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When Maksim Kolker's phone rang at 6 a.m., and the voice on the other end said his father had been arrested, he thought it was a scam to extort money. A day earlier, he had taken his father, prominent Russian physicist Dmitry Kolker, to the hospital in his native Novosibirsk, when his advanced pancreatic cancer had suddenly worsened. The phone kept ringing and Kolker kept hanging up until finally his father called to confirm the grim news. The elder Kolker had been charged with treason, the family later learned, a crime that is probed and prosecuted in absolute secrecy in Russia and punished with long prison terms. Treason cases have been rare in Russia in the last 30 years, with a handful annually. But since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, they have skyrocketed, along with espionage prosecutions, ensnaring citizens and foreigners alike, regardless of their politics. That has brought comparisons to the show trials under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in the 1930s. The more recent victims range from Kremlin critics and independent journalists to veteran scientists working with countries that Moscow considers friendly. These cases stand out from the crackdown on dissent that has reached unprecedented levels under President Vladimir Putin. They are investigated almost exclusively by the powerful Federal Security Service, or FSB, with specific charges and evidence not always revealed. The accused are often held in strict isolation in Moscow's notorious Lefortovo Prison, tried behind closed doors, and almost always convicted, with long prison sentences. In 2022, Putin urged the security services to "harshly suppress the actions of foreign intelligence services, promptly identify traitors, spies and saboteurs." The First Department, a rights group that specializes in such prosecutions and takes its name from a division of the security service, counted over 100 known treason cases in 2023, lawyer Evgeny Smirnov told The Associated Press. He added there probably were another 100 that nobody knows about. The longer the war goes on, "the more traitors" the authorities want to round up, Smirnov said. Treason cases began growing after 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in the eastern part of the country and fell out with the West for the first time since the Cold War. Two years earlier, the legal definition of treason was expanded to include providing vaguely defined "assistance" to foreign countries or organizations, effectively exposing to prosecution anyone in contact with foreigners. The move followed mass anti-government protests in 2011-12 in Moscow that officials claimed were instigated by the West. Those changes to the law were heavily criticized by rights advocates, including those in the Presidential Human Rights Council. Faced with that criticism at the time, Putin promised to look into the amended law and agreed "there shouldn't be any broad interpretation of what high treason is." And yet, that's exactly what began happening. In 2015, authorities arrested Svetlana Davydova, a mother of seven in the western region of Smolensk, on treason charges in accordance with the new, expanded definition of the offense. She was charged over contacting the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow in 2014 to warn officials there that she thought Russia was sending troops into eastern Ukraine, where the separatist insurgency against Kyiv was unfolding. The case drew national attention and public outrage. Russia at the time denied its troops were involved in eastern Ukraine, and many pointed out that the case against Davydova contradicted that narrative. The charges against her were eventually dropped. That outcome was a rare exception to the multiplying treason and espionage cases in subsequent years that consistently ended in convictions and prison terms. Paul Whelan, a United States corporate security executive who traveled to Moscow to attend a wedding, was arrested in 2018 and convicted of espionage two years later, and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He denied the charges. Ivan Safronov, an adviser to the Roscosmos space agency and a former military affairs journalist, was convicted of treason in 2022 and sentenced to 22 years in prison. His prosecution was widely seen as retaliation for his reporting exposing military incidents and shady arms deals. "It's a very good cautionary tale case for them that journalists shouldn't write anything about the defense sector," his fiancee and fellow reporter Ksenia Mironova told AP. The FSB also went after scientists who study aerodynamics, hypersonics and other fields that could be used in weapons development. Such arrests swelled after 2018, when Putin in his annual state-of-the-nation address touted new and unique hypersonic weapons that Russia was developing, according to Smirnov, the lawyer. In his view, it was the security services' way of showing the Kremlin that Russian scientific advances, especially those used to develop weapons, are so valuable that "all foreign intelligence services in the world are after it." He stressed that all the arrested scientists were civilians, and that "they practically never go