World
Out-of-control wildfires cause evacuations in western Canada
Fire crews battled wildfires threatening communities in western Canada on Sunday as cooler temperatures and a bit of rain brought some relief, but officials warned the reprieve came only in some areas.
Officials in Alberta said there were 108 active fires in the province and the number of evacuees grew to about 29,000, up from approximately 24,000 Saturday, when a provincewide state of emergency was declared.
Two out-of-control wildfires in neighboring British Columbia also caused some people to leave their homes, and officials warned that they expected high winds to cause the blazes to grow bigger in the next few days.
Provinicial officials in Alberta said the weather forecast was favorable for the next few days, with small amounts of rain and overcast conditions. But they cautioned that hot and dry conditions were predicted to return within a few days.
“People have called this season certainly unprecedented in recent memory because we have so many fires so spread out,” Christie Tucker with Alberta Wildfire said at a briefing. “It’s been an unusual year.”
Colin Blair, executive director of the Alberta Emergency Management Agency, said accurate damage reports were not yet available because conditions made it difficult to assess the situation. There were of buildings destroyed in the town of Fox Lake, including 20 homes, a police station and a store.
In northeastern British Columbia, officials urged residents to evacuate the areas around two out-of-control wildfires near the Alberta border, saying there were reports of some people staying behind.
“This is impeding the response and putting their lives and the lives of firefighters at risk," said Leonard Hiebert, chairman of the Peace River Regional District.
A third fire in British Columbia was burning out of control 700 kilometers (430 miles) to the south, in the Teare Creek region, and some residents near the village of McBride were evacuated.
Turkey’s opposition denounces fairness of vote under Erdogan
As Turkey heads for presidential and parliamentary elections at the weekend that are shaping up to be the strongest challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his 20 years as leader, complaints are growing about the fairness of the vote.
Turkey’s opposition has long said that the country’s elections are played out on an unlevel playing field, claims often backed by international observers.
Media coverage stands out as the most obvious example of where Erdogan enjoys an advantage over his opponents, but factors such as the use of state resources while campaigning and the questionable interpretation of electoral law also feature.
Also Read: Turkey’s Erdogan faces tough election amid quake, inflation
Some 90% of Turkey’s media is in the hands of the government or its backers, according to Reporters Without Borders, ensuring overwhelming airtime for the president. Only a handful of opposition newspapers remain in print, most having transitioned to online-only editions.
During April, Erdogan received nearly 33 hours of airtime on the main state-run TV station, according to opposition members of the broadcasting watchdog. His presidential opponent, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, received 32 minutes.
The main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, last month launched legal action against broadcaster TRT for failing to screen its campaign video.
“Unfortunately, the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation has moved away from being an impartial and objective institution and has turned into the Tayyip Radio and Television Corporation,” CHP lawmaker Tuncay Ozkan said.
The remaining independent media also face increasing restrictions. Last month, broadcasting authority RTUK fined independent channels Fox News, Halk TV and TELE1 over news and commentary deemed a breach of regulations. Ilhan Tasci, an opposition-appointed RTUK member, said in all three cases the stations had been accused of criticizing or questioning ruling-party actions.
Also Read: Erdogan hints Turkey may ratify Finland's NATO membership
In a statement following the last presidential and general elections in 2018, observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe noted that Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) enjoyed “an undue advantage, including in excessive coverage by government-affiliated public and private media outlets.”
The government’s reach has also been extended over social media, where many opposition voices have retreated.
A “disinformation” law introduced in October allows a jail sentence of up to three years for spreading false information “with the sole aim of creating anxiety, fear or panic among the public.”
Sinan Aygul, the only journalist to be prosecuted under the new law, was handed a 10-month prison term in February. He is currently free while appealing the case.
“The real aim is to silence all dissident voices in society,” said Aygul, chair of the journalists association in Bitlis, southeastern Turkey. It is “a law that targets anyone who expresses an opinion. It targets not only individuals but also media organs,” he said.
