MYANMAR
Group seizes border gate
An ethnic minority armed group has seized control from the country’s ruling junta of a lucrative border crossing to China, local media and a security source said yesterday. Clashes have raged across Myanmar’s northern Shan state, close to the Chinese border, after an armed alliance of three ethnic minority groups launched an offensive against the military last month. An offensive by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) — one of the three allied groups — captured the Kyin San Kyawt border gate, a local media outlet affiliated with the group said. “MNDAA also reported they seized one more border trade gate, which is called Kyin San Kyawt, in Mongko area, Muse district this morning,” Kokang News reported yesterday. It added that the alliance — including the Arakan Army and Ta’ang National Liberation Army — had taken other positions in the border trade zone after the assault began on Friday.
INDIA
Four die in stampede
At least four people were killed and dozens injured on Saturday evening in a stampede at a university in southern India, local officials and media reported. The stampede occurred at an outdoor auditorium in the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) in southwest Kerala state, where a concert had been planned. Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan wrote on X that he was “deeply shocked and grieved to know about the sad demise of four students” at CUSAT. Four more people were in a critical condition and 60 people had been injured, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported. A local police official told PTI that a crowd outside the auditorium had rushed for cover during a sudden downpour when a number of people slipped on some stairs and were trampled.
RUSSIA
Ex-PM Kasyanov blacklisted
The Minsitry of Justice on Friday classified former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who left the country to denounce the offensive in Ukraine, as a “foreign agent.” The name of Kasyanov, who was the first head of President Vladimir Putin’s government in the early 2000s, now appears in the justice ministry’s register of “foreign agents,” a term reminiscent of the Soviet-era “enemy of the people.” The ministry accused Kasyanov of having “opposed the special military operation in Ukraine” and of being “a member of the Russian Anti-War Committee, an association whose activities are aimed at discrediting Russian foreign and domestic policy.”
MEXICO
Three journalists freed
Three journalists recently kidnapped in Mexico’s southern state of Guerrero have been freed unharmed after search operations by security authorities, the office of the state’s attorney general said on Saturday. The three journalists released on Saturday were among five people whose disappearance in the tourist town of Taxco the state attorney general’s office had this week said it was investigating. Silvia Arce and Alberto Sanchez, who lead the digital platform RedSiete, were freed early on Saturday, free-speech group, Article 19 said, after having been taken on Wednesday by armed men who entered the outlet’s central Taxco offices. Another journalist freed on Saturday was Marco Toledo, director of the weekly El Espectador de Taxco, authorities said. Toledo’s wife and son had also been kidnapped by five armed men who entered their home last Sunday, Article 19 said. Although Toledo’s wife has been freed, authorities are still searching for his son.
‘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
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,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
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