after military scientists." Many of the scientists denied the charges. Their families and colleagues insisted they were implicated over something as benign as giving lectures abroad or working with foreign scientists on joint projects. Kolker, the son of the detained Novosibirsk physicist, said that when the FSB searched his father's apartment, they looked for several presentations he had used in lectures given in China. The elder Kolker, who had studied light waves, gave presentations that were cleared for use abroad and also were given inside Russia, and "any student could understand that he wasn't revealing anything (secret) in them," Maksim Kolker said. Nevertheless, FSB officers yanked the 54-year-old physicist from his hospital bed in 2022 and flew him to Moscow, to the Lefortovo Prison, his son said. The ailing scientist called his family from the plane to say goodbye, knowing he was unlikely to survive prison, the son said. Within days, the family received a telegram informing them he had died in a hospital. Other cases were similar. Valery Golubkin, a 71-year-old Moscow physicist specializing in aerodynamics, was convicted of treason in 2023. His state-run research institute was working on an international project of a hypersonic civilian aircraft, and he was asked by his employer to help with reports on the project. Smirnov of the First Department group, which was involved in his defense, says the reports were vetted before they were sent abroad and didn't contain state secrets. Golubkin's daughter, Lyudmila, said the 2021 arrest came as a shock. "He is not guilty of anything," she said. His 12-year sentence was upheld despite appeals, and his family now hopes he will be released on parole. Other scientists working on hypersonics, a field with important applications for missile development, also were arrested on treason charges in recent years. One of them, Anatoly Maslov, 77, was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison in May. The Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in Novosibirsk wrote a letter supporting Maslov and two other physicists implicated over "making presentations at international seminars and conferences, publishing articles in highly rated journals (and) participation in international scientific projects." Such activities, the letter said, are "an obligatory component of conscientious and high-quality scientific activity," both in Russia and elsewhere. Two other recent high-profile cases involved a prominent opposition politician and a journalist. Vladimir Kara-Murza, a journalist who became an activist, was charged with treason in 2022 after giving speeches in the West that were critical of Russia. After surviving what he believed were attempts to poison him in 2015 and 2017, Kara-Murza was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison, where his family fears for his deteriorating health. In his closing statement at trial, Kara-Murza alluded to the USSR's dark legacy of prosecutions, saying the country has gone "all the way back to the 1930s." The Wall Street Journal's Evan Gershkovich was arrested in 2023 on espionage charges, the first American reporter detained on such charges since the Cold War. Gershkovich, who went on trial in June, denies the charges, and the U.S. government has declared him to be wrongfully detained. Russians reportedly have been charged with treason — or the less-severe charges of "preparing for treason" — for acts including donating money to Ukrainian charities or groups fighting alongside Kyiv's forces, setting military enlistment offices in Russia on fire, and even private phone conversations with friends in Ukraine about moving there. Ksenia Khavana, 33, was arrested in Yekaterinburg in February on treason charges, accused of collecting money for Ukraine's military. The dual Russian-U.S. citizen had returned from Los Angeles to visit family, and the First Department said the charges stem from a $51 donation to a U.S.-based charity that helps Ukraine. Several factors are motivating authorities to pursue more treason cases, experts say. One is that it sends a clear message that the unwritten rules have changed, and that conferences abroad or work with foreign peers is no longer something scientists should do, says Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist and expert on the security services. It's also easier to get higher authorities to allocate resources to a treason case, like surveillance or wiretaps, he says. According to Smirnov, the spike in prosecutions came after the FSB allowed its regional branches in 2022 to pursue certain kinds of treason, and officials in those branches sought to curry favor with their superiors to advance their careers. Above all, Soldatov said, is the FSB's genuine and widespread belief of "the fragility of the regime" at a time of a political turmoil — either from mass protests, as in 2011-12, or now during the war with Ukraine. "They sincerely believe that it can break," he said, even if it's really not the case. Mironova, the fiancee of the imprisoned journalist Safronov, echoed that sentiment. FSB investigators think they're catching "traitors" and "enemies of the motherland," even when they know they don't have evidence against them, she said.

