SRI LANKA
President bans strikes
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa yesterday banned strikes in the health and electricity sectors as trade union action that has crippled state-run hospitals entered its sixth day. Rajapaksa invoked a 1979 law prohibiting stoppages in the two sectors, declaring all related work “essential public services,” his office said. The regulations allow courts to hand down five-year jail terms and confiscate the assets of those refusing to work. The move followed health unions on Thursday ignoring a court order instructing them to suspend their strike pending a hearing of a petition against their action. The nation is in the grip of a foreign exchange crisis that has crippled the economy, and the unions are demanding better promotional prospects, restructuring of their pay scales and higher allowances. The government has refused, saying that the economic situation does not allow it to increase the salaries budget.
MICRONESIA
Breakaway plans suspended
Five Micronesian nations yesterday suspended breakaway plans from a Pacific islands political bloc as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the region. The Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru and Palau “have agreed to temporarily rescind their withdrawal” from the Pacific Islands Forum, the FSM Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The five territories announced a year ago that they were quitting the group after their nominee lost the vote for a new forum secretary general. They said the majority decision by the 18-nation body to elect former Cook Islands prime minister Henry Puna had overridden an informal agreement that the position would be filled by Micronesia and had caused an irreparable rift. However, in a statement the Micronesian leaders said they had discussed “specific substantive reforms of the Pacific Island Forum” and had given the forum until June for the reforms to materialize.
UNITED NATIONS
Ethiopian ‘horrors’ described
Fresh off a visit to Ethiopia, UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed on Friday described “unimaginable” horrors women have faced, and called for justice and accountability. At a news conference recapping her trip to Ethiopia’s Tigray, Amhara, Afar and Somali regions, Mohammed described an instance when a woman had been raped in front of her young child, and then was spurned by her husband, family and society. “Ethiopian women, writ large, were affected in a way that is unimaginable,” Mohammed said. The conflict between the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan rebels started in November 2020 and has left thousands dead, while UN data show that hundreds of thousands have been pushed into famine. “In your worst nightmares, you cannot imagine what has happened to the women in Ethiopia,” Mohammed said, adding that she also saw widespread suffering due to famine. “There is everyone to blame” for these war-fueled horrors and in the 21st century “it’s unacceptable that one human being would do that to another,” she said. “Justice and accountability have to be had,” she said, without specifying what formal actions could be taken. “When men go to war, they come back and they’re heroes, doesn’t matter any injury that they have, right?” Mohammed asked. “But women have been injured — injured in a way that is unimaginable, and yet they’re not coming back heroes. They’re just outcast. That has to stop.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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