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India on Monday got its youngest and first tribal President, as a former female school teacher from a remote village shattered the glass ceiling for holding the country's top constitutional office. Droupadi Murmu was sworn in as India's 15th President by the Chief Justice at an imposing and colourful ceremony in Parliament, as millions clustered around TV screens in public squares, offices and living rooms to witness the event live. "Coming from a remote village and being a tribal, I am really honoured to hold this post. This proves that even a poor can dream of becoming India's President. This is the beauty of our democracy," she said, in her inaugural speech. Indian Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Ministers, and lawmakers attended the oath ceremony at Parliament. Earlier the 64-year-old was accorded a guard of honour and driven to Parliament in a ceremonial procession accompanied by soldiers mounted on horses. Read:Droupadi Murmu elected India's first tribal President On Thursday, Murmu scripted history by being the youngest and first tribal politician to win the presidency.  Murmu, a former state governor who was fielded by India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, defeated her main challenger and opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha, a former finance minister, by a huge margin. Voting to elect India's 15th President was held on Monday, where more than 95% of the eligible 4,500-plus lawmakers across the country exercised their franchise. In India, the President is elected not directly by the people but by the members of both Houses of Parliament -- the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha -- and state assemblies and federal government-ruled Territories. Like in Bangladesh, the Indian President is the ceremonial head of state who does not exercise executive powers. Who's Murmu? Born in independent India on June 20 in 1958, Murmu completed her graduation in 1979 and began her career as a government employee before becoming a school teacher. She subsequently made a foray into the eastern Indian state of Odisha's politics, first as a local civic body councillor and then as a legislator. The two-term legislator went on to become a minister in the Odisha government in 2000. And some 15 years later, Murmu was sworn in as the first woman Governor of the neighbouring eastern state of Jharkhand. In her personal life, Murmu lost her husband and their two sons. While her husband died of a cardiac arrest, one of her two sons was found dead under mysterious circumstances in 2009. She has a daughter.

A human rights group said Sunday it had filed a criminal complaint with Singapore’s attorney general to seek the arrest of Sri Lanka’s former president for alleged war crimes during his country’s civil war. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was ousted from office over his country's economic collapse and fled to Singapore earlier this month. He was defense secretary during Sri Lanka’s civil war, which ended in 2009. The International Truth and Justice Project — an evidence-gathering organization administered by a South Africa-based nonprofit foundation —said its lawyers filed the complaint requesting Rajapaksa’s immediate arrest. The complaint alleges Rajapaksa committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions during the civil war "and that these are crimes subject to domestic prosecution in Singapore under universal jurisdiction.” Sri Lanka's economic crisis has left the nation’s 22 million people struggling with shortages of essentials, including medicine, fuel and food. Months of protests have focused on the Rajapaksa political dynasty, which has ruled the country for most of the past two decades. Read: Sri Lankan president urged not to use force on protesters “The economic meltdown has seen the government collapse, but the crisis in Sri Lanka is really linked to structural impunity for serious international crimes going back three decades or more,” said the ITJP’s executive director, Yasmin Sooka. “This complaint recognizes that it’s not just about corruption and economic mismanagement but also accountability for mass atrocity crimes,” she added. Sri Lanka’s civil war killed 100,000 people, according to conservative United Nations estimates. The actual number is believed to be much higher. A report from a U.N. panel of experts said at least 40,000 ethnic minority Tamil civilians were killed in the final months of the fighting alone. Tamil Tiger rebels fought to create an independent state for ethnic minority Tamils. The country’s ethnic Sinhala majority credited Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa with the war victory, cementing the family's political dominance, though accounts of atrocities, autocratic governance and nepotism persisted. Efforts to investigate allegations of war crimes were largely suppressed under Rajapaksa leaders. After Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country earlier this month, lawmakers elected Ranil Wickremesinghe to serve the remainder of his presidential term. He declared a state of emergency with broad powers to act to ensure law and order, and a day after he was sworn in, hundreds of armed troops raided a protest camp outside the president’s office, attacking demonstrators with batons. Rights groups have urged the president to immediately order troops and police to cease use of force and said Friday's display seemed to follow a pattern of Sri Lankan authorities forcefully responding to dissent. The political turmoil has threatened Sri Lanka's potential for economic recovery. Wickremesinghe recently said bailout talks with the International Monetary Fund were nearing a conclusion.