Thousands of supporters of a Pakistani radical political party rallied near the capital, Islamabad, on Saturday, denouncing Israeli strikes in Gaza and urging the government to send more aid to the Palestinians. The protesters also demanded that Pakistan declare Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a terrorist.” There was no immediate response from the government following the rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Pakistan has no diplomatic relations with Israel. Pakistan has been calling for a cease-fire in the nine-month Israel-Hamas war, and in recent months has sent relief items for the Palestinians in Gaza. Pakistani court acquits Imran Khan, wife, in marriage case, paving way for possible release Saad Rizvi, head of the Islamist Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan party, which led the rally, said the sit-in at the protest would continue as long as its demands are not accepted by the government. Hundreds of police were deployed near the rally, which took place as militant attacks have surged in Pakistan. Israeli attack on southern Gaza kills 71 people, said to target head of Hamas' military wing

A Pakistani court on Saturday overturned the conviction and seven-year prison sentence of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife in the case of the couple’s alleged 2018 unlawful marriage case, removing the last known hurdle in the way of his release nearly a year after he was jailed, lawyers said. Naeem Panjutha, one of Khan's lawyers, said the court announced the verdict in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where the former premier is being held. The acquittal comes two weeks after another appeals court upheld the Feb. 5 conviction and sentence of Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi. The court in its brief order said if the couple is not wanted in any other case, they should be released. Bibi is Khan's third wife and a spiritual healer. She was previously married to a man who claimed that they divorced in November 2017, less than three months before she married Khan. Islamic law, as upheld by Pakistan, requires a three-month waiting period before a new marriage. Bibi has said they divorced in August 2017 and the couple insisted during the trial that they did not violate the waiting period. An appeals court in Pakistan upholds conviction of Imran Khan and his wife for unlawful marriage It was unclear how the government would respond to the court order. Authorities have registered multiple cases against Khan since 2022 when he was ousted from power through a vote of no-confidence in the parliament. The latest development came a day after Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that the party of Khan was improperly denied at least 20 seats in parliament, in a significant blow to the country’s fragile governing coalition. Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party was previously excluded from a system that gives parties extra seats reserved for women and minorities in the National Assembly, or lower house of the parliament. Though the verdict was a major political win for Khan, it would not put his party in a position to oust the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who came into power following a Feb. 8 election that Khan allies say was rigged. Hundreds of people suffer heatstroke in Pakistan, and dangerous heat is forecast to stay a while Khan has been embroiled in more than 150 legal cases, including inciting violence, since his arrest in May 2023. During nationwide riots that followed that, Khan’s supporters attacked the military and government buildings in various parts of the country and torched a building housing state-run Radio Pakistan in the northwest. The violence subsided only when Khan was released by the Supreme Court. Khan was again arrested in early August 2023 after a court handed him a three-year jail sentence for corruption. Since then, Khan has been given bail by different courts in all the cases in which he has been convicted.

Searchers scoured a mountain river and surrounding areas Saturday for two buses carrying more than 50 people that were swept away by a landslide a day earlier. Police said they had not found any traces of the buses or the people on board in the Trishuli river that was swollen by continuous rainfall over the past few days. Weather conditions improved Saturday and searchers were able to cover more ground in the hunt for the missing buses and passengers. Heavy equipment had cleared much of the landslides from the highway, making it easier for more searchers to reach the area. 2 buses carrying at least 60 people swept into a river by landslide in Nepal Soldiers and police teams were using rubber rafts, divers and sensor equipments to try to locate the buses, which were pushed off the highway into the river by a landslide. Three people were ejected from the buses and were being treated in a nearby hospital. The buses were likely submerged and swept downstream in the Trishuli. Nepal's rivers generally are fast-flowing due to the mountainous terrain. Heavy monsoon downpours in the past few days have swollen the waterways and turned their waters murky brown, making it even more difficult to see the wreckage. The buses were on the key highway connecting Nepal's capital to southern parts of the country when they were swept away Friday morning near Simaltal, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Kathmandu. A third bus was hit by another landslide Friday morning a short distance away on the same highway. Authorities said the driver was killed but it was not clear if there were any other casualties. Anar Murder: Nepal police arrested suspects Siam, Jihad, says DB chief Monsoon season brings heavy rains to Nepal from June to September, often triggering landslides in the mountainous Himalayan country. The government has imposed a ban on passenger buses travelling at night in the areas where weather warnings are posted, according to the Home Ministry. DB chief leading team in Nepal to investigate MP Anar murder

