BANGLADESH
Train crash kills at least 17
The bodies of at least 17 people were recovered from a train crash outside Dhaka that might have occurred after one of the trains disregarded a red signal, officials said yesterday. The rescue operation was halted early in the morning a day after rescuers and residents together extracted passengers from the wreckage, said fire official Mosharraf Hossain at Bhairab, in the central district of Kishoreganj. He said 26 others were injured. “Our fire service teams returned early Tuesday from the scene as there is no chance of having more bodies from the wreckage. The train service has also been restored,” he said by telephone. The crash occurred when two rear coaches of the Dhaka-bound Egarosindur Godhuli Express passenger train were hit by a cargo train heading to Chattogram, senior fire official Azizul Haque Rajon said on Monday.
SPAIN
Stolen jewelry seized
Police on Monday said that they had confiscated 11 pieces of ancient gold jewelry that were taken out of Ukraine illegally in 2016. A police statement said that five people — two Ukrainians, one of them an Orthodox Church priest, and three Spaniards — who were attempting to sell the pieces in Spain have been arrested in recent weeks. The jewelry was estimated to be worth 60 million euros (US$64 million) and dated from between the 8th and 4th centuries BC. Police said the items were part of Ukraine’s national heritage. They went missing after being put on display between 2009 and 2013 in a museum in Kyiv. The pieces are being studied by the National Archeological Museum and the Cultural Heritage Institute.
KOREAS
‘Defectors’ arrive in boat
A small wooden boat carrying a group of North Koreans has crossed into South Korean waters, Seoul’s military said yesterday, in what appeared to be a rare defection across the maritime border. The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the boat and its crew were “presumed to have defected” from the North. The vessel was intercepted in waters off the eastern port city of Sokcho and those aboard brought to safety, it added. The boat was carrying four North Koreans who “expressed their intent to defect,” Yonhap News Agency reported, citing an unnamed government source. More than 30,000 North Koreans have fled to the South over the decades since the 1950-1953 conflict to escape repression and poverty.
ICELAND
PM, women stage strike
Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir and women across the volcanic island nation yesterday went on strike to push for an end to unequal pay and gender-based violence. Jakobsdottir said she would stay home as part of the “women’s day off,” and expected other women in her Cabinet would do the same. “We have not yet reached our goals of full gender equality and we are still tackling the gender-based wage gap, which is unacceptable in 2023,” she told news Web site mbl.is. “We are still tackling gender-based violence, which has been a priority for my government to tackle.” Organizers called on women and nonbinary people to refuse both paid and unpaid work, including household chores, during the one-day strike. Schools and the health system, which have female-dominated workforces, said they would be heavily affected by the walkout. National broadcaster RUV said it was reducing television and radio broadcasts for the day.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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