A gunman opened fire on university campus in the Philippine capital region on Sunday, killing a former town mayor and two others in a brazen attack ahead of a graduation ceremony, police said. The suspect was armed with two pistols and was captured in a car he commandeered trying to escape the Ateneo de Manila University in suburban Quezon City, police said. He was blocked by witnesses and authorities outside the university gates. The sprawling university was put under lockdown and the graduation rite at the law school on campus was canceled, police said. Supreme Court Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo, who was supposed to be a speaker at the ceremony, was advised to turn back en route to the event, officials said. Read:Philippines affirms news site shutdown order: Maria Ressa Newly elected President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. promised to have the attack swiftly investigated and those behind the killings brought to justice. He is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress at the House of Representatives on Monday also in Quezon city, where police and other law enforcers had imposed a gun ban and heightened security before the shooting. “We are shocked and saddened by the events at the Ateneo graduation today,” Marcos Jr. said. “We mourn with the bereaved, the wounded and those whose scars from this experience will run deep." Those killed in the attack included Rosita Furigay, a former mayor of Lamitan town in southern Basilan province, her aide and a university guard. Furigay’s daughter, who was supposed to attend the graduation, was wounded and taken to a hospital, a police report said. A picture from scene showed one of the victims sprawled on the ground near a bouquet of flowers. Investigators were trying to determine a motive for the attack, but Quezon City police chief Brig. Gen. Remus Medina said the suspect, apparently a medical doctor, had a long-running feud with Furigay.

A Nigerian man, who has contracted monkeypox and fled Thailand recently, was found here in the capital of Cambodia on Saturday evening, a deputy governor said. The 27-year-old man, identified as Osmond Chihazirim Nzerem, was found at Phsar Deum Thkov area in the Chamkarmon district after a report from the Thai authority, said Koeut Chhe, deputy governor of the Phnom Penh Municipality. "The Nigerian man was detained and sent to the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital," he told Xinhua via telephone. "We have also deployed our police force at the hospital to monitor the man as he does not cooperate with health staff." The Nigerian man was confirmed to be infected with monkeypox by the Thai health authority on Thursday. The patient, who entered Thailand's southern tourist island of Phuket in October 2021 with no departure record, had been sick for more than a week, developing symptoms including fever, sore throat, coughing and rashes, and sought treatment at a local hospital as an outpatient last week. Read: UN health agency chief declares monkeypox a global emergency According to the Phuket health authority, after the test result turned out to be positive, the patient refused to receive treatment, turned off his phone, did not contact the hospital and fled to Cambodia.  

Ten employees of a coal company died in northwestern China on Saturday when a mountainside slope collapsed on them, state media reported. Rescuers spent all day to retrieve the workers who were buried in their vehicle en route to a mine site in Jingtai county in Gansu province, CCTV reported. Read: Mountain collapses on township in China's remote southwest, killing two Ten died and seven were found alive with light injuries. Operations stopped around 8 p.m. Saturday The workers were employed by Shanxi Coking Coal Minbao group. An investigation into the incident was underway.

A senior Minister in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal was arrested on Saturday for his alleged involvement in a school teacher recruitment scam. Partha Chatterjee, also a high-ranking functionary in Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's ruling Trinamool Congress party, was taken into custody by India's Enforcement Directorate, following hours of questioning. Read: Droupadi Murmu elected India's first tribal President "He will be produced in a court and we will seek his remand for custodial interrogation," an official of the federal agency told the local media. In fact, the Minister was questioned for hours by sleuths of the federal agency after they seized over Rs 20 crore during a raid at one of his female friend's house on Friday. "Cash worth more than Rs 20 crore was seized from a house which belongs to Arpita Mukherjee. It is being suspected that the cash was proceeds of the recruitment scam,” another ED official said on Friday.