The youngest son of Mukesh Ambani, Asia's richest man, married his longtime girlfriend early Saturday in what many dubbed the wedding of the year, attended by global celebrities, business tycoons and politicians, highlighting the billionaire's staggering wealth and rising clout. The wedding rituals, including exchanging garlands by the couple and walking around the sacred fire, began Friday and were completed past midnight. The celebrations of Anant Ambani marrying Radhika Merchant took place at the Ambani-owned Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai and the family home. The marriage culminated months of wedding events that featured performances by pop stars including Rihanna and Justin Bieber. Son of Asia’s richest man set to marry in one of India’s most extravagant weddings The four-day wedding celebrations began Friday with the traditional Hindu wedding ceremony and will be followed by a grand reception to run through the weekend. The guest list includes former British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Boris Johnson; Saudi Aramco CEO Amin H. Nasser; and Adele, Lana Del Rey, Drake and David Beckham, according to local media. The Ambani family did not confirm the guest list. Television news channels showed celebrities like Kim Kardashian in a red ensemble and professional wrestler and Hollywood actor John Cena arriving. International guests also wore traditional dresses by major Indian fashion designers. They put on embroidered sherwanis — long-sleeved outer coats worn by men in South Asia. Cena came in a sky-blue sherwani and white pants. Nick Jonas wore a pink sherwani and white pants. Police imposed traffic diversions around the wedding venue from Friday to Monday to handle the influx of guests who flew to Mumbai, where heavy monsoon rains have caused flooding and flight disruptions for the past week. The extravaganza and the display of opulence that comes with the wedding has led many to raise questions about rising inequality in India, where the gap between rich and poor is growing. The event has also sparked anger among some Mumbai residents, who say they are struggling with snarled traffic. "It affects our earnings. I don't care much about the wedding," said Vikram, a taxi driver who uses only one name. Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani is set to throw a grand wedding for his son. Here's what to know The father of the groom, Mukesh Ambani, is the world's ninth-richest man, with a net worth of $116 billion, according to Forbes. He is the richest person in Asia. His Reliance Industries is a conglomerate reporting over $100 billion in annual revenue, with interests that include petrochemicals, oil and gas, telecoms and retail. The Ambani family owns, among other assets, a 27-story family compound in Mumbai worth $1 billion. The building contains three helipads, a 160-car garage and a private movie theater. The groom, 29-year-old Anant, oversees the conglomerate's renewable and green energy expansion. He also runs a 3,000-acre (about 1,200-hectare) animal rescue center in Gujarat state's Jamnagar, the family's hometown. The bride, Radhika Merchant, also 29, is the daughter of pharmaceutical tycoon Viren Merchant and is the marketing director for his company, Encore Healthcare, according to Vogue. Ambani's critics say his company has relied on political connections during Congress Party-led governments in the 1970s and '80s, and under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rule after 2014. The Ambani family's pre-wedding celebrations have been lavish and star-studded from the start. In March, they threw a three-day prenuptial bash for Anant that had 1,200 guests, including former world leaders, tech tycoons and Bollywood megastars, and performances by Rihanna, Akon and Diljit Dosanjh, a Punjabi singer who shot to international fame when he performed at Coachella. The event was also attended by tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. It was the start of lavish, months-long pre-wedding celebrations that grabbed headlines and set off a social media frenzy. Tycoons, heads of state, Hollywood and Bollywood stars show up as Asia’s richest man celebrates son’s wedding In May, the family took guests on a three-day cruise from Italy to France, which included Katy Perry singing her hit song "Firework" and a performance by Pitbull, according to media reports. The family also organized a mass wedding for more than 50 underprivileged couples on July 2 as part of the celebrations. Last week, Justin Bieber performed for hundreds of guests at a pre-wedding concert that included performances by Bollywood stars Alia Bhatt, Ranveer Singh and Salman Khan. Ambani also made headlines in 2018, when Beyoncé performed at pre-wedding festivities for his daughter. Former U.S. Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were among those who rubbed shoulders with Indian celebrities and Bollywood stars in the western Indian city of Udaipur.

