Asia
Mamata sacks tainted Bengal Minister over school jobs scam
Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday sacked one of her senior ministers from her Cabinet as well as from all posts of her ruling Trinamool Congress party, days after he was arrested in a school jobs scam.
Partha Chatterjee held the portfolios of Commerce and Industry, IT and electronics, and Industrial Reconstruction in the state Cabinet. He was also the ruling Trinamool Congress party's general secretary.
"I have removed Partha Chatterjee as a minister. My party takes strict action. There are many plannings behind it but I don't want to go into details,” the Bengal Chief Minister told the media after a Cabinet meeting at the Bengal secretariat.
Also read: Mamata, Modi on the same page on Ukraine crisis
Trinamool's disciplinary committee, headed by its second-in-command and Mamata's nephew Abhishek, subsequently announced Chatterjee's removal from all party posts.
Earlier in the day, the party's spokesperson tweeted to demand strict action against the disgraced minister. "Chatterjee should be removed from ministry and all party posts immediately. He should be expelled."
The 69-year-old was taken into custody by India's anti-money laundering probe agency, on Saturday, following hours of questioning for his alleged involvement in school teachers' recruitment scam.
Also read: Bengal CM Mamata reinstates nephew as Trinamool general secretary
Subsequent raids on multiple flats of Chatterjee's aide Arpita, a small-time actor, helped the Enforcement Directorate seize Rs 50 crore in cash. Chatterjee is said to have taken money for doing out teaching jobs when he was the Education Minister.
Amnesty: Taliban crackdown on rights is 'suffocating' women
The lives of Afghan women and girls are being destroyed by a “suffocating” crackdown by the Taliban since they took power nearly a year ago, Amnesty International said in a report released Wednesday.
After they captured the capital, Kabul, in August 2021 and ousted the internationally backed government, the Taliban presented themselves as having moderated since their first time in power, in the 1990s. Initially, Taliban officials spoke of allowing women to continue to work and girls to continue their education.
Instead, they formed an all-male government stacked with veterans of their hard-line rule that has banned girls from attending school from seventh grade, imposed all-covering dress that leaves only the eyes visible and restricted women's access to work.
Amnesty said the Taliban have also decimated protections for those facing domestic violence, detained women and girls for minor violations and contributed to a surge in child marriages. The report also documented the torture and abuse of women arrested by the Taliban for protesting against restrictions.
“Taken together, these policies form a system of repression that discriminates against women and girls in almost every aspect of their lives,” the report said. “This suffocating crackdown against Afghanistan’s female population is increasing day by day.”
The group's researchers visited Afghanistan in March as part of a nine-month-long investigation conducted from September 2021 to June 2022. They interviewed 90 women and 11 girls, between 14 and 74 years-old, across Afghanistan.
Among them were women detained for protesting who described torture at the hands of Taliban guards, including beatings and threats of death.
Read: Hope and despair: Kathy Gannon on 35 years in Afghanistan
One woman told Amnesty that guards beat her and other women on the breasts and between the legs, “so that we couldn’t show the world.” She said one told her, “I can kill you right now, and no one would say anything.”
A university student who was detained said she was electrically shocked on her shoulder, face, neck and elsewhere, while the Taliban shouted insults at her. One held a gun at her and told her, “I will kill you, and no one will be able to find your body.”
The report said rates of child, early and forced marriage in Afghanistan are surging under Taliban rule.
The increase, Amnesty said, is fueled by Afghanistan’s economic and humanitarian crisis and the lack of education and job prospects for women and girls. The report documented cases of forced marriages of women and girls to Taliban members — under pressure by the Taliban member or by the women’s families.
One woman from a central province of Afghanistan told Amnesty that she was compelled her to marry off her 13-year-old daughter to a 30-year-old neighbor in exchange for 60,000 Afghanis (around US$670). She said she felt relieved because her daughter “won’t be hungry anymore.”
She said she was also considering the same for her 10-year-old daughter but was holding off in hopes the girl could get an education and eventually secure a job to support the family. “Of course, if they don’t open the school, I will have to marry her off,” she added.
