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.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home