The ill-defined law creates crimes from “basic journalistic activities,” Aygul said, adding that it could be used during the elections to target groups seeking to protect ballot box security who use social media to highlight abuses.
“If there is going to be fraud in the election, all opposition channels will be silenced by using this law,” he said.
The imposition of a state of emergency over the 11 provinces hit by February’s earthquake has also raised concerns about how the polls will be conducted in the region. A U.N. report published April 11 said at least 3 million people had relocated from their homes in the quake zone, many of them heading to other parts of Turkey.
However, just 133,000 people from the earthquake region have registered to vote outside their home provinces, the head of the Supreme Election Council said last month. Ahmet Yener added that election officials are overseeing preparations, including polling stations at temporary shelters.
In 2018, a nationwide state of emergency imposed following a 2016 coup attempt was in place until shortly before the election, which the OSCE said restricted the media and freedoms of assembly and expression.
Erdogan has stepped up his public appearances, which are closely followed by most TV channels, and uses these official duties to attack his rivals. Attending a ceremony on the Friday of Eid al-Fitr last month to mark renovations to Istanbul’s Blue Mosque, he accused the opposition of “working with terrorist groups.”
The previous evening, the leaders of four political parties allied to the AKP were present for an event to launch the delivery of Black Sea natural gas, despite none holding any government position.
Other large projects that were rolled out ahead of the vote include Turkey’s first nuclear power reactor built by Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear energy company, and several defense developments.
Critics also point to the bending of election law to allow government ministers to stand as parliamentary candidates while remaining in office, despite legal requirements to the contrary.
The election board, meanwhile, has previously faced criticism for siding with AKP objections during elections.
In the 2019 local polls, the victorious opposition mayoral candidate for Istanbul was forced to face a rerun following AKP complaints of ballot irregularities. Results from district and city council votes, which were collected in the same boxes and favored the AKP, were not questioned.
Adem Sozuer of Istanbul University’s law faculty told the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper that voters had lost confidence in the election authorities. “There is widespread suspicion in a significant part of society that elections will be rigged,” he said.
At least 100 killed in armed fighter clashes: Sudan doctors
At least 100 people were killed in clashes that erupted last month between armed fighters in a city in Sudan’s restive region of Darfur, according to the Sudan’s Doctors Syndicate.
Hospitals were still out of service in the Darfur city of Genena and an accurate count of the wounded was still hard to make, the doctors’ union added in a statement posted on their official Facebook page late Sunday.
The fighting in Genena, which broke out a few days after Sudan’s two rival generals took arms against each other in Khartoum, pointed to the possibility that conflict in the capital could spiral to other parts of the East African country.
Also Read: Sudan conflict: 136 Bangladeshi evacuees arrive in Dhaka
At least 481 civilians were killed in Khartoum clashes that erupted in mid-April between the military, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, according to the same doctors’ statement. The number of the wounded among civilians has jumped to more than 2560.
UN urges Afghanistan’s Taliban to end floggings, executions
A U.N. report on Monday strongly criticized the Taliban for carrying out public executions, lashings and stonings since seizing power in Afghanistan, and called on the country's rulers to halt such practices.
In the past six months alone, 274 men, 58 women and two boys were publicly flogged in Afghanistan, according to a report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA.
“Corporal punishment is a violation of the Convention against Torture and must cease,” said Fiona Frazer, the agency's human rights chief. She also called for an immediate moratorium on executions.
The Taliban foreign ministry said in response that Afghanistan’s laws are determined in accordance with Islamic rules and guidelines, and that an overwhelming majority of Afghans follow those rules.
“In the event of a conflict between international human rights law and Islamic law, the government is obliged to follow the Islamic law,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Taliban began carrying out such punishments shortly after coming to power almost two years ago, despite initial promises of a more moderate rule than during their previous stint in power in the 1990s.