“You have a patriarchal government, war, poverty, drought, girls out of school. With all of these factors combined … we knew child marriage was going to go through the roof,” said Stephanie Sinclair, director of Too Young to Wed, who was quoted in the report.
The Taliban seized Kabul as U.S. and NATO forces were withdrawing from Afghanistan, ending a nearly 20-year war against the Taliban’s insurgency. The world has refused to recognize the Taliban's rule, demanding it respect human rights and show tolerance for other groups. The U.S. and its allies have cut off billions in development funds that kept the government afloat, as well as froze billions in Afghan national assets.
This sent the already shattered economy into freefall, increasing poverty dramatically and creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Millions, struggling to feed their families, are kept alive by a massive U.N.-led relief effort.
Amnesty called on the international community to take action to protect Afghan women and girls.
“Less than one year after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, their draconian policies are depriving millions of women and girls of their right to lead safe, free and fulfilling lives,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty secretary general.
“If the international community fails to act, it will be abandoning women and girls in Afghanistan, and undermining human rights everywhere,” she said.
7.3 earthquake hits north Philippines, causes some damage
A strong earthquake shook the northern Philippines on Wednesday, causing some damage and prompting people to flee buildings in the capital. Officials said no casualties were immediately reported.
The 7.3 magnitude quake was centered around Abra province in a mountainous area and several aftershocks have followed, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said.
The quake was set off by movement in a local fault at a depth of 25 kilometers (15 miles), the institute said, adding it expected damage and more aftershocks.
Officials said the strong shaking caused cracks in buildings and houses.
Read: Japan minister says women ‘underestimated’
The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake’s strength at 7.0 and depth at 10 kilometers (6 miles). Shallower quakes tend to cause more damage.
The Philippines lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of faults around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes occur. It is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and tropical storms each year, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.
A magnitude 7.7 quake killed nearly 2,000 people in the northern Philippines in 1990.
Japan minister says women ‘underestimated’
Japan’s minister for gender equality and children’s issues called the country’s record low births and plunging population a national crisis and blamed “indifference and ignorance” in the male-dominated Japanese parliament for the neglect.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Seiko Noda couched the steadily dwindling number of children born in Japan as an existential threat, saying the nation won’t have enough troops, police or firefighters in coming decades if it continues. The number of newborns last year was a record low 810,000, down from 2.7 million just after the end of World War II, she said.
“People say that children are a national treasure. ... They say that women are important for gender equality. But they are just talking,” Noda, 61, told the AP in a Cabinet office in downtown Tokyo’s government complex. “The politics of Japan will not move unless (the problems of children and women) are made visible.”
She said there are a variety of reasons for the low birthrate, persistent gender bias and population decline in Japan, “but being in the parliament, I especially feel that there is indifference and ignorance.”
Read: Saudi crown prince: First EU visit since Khashoggi killing
Japan is the world’s third biggest economy, a powerful democracy and a major U.S. ally, but the government has struggled to make society more inclusive for children, women and minorities. There are deep concerns, both within Japan and abroad, about how Japan will reverse what critics call a deep-seated history of male chauvinism that has contributed to the low birthrate.
The gap between men and women in Japan is one of the world’s worst. It ranked 116th in a 146-nation survey by the World Economic Forum for 2022, which measured progress toward equality based on economic and political participation, as well as education, health and other opportunities for women.
“Japan has fallen behind because other countries have been changing faster,” said Chizuko Ueno, a University of Tokyo professor of feminist studies, referring to Japan’s gender gap. “Past governments have neglected the problem.”
Because of outdated social and legal systems surrounding family issues, younger generations are increasingly reluctant to get married and have children, contributing to the low birthrate and shrinking population, said Noda. She has served in parliament since 1993 and expressed her ambition to be Japan’s first female prime minister.
Noda criticized a law requiring married couples to choose one family name — 90% of the time it is the women who change their surnames — saying it’s the only such legislation in the world.
“In Japan, women are underestimated in many ways,” said Noda, who is one of only two women in the 20-member Cabinet. “I just want women to be on equal footing with men. But we are not there yet, and the further advancement of women still has to wait.”