At least 60 people were believed missing in Nepal after two buses were swept by a landslide off a highway and into a swollen river early Friday. Three passengers were rescued as the continuous rain made rescue efforts difficult. The three survivors were being treated in the hospital, government administrator Khima Nanada Bhusal said, adding that they reportedly jumped out of the bus and swam to the banks, where locals found them and took them to a nearby hospital. Landslides also blocked routes to the area in several places, according to Bhusal. Additional rescuers and security forces have been sent to help with rescue efforts. The buses were swept off the highway around 3 a.m. near Simaltal, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu. One bus was carrying at least 24 people, while the other had at least 42, but more could have boarded en route, Bhusal said. A third bus was hit by another landslide on Friday morning a short distance away on the same highway, killing the driver, Bhusal added. It was not clear if there were any other casualties. Nepal's Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal said he was saddened by the news and expressed concern over recent flooding and landslides. He added that several government agencies were searching for the missing, in a post on the social media platform X. On Thursday night, a landslide buried a hut and killed a family of seven near the resort town of Pokhara. The family were asleep when the landslide crushed their hut and damaged three more houses nearby. Monsoon season brings heavy rains to Nepal from June to September, often triggering landslides in the mountainous Himalayan country.

South Korea said Thursday it will begin deploying laser weapons systems designed to intercept North Korean drones, which have caused security concerns in the South in recent years. South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration said that it will deploy at least one anti-air laser weapons system called “Block-I” by the end of this year and more in coming years. An agency statement said the “Block-I” system is capable of launching precision attacks on small incoming drones and multi-copters. It said the system, developed by local company Hanwha Aerospace, costs just 2,000 won (about $1.50) per shot. “We face North Korea on our doorstep and its drones pose present threats to us, so that's why we've been aiming to build and deploy laser weapons soon to cope with them,” an agency official said, requesting anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to media on the issue. He said that other countries like the United States and Israel are ahead of South Korea in laser weapons technology, but their primary focus has been on higher-powered laser guns that can shoot down incoming ballistic missiles. South Korea also hopes to develop such anti-missile laser weapons, which its defense procurement agency called “a game changer” in future combat environments. The “Block-I” system is meant to hit circuit boards and other equipment in enemy drones to make them malfunction and crash on the ground. Tests of the weapons system in 2022-2023 were successful and proved its credibility, the official said. Some experts questioned the technology. Lee Illwoo, an expert with the Korea Defense Network in South Korea, doubts how effectively South Korea can use its laser weapons since its anti-air radar systems aren't advanced enough to detect North Korean drones well. He said the range of a laser weapon is relatively short, so high-power microwave weapons would be better when enemy drones are flown in large numbers simultaneously. Jung Chang Wook, head of the Korea Defense Study Forum think tank in Seoul, said South Korea is likely about five years away from acquiring a functioning laser weapon that can shoot down the drones used by North Korea. North Korea has periodically flown drones across its heavily fortified border with South Korea for several years, in what observers have called tests of South Korean readiness. In December 2022, South Korea accused the North of sending drones across the border for the first time in five years. South Korea fired warning shots and launched fighter jets and helicopters but failed to shoot down any of the drones. In a key political meeting in December 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to introduce various types of unmanned combat equipment such as attack drones for 2024. Foreign experts say Kim likely regards drones as a cheap yet effective method to trigger security jitters and an internal divide in South Korea. Animosities between the two Koreas, split along the world's most heavily fortified border, have deepened in recent months, with North Korea flying trash-carrying balloons toward South Korea in response to South Korean activists floating political leaflets via their own balloons.