An international human rights group is urging Sri Lanka’s new president to immediately order security forces to cease all unlawful use of force against protesters who have been demonstrating against the government — for months — over the country’s economic meltdown. A day after President Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in Thursday, hundreds of armed troops raided a protest camp outside the president’s office in the early hours of Friday, attacking demonstrators with batons in a move that Human Rights Watch said “sends a dangerous message to the Sri Lankan people that the new government intends to act through brute force rather than the rule of law.” Two journalists and two lawyers were also attacked by soldiers in the crackdown. Security forces arrested 11 people, including protesters and lawyers. “Urgently needed measures to address the economic needs of Sri Lankans demand a government that respects fundamental rights,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement released early Saturday. Read: ‘I can’t forget her'- Myanmar’s soldiers admit atrocities “Sri Lanka’s international partners should send the message loud and clear that they can’t support an administration that tramples on the rights of its people,” she added. Wickremesinghe, who previously served as prime minister six times, was sworn in as president a week after his predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, fled the country after protesters stormed his residence. Rajapaksa later resigned while exiled in Singapore. Sri Lankans have taken to the streets for months to demand their top leaders step down to take responsibility for the economic chaos that has left the nation’s 22 million people struggling with shortages of essentials, including medicine, fuel and food. While the protesters have focused on the Rajapaksa political dynasty, Wickremesinghe also has drawn their ire as a perceived Rajapaksa surrogate. Armed troops and police arrived in trucks and buses on Friday to clear the main protest camp near the presidential palace in the capital, Colombo, where demonstrators had gathered for more than 100 days. They removed tents and blocked roads leading to the site. The troops moved in even though protesters had announced they would vacate the site on Friday voluntarily. Sri Lanka’s opposition, the United Nations, and the U.S. have denounced the government’s heavy-handed tactics. Despite the heavy security now positioned outside the president’s office, protesters have vowed to continue their efforts until Wickremesinghe resigns. Wickremesinghe was voted president by lawmakers this week — apparently seen as a safe pair of hands to lead Sri Lanka out of the crisis, even though he, too, was a target of the demonstrations. On Friday, he appointed as prime minister a Rajapaksa ally, Dinesh Gunawardena, who is 73 and from a prominent political family. Read: Sri Lanka's new cabinet of ministers sworn in On Monday, when he was acting president, Wickremesinghe declared a state of emergency giving him the power to change or suspend laws and giving authorities broad power to search premises and detain people. Overnight, just hours after he was sworn in, he issued a notice under the state of emergency calling on the armed forces to maintain law and order nationwide — clearing the way for the move against the protest camp. The protesters accuse Rajapaksa and his powerful family of siphoning money from government coffers and of hastening the country’s collapse by mismanaging the economy. The family has denied the corruption allegations, but the former president acknowledged that some of his policies contributed to Sri Lanka’s crisis. The political turmoil has threatened to make a rescue from the International Monetary Fund more difficult. Still, earlier this week, Wickremesinghe said bailout talks with the fund were nearing a conclusion and talks on help from other countries had also progressed. The head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, told the Japanese financial magazine Nikkei Asia this week that the fund hopes for a deal “as quickly as possible.”