The more powerful lower house of Japan’s two-chamber parliament is more than 90% “people who do not menstruate, do not get pregnant and cannot breastfeed,” Noda said.
The lack of female representation is often referred to as “democracy without women.”
A quota system could help increase the number of female candidates for political office, Noda said, but male lawmakers have criticized her proposal, saying women should be judged by their abilities.
“That made me think that there are men who lack the ability” to be candidates, she said. But during the candidate selection process, “men can just be men, and I guess, for them, just being male can be considered their ability.”
Noda graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo and worked at the prestigious Imperial Hotel in Tokyo before she entered politics, succeeding her grandfather, who was a parliamentarian in Gifu prefecture.
Noda had her first child, who is disabled, at age 50 after fertility treatments. She supports same-sex marriage and acceptance of sexual diversity.
Noda, who has many liberal supporters, called herself “an endangered species” in her conservative Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan with little interruption since the end of the war.
She said she is frequently “bashed” by conservatives in the party, but also by women’s rights activists, who don’t see her as an authentic feminist.
Read: Russia to drop out of International Space Station after 2024
Still, without the help of powerful male lawmakers in the party she could not have come this far, Chiyako Sato, a Mainichi newspaper editorial writer, said in her recent article.
Comparing Noda and her ultra-conservative and hawkish female rival Sanae Takaichi who both ran unsuccessfully in the September party leadership race, Sato said despite their different political views, they are similar “perhaps they had no other way but win powerful male lawmakers’ backing to advance in the Liberal Democratic Party at a time women are not considered full fledged humans.”
Japan’s Self Defense Force, she said, has had trouble getting enough troops because of the shrinking younger population. She said there’s also not enough attention paid to what the dwindling numbers will mean for police and firefighters, who rely on young recruits.
To try to address the problems, she has created a new government agency dedicated to children set to be launched next year.
Younger male politicians in recent years have become more open to gender equality, a reflection, in part, of the growing number of children who are being raised by working parents, Noda said.
But many male lawmakers, she said, think that issues around families, gender and population don’t concern them, and are reluctant to get involved.
“The policies have been made as if there were no women or children,” she said.
Saudi crown prince: First EU visit since Khashoggi killing
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived in Greece Tuesday on his first trip to a European Union country since the killing in 2018 of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi that triggered widespread international condemnation.
Bin Salman, who is traveling with a large government and business delegation, met with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and will attend the signing of a series of bilateral investment and defense agreements.
Khashoggi, a U.S.-based journalist, was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and his body was dismembered with a bone saw, according to Turkish officials.
A U.S. intelligence report, made public last year, said the crown prince likely approved the killing but he has denied any involvement.
Greece has forged close ties with Saudi Arabia in recent years as it seeks allies in the wider region to address long-standing tension with neighbor Turkey, mostly over sea boundaries and drilling rights. Last year, Greece and Saudi Arabia held joint military exercises out of the Greek island of Crete, and Athens lent the kingdom a missile battery from its Patriot air defense system.
The two countries are also planning a data cable link worth a reported 800 million euros that would run under the Mediterranean Sea and be completed in 2025.
Read: Jamal Khashoggi killing: Rights group files complaint against Saudi crown prince
The Saudi Prince’s trip to Greece follows his meeting earlier with month in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with President Joe Biden. Mitsotakis visited Saudi Arabia last October and met the crown prince who also later received visits from French President Emmanuel Macron and the outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Police kill 6 armed drug traffickers in southern Iran
The Iranian police have seized 697 kg of illicit drugs and killed six armed smugglers in an operation in the southern province of Kerman, provincial police chief Abdolreza Nazeri said on Tuesday.
Additionally, three assault rifles and large quantities of ammunition were discovered from the smugglers, Nazeri was quoted as saying by state TV.
In the operation, one police officer was killed and five others were injured by the armed drug traffickers, he added.
Iran has been suffering from drug trafficking given its location at the crossroads of international drug smuggling from Afghanistan to Europe.
