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.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
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