Soldiers in the Myanmar military have admitted to killing, torturing and raping civilians in exclusive interviews with the BBC. For the first time they have given detailed accounts of widespread human rights abuses they say they were ordered to conduct. "They ordered me to torture, loot and kill innocent people." Maung Oo says he thought he had been recruited to the military as a guard. But he was part of a battalion who killed civilians hiding in a monastery in May 2022, reports BBC. "We were ordered to round up all the men and shoot them dead," he says. "The saddest thing was we had to kill elderly people and a woman." The testimony of six soldiers, including a corporal, plus some of their victims provides a rare insight of a military desperate to cling to power. All of the Myanmar names in this report have been changed to protect their identities. The soldiers, who recently defected, are under the protection of a local unit of the People's Defence Force (PDF), a loose network of civilian militia groups fighting to restore democracy. The military seized power from the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup last year. It is now trying to crush the armed civilian uprising. On 20 December last year, three helicopters circled Yae Myet village in central Myanmar, dropping soldiers with orders to open fire. At least five different people, speaking independently from each other, told the BBC what happened. They say the army entered in three separate groups, shooting at men, women and children indiscriminately. "The order was to shoot anything you see," says Corporal Aung from an undisclosed location in a remote part of Myanmar's jungle. Read: Genocide against Rohingya: Bangladesh welcomes ICJ's rejection of Myanmar claims He says some people hid in what they thought was a safe place, but as the soldiers closed in they "started to run and we shot at them". Cpl Aung admits his unit shot and buried five men. "We also had an order to set fire to every large and decent house in the village," he says. The soldiers paraded around the village torching houses, shouting, "Burn! burn!" Cpl Aung set fire to four buildings. Those interviewed say about 60 houses were burnt, leaving much of the village in ashes. Most of the villagers had fled, but not everyone. One home in the centre of the village was inhabited. Thiha says he had joined the military just five months before the raid. Like many others, he was recruited from the community and says he was untrained. These recruits are locally referred to as Anghar-Sit-Thar or "hired soldiers". At the time he was paid a decent salary of 200,000 Myanmar Khat (approximately 100 USD) a month. He remembers what happened at that house vividly. He saw a teenage girl trapped behind iron bars in a house they were about to burn down. "I can't forget her shouting, I can still hear it in my ears and remember it in my heart," he says. When he told his captain, he replied, "I told you to kill everyone we see". So Thiha shot a flare into the room. Cpl Aung was also there and heard her cries as she was burnt alive. Read: Myanmar denies genocide, again describes Rohingyas as 'Bengali community' "It was heartbreaking to hear. We heard her voice repeatedly for about 15 minutes while the house was on fire," he recalls. The BBC tracked down the girl's family, who spoke in front of the charred remains of their home. Her relative U Myint said the girl had a mental health condition and had been left in her home while her parents went to work. "She tried to escape but they stopped her and let her burn," he says. She was not the only young woman to suffer at the hands of these soldiers. Thiha says he joined the military for the money but was shocked by what he was forced to do and the atrocities he witnessed. He speaks about a group of young women they arrested in Yae Myet. The officer handed them to his subordinates and said, "Do as you wish," he recounts. He said they raped the girls but he was not involved. We tracked down two of these girls. Pa Pa and Khin Htwe say they met the soldiers on the road as they tried to run away. They were not from Yae Myet, they had been visiting a tailor there. Despite their insistence that they were not PDF fighters or even from the village, they were imprisoned in a local school for three nights. Each night, they were repeatedly sexually abused by their intoxicated captors, they say. "They blindfolded my face with a sarong and pushed me down, they took off my clothes and raped me," Pa Pa says. "I shouted as they raped me." She pleaded with the soldiers to stop but they beat her round the head and threatened her at gunpoint. "We had to take it without resisting because we were scared that we would be killed," says her sister Khin Htwe, trembling as she speaks. The girls were too scared to get a proper look at their abusers but say they remember seeing some in plain clothes and some wearing military uniforms. "When they caught young women," remembers the soldier Thiha, "they would say, 'this is because you support the PDF' as they (raped) the girls." Read: UN court rejects Myanmar claims, will hear Rohingya case At least 10 people died in the violence in Yae Myet and eight girls were reportedly raped over the three-day