Read: Woman held for drug trafficking in DU
Over the past few decades, Iran's eastern and southeastern borders have seen deadly clashes between Iranian security forces and armed drug smugglers. Unx4
Armed assailants kill 6 at Mexico rehab center.
Widespread condemnation of Myanmar's execution of prisoners
International outrage over Myanmar's execution of four political prisoners intensified Tuesday with grassroots protests and strong condemnation from world governments, as well as fears the hangings could derail nascent attempts to bring an end to the violence and unrest that has beset the Southeast Asian nation since the military seized power last year.
Myanmar's military-led government that seized power from elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 has been accused of thousands of extrajudicial killings since then, but the hangings announced Monday were the country's first official executions in decades.
“We feel that this is a crime against humanity,” said Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah, speaking at the side of the United Nations' Special Envoy on Myanmar Noeleen Heyzer at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur.
He said the executions would be a focus of the upcoming meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministers, which begin in Cambodia in a week.
Myanmar is a member of the influential ASEAN group, which has been trying to implement a five-point consensus it reached on Myanmar last year calling for dialogue among all concerned parties, provision of humanitarian assistance, an immediate cessation of violence and a visit by a special envoy to meet all parties.
With the executions, he said, “we look at it as if the junta is making a mockery of the five point process.”
Heyzer said that the U.N. sees the executions as a “blatant violation” of a person's “right to life, liberty and security."
In Bangkok, hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators protested outside neighboring Myanmar's embassy, waving flags and chanting slogans amid a heavy downpour.
Read:Myanmar executes NLD lawmaker, 3 other political opponents
“The dictators used their power arbitrarily,” yelled a young man through a bullhorn to the crowd, some of whom waved pictures of Suu Kyi or the four executed men. “We can't tolerate this any more.”
Among the four executed was Phyo Zeya Thaw, a 41-year-old former lawmaker from Suu Kyi’s party, and Kyaw Min Yu, a 53-year-old democracy activist better known as Ko Jimmy. All were tried, convicted and sentenced by a military tribunal with no possibility of appeal.
The executions were carried out over the weekend, and came as a surprise even to family members.
Phyo Zeya Thaw's mother Khin Win May told The Associated Press she had just spoken with her son via video conference on Friday and he had asked her for reading glasses, books and some spending money.
“I was a little shocked when I heard about the execution, I think it will take some time,” she said.
She said she hoped her son and the others would be seen as martyrs for their cause.
“I'm proud of all of them as they sacrificed their lives for the country," she said.
The execution of the four activists prompted immediate calls from around the world for a moratorium on carrying out any further sentences, and condemnation for what was broadly seen as a politically motivated move.
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, announced in June that it was going to resume executing prisoners and has 113 others who have been sentenced to death, although 41 of those were convicted in absentia, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a non-governmental organization that tracks killing and arrests. At the same time, 2,120 civilians have been killed by security forces since the military takeover.
“This was a barbaric act by Myanmar's military regime,” said New Zealand's Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta of the four executions carried out. “New Zealand condemns these actions in the strongest possible terms.”
Australia's Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she was “appalled” by the executions.
“Australia opposes the death penalty in all circumstances for all people,” she said.
Earlier, Australia and New Zealand had joined the European Union, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Norway and South Korea in a joint statement condemning the executions.
ASEAN denounced the executions as “highly reprehensible.”
It said the move represented a setback to the group's efforts to facilitate a dialogue between the military leadership and opponents.
“We strongly and urgently call on all parties concerned to desist from taking actions that would only further aggravate the crisis, hinder peaceful dialogue among all parties concerned, and endanger peace, security and stability, not only in Myanmar, but the whole region,” the group said in a statement.
The military’s seizure of power from Suu Kyi’s elected government triggered peaceful protests that soon escalated to armed resistance and then to widespread fighting that some U.N. experts characterize as a civil war.
Some resistance groups have engaged in assassinations, drive-by shootings and bombings in urban areas. Mainstream opposition organizations generally disavow such activities, while supporting armed resistance in rural areas that are more often subject to brutal military attacks.
