BANGLADESH
Refugee crossing prevented
Authorities prevented 84 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar from attempting a perilous boat journey to Malaysia, officials said yesterday. Police in Pekua said that 67 Rohingya Muslims from Kutupalong — the largest refugee settlement in the world — were stopped as they waited to board a fishing trawler. They included 31 women and 15 children. On St Martin’s, a small island in the Bay of Bengal, the country’s coast guard stopped 17 other Rohingya and five Bangladeshi traffickers before they could board a rickety fishing boat. Regional coast guard commander Fayezul Islam Mondol said that they were acting on a tip off. Refugees frequently spend their life savings to embark on dangerous boat journeys that they believe would improve their lives, but many fall prey to international human trafficking gangs. Most attempt the journey before March, when the sea is calm before the monsoon season sets in, but experts said that traffickers have been convincing the refugees to attempt the crossing even in rough waters.
NORTH KOREA
UN petitioned over ship
The government has demanded that the UN take “urgent measures” to help return a cargo ship taken by the US, calling the seizure a “heinous” act. Washington last week announced that it had taken possession of the North Korean-registered bulk carrier M/V Wise Honest — a year after it was detained in Indonesia — citing activities that breached US sanctions. The seizure came amid heightened tensions after Pyongyang conducted weapons drills involving short-range missiles in the past few weeks, and with nuclear talks deadlocked since the collapse of the Hanoi summit between US President Donald Trump and leader Kim Jong-un earlier this year. In a letter sent on Friday to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Ambassador to the UN Kim Song said that the incident was “an unlawful and outrageous act,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported. “This act of dispossession has clearly indicated that the US is indeed a gangster country that does not care at all about international laws,” the letter said. The representative asked Guterres to “take urgent measures as a way of contributing to the stability of the Korean Peninsula and proving the impartiality of the UN.”
THAILAND
Dog saves abandoned baby
An attentive dog in the country’s northeast is being hailed as a hero after finding and saving an infant allegedly buried in a field by his teenage mother, police said yesterday. The newborn was lying on Wednesday under a layer of dirt near a farm in the Chumpuang District of Nakhon Ratchasima Province, but was found the same day by a curious canine named Ping Pong. The dog dug around the area and began barking, alerting his owner, a cattle herder, who went to the site. “I don’t think it was long after his mother buried him before the dog found him,” case officer Panuvat Udkam said. He added that the boy was healthy, recovering in the hospital and so young he had not yet been named. The teenage mother was charged with attempted murder and abandonment of children. The suspect was 15 years old and had tried to dispose of the child because she was afraid her parents would get angry, Panuvat said, adding: “So after she delivered the baby by herself, she buried it.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in