At the same time, they have gradually tightened restrictions on women, barring them from public spaces, such as parks and gyms, in line with their interpretation of Islamic law. The restrictions have triggered an international uproar, increasing the country’s isolation at a time when its economy has collapsed — and worsening a humanitarian crisis.
Monday's report on corporal punishment documents Taliban practices both before and after their return to power in August 2021, when they seized the capital of Kabul as U.S. and NATO forces withdrew after two decades of war.
The first public flogging following the Taliban takeover was reported in October 2021 in the northern Kapisa province, the report said. In that case, a woman and man convicted of adultery were publicly lashed 100 times each in the presence of religious scholars and local Taliban authorities, it said.
In December 2022, Taliban authorities executed an Afghan convicted of murder, the first public execution since they took power the report said.
The execution, carried out with an assault rifle by the victim’s father, took place in the western Farah province before hundreds of spectators and top Taliban officials.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the top government spokesman, said the decision to carry out the punishment was “made very carefully," following approval by three of the country’s highest courts and the Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada.
There has been a significant increase in the number and regularity of judicial corporal punishment since November when Mujahid repeated comments by the supreme leader about judges and their use of Islamic law in a tweet, the report said.
Since that tweet, UNAMA documented at least 43 instances of public lashings involving 274 men, 58 women and two boys. A majority of punishments were related to convictions of adultery and “running away from home," the report said. Other purported offenses included theft, homosexuality, consuming alcohol, fraud and drug trafficking.
In a video message, Abdul Malik Haqqani, the Taliban’s appointed deputy chief justice, said last week that the Taliban’s Supreme Court has issued 175 so-called retribution verdicts since taking power, including 79 floggings and 37 stonings.
Such verdicts establish the right of a purported victim, or relative of a victim of a crime to punish or forgive the perpetrator. Haqqani said the Taliban leadership is committed to carrying out such sentences.
After their initial overthrow in the U.S. invasion of 2001, the Taliban continued to carry out corporal punishment and executions in areas under their control while waging an insurgency against the U.S.-backed former Afghan government, the report said.
UNAMA documented at least 182 instances when the Taliban carried out their own sentences during the height of their insurgency between 2010 and August 2021, resulting in 213 deaths and 64 injuries.
Many Muslim-majority countries draw on Islamic law, but the Taliban interpretation is an outlier.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called a Taliban ban on women working an unacceptable violation of Afghan human rights.
On April 5, Afghanistan's Taliban rulers informed the United Nations that Afghan women employed with the U.N. mission could no longer report for work. Aid agencies have warned that the ban on women working will impact their ability to deliver urgent humanitarian help in Afghanistan.
The Taliban previously banned girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade and women from most public life and work. In December, they banned Afghan women from working at local and non-governmental groups — a measure that at the time did not extend to U.N. offices.
Under the first Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001, public corporal punishment and executions were carried out by officials against individuals convicted of crimes, often in large venues such as sports stadiums and at urban intersections.
Global Covid-19 cases near 688 million
The overall number of global Covid-19 cases is gradually nearing 688 million.
According to the latest global data, the total Covid-19 case count is 687,803,066, while the death toll reached 6,871,031 this morning.
The US has reported 106,768,296 Covid-19 cases so far, while 1,162,431 people have died from the virus in the country — both highest counts globally.
India on Sunday logged 2,380 new cases of Covid-19, bringing down the active cases to 27,212 from 30,041 a day before.
READ: WHO downgrades COVID pandemic, says it's no longer emergency
According to the global data, the Covid-19 case tally was recorded at 44,969,630.
France and Germany have registered 40,021,190 and 38,411,062 Covid-19 cases so far, occupying the third and fourth positions in the world number-wise, and 166,811 and 173,375 people have died in the European countries, as per Worldometer.
READ: WHO fires scientist who led COVID search over sex misconduct
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Friday announced that the Covid-19 pandemic was no longer a global health emergency. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, made the announcement while addressing a media briefing on Covid-19 and global health issues.
