World News
In Burma, the death toll rises to 145 after the passage of the terrible cyclone « Mocha”
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Steph Deschamps / May 23, 2023
In Burma, the death toll from Cyclone Mocha, which swept through the country and Bangladesh, has risen to 145, mostly Rohingya, the junta announced in a statement Friday.
The cyclone hit Burma and Bangladesh on Sunday, with heavy rains and 195 km/h winds that demolished buildings and turned streets into rivers. The strongest storm in the region in more than a decade ravaged villages, uprooted trees and cut off communications in much of Rakhine State, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya live in camps displaced by decades of inter-ethnic conflict.
A total of 145 people were killed in the cyclone,” the junta’s information team said in the statement. “According to the information we got, four soldiers, 24 residents and 117 Bengalis were killed in the storm,” it said.
Bengali” is a derogatory term used in Burma to designate the Muslim minority. Some 600,000 Rohingya have been living in Burma for several generations, deprived of access to health and education, “under an apartheid regime”, according to Amnesty International. All are treated as foreigners and even have to ask for permission to travel outside their village.
A Rohingya village chief had told AFP that more than 100 people were missing in his village alone in the aftermath of the cyclone. Another village chief near Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, told AFP that at least 105 Rohingya had died in the vicinity of the town, and that the count was not complete.
In neighboring Bangladesh, officials told AFP that no one died in the cyclone, which passed near huge refugee camps housing nearly a million Rohingya.
The junta’s statement also said that media reports about the deaths of 400 Rohingya were “false” and that action would be taken against the media outlets that published them.
Since its coup more than two years ago, the junta has arrested dozens of journalists and closed media outlets deemed critical of its regime. Ships and the air force have brought in thousands of bags of rice and thousands of electricians, firefighters and rescue workers had been deployed to Rakhine State, junta-backed media reported Friday.
Flights resumed normally at Sittwe airport on Thursday, according to the official Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper. Some international aid agencies, including the World Food Programme, were working on the ground in Sittwe town this week, according to AFP correspondents on the ground.
When asked by AFP, a junta spokesman did not immediately respond to a question about whether UN agencies had access to IDP camps outside Sittwe.
In 2017, a violent military crackdown drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh, reporting stories of murder, rape and arson.
Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, who has been in power since the Feb. 1, 2021, coup and was head of the armed forces during the 2017 crackdown, called the identity of the Rohingya “imaginary. »
Cyclones, sometimes called hurricanes in the Atlantic and typhoons in the Pacific, are a regular threat to the northern Indian Ocean coasts, where tens of millions of people live.
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Sylvie Claire / July 21, 2024
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on the phone on Friday, with the former US president claiming to have promised the Ukrainian president to “end the war” between Ukraine and Russia should he return to the White House. “As your next president of the United States, I will bring peace to the world and end the war that has cost so many lives,” said the Republican presidential candidate.
Donald Trump frequently claims that he would be able to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine very quickly on his return to power, but never provides details of how he would achieve this. Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the phone call, during which he congratulated the billionaire on his official nomination the previous day as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate.
Donald Trump’s frequent praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as his criticism of other Nato countries, is causing concern among Ukraine’s Western allies. In February, he threatened that, if he returned to the White House, he would no longer guarantee the protection of Atlantic Alliance countries against Russia if they did not pay their share, even claiming that he would “encourage” Moscow to attack them. The former American president also used his power over the Republicans to block a $61 billion military aid package for Kiev for months in Congress, which was finally adopted at the end of April.
In his posting on X on Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky said he had “agreed with President Trump to discuss, in a face-to-face meeting, the steps to be taken towards a just and lasting peace” in Ukraine.
World News
Former Ukrainian far-right MP murdered in Lviv: “All leads are being investigated, including Russia”
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Steph Deschamps / July 21, 2024
In a message on Telegram, the Ukrainian National Police said she had succumbed to her injuries in hospital after being the target of an assassination attempt.
“I always say that no place is safe in Ukraine,” lamented Lviv mayor Andriï Sadovy, denouncing a ‘heinous murder’ and offering his condolences to the victim’s relatives.
According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office, the attack took place on Friday evening, at around 7.30pm, when an unidentified individual fired at Irina Farion, seriously wounding her in the head. “All surveillance cameras are being checked, witnesses are being interviewed and several districts (of Lviv) are being examined. All leads are being investigated, including the one leading to Russia”, reacted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X on Saturday.
Interior Minister Igor Klimenko told a briefing in Lviv on Friday evening that the suspected killer could have been lurking around Irina Farion’s home for several days.
According to him, investigators are currently focusing on the possibility of a murder motivated by a “personal grudge” linked to the victim’s activities, but are not ruling out a “commissioned assassination” either.
The 60-year-old language teacher and linguist was a member of parliament for the nationalist Svoboda party between 2012 and 2014.
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Sylvie Claire / July 18, 2024
At least six people died in a shopping mall fire on Wednesday in Zigong, southwest China, and thirty others were rescued, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said. “Rescue teams are continuing their search,” the media outlet added.
Images broadcast by the channel and others shared on social networks show thick black smoke rising from a building overlooking a shopping street in this city 1,600 kilometers from the capital Beijing, in the southwestern province of Sichuan.
The fire broke out in the early evening in a shopping mall at the foot of a 14-storey building, CCTV reported.
“At 8:20 pm, the fire was extinguished and 17 people were rescued. Others are still trapped, and rescue operations are continuing”, said the station in an initial report on the situation.
Fires and other fatal accidents are frequent in China, due to the sometimes lax application of safety standards. In January, at least 39 people perished in a store fire in central China. According to the authorities, the fire started in the basement of a store when workers “broke the rules” during construction work. At the time, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for lessons to be learned from the disaster to prevent further tragedies. The same month, a fire in a residential building claimed at least 15 lives.
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