Two Australian nationals and their Filipina companion were killed in a hotel in a popular resort city south of the Philippine capital, Manila and police were trying to identify and track down the suspects, officials said Thursday. A hotel worker found the bodies of the victims, whose hands and feet were tied, in a room at the Lake Hotel in Tagaytay city, on Wednesday, according to a police statement. The Australian male victim's throat was slit with a sharp object that may have caused his death while the two women apparently may have been suffocated using a pillow, Tagaytay police chief Charles Daven Capagcuan told The Associated Press. Ongoing autopsies would verify those initial indications, he said. Capagcuan said the motive for the killings was not immediately clear and added some valuables of the victims, including their cellphones, were not taken by the suspect. “We were shocked by this incident,” Tagaytay Mayor Abraham Tolentino said, apologizing to the families of the victims. “We’re very sorry to our Australian friends. We will resolve this as soon as possible.” The victims were believed to be a man in his 50s from Australia, his Philippine-born partner, who had acquired Australian citizenship, and her Filipina relative. Investigators were interviewing witnesses and examining security cameras at the hotel, including one footage that showed a man wearing a mask and a hoodie and carrying a sling bag who walked out of the victims' room a few hours before their bodies were discovered, Capagcuan said. A Filipino relative of the Australian woman told the AP that the Australian couple flew from Sydney to the Indonesian resort island of Bali for a vacation then headed to the Philippines Monday to visit her two children from a previous marriage in the country. The Australian couple was supposed to fly back to Australia Wednesday, the day they were killed, but decided to briefly take a vacation in Tagaytay, said the relative, who asked not to be identified for security reasons. Tagaytay, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of Manila, is popular among local and foreign tourists who flock there for its cool weather and to view one of the world's smallest active volcanos nestled in the middle of a lake. Tolentino told the AP that the remains of the Australian man would be flown back to Sydney and the two women would be buried in the Philippines as requested by their relatives. The government would pay for the women's funeral and burial, he said. In Australia, a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it’s providing consular assistance to the families of the two Australians and expressed condolences to their families. No other details were provided “owing to our privacy obligations,” the spokesperson said.

China accused NATO on Thursday of seeking security at the expense of others and told the alliance not to bring the same “chaos” to Asia, a reflection of its determination to oppose strengthening ties between NATO members and Asian nations such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. The statement by a Foreign Ministry spokesperson came a day after NATO labeled China a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Ukraine is on an 'irreversible' path to NATO. But only after war with Russia ends “NATO hyping up China’s responsibility on the Ukraine issue is unreasonable and has sinister motives,” spokesperson Lin Jian said at a daily briefing. He maintained that China has a fair and objective stance on the Ukraine issue. China has broken with the United States and its European allies over the war in Ukraine, refusing to condemn Russia's invasion or even to refer to it as an act of aggression in deference to Moscow. Its trade with Russia has grown since the invasion, at least partially offsetting the impact of Western sanctions. NATO, in a statement issued at a summit in Washington, said China has become an enabler of the war through its “no-limits partnership” with Russia and its large-scale support for Russia’s defense industrial base. Lin said China's trade with Russia is legitimate and reasonable and based on World Trade Organization rules. Russian missile attack on Ukraine's largest hospital complicates treatment of kids with cancer He said NATO’s “so-called security” comes at the cost of the security of other countries. China has backed Russia's contention that NATO expansion posed a threat to Russia, whose attack on Ukraine has only strengthened the alliance, leading to Sweden and Finland becoming formal members. China has expressed concern about NATO’s budding relationships with countries in the Indo-Pacific region. Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea sent their leaders or deputies to the NATO summit this week. “China urges NATO to ... stop interfering in China’s internal politics and smearing China’s image and not create chaos in the Asia-Pacific after creating turmoil in Europe,” Lin said. Chinese troops are in Belarus this week for joint drills near the border with Poland, a NATO member. The exercises are the first with Belarus, an ally of Russia, with which it shares a single-party system under President Alexander Lukashenko, whose regime cracked down brutally on 2020 mass protests against his rule, Lin described the joint training as a normal military operation that is not directed at any particular country. China is a key player in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes a strong military element involving Russia and several Central Asian nations, India and, most recently, Belarus. That is seen as creating a bulwark against Western influence in the region, but also tensions over rising Chinese influence in what Russia considers its political backyard made up of former parts of the Soviet Union, which included Belarus. Russian House in Dhaka celebrates the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity Earlier this month, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attended a meeting of leaders or top officials from the 10 SCO countries in Kazakhstan at which Putin reiterated his demand that Ukraine withdraw its troops from parts of the country occupied by Russia. Ukraine has firmly rejected that, along with a Chinese peace proposal that makes no mention of the return of Ukrainian territory to the government in Kyiv. China and Russia have closely aligned their foreign policies to oppose the West, even as Russia grows increasingly reliant on China as a purchaser of its oil and gas that make up the bulk of its foreign trade.

