Myanmar military denies junta chief detained by generals

Myanmar military denies junta chief detained by generals
Myanmar’s military on August 14, 2024 said rumors top generals had detained the embattled junta chief in a new coup were “propaganda” spread by “traitors” ahead of a vist by China’s foreign minister. (AFP)
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Updated 14 August 2024
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Myanmar military denies junta chief detained by generals

Myanmar military denies junta chief detained by generals

YANGON: Myanmar’s military on Wednesday said rumors top generals had detained the embattled junta chief in a new coup were “propaganda” spread by “traitors” ahead of a visit by China’s foreign minister.
Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing has faced public criticism from military supporters in recent weeks as government troops lose territory to ethnic minority armed groups and other opponents battling to overturn its 2021 coup.
On Tuesday several social media posts claimed that top generals had detained Min Aung Hlaing in the capital Naypyidaw in a bid to change the junta’s top leadership.
The claims were “propaganda... with the aim of disrupting the country’s peace and stability,” the junta said in a statement, accusing those sharing the news of being “traitors.”
“The head of state and authorities are fulfilling their national responsibility together,” it said.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is due to arrive in Myanmar on Wednesday for talks with Min Aung Hlaing.
The visit is “aimed at deepening bilateral mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields,” an unnamed Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.
China is a major ally and arms supplier to the junta but analysts say it also maintains ties with ethnic armed groups that hold territory near its border.
In recent weeks an alliance of ethnic armed groups has seized territory from the junta in northern Shan state, which borders China’s Yunnan province.
Territory captured includes the military’s northeastern command in the Shan state town of Lashio, home to about 150,000 people.
The capture of the regional command — the first by opponents of the junta since the military’s 2021 coup — sparked rare public criticism of the top generals by its supporters.
Min Aung Hlaing later said the alliance was receiving weapons, including drones and short-range missiles, from “foreign” sources that he did not identify.
The last top Chinese official to visit the isolated junta was former foreign minister Qin Gang, who held talks with Min Aung Hlaing in May last year.
According to a senior Myanmar military official Wang Yi will not meet Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained by the military since it seized power.


Mexican soldiers open fire on migrants, killing six

Mexican soldiers open fire on migrants, killing six
Updated 41 sec ago
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Mexican soldiers open fire on migrants, killing six

Mexican soldiers open fire on migrants, killing six

MEXICO CITY: Mexican soldiers killed six migrants when they opened fire on group of 33 migrants traveling in a pick-up truck that had tried to evade a military patrol, the defense ministry announced in a statement on Wednesday.

Another 10 migrants were injured in the incident on Tuesday evening, the ministry added, from a group of 33 migrants that included Egyptian, Nepalese, Cuban, Indian and Pakistani nationals.


Thousands rally in Armenia, demanding PM’s resignation over his handling of standoff with Azerbaijan

Thousands rally in Armenia, demanding PM’s resignation over his handling of standoff with Azerbaijan
Updated 9 min 51 sec ago
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Thousands rally in Armenia, demanding PM’s resignation over his handling of standoff with Azerbaijan

Thousands rally in Armenia, demanding PM’s resignation over his handling of standoff with Azerbaijan
  • Protesters accused PM Pashinyan of making unnecessary territorial concessions to Baku
  • Armenia and Azerbaijan fought two wars — in 2020 and the 1990s — over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region

YEREVAN: Thousands rallied on Wednesday in Armenia’s capital, demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation over his handling of the decades-long standoff with Azerbaijan.
Despite a weeks-long wave of protests led in the spring by the charismatic Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, Pashinyan’s position held firm.
Chanting “Nikol (Pashinyan) traitor!” several thousand anti-government protesters rallied Wednesday in Yerevan’s central Republic Square, outside government headquarters, watched by a heavy police presence, according to an AFP reporter at the scene.
The rally was held days after Galstanyan vowed to renew street protests, which he promised would “guarantee” Pashinyan’s departure.

Protest leader Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan addresses demonstrators in Yerevan's Republic Square on Oct. 2, 2024 to demand Prime Minister Pashinyan's resignation. (AFP)

The cleric has accused Pashinyan of making unnecessary territorial concessions to Baku.
“Our struggle will continue as long as evil remains in power in Armenia,” he told the crowd.
“I call on all political forces to join us, as new disasters, new losses lie ahead.”
Protesters then marched toward the offices of Armenia’s public broadcaster, to demand live air time.
Armenia’s interior ministry said in a statement it would use force against protesters should they attempt to break into the broadcaster’s offices.
“It’s not easy getting rid of Pashinyan’s government, but we can’t give up hope,” said one demonstrator, 64-year-old Sveta Sargsyan. “We need a government that will defend every centimeter of Armenian soil.”
Another protester, Karen Hovhannisyan, 55, said: “We can’t put up with Pashinyan’s rule any longer, he is flat-out pushing anti-Armenian policies.”

Armenia and Azerbaijan fought two wars — in 2020 and the 1990s — over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Baku recaptured last year from Armenian separatists who had controlled it for three decades.
Nearly all its ethnic Armenians — more than 100,000 people — fled Karabakh in the aftermath and in May Pashinyan returned to Azerbaijan control over four border villages that it had seized decades earlier.
Galstanyan has previously sought to launch an impeachment process against Pashinyan, and even temporarily stepped down from his religious post to run for prime minister.
But he is not eligible to hold the office under Armenian law because he has dual citizenship — Armenian and Canadian — and opposition parties do not have enough seats in parliament to launch impeachment procedures.
Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have said a comprehensive peace deal to end their long-standing animosity is within reach, but the talks have so far failed to achieve a breakthrough.
 


Prosecutors lay out new evidence in Trump election case, accuse him of having ‘resorted to crimes’

Prosecutors lay out new evidence in Trump election case, accuse him of having ‘resorted to crimes’
Updated 39 min 29 sec ago
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Prosecutors lay out new evidence in Trump election case, accuse him of having ‘resorted to crimes’

Prosecutors lay out new evidence in Trump election case, accuse him of having ‘resorted to crimes’
  • New filing seeks to convince judge that the offenses charged in the indictment are private, rather than official, acts
  • It narrows the scope of the prosecution charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the results of the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden
  • New filing follows Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump laid the groundwork to try to overturn the 2020 election even before he lost, knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to crimes” in his failed bid to cling to power, according to a newly unsealed court filing from prosecutors that lays out fresh details from the landmark criminal case against the former president.
The filing from special counsel Jack Smith’s team offers the most comprehensive view to date of what prosecutors intend to prove if the case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election reaches trial. Though a months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself have chronicled in stark detail Trump’s efforts to undo the election, the new filing cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump’s closest aides to paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who while losing his grip on the White House “used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.”
“So what?” the filing quotes Trump as telling an aide after being alerted that his vice president, Mike Pence, was in potential danger after a crowd of violent supporters stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The details don’t matter,” Trump said, when told by an adviser that a lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges wouldn’t be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing states.
The filing was submitted, initially under seal, following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office, narrowing the scope of the prosecution charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the results of the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
The purpose of the brief is to convince US District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the offenses charged in the indictment are private, rather than official, acts and can therefore remain part of the indictment as the case moves forward. Chutkan permitted a redacted version to be made public.
“Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith’s team wrote, adding, “When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional” and repeated oft-stated allegations that Smith and Democrats were “hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power.”
“The release of the falsehood-ridden, Unconstitutional J6 brief immediately following Tim Walz’s disastrous debate performance is another obvious attempt by the Harris-Biden regime to undermine American Democracy and interfere in this election.”
The filing includes details of conversations between Trump and Pence, including a private lunch the two had on Nov. 12, 2020, in which Pence “reiterated a face-saving option” for Trump, telling him, “don’t concede but recognize the process is over,” according to prosecutors.
In another private lunch days later, Pence urged Trump to accept the results of the election and run again in 2024.
“I don’t know, 2024 is so far off,” Trump told him, according to the filing.
But Trump “disregarded” Pence “in the same way he disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies’ legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states — including those in his own party — who stated publicly that he had lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false,” prosecutors wrote.
Trump’s “steady stream of disinformation” in the weeks after the election culminated in his speech at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, in which Trump “used these lies to inflame and motivate the large and angry crowd of his supporters to march to the Capitol and disrupt the certification proceeding,” prosecutors wrote.


Nepalese grapple with loss after deadly floods

Nepalese grapple with loss after deadly floods
Updated 02 October 2024
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Nepalese grapple with loss after deadly floods

Nepalese grapple with loss after deadly floods

KATHMANDU: Bishworaj Khadka, a cook in Lalitpur, could hear the Nakhu River becoming louder and louder as he sat with his wife and daughter- in-law in their house situated at the river’s edge. It hadn’t stopped raining for about 12 hours and the swollen river was getting dangerously close.

When they felt the first reverberations through the living room floor, the family rushed out the door. The rest is a blur in Bishow- raj’s mind. He had only managed to stuff some money into his pocket. Barely 15 minutes later, the house caved in before their eyes.

Bishowraj took his family to his brother’s place, farther up from the river’s edge.

It was the morning of Saturday, Sept. 28, and the rain would continue for another day, causing landslides and floods in areas surrounding Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. More than 200 people were dead in the worst flooding to hit the region in five decades. Over 10 inches of rainfall fell in the Kathmandu Valley in two days, nearly 20 percent of the monthly average.

The Bagmati River in Kathmandu inundated low-lying areas, damaging temporary shelters and forcing daily wage squatters to seek safety away from the raging waters. Some of the urban dwellings were covered foot deep in mud and and debris of broken tree limbs and damaged buildings.

By Monday, the sun was out and Bishowraj and his wife Sharmila went back to what remained of their home to try and salvage whatever they could. The damage was extensive and Sharmila tried hard to find some cooking utensils that were intact.


Israel bars UN secretary-general Guterres from entering country

Israel bars UN secretary-general Guterres from entering country
Updated 02 October 2024
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Israel bars UN secretary-general Guterres from entering country

Israel bars UN secretary-general Guterres from entering country
  • Iran fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday

NEW YORK CITY: Israel’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that he was barring UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from entering the country because he had not “unequivocally” condemned Iran’s missile attack on Israel.
Iran fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday amid an escalation in fighting between Israel and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Many were intercepted in flight but some penetrated missile defenses.
Guterres on Tuesday issued a brief statement after the missile attack condemning “the broadening of the Middle East conflict, with escalation after escalation.” Earlier on Tuesday, Israel had sent troops into southern Lebanon.
Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said Guterres’ failure to call out Iran made him persona non grata in Israel.
“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel, as nearly all the countries of the world have done, does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil,” Katz said.
“Israel will continue to defend its citizens and uphold its national dignity, with or without Antonio Guterres.”
UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric described the announcement as political and “just one one more attack, so to speak, on UN staff that we’ve seen from the government of Israel.” He said the UN traditionally does not recognize the concept of persona non grata as applying to UN staff.
During a Security Council meeting on Wednesday Guterres said: “As I did in relation to the Iranian attack in April — and as should have been obvious yesterday in the context of the condemnation I expressed — I again strongly condemn yesterday’s massive missile attack by Iran on Israel.”