houses were buried by a massive landslide that levelled a remote village in northern Papua New Guinea, local media reported on Saturday. Hundreds are feared dead in the landslide that hit Kaokalam village in Enga Province, about 600 km northwest of capital Port Moresby, around 19:00 GMT on Thursday. The landslide in the Pacific nation north of Australia buried more than 300 people and 1,182 houses, the Papua New Guinea Post...
Reuters : In 2018, a year after becoming France’s president, Emmanuel Macron flew to the remote French-ruled Pacific island of New Caledonia to outline his latest foreign policy plan. With China’s regional ambitions growing, a new Indo-Pacific strategy was needed to prevent it from becoming hegemonic, he said. New Caledonia would be a key French anchor of that plan. “I believe in the future of this territory, and I believe in the place that this territory occupies in a broader...
News Desk : More than 100 people are believed to have been killed on Friday in a landslide that buried a village in a remote part of Papua New Guinea (PNG). The landslide reportedly hit Kaokalam village in Enga province, about 600km northwest of the South Pacific island nation’s capital of Port Moresby, at 15:00 GMT, Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) reported. Residents say current estimates of the death toll are above 100, although authorities have not confirmed this figure. Villagers...
AFP : A fire ripped through an apartment complex in central Hanoi early Friday, killing 14 people and injuring three others, police said. Smoke and toxic gases billowed out of the building in Cau Giay district, a densely populated district of Vietnam’s capital that is home to several universities, after a fire broke out around 12:30am Thursday. Rescuers forced their way inside, breaking the lock of an external gate and smashing a window to rescue seven people trapped inside. Neighbours...
Staff Reporter : The Election Commission (EC) Secretary, Md Jahangir Alam, indicated on Sunday that the decision to cancel upazila elections in affected areas will hinge on the extent of damage caused by Cyclone Remal. He made these remarks while speaking to journalists at Nirbachan Bhaban in Agargaon, the capital. “We are closely monitoring the situation at the field level. The cyclone has not yet made landfall. Decisions will be taken once it hits the country,” said the EC secretary...
Staff Reporter : Bangladesh is severely underutilizing its potential for Asian regional trade, as less than 5 percent of its total exports are directed towards India and China. Despite the fact that global exports to China and India amount to around $4,050 billion annually, Bangladesh’s exports to these countries were only $2.64 billion in 2022, according to a recent study led by Atiur Rahman, former governor of Bangladesh Bank. Rahman’s study, titled “Post-LDC Graduation: Opportunities, Challenges, and the Way Forward,”...
AFP : Survivors reported having to kick down doors and leap out of windows to escape the inferno that swept through a centre packed full of young people enjoying games, including bowling, Indian media reported on Sunday. Lines of bodies draped in white cloths were laid out before being taken away from the centre in Rajkot, a city in the western state of Gujarat. The four children reported dead were all aged under 12, said police, who warned that many...
City Desk : Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) central committee has directed its leaders and activists to help the affected people of cyclonic storm Remal. BCL President Saddam Hossain and its General Secretary Sheikh Wali Asif Enan urged them through a statement, reports BSS. The leaders said Chhatra League will play an important role for the affected people of cyclonic storm Remal in cyclonic areas. They also said Chhatra League leaders and activists will remove the affected people of cyclonic storm...
AFP : UN war crimes investigators said on Thursday they were tracking the escalating fighting in conflict-torn Myanmar’s Rakhine State, and were probing reports that thousands from a persecuted minority had been displaced. The United Nations’ Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) said in a statement that it was closely following events unfolding on the ground in Rakhine and “assessing if crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed.” Clashes have rocked Rakhine since the Arakan Army (AA) attacked...
AFP : At least 85 people have died in a single hospital in the Darfur city of El-Fasher since fighting reignited between Sudan’s warring parties on May 10, medical charity Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday. On Monday alone, nine of 60 casualties received at Southern Hospital — El-Fasher’s only remaining medical facility — had died of their wounds, said Claire Nicolet, head of the charity’s Sudan emergency programme. In the period since the fighting erupted in the North Darfur state...