Covid-19 situation in Bangladesh
Bangladesh reported 23 more Covid-19 cases in 24 hours till Sunday morning.
With the new numbers, the country's total caseload rose to 2,038,338 according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
However, the official death toll from the disease remained unchanged at 29,446 as no new fatalities were reported.
Boat capsizes in southern India, at least 20 people dead
Twenty people, including women and children, died after a boat carrying more than 30 passengers capsized on Sunday night near a beach in India's southern state of Kerala, local media reported.
“The boat is being hauled ashore and more bodies are expected to be recovered from inside,” Sports Minister V Abdurahiman told the Press Trust of India news agency, adding that four people in critical condition were admitted to a hospital.
Rescuers had reached Tanur, a coastal town in the state’s Malappuram district, where the capsizing occurred near Thoovaltheeram beach. It's not clear what caused the boat to overturn.
Trump rejects last chance to testify at New York civil trial
Former President Donald Trump rejected his last chance Sunday to testify at a civil trial where a longtime advice columnist has accused him of raping her in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996.
Trump, a Republican candidate for president in 2024, was given until 5 p.m. Sunday by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to file a request to testify. Nothing was filed.
It was not a surprise. Trump has not shown up once during the two-week Manhattan trial where writer E. Jean Carroll testified for several days, repeating claims she first made publicly in a 2019 memoir. She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages totaling millions of dollars.
The jury has also watched lengthy excerpts from an October videotaped deposition in which Trump vehemently denied raping Carroll or ever really knowing her.
Without Trump’s testimony, lawyers were scheduled to make closing arguments Monday, with deliberations likely to begin on Tuesday.
After plaintiffs rested their case Thursday, Trump attorney Joe Tacopina immediately rested the defense case as well without calling any witnesses. He did not request additional time for Trump to decide to testify. Tacopina declined in an email to comment after the deadline passed Sunday.
On Thursday, Kaplan had given Trump extra time to change his mind and request to testify, though the judge did not promise he would grant such a request to reopen the defense case so Trump could take the stand.
At the time, Kaplan noted that he’d heard about news reports Thursday in which Trump told reporters while visiting his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, that he would “probably attend” the trial. Trump also criticized Kaplan, a Bill Clinton appointee, as an “extremely hostile” and “rough judge” who “doesn’t like me very much.”
On the witness stand, Carroll, 79, testified that Trump, 76, raped her in spring 1996 after they met at the entrance of the midtown Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman.
She said the encounter began as a fun and flirtatious outing as Trump coaxed her into helping him shop for a gift for another woman. She said they ended up in the store’s desolate lingerie section, where they teased each other to try on a see-through bodysuit.
As Carroll recalled it, laughter accompanied them into a dressing room where Trump became violent, slamming her up against a wall, pulling aside her tights and raping her before she kneed him and fled the store.
In his deposition, Trump said Carroll made it up. He called it “a false, disgusting lie” delivered by a “nut job” who was trying to stoke sales of her book.
He also repeated comments he made in statements that she was not his “type.”
“She’s not my type and that’s 100% true,” he said.
And he repeated his claims in a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which he bragged that men who are celebrities can grab women by the genitals without asking.
“Historically that’s true with stars,” he said.
Carroll sued Trump in November, minutes after New York state enacted a law allowing adult sexual assault victims to sue others even if the attacks occurred decades earlier.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, wrote a letter to the judge Sunday to complain that Trump still has not removed April 26 posts on his social media network in which he called Carroll’s allegations “a made up SCAM.” And she noted that he repeated disparaging remarks about the trial three days ago in Ireland.
After the April 26 postings on Truth Social, Judge Kaplan, who is not related to Carroll’s lawyer, said Trump’s comments were “highly inappropriate” and expressed concern that Trump was trying to communicate to the jury “about stuff that has no business being spoken about.”
The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.