Myanmar’s military has been emptying villages on the outskirts of the capital of the western state of Rakhine as part of an evident effort to defend against expected attacks by a powerful rebel group that has captured most of the surrounding area, according to residents, a local activist group and media reports on Tuesday. The action over the past few days to defend the state capital, Sittwe, came a week after the Arakan Army, the ethnic armed organization of the state’s Muslim Rohingya minority, vowed to capture the army outposts in the city. Rakhine is the current hotspot for fighting in Myanmar’s nationwide civil war, in which pro-democracy guerrillas and ethnic minority armed forces battle the country’s military rulers, who took power in 2021 after the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. If the Arakan Army captures Sittwe, it would be the first state capital to fall to the rebel forces. Sittwe is also strategically important as its location offers easy access to the Bay of Bengal. The Arakan Army, which seeks autonomy from Myanmar’s central government, began a largely successful offensive in Rakhine — its home ground — about six months ago, gaining control of nine of 17 townships in Rakhine and one in adjacent Chin state. In early June that the group declared it would target the military’s outposts in Rakhine's remaining eight townships. It already controls all three townships bordering Sittwe, about 340 kilometers (235 miles) southwest of Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city. 11 killed as passenger bus collides with pickup truck in northern Philippines A resident of Palin Pyin, a village about 15 kilometers (9 miles) northwest of Sittwe, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that soldiers and civil authorities on Sunday forced the village elders, without giving a reason, to tell the residents to leave within five days. The deadline was later shortened to three days. Palin Pyin is a fishing village located at the confluence of the Mayu and Kywee Tae rivers, which mark the border between the townships of Sittwe and Rathedaung, which is already under the Arakan Army's control. The villager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she fears arrest by the military, said residents were told to move to Sittwe town and its immediate suburbs, taking their belongings, including whatever elements of their housing they could bring. She said members of the security forces had been planting landmines, and building fences and watchtowers around the village since the end of May to guard against any attacks, which could come by river. The woman said her family had moved on Monday to a village in Sittwe's suburbs after being warned by the authorities, who had set up an outpost in her home village's Buddhist monastery. Residents of four nearby villages also moved with difficulty to Sittwe's environs, some sheltering in monasteries. Two town residents also told the AP that their relatives who had been living in outlying villages to the north confirmed that people from five villages had been told to leave their homes in order to protect the city from attack by the Arakan Army. The All Arakan Students’ & Youths’ Congress-AASYC, an independent youth organization from Rakhine state opposed to the military government, said in a statement released on Monday that the army was planning to demolish 12 villages along the bank of the Kywee Tae river after forcing their residents to leave by Friday this week. A double-decker bus collides with a milk truck in northern India, killing at least 18 people The statement claimed the villagers were given five days, instead of being forced to leave immediately, by the chief minister of Rakhine state military council in order to avoid a situation similar to one at the end of May in Byine Phyu village, just outside of Sittwe town. In that case, the military and their allies were accused of killing 76 people in the village, though details remain hazy. The military claimed that only three people were killed when they tried to grab a gun from a soldier, but other reports have suggested dozens were killed because the village was supposedly offering its support to the Arakan Army. News from the area cannot be verified independently because of severe restrictions on movement. After the incident in Byine Phyu, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres issued a statement expressing deeply concern about escalating violence in Myanmar. U.N. Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said that aerial bombings and human rights violations are constantly reported in many parts of Myanmar and “those responsible must be held to account.” Dujarric said the U.N. secretary-general “calls on all parties to the conflict to exercise maximum restraint, prioritize protection of civilians in accordance with international humanitarian law and prevent further incitement of communal tension and violence.”