period. The brutal killings which hired soldier Maung Oo took part in occurred on 2 May 2022 in Ohake pho village, also in Sagaing region. His account of members from his 33rd Division (Light Infantry Division 33) rounding up and shooting people in a monastery matches witness testimonies and disturbing video the BBC obtained from the immediate aftermath of the attack. The video shows nine dead bodies lined up including a woman and a grey-haired man lying next to each other. They are all wearing sarongs and t-shirts. Signs in the footage indicate that they were shot from behind and at close range. We also spoke to villagers who witnessed this atrocity. They identified the young woman in the video lined up next to the elderly man. She was called Ma Moe Moe, and was carrying her child and a bag containing pieces of gold. She pleaded with the soldiers not to take her things. "Despite the child she was carrying, they looted her belongings and shot her to death. They also lined up (the men) and shot them one by one," says Hla Hla, who was at the scene but was spared. The child survived and is now being cared for by relatives. Hla Hla says she heard soldiers boasting on the phone that they had killed eight or nine people, that it was "delicious" to kill people and describing it as "their most successful day yet". She says they left the village chanting "Victory! Victory!" Another woman saw her husband killed. "They shot him in the thigh, then they asked him to lie face down and shot his buttock. Finally they shot his head," she says. She insists he was not a member of the PDF. "He was really a toddy palm worker who earned his living in a traditional way. I have a son and a daughter and I don't know how to continue living." Maung Oo says he regrets his actions. "So, I will tell you all," he says. "I want everyone to know so they can avoid falling into the same fate. All of the six soldiers who spoke to the BBC admitted burning houses and villages across central Myanmar. This suggests it is an organised tactic to destroy any support for the resistance. It comes as some say the military struggles to maintain its multi-front civil war. Myanmar Witness - a group of open source researchers tracking human rights abuses - has verified more than 200 reports of villages being burnt in this way over the past 10 months. They say the scale of these arson attacks is rapidly increasing, with at least 40 attacks in January and February, followed by at least 66 in March and April. This is not the first time Myanmar's military has used a scorched earth policy. It was widely reported against the Rohingya people in 2017 in Rakhine state. The country's mountainous ethnic regions have faced these kinds of assaults for many decades. Some of these ethnic fighters are now helping to train and arm the PDF in this current civil war against the military. The culture of impunity in which soldiers are allowed to loot and kill at will, as described by the soldiers, has occurred for decades in Myanmar, Human Rights Watch says. People are rarely held accountable for atrocities allegedly carried out by the military. But Myanmar's military is increasingly having to hire soldiers and militias due to defections and killings by the PDF. Some 10,000 people have defected from both the army and the police since the 2021 coup, according to a group called People's Embrace, formed by former military and police personnel. "The military is struggling to maintain its multi-front civil war," says Michael Martin from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank. "It's running into personnel problems both in the officer ranks and the enlisted ranks, it's taking heavy casualties, problems with recruitment, problems getting equipment and supplies and that's reflected by the fact that they seem to be losing territory or control of territory in various parts of the country." Magway and Sagaing regions (where the above incidents happened) were one of the historic recruitment grounds for Myanmar's military. But young people here are instead choosing to join the PDF groups. Cpl Aung was clear about why he defected: "If I thought the military would win in the long term, I wouldn't have switched sides to the people." He says soldiers do not dare to leave their base alone as they are worried they will be killed by the PDF. "Wherever we go, we can only go in the form of a military column. No-one can say that we are dominating," he says. We put the allegations in this investigation to General Zaw Min Tun, the spokesperson for Myanmar's military. In a statement, he denied that the army has been targeting civilians. He said both of the raids cited here were legitimate targets and those killed were "terrorists". He denied the army has been burning villages and says that it is the PDFs who are carrying out arson attacks. It is hard to say how and when this civil war might end but it seems likely that millions of Myanmar's civilians will be left traumatised. And the longer it takes to find peace, the more women like rape victim Khin Htwe will be vulnerable to violence. She says she no longer wanted to live after what had happened to her and considered taking her own life.   She has been unable to tell her fiance what happened to her.