Fire in gold mine kills at least 27, Peruvian officials say
A fire broke out deep in a gold mine in southern Peru and killed at least 27 workers during an overnight shift, Peruvian authorities reported.
The Yanaquihua mining company said in a statement that a total of 175 workers had been safely evacuated after the accident, which happened late Friday or early Saturday. It said the 27 dead worked for a contractor that specializes in mining.
READ: Gazipur factory fire brought under control
Government officials said the cause of the incident was under investigation. Some news reports said preliminary investigations indicated an explosion might have been set off by a short circuit in a part of the mine about 100 meters (330 feet) below the surface.
Relatives of the victims were brought by buses to the mine in Yanaquihua in the Arequipa region, where they were briefed by security agents. Some sat in front of posters at the entrance to the mine to wait for the bodies of their loved ones.
Marcelina Aguirre said her husband was among the dead. She said he had told her there were risks at the mine.
READ: Boat capsizes in southern India, at least 20 people dead
“We are very worried, very sad we are, to lose a husband, leaving two abandoned children,” she said.
The Public Ministry of Arequipa’s Fiscal District said investigators were working to clarify what happened. “During the investigation, the Prosecutor’s Office will determine the cause of the tragic event and the responsibilities of those involved,” its statement said.
Rallygoers in Pakistan kill man accused of blasphemy
Rallygoers for a political party in Pakistan beat to death a participant for allegedly making a blasphemous speech, police said Sunday.
Local police officer Iqbal Khan said Maulana Nigar Alam, 40, was killed Saturday night by demonstrators in Sawaldher village of Mardan district northeast of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The rallygoers, gathered to express support for the country's judiciary, accused Alam of blasphemy when he made a concluding prayer at the end of the event.
“Some words of his prayer were deemed blasphemous by a number of protestors, leading to torture and death at the hands of the angry mob,” said Khan.
Witnesses said the police deputy on duty at the rally attempted to save the man by locking him up in a nearby shop, but the mob broke through the door and attacked him.
Videos circulating on social media showed people pushing the accused man to the ground, kicking him and beating him with batons. The man died at the scene.
Police took the body into custody and said an investigation was underway.
Accusing people of blasphemy in Pakistan is common.
Last month, the Pakistani police arrested and later released a Chinese national named Tian, who was working in Pakistan on a dam project and was accused by the locals of blasphemy.
In February, an angry mob entered a police station in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore, snatched a person accused of blasphemy from his cell and killed him.
In 2021, a Sri Lankan national, Priyantha Diyawadanage, who was working as a factory manager in Pakistan, was killed by an angry mob over allegations of blasphemy.
In 2017, Pakistani student Mashal Khan was killed by a mob on the premises of his university over allegations of posting blasphemous content online.
Japan leader expresses sympathy for Korean colonial victims
Japan’s prime minister expressed sympathy for the suffering of Korean forced laborers during Japan’s colonial rule, as he and his South Korean counterpart on Sunday renewed resolve to overcome historical grievances and strengthen cooperation in the face of shared challenges such as North Korea’s nuclear program.
Comments by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during his summit with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol — their second meeting in less than two months — were closely watched in South Korea, where many still harbor strong resentment against Japan's 1910-45 colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula.
Yoon has faced domestic criticism that he had preemptively made concessions to Tokyo without getting corresponding steps in return. Kishida’s statement, which avoided a new, direct apology over the colonization but still sympathized with the Korean victims, suggests he felt pressure to say something to maintain momentum for an effort to improve ties.
“And personally, I have strong pain in my heart as I think of the extreme difficulty and sorrow that many people had to suffer under the severe environment in those days,” Kishida told a joint news conference with Yoon, referring to the Japanese colonial period.
He said he believes “it is my responsibility as prime minister of Japan to cooperate with” Yoon to forge stronger relations.
Kishida arrived in South Korea earlier Sunday for a two-day visit, which reciprocates a mid-March trip to Tokyo by Yoon and marks the first exchange of visits between the leaders of the Asian neighbors in 12 years.
The back-to-back summits were largely meant to resolve the countries’ bitter disputes caused by the 2018 court rulings in South Korea that ordered two Japanese companies to financially compensate some of their aging former Korean employees for colonial-era forced labor. Japan has refused to abide by the verdicts, arguing that all compensation issues were already settled when the two countries normalized ties in 1965.
The wrangling led to the countries downgrading each other’s trade status and Seoul’s previous liberal government threatening to spike a military intelligence-sharing pact. Their strained ties complicated U.S. efforts to build a stronger regional alliance to better cope with rising Chinese influence and North Korean nuclear threats.
In March, however, Yoon’s conservative government took a major step toward mending the ties by announcing it would use local funds to compensate the forced labor victims without demanding contributions from Japanese companies. Later in March, Yoon traveled to Tokyo to meet with Kishida, and the two agreed to resume leadership-level visits and other talks. Their governments have since taken steps to withdraw their economic retaliatory steps.
Yoon’s push, however, drew strong backlash from some of the forced labor victims and his liberal rivals at home, who have demanded direct compensation from the Japanese companies. Yoon has defended his move, saying greater cooperation with Japan is required to jointly tackle North Korea’s advancing nuclear program, the intensifying U.S.-China strategic rivalry and global supply chain challenges.
“We should stay away from a thinking that we must not make a step forward because our history issues aren’t settled completely,” Yoon said Sunday. He said that 10 out of the 15 former forced laborers or their families involved in the 2018 rulings had accepted compensation under Seoul’s third-party reimbursement plan.
Kishida said: “I’m struck by the fact that many people, despite their painful memories from the past, opened their hearts for the future as measures by the South Korean government related to (the fund) move forward.”
Kishida also reaffirmed his government upholds the positions of previous Japanese administrations on the colonization issue, including the landmark 1998 joint declaration by Tokyo and Seoul, but didn’t make a new apology. In that declaration, then-Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi said: “I feel acute remorse and offer an apology from my heart” over the colonial rule.
Japanese governments have expressed remorse or apologies over the colonial period numerous times. But some Japanese officials and politicians have occasionally made comments that have been accused of whitewashing Tokyo’s wartime aggressions, prompting Seoul to urge Tokyo to make new, more sincere apologies.
Ahead of his summit with Yoon, Kishida and his wife, Yuko Kishida, visited the national cemetery in Seoul, where they burned incense and paid a silent tribute before a memorial. Buried or honored in the cemetery are mostly Korean War dead, but include Korean independence fighters during the period of Japanese rule. Kishida was the first Japanese leader to visit the place in 12 years.
“Kishida’s comments about Koreans who suffered under Japanese colonialism may be criticized for not being more specific about historical perpetrators and more apologetic toward historical victims,” Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said. “But Kishida did visit South Korea’s national cemetery and said that his heartfelt views, respect for the past, and recognition of current global challenges produce a sense of responsibility for improving Seoul-Tokyo relations.”
Yoon said talks among Seoul, Tokyo and Washington are underway to implement their earlier agreement on a faster exchange of information on North Korean missile tests. Yoon said he and Kishida reaffirmed that North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs pose a grave threat to the two countries and the rest of the world.
In late April, Yoon made a state visit to the United States and agreed with President Joe Biden to reinforce deterrence capabilities against North Korea's nuclear threats. During a joint news conference, Biden thanked Yoon “for your political courage and personal commitment to diplomacy with Japan.”
Yoon, Biden and Kishida are expected to hold a trilateral meeting later this month on the sidelines of the Group of Seven meetings in Hiroshima to discuss North Korea, China's assertiveness and Russia's war on Ukraine. Yoon was invited as one of eight outreach nations.
Kishida said he and Yoon would pay respects before a memorial for Korean atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima. In another apparent conciliatory measure, Kishida said Japan will allow South Korean experts to visit and inspect a planned release of treated but still radioactive wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.