BANGLADESH
Yunus faces US$1.1m tax
The Supreme Court on Sunday ordered Nobel laureate and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus to pay more than US$1 million in taxes on a US$7 million donation made to three charitable trusts, lawyers said yesterday. Yunus, 83, is credited with lifting millions out of poverty with his pioneering micro-credit bank, but he has fallen out with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has said he is “sucking blood” from the poor. The court on Sunday upheld a ruling that Yunus must pay as the law does not support tax exemptions for donations to trusts. Yunus had donated 767 million taka (US$7 million) to the Professor Muhammad Yunus Trust, the Yunus Family Trust, and the Yunus Centre between 2011 and 2014. The court ordered him to pay a total tax bill of 150 million taka, 30 million taka of which he has already paid.
RUSSIA
Navalny campaigner jailed
The former head of a local branch of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s campaign organization was sentenced to nine years in prison for participating in an “extremist community,” Navalny’s team said yesterday. Vadim Ostanin, who had run Navalny’s local headquarters in the Siberian city of Barnaul, had carried out only “legal political work,” Navalny’s team wrote on the Telegram app. He was also found guilty of involvement in a non-profit group “whose activity involves violence against citizens.” Ostanin was arrested in December 2021 and held in Moscow before being transferred to Barnaul, where he stood trial.
CHINA
Roof collapse kills 11
Eleven people died after the roof of a school gym collapsed in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang Province, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. The collapse was caused by construction workers illegally placing perlite — a form of volcanic glass — on the building’s roof, Xinhua said. Heavy rain then led the perlite to expand and increase in weight, causing the roof to collapse on Sunday, it added. The gym at the No. 34 Middle School collapsed just before 3pm on Sunday, it said. An in-depth investigation of the accident was in progress, state media said, with those in charge of the construction company having been placed in police custody.
INDONESIA
Boat capsizes, killing 15
At least 15 people were killed yesterday after a wooden boat sank off the coast of Sulawesi Island, local officials said, adding that all missing passengers had been accounted for. The boat sank with 48 people onboard just after midnight on Sunday, the local office of the National Search and Rescue Agency said in a statement. Six people were rescued and taken to hospital for treatment, it said, adding that the cause of the sinking was being investigated.
ECUADOR
Port city mayor slain
The mayor of the nation’s third-largest city was slain on Sunday in a shooting that killed one other person and wounded four more, including two suspected attackers, officials said. Agustin Intriago, a 38-year-old lawyer, belonged to the local Better City movement in the port city of Manta and was recently re-elected to a term that began in May. Minister of the Interior Juan Zapata reported Intriago’s slaying and the other casualties on Twitter. He said the two wounded people suspected of being involved in the attack were receiving medical attention under police surveillance. A motive for the attack was not immediately disclosed.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
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