Judges at the United Nations’ highest court on Friday dismissed preliminary objections by Myanmar to a case alleging the Southeast Asian nation is responsible for genocide against the Rohingya ethnic minority. The decision establishing the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction sets the stage for hearings airing evidence of atrocities against the Rohingya that human rights groups and a U.N. probe say breach the 1948 Genocide Convention. In March, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the violent repression of the Rohingya population in Myanmar, which formerly was known as Burma, amounts to genocide. Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK, welcomed the decision, saying 600,000 Rohingya “are still facing genocide,” while “one million people in Bangladesh camps, they are waiting for a hope for justice.” The African nation of Gambia filed the case in 2019 amid international outrage at the treatment of the Rohingya, hundreds of thousands of whom fled to neighboring Bangladesh amid a brutal crackdown by Myanmar forces in 2017. It argued that both Gambia and Myanmar were parties to the 1948 convention and that all signatories hade a duty to ensure it was enforced. Judges at the court agreed. Reading a summary of the decision, the court’s president, U.S. Judge Joan E. Donoghue, said: “Any state party to the Genocide Convention may invoke the responsibility of another state party including through the institution of proceedings before the court.” A small group of pro-Rohingya protesters gathered outside the court’s headquarters, the Peace Palace, ahead of the decision with a banner reading: “”Speed up delivering justice to Rohingya. The genocide survivors can’t wait for generations.” One protester stamped on a large photograph of Myanmar’s military government leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing. Read: UN court to rule on jurisdiction in Rohingya genocide case The court rejected arguments raised at hearings in February by lawyers representing Myanmar that the case should be tossed out because the world court only rules in disputes between states and the Rohingya complaint was brought by Gambia on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. The judges also dismissed Myanmar’s claim that Gambia could not file the case as it was not directly linked to the events in Myanmar and that a legal dispute did not exist between the two countries before the case was filed. Myanmar’s representative, Ko Ko Hlaing, the military government’s minister for international cooperation, said his nation “will try our utmost to defend our country and to protect our national interest.” Gambia’s attorney general and justice minister, Dawda Jallow, said: “We are very pleased that justice has been done.” The Netherlands and Canada have backed Gambia, saying in 2020 that the country “took a laudable step towards ending impunity for those committing atrocities in Myanmar and upholding this pledge. Canada and the Netherlands consider it our obligation to support these efforts which are of concern to all of humanity.” However, the court ruled Friday that it “would not be appropriate” to send the two countries copies of documents and legal arguments filed in the case. Myanmar’s military launched what it called a clearance campaign in Rakhine state in 2017 in the aftermath of an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh. Myanmar security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of Rohingya homes. Read: Genocide against Rohingya: Bangladesh welcomes ICJ's rejection of Myanmar claims In 2019, lawyers representing Gambia at the ICJ outlined their allegations of genocide by showing judges maps, satellite images and graphic photos of the military campaign. That led the court to order Myanmar to do all it can to prevent genocide against the Rohingya. The interim ruling was intended to protect the minority while the case is decided in The Hague, a process likely to take years.   The International Court of Justice rules on disputes between states. It is not linked to the International Criminal Court, also based in The Hague, which holds individuals accountable for atrocities. Prosecutors at the ICC are investigating crimes committed against the Rohingya who were forced to flee to Bangladesh.

Eighteen ministers including Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena were sworn into Sri Lanka's new cabinet before President Ranil Wickremesinghe here on Friday. The President's Office said that among those who took oaths as cabinet ministers were Ali Sabry as the minister of Foreign Affairs, Harin Fernando as the minister of Tourism and Lands, Nalin Fernando as the minister of Trade, Commerce and Food Security, Kanchana Wijesekera as the minister of Power and Energy. Dinesh Gunawardena was sworn in as the prime minister earlier in the day, and he also held the position of the minister of Public Administration, Home Affairs, Provincial Councils, and Local Government.   The new cabinet of ministers was sworn in after Ranil Wickremesinghe won an election in parliament on July 20 to become the new president of Sri Lanka following the resignation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Read: Sri Lankan Cabinet reshuffled to counter economic crisis