AUSTRALIA
Burmese brass sanctioned
The government yesterday slapped travel and financial sanctions on five top Burmese military officers, accused of overseeing brutal violence against Rohingya Muslims by units under their command, following similar moves by the EU and the US. The country, which has previously provided training for the Burmese army and refrained from imposing sanctions, yesterday responded to a UN report calling for sanctions by targeting four of the men named, as well as one other senior commander. “I have now imposed targeted financial sanctions and travel bans against five Myanmar military officers responsible for human rights violations committed by units under their command,” Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne said in a statement.
CHINA
Crews seek trapped miners
Emergency crews are struggling to rescue 18 coal miners trapped underground in Shandong Province following a collapse inside the shaft on Saturday. Three miners were killed by falling rocks in the accident that also destroyed part of a drainage tunnel. State-owned media yesterday showed ambulances standing by at the mine entrance and crews equipped with oxygen tanks heading underground. More than 300 people were working inside the mine at the time of the collapse, and most were successfully lifted to safety. China long had the world’s deadliest coal mines, but it has closed most of the smallest, most dangerous mines.
BANGLADESH
Dissenting publisher charged
A prominent lawyer and newspaper publisher who is tied to the political opposition has been arrested on defamation charges amid concern that the government is acting tough on dissent ahead of national elections, police said yesterday. Detectives arrested Moinul Hosein late on Monday in the capital, said Mahbub Alam, a joint commissioner in the Detective Branch of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police. Hosein is the publisher of the English-language New Nation daily. Alam said the warrant issued on Monday involved a television talk show appearance in which Hosein called a journalist “characterless.” The government has executed almost all political party leaders thought to have had a role in killings, arson and rape during the country’s 1971 war of independence against Pakistan.
UNITED STATES
Alleged student-killer sought
Police are searching for a man they say shot and killed a University of Utah student outside of a dormitory on campus, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. The female student’s body was found at about 9pm in a car near the medical towers, University of Utah Police Lieutenant Brian Wahlin said. The man and the student had “a previous relationship,” Wahlin added. Dozens of police had the situation under control, Wahlin told the Tribune. “It was really scary to look out the window and see. I saw 15 to 20 police officers right where we’re standing right now,” Tyler Olsen, a student who lives in family housing near the shooting scene, told the Deseret News.
UNITED STATES
Hopefuls crash lottery site
The US Mega Millions lottery Web site crashed on Monday ahead of a record US$1.6 billion drawing to be held yesterday evening. Visitors to the Web site saw an error message after too many users visited the site and it crashed, said a spokeswoman for the Maryland Gaming Commission, which administers the Web site.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema