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UN refugee agency fears more than 400 fleeing Rohingya died this month in separate boat incidents

UN refugee agency fears more than 400 fleeing Rohingya died this month in separate boat incidents
In this photo taken on January 29, 2025, Rohingya refugees remain aboard their boat at Leuge Beach in Indonesia's Aceh province after authorities prevented them from disembarking. (AFP)
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Updated 24 May 2025
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UN refugee agency fears more than 400 fleeing Rohingya died this month in separate boat incidents

UN refugee agency fears more than 400 fleeing Rohingya died this month in separate boat incidents
  • UNHCR said it has collected reports from family members and others of two separate boat tragedies off the coast of Myanmar
  • About 1 million Rohingya, who are predominantly Muslim, are in camps in Bangladesh after leaving Myanmar
Updated 24 May 2025
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GENEVA: The UN refugee agency said Friday it fears that 427 Rohingya fleeing Myanmar and a refugee camp in Bangladesh may have died at sea this month.
UNHCR said it has collected reports from family members and others of two separate boat tragedies off the coast of Myanmar in May. It acknowledged that details remained unclear but that enough information has been collected and verified to bring the incidents to light publicly.
About 1 million Rohingya, who are predominantly Muslim, are in camps in Bangladesh after leaving Myanmar. They include about 740,000 who fled a brutal “clearance campaign” in 2017 by Myanmar’s security forces, who were accused of committing mass rapes and killings.
A first boat that left from a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and traveled to Rakhine State in neighboring Myanmar to pick up more people sank on May 9, with only 66 survivors among a total of 267 people on board, UNHCR said.
The Geneva-based agency said reports indicated a second boat with 247 people on board that made a similar journey capsized a day later, with only 21 survivors.
“Reports have been coming in and it has been very hard to confirm what has happened, but the fear is that this number of people may have lost their lives at sea in the region,” said UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch.
“Before these two tragedies, some 30 Rohingya were reported to have died or gone missing in boat journeys in 2025,” he said. “So if confirmed, this is a huge jump.”
Thousands of Rohingya each year attempt to cross the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, and often the fates of those who have gone missing go unexplained. Even when officials knew the boats’ locations, maritime authorities to rescue some of them have gone ignored, UNHCR has said.
A total of 657 people died or went missing in the regional waters in more than 150 boat journeys by fleeing Rohingya last year, UNHCR said.
The recent monsoon season brought perilous maritime conditions including strong winds, rain and rough seas, UNHCR said, adding that it was investigating reports about the fate of a third boat carrying 188 Rohingya that left Myanmar on May 14.
Many Rohingya have fled by sea to Indonesia, which has reported an increase in the number of Rohingya refugees in recent months.

Topics: Rohingya Myanmar

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US resumes visas for foreign students but demands access to social media accounts

US resumes visas for foreign students but demands access to social media accounts
Updated 9 sec ago
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US resumes visas for foreign students but demands access to social media accounts

US resumes visas for foreign students but demands access to social media accounts
  • The Trump administration last month temporarily halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students hoping to study in the US w
  • Foreign students make up more than 15 percent of the total student body at almost 200 US universities
Updated 9 sec ago
AP

WASHINGTON: The US State Department said Wednesday it is restarting the suspended process for foreigners applying for student visas but all applicants will now be required to unlock their social media accounts for government review.
The department said consular officers will be on the lookout for posts and messages that could be deemed hostile to the United States, its government, culture, institutions or founding principles.
In a notice made public Wednesday, the department said it had rescinded its May suspension of student visa processing but said new applicants who refuse to set their social media accounts to “public” and allow them to be reviewed may be rejected. It said a refusal to do so could be a sign they are trying to evade the requirement or hide their online activity.
The Trump administration last month temporarily halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students hoping to study in the US while preparing to expand the screening of their activity on social media, officials said.
Students around the world have been waiting anxiously for US consulates to reopen appointments for visa interviews, as the window left to book their travel and make housing arrangements narrows ahead of the start of the school year.
On Wednesday afternoon, a 27-year-old Ph.D. student in Toronto was able to secure an appointment for a visa interview next week. The student, a Chinese national, hopes to travel to the US for a research internship that would start in late July. “I’m really relieved,” said the student, who spoke on condition of being identified only by his surname, Chen, because he was concerned about being targeted. “I’ve been refreshing the website couple of times every day.”
Students from China, India, Mexico and the Philippines have posted on social media sites that they have been monitoring visa booking websites and closely watching press briefings of the State Department to get any indication of when appointment scheduling might resume.
In reopening the visa process, the State Department also told consulates to prioritize students hoping to enroll at colleges where foreigners make up less than 15 percent of the student body, a US official familiar with the matter said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to detail information that has not been made public.
Foreign students make up more than 15 percent of the total student body at almost 200 US universities, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal education data from 2023. Most are private universities, including all eight Ivy League schools. But that criteria also includes 26 public universities, including the University of Illinois and Pennsylvania State University. Looking only at undergraduate students, foreign students make up more than 15 percent of the population at about 100 universities, almost all of them private.
International students in the US have been facing increased scrutiny on several fronts. In the spring, the Trump administration revoked permission to study in the US for thousands of students, including some involved only in traffic offenses, before abruptly reversing course. The government also expanded the grounds on which foreign students can have their legal status terminated.
As part of a pressure campaign targeting Harvard University, the Trump administration has moved to block foreign students from attending the Ivy League school, which counts on international students for tuition dollars and a quarter of its enrollment. Trump has said Harvard should cap its foreign enrollment at 15 percent.
This latest move to vet students’ social media, the State Department said Wednesday, “will ensure we are properly screening every single person attempting to visit our country.”
In internal guidance sent to consular officers, the department said they should be looking for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States.”
Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said the new policy evokes the ideological vetting of the Cold War, when prominent artists and intellectuals were excluded from the US
“This policy makes a censor of every consular officer, and it will inevitably chill legitimate political speech both inside and outside the United States,” Jaffer said.
The Trump administration also has called for 36 countries to commit to improving vetting of travelers or face a ban on their citizens visiting the United States. A weekend diplomatic cable sent by the State Department says the countries have 60 days to address US concerns or risk being added to a travel ban that now includes 12 nations.
 

Topics: Trump Returns US visa ban

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Taiwan pursues homegrown Chinese spies as Beijing’s influence grows

Taiwan pursues homegrown Chinese spies as Beijing’s influence grows
Updated 29 min 8 sec ago
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Taiwan pursues homegrown Chinese spies as Beijing’s influence grows

Taiwan pursues homegrown Chinese spies as Beijing’s influence grows
  • Alarm is growing in Taiwan over the extent of China’s infiltration on the self-ruled island
  • The main targets of Chinese infiltration have been retired and active members of the military
Updated 29 min 8 sec ago
AFP

TAIPEI: Taiwan is vetting hundreds of thousands of military service members, public school teachers and civil servants in a bid to root out potential homegrown Chinese sympathizers, as Beijing intensifies espionage on the island.
Alarm is growing in Taiwan over the extent of China’s infiltration on the self-ruled island, which Beijing claims is part of its territory and has threatened to seize by force.
Prosecutors last week charged four recently expelled members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party — including a former staffer in President Lai Ching-te’s office — for sharing state secrets with Beijing.
While Taipei and Beijing have spied on each other for decades, analysts warn the threat to Taiwan is more serious given the risk of a Chinese attack.
The main targets of Chinese infiltration have been retired and active members of the military, persuaded by money, blackmail or pro-China ideology.
Lai, an outspoken defender of Taiwan’s sovereignty and loathed by Beijing, has branded China a “foreign hostile force” and sought to raise public awareness about Chinese actions he says threaten national security.
After a sharp rise in the number of people prosecuted for spying for China in recent years, the government is trying to identify people within its own departments, military and public schools with a possible allegiance to Beijing.
Anyone on the public service payroll found with Chinese residence or other identification cards risks losing their Taiwanese household registration, effectively their citizenship.
“The reason we started to survey (for Chinese IDs) is because China uses this way to coerce Taiwanese people, to penetrate our system, especially the public service,” DPP lawmaker Wang Ting-yu told AFP.
“The threat is getting worse and worse and we have to deal with that.”

In the first round held recently, 371,203 people, or nearly all of those surveyed, signed statements declaring they did not hold any Chinese ID documents prohibited by Taiwanese law.
Two people admitted having Chinese ID cards and 75 having residence permits, which were annulled, Taiwan’s top policy body on China, the Mainland Affairs Council, said.
The second round of vetting is underway, but the government has said the general public will not be targeted.
Concern over Taiwanese people holding Chinese ID documents flared after a YouTube video last year alleged there were tens of thousands of cases.
A senior Taiwanese security official said recently China was issuing ID papers to a growing number of people from Taiwan, but it was “difficult to estimate” how many or track down offenders without Beijing’s cooperation.
“The idea is to define Taiwanese citizens as Chinese citizens under their legal framework,” the official said.
Legal scholar Su Yen-tu said there were limits on the government’s “investigatory power” to find out who held Chinese ID cards in Taiwan.
If Taiwanese people did not voluntarily disclose the information, “there’s not much the government can do,” said Su, a research professor at Academia Sinica.
Collecting records was still “potentially useful,” Jamestown Foundation president Peter Mattis told AFP, particularly if someone under investigation in the future is found to have lied about their documents.
Taiwan has also asked around 10,000 Chinese spouses and their China-born children for proof they have given up their Chinese household registration, a decades-old requirement under Taiwanese law.

The notices sparked criticism that the government was being heavyhanded, but Wang said stricter enforcement was needed because some “new immigrants” from China had spied for Beijing and interfered in Taiwan’s elections.
“I personally feel that it’s a bit disturbing for the people,” said Li I-ching, a 23-year-old graduate student in Taipei, who was born in China to a Chinese mother and a Taiwanese father.
Like many others, Li has to obtain evidence from China that she no longer holds permanent residence status.
The Beijing-friendly main opposition Kuomintang party (KMT) has accused the government of conducting “loyalty” tests.
“At a time when our country is facing so many difficulties... the government is only thinking about how to cleanse the population,” said KMT lawmaker Chen Yu-jen.
The dispute between Taiwan and China dates back to 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s communist fighters and fled to the island.
China has vowed to annex Taiwan and in recent years has ramped up its military pressure on the island.
Taiwan says China also uses disinformation, cyberattacks and espionage to weaken its defenses.
“It’s a fight every day for the Taiwanese against this sort of stuff,” said Mark Harrison, a senior lecturer in Chinese studies at the University of Tasmania.
“I think their democracy has tremendous integrity, but it does have to be defended, and when you defend something, it certainly generates a lot of discourse, a lot of debate.”
 

Topics: China Taiwan

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Warning signs on climate flashing bright red: top scientists

Warning signs on climate flashing bright red: top scientists
Updated 19 June 2025
AFP
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Warning signs on climate flashing bright red: top scientists

Warning signs on climate flashing bright red: top scientists
  • “The next three or four decades is pretty much the timeline over which we expect a peak in warming to happen”
Updated 19 June 2025
AFP

PARIS: From carbon pollution to sea-level rise to global heating, the pace and level of key climate change indicators are all in uncharted territory, more than 60 top scientists warned Thursday.
Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation hit a new high in 2024 and averaged, over the last decade, a record 53.6 billion tons per year — that is 100,000 tons per minute — of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases, they reported in a peer-reviewed update.
Earth’s surface temperature last year breached 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time, and the additional CO2 humanity can emit with a two-thirds chance of staying under that threshold long-term — our 1.5C “carbon budget” — will be exhausted in a couple of years, they calculated.
Investment in clean energy outpaced investment in oil, gas and coal last year two-to-one, but fossil fuels account for more than 80 percent of global energy consumption, and growth in renewables still lags behind new demand.
Included in the 2015 Paris climate treaty as an aspirational goal, the 1.5C limit has since been validated by science as necessary for avoiding a catastrophically climate-addled world.
The hard cap on warming to which nearly 200 nations agreed was “well below” two degrees, commonly interpreted to mean 1.7C to 1.8C.
“We are already in crunch time for these higher levels of warming,” co-author Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, told journalists in a briefing.
“The next three or four decades is pretty much the timeline over which we expect a peak in warming to happen.”
No less alarming than record heat and carbon emissions is the gathering pace at which these and other climate indicators are shifting, according to the study, published in Earth System Science Data.
Human-induced warming increased over the last decade at a rate “unprecedented in the instrumental record,” and well above the 2010-2019 average registered in the UN’s most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, in 2021.
The new findings — led by the same scientists using essentially the same methods — are intended as an authoritative albeit unofficial update of the benchmark IPCC reports underpinning global climate diplomacy.
They should be taken as a reality check by policymakers, the authors suggested.
“I tend to be an optimistic person,” said lead author Piers Forster, head of the University of Leed’s Priestley Center for Climate Futures.
“But if you look at this year’s update, things are all moving in the wrong direction.”
The rate at which sea levels have shot up in recent years is also alarming, the scientists said.
After creeping up, on average, well under two millimeters per year from 1901 to 2018, global oceans have risen 4.3 mm annually since 2019.
An increase in the ocean watermark of 23 centimeters — the width of a letter-sized sheet of paper — over the last 125 years has been enough to imperil many small island states and hugely amplify the destructive power of storm surges worldwide.
An additional 20 centimeters of sea level rise by 2050 would cause one trillion dollars in flood damage annually in the world’s 136 largest coastal cities, earlier research has shown.
Another indicator underlying all the changes in the climate system is Earth’s so-called energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere and the smaller amount leaving it.
So far, 91 percent of human-caused warming has been absorbed by oceans, sparing life on land.
But the planet’s energy imbalance has nearly doubled in the last 20 years, and scientists do not know how long oceans will continue to massively soak up this excess heat.
Dire future climate impacts worse than what the world has already experienced are already baked in over the next decade or two.
But beyond that, the future is in our hands, the scientists made clear.
“We will rapidly reach a level of global warming of 1.5C, but what happens next depends on the choices which will be made,” said co-author and former IPCC co-chair Valerie Masson-Delmotte.
The Paris Agreement’s 1.5C target allows for the possibility of ratcheting down global temperatures below that threshold before century’s end.
Ahead of a critical year-end climate summit in Brazil, international cooperation has been weakened by the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
President Donald Trump’s dismantling of domestic climate policies means the United States is likely to fall short on its emissions reduction targets, and could sap the resolve of other countries to deepen their own pledges, experts say.

Topics: climate change Global warming

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Congo and Rwanda sign preliminary peace agreement in Washington

Congo and Rwanda sign preliminary peace agreement in Washington
Updated 19 June 2025
AP
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Congo and Rwanda sign preliminary peace agreement in Washington

Congo and Rwanda sign preliminary peace agreement in Washington
  • Accord included conditional integration of non-state armed groups, says US State Department
  • Congo has accused Rwanda of backing M23 rebels in the east of the country
Updated 19 June 2025
AP

DAKAR, Senegal: Representatives from Congo and Rwanda have signed the text of a peace agreement between the two countries in Washington, according to a joint press release from the nations and the US State Department on Wednesday.
Congo has accused Rwanda of backing M23 rebels in the east of the country. UN experts says the rebels are supported by about 4,000 troops from the neighboring nation.
The decades-long conflict escalated in January, when the M23 rebels advanced and seized the strategic Congolese city of Goma, followed by the town of Bukavu in February.
“The Agreement includes provisions on respect for territorial integrity and a prohibition of hostilities; disengagement, disarmament, and conditional integration of non-state armed groups,” said the statement posted to the State Department’s website.
The agreement signed included a commitment to respecting territorial integrity and the conditional integration of non-state armed groups. Both sides also committed to a ministerial-level meeting next week and invited the leaders of both countries to attend.
This is not the first time peace talks have been held. Talks hosted by Qatar in April fell apart.
Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance, a coalition of rebel groups, told The Associated Press in April that international sanctions and Congo’s proposed minerals deal with the United States in search of peace would not stop the fighting.
M23 is one of about 100 armed groups that have been vying for a foothold in mineral-rich eastern Congo near the border with Rwanda. The conflict has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and has displaced more than 7 million people.

Topics: Congo Rwanda

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US safety board wants warnings on Boeing 737 MAX engines over smoke entering cockpit

US safety board wants warnings on Boeing 737 MAX engines over smoke entering cockpit
Updated 19 June 2025
Reuters
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US safety board wants warnings on Boeing 737 MAX engines over smoke entering cockpit

US safety board wants warnings on Boeing 737 MAX engines over smoke entering cockpit
  • The NTSB wants the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure that operators inform flight crews of airplanes equipped with the affected engines
Updated 19 June 2025
Reuters

WASHINGTON: The National Transportation Safety Board issued an urgent safety recommendation Wednesday to address the possibility of smoke entering the cockpit or cabin of Boeing 737 MAX airplanes equipped with CFM International LEAP-1B engines.
The NTSB also recommended evaluating the potential for the same issue with LEAP-1A and LEAP-1C engines, which are used on some Airbus A320neo variants and COMAC’s Chinese-made C919 jets.
The recommendation comes after two incidents involving Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX jets that experienced bird strikes in 2023. The NTSB wants the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure that operators inform flight crews of airplanes equipped with the affected engines.
Southwest said it is reviewing the recommendations and that it has mitigation procedures currently in place. Southwest notified its flight crews about the effects of certain bird strikes following two events that occurred in 2023, reiterating the importance of following established safety procedures.
CFM, the world’s largest engine maker by units sold, is co-owned by GE Aerospace and Safran.
The NTSB said it was “critical to ensure that pilots who fly airplanes equipped with CFM International LEAP-1B engines are fully aware of the potential for smoke in the cockpit if the load reduction device is activated during a critical phase of flight (takeoff or landing).”
The FAA and Boeing both said they agreed with the NTSB recommendations, and the planemaker alerted operators that smoke could enter the flight deck following the activation of the Load Reduction Device (LRD) in the engines, as a result of a bird strike.
“We advised operators to evaluate their procedures and crew training to ensure they address this potential issue,” the FAA said. “When the engine manufacturer develops a permanent mitigation, we will require operators to implement it within an appropriate timeframe.”
Boeing said that CFM and Boeing “have been working on a software design update.” The NTSB wants the update to be required on all 737 MAX planes once completed.
GE, Airbus and COMAC did not immediately respond to requests for comment
The NTSB asked the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and the Civil Aviation Administration of China to determine if other variants of the CFM LEAP engine are also susceptible to smoke in the cabin or cockpit when an LRD activates. EASA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In November, the FAA said it would not require immediate action after convening a review board to consider concerns about Boeing 737 MAX engines after two bird strike incidents involving the CFM LEAP-1B.
The FAA had been considering recommendations for new takeoff procedures to close the airflow to one or both engines to address the potential impact of a bird strike and prevent smoke from entering the cockpit.
In 2024, the NTSB opened an investigation into the Southwest left engine bird strike and subsequent smoke in cockpit event that occurred near New Orleans in December 2023.
The other incident occurred in a Southwest March 2023 flight that had departed Havana and in which a bird strike led to smoke filling the passenger cabin.
In February 2024, Boeing published a bulletin to inform flight crews of potential flight deck and cabin effects associated with severe engine damage.

Topics: National Transportation Safety Board Boeing 737 MAX CFM

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