News of the executions prompted a flash-demonstration Monday in Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, where about a dozen protesters took to the streets marching behind a banner saying “we are never afraid,” then quickly slipping away before authorities could confront them.
Similar demonstrations broke out in more rural areas across Myanmar on both Monday and Tuesday.
The last judicial execution to be carried out in Myanmar is generally believed to have been of another political offender, student leader Salai Tin Maung Oo, in 1976 under a previous military government led by dictator Ne Win.
All four executed men had been accused of violent anti-government acts, charges which were denied by their defenders.
28 people dead, 60 sick in India from drinking spiked liquor
At least 28 people have died and 60 others became ill from drinking altered liquor in western India, officials said Tuesday.
Senior government official Mukesh Parmar said the deaths occurred in Ahmedabad and Botad districts of Gujarat state, where manufacturing, sale and consumption of liquor are prohibited. It was not immediately known what chemical was used to alter the liquor.
Ashish Gupta, Gujarat state's police chief, said several suspected bootleggers who were involved in selling the spiked alcohol have been detained.
Read: 8 killed in India road crash
Deaths from illegally brewed alcohol are common in India, where illicit liquor is cheap and often spiked with chemicals such as pesticides to increase potency.
Illicit liquor has also become a hugely profitable industry across India where bootleggers pay no taxes and sell enormous quantities of their product to the poor at a cheap rate.
In 2020, at least 120 people died after drinking tainted liquor in India’s northern Punjab state.
India's daily COVID-19 caseload slips to 14,830
India's daily caseload further slipped to 14,830 on Tuesday, officials said.
According to health ministry data released on Tuesday morning, 14,830 new cases of COVID-19 were reported during the past 24 hours, taking the total tally to 43,920,451 in the South Asian country.
The new cases reported on Tuesday mark a decrease from the Monday daily caseload of 16,866.
With the reporting of fresh cases, the number of active cases currently stands at 147,512 in India.
The country also logged 36 new deaths due to COVID-19, bringing the death toll to 526,110 since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, the ministry said.
With the increase in cases, the daily positivity rate stood at 3.48 percent and the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 4.53 percent, the ministry data showed.
The ministry said that so far 43,246,829 COVID-19 cases have been cured and discharged from hospitals in the country, including 18,159 new recoveries.
According to the health ministry, the cumulative COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the country has exceeded 2 billion vaccine doses as 2,025,057,717 doses have been administered until Tuesday morning.
Read: From Dec, only Covid booster dose will be available in Bangladesh
So far over 873 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted across the country, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said on Tuesday. Out of them 426,102 tests were conducted on Monday.
The Indian government said recently that an estimated 40 million eligible people in the country have failed to take a single dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The government is currently focusing efforts on promoting booster doses as the uptake for the third dose has been low.
Last week the Indian government said that given the emergence of COVID-19 sub-variants with variable transmissibility and other public health implications, the health ministry was closely following the COVID-19 trajectory globally and in the country.
Local governments in various states have issued advisories urging people to wear face masks and follow COVID-19 protocols at mass gatherings in the wake of an increase in daily infections.
At least 30 passengers killed in road accident in Kenya
At least 30 passengers were killed and several others injured on Sunday evening when their bus fell off a bridge and plunged into a river along the highway in Tharaka Nithi, Kenya, local police said.
The bus, traveling from Meru town to the coastal city of Mombasa, plunged into the Nithi River about 40 meters below along the Meru-Nairobi highway at around 6:40 p.m. (1540 GMT), Eastern Regional Police Commander Rono Bunei said on Monday.
Bunei said the bus must have developed brake failure because it was at a very high speed when the accident happened.
Also read: 22 killed in Egypt traffic accident
The wreckage of the bus could be seen strewn on the hillside near the black spot.
Alex Mugambi, Tharaka Nithi County Rescue team manager, said the death toll may rise.
The accident is among a series of deadly crashes in the country. On July 8, more than 20 passengers were killed in an accident along the Nairobi-Mombasa highway.
Also read: 13 killed in India bus accident