MYANMAR
Leader to head to China
Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing is to travel to China this week to attend regional summits, state media reported yesterday, the embattled top general’s first visit to the influential neighbor since he seized power in a 2021 coup. The Southeast Asian country has been in chaos since the coup, including along the Myanmar-China border, with an armed resistance movement combining with established ethnic minority armies militias to wrest control of large territories from the military government. Min Aung Hlaing would attend summits of the Greater Mekong Subregion and the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy and join a meeting with Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam from tomorrow to Thursday, in the Chinese city of Kunming, Myanmar Radio and Television reported.
INDIA
Bus crashes in Uttarakhand
A bus in India plunged into a deep Himalayan ravine yesterday, killing at least 36 passengers and injuring several others, a government official said yesterday. Photographs released by government rescue teams showed the crumpled wreckage of the bus in thick undergrowth, with the twisted front of the vehicle squashed nearly flat. Road accidents are common along the many mountainous roads in the Himalayan region, caused mostly by poor maintenance and reckless driving in the tortuous terrain. “So far, 36 casualties have been confirmed,” Deepak Rawat, a senior official from the northern state of Uttarakhand, told reporters.
IRAN
Two dead in autogiro crash
An Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander and his pilot were killed yesterday in an autogiro accident during an operation near the Pakistani border, state TV reported. The report said that General Hamid Mazandarani died during a military operation in the Sirkan border area, in Sistan and Baluchestan Province. An autogiro, resembling a helicopter in rotor design, but simpler and smaller, is typically used in Iran for pilot training and border monitoring. It is capable of carrying two people.
RUSSIA-IRAN
Satellites launched today
Russia would launch two Iranian satellites into orbit using a Soyuz launcher today, Iranian Ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali said yesterday, as the two US-sanctioned countries deepen their scientific relationship. “In continuation of the development of Iran-Russia scientific and technological cooperation, two Iranian satellites, Kowsar and Hodhod, will be launched to a 500 km orbit of earth on Tuesday, Nov. 5, by a Soyuz launch vehicle,” he said in a post on X.
ISRAEL
Strikes in Lebanon continue
The Israeli military yesterday said it had killed a top Hezbollah commander it accused of overseeing rocket and anti-tank missile attacks against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. Abu Ali Rida, the Hezbollah commander of the Baraachit area in southern Lebanon, was “eliminated” in an airstrike, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said, without specifying when he was killed. Rida “was responsible for planning and executing rocket and anti-tank missile attacks on IDF [military] troops and oversaw the terrorist activities of Hezbollah operatives in the area,” the military said in a statement. Israel has continued to pound Hezbollah targets in Lebanon since the war between the two sides broke out in late September.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS