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Two Australian Cabinet Ministers Demoted After Dual Rape Scandals

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Two Australian Cabinet Ministers Demoted After Dual Rape Scandals" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-03/am8sfpvk_linda-reynolds-instagram-650_625x300_04_March_21.jpg" title="Two Australian Cabinet Ministers Demoted After Dual Rape Scandals" /></div>
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Sydney:
Two Australian ministers were demoted from top cabinet posts Monday as the ruling conservative party tried to draw a line under dual rape scandals that have convulsed national politics.
Linda Reynolds was removed as defence minister and Christian Porter as attorney-general, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison bowed to weeks of mounting public pressure.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world Two Australian Cabinet Ministers Demoted After Dual Rape Scandals

Sydney: Two Australian ministers were demoted from top cabinet posts Monday as the ruling conservative party tried to draw a line under ...

"Vaccine Passports" Are On The Way, But Developing Them Won't Be Easy

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="'Vaccine Passports' Are On The Way, But Developing Them Won't Be Easy" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2020-06/k5890kk8_covid19-vaccine-generic-reuters-650_625x300_10_June_20.jpg" title="'Vaccine Passports' Are On The Way, But Developing Them Won't Be Easy" /></div>
The passports are expected to be free and available through applications for smartphones
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The Biden administration and private companies are working to develop a standard way of handling credentials - often referred to as "vaccine passports" - that would allow Americans to prove they have been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus as businesses try to reopen.
The effort has gained momentum amid President Joe Biden's pledge that the nation will start to regain normalcy this summer and with a growing number of companies - from cruise lines to sports teams - saying they will require proof of vaccination before opening their doors again.
The administration's initiative has been driven largely by arms of the Department of Health and Human Services, including an office devoted to health information technology, said five officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the effort. The White House this month took on a bigger role coordinating government agencies involved in the work, led by coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients, with a goal of announcing updates in coming days, said one official.
The White House declined to answer questions about the passport initiative, instead pointing to public statements that Zients and other officials made this month.
"Our role is to help ensure that any solutions in this area should be simple, free, open source, accessible to people both digitally and on paper, and designed from the start to protect people's privacy," Zients said at a March 12 briefing.
The initiative has emerged as an early test of the Biden administration, with officials working to coordinate across dozens of agencies and a variety of experts, including military officials helping administer vaccines and health officials engaging in international vaccine efforts.
The passports are expected to be free and available through applications for smartphones, which could display a scannable code similar to an airline boarding pass. Americans without smartphone access should be able to print out the passports, developers have said.
Other countries are racing ahead with their own passport plans, with the European Union pledging to release digital certificates that would allow for summer travel.
U.S. officials say they are grappling with an array of challenges, including data privacy and health-care equity. They want to make sure all Americans will be able to get credentials that prove they have been vaccinated, but also want to set up systems that are not easily hacked or passports that cannot be counterfeited, given that forgeries are already starting to appear.
One of the most significant hurdles facing federal officials: the sheer number of passport initiatives underway, with the Biden administration this month identifying at least 17, according to slides obtained by The Washington Post.
Those initiatives - such as a World Health Organization-led global effort and a digital pass devised by IBM that is being tested in New York state - are rapidly moving forward, even as the White House deliberates about how best to track the shots and avoid the perception of a government mandate to be vaccinated.
One of the teams working on vaccine passports is the Vaccination Credential Initiative, a coalition endeavoring to standardize how data in vaccination records is tracked.
"The busboy, the janitor, the waiter that works at a restaurant, wants to be surrounded by employees that are going back to work safely - and wants to have the patrons ideally be safe as well," said Brian Anderson, a physician at Mitre, a nonprofit company that runs federally funded research centers, who is helping lead the initiative. "Creating an environment for those vulnerable populations to get back to work safely - and to know that the people coming back to their business are 'safe,' and vaccinated - would be a great scenario."
Anderson's team is aiming to release its free software standards in April, hoping developers will use them to help build digital vaccine records that allow people to show they have been inoculated. The Vaccination Credential Initiative includes the Mayo Clinic, Microsoft and more than 225 other organizations, many of which have pledged to use the code when administering shots.
Biden administration officials privately acknowledge the high stakes of the effort.
Proof of vaccination "may be a critical driver for restoring baseline population health and promoting safe return to social, commercial, and leisure activities," according to the March 2 slides prepared by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and obtained by The Post. But officials at the session - attended by more than 150 staff from the health, defense, homeland security and other departments, and even far-flung agencies such as NASA - warned of the "confusing array" of efforts underway to create credentials.
"A chaotic and ineffective vaccine credential approach could hamper our pandemic response by undercutting health safety measures, slowing economic recovery, and undermining public trust and confidence," one slide reads.
Micky Tripathi, whom Biden tapped as the national coordinator for health IT, recently said federal officials are concerned with a variety of health-tech challenges, including protecting the credentials against fraud, ensuring data security and making certain that low-income populations aren't squeezed out.
"How do we make sure that whatever is available is accessible to everyone so no one is left behind or feeling like they can't participate in the return of their day-to-day activities?" Tripathi asked at a virtual meeting hosted by the Health IT Leadership Roundtable on March 11.
Tripathi told the group he didn't like the term "vaccine passports," adding that "passports are something that are issued by governments. ... I think of them as vaccine credentials or certificates." Tripathi did not respond to a request for comment.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is participating in the WHO's effort to create "digital vaccination certificates," also is preparing to help advise on the passport rollout. The health agency says it is expecting to play a role in determining which organizations will credential and issue the certificates, in addition to informing the public, according to CDC documents reviewed by The Post.
The Biden administration has promised to release more information about its efforts. Asked by Hawaii Gov. David Ige on Tuesday about the state of the passport initiative, Zients told governors he would provide a more detailed briefing this week, according to two peopleon the call, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the private conversation.
Federal officials defended the pace of the project.
Taking time to get the credentialing project right "is very, very important because this has a high likelihood of being either built wrong, used wrong or a bureaucratic mess," said one official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the effort. The official said some of the considerations include how to adjust for the spread of variants, how booster shots would be tracked and even questions about how long immunity lasts after getting a shot. There's "a lot to think through," the official said.
"Many people see this as a key aspect to getting things closer to normal," said Kristen McGovern, a partner at health-care consultancy Sirona Strategies and former chief of staff at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. But the technical challenges are significant and given that so many separate efforts are underway, "it would be an almost herculean task to come up with a single standard" for all the vaccine credentials to follow, McGovern said.
There is evidence vaccine passports could motivate skeptical Americans to get shots. Several vaccine-hesitant participants at a recent focus group of Trump voters led by pollster Frank Luntz suggested their desire to see family, go on vacation and resume other aspects of daily life outpaced fear of the shots, particularly if travel companies and others moved to require proof of vaccination.
"We love to travel. We love to take cruises. I would get it to travel," said Debbie of Georgia, who like others in the focus group was identified only by her first name.
Some attendees dissented and warned that requiring a credential would backfire.
"I would change my travel plans," said a man identified as Patrick of Tennessee.
Public health and ethics experts agreed that the Biden administration needed to strike a careful balance: Encourage shots and support the private-sector initiatives but don't put too much federal emphasis on the looming passports.
"If it became a government mandate, it would go down a dark road very quickly," said Brian Castrucci, who leads the Bethesda, Md.-based de Beaumont Foundation, a public health group funding Luntz's research into why some Americans are balking at the vaccine. "It becomes a credential. It becomes a 'needing your papers,' if you will. That could be dangerous - and it could turn off people."
"It has to be that everyone can get it, and it's their choice, as it were," said Ezekiel Emanuel, a University of Pennsylvania bioethics expert who co-authored a Journal of the American Medical Association article last year about the ethics of such certificates and advised Biden's transition team on the coronavirus. "The one thing I am concerned is that some people won't be able to get vaccinated for a variety of reasons."
Emanuel added that the passports will be an element of global travel - not just domestic policy. Key aviation and travel associations on March 22 called on the White House to finalize its vaccine credential plan by May, saying it was essential for the safe resumption of international travel.
Donald Rucker, who led the health IT office during the Trump administration, said myriad technical issues await the rollout of vaccine credentials, including how they are tracked, whether they are enforced and who pulls together the initial records of which Americans have gotten shots.
Rucker said keeping vaccine credentials could help officials better understand coronavirus vaccination, including possible long-term side effects, if the data is connected with the health information exchanges that states maintain.
"The tracking of vaccinations is not just simply for vaccine passports," Rucker said. "The tracking of vaccinations is a broader issue of 'we're giving a novel biologic agent to the entire country,' more or less."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world "Vaccine Passports" Are On The Way, But Developing Them Won't Be Easy

The passports are expected to be free and available through applications for smartphones The Biden administration and private companies ...

A Suez Canal Village Grapples With Giant Ship Blockade Like Rest Of World

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="A Suez Canal Village Grapples With Giant Ship Blockade Like Rest Of World" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-03/bkh0sc0o_suez-canal-village-afp_625x300_29_March_21.jpg" title="A Suez Canal Village Grapples With Giant Ship Blockade Like Rest Of World" /></div>
MV Ever Given wedged diagonally across Suez Canal.
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Manshiyet Rugola, Egypt:
Hassan cannot forget the huge dust storm.
Not the one Tuesday that grounded a massive container ship in front of this tiny hamlet on the edge of the Suez Canal. But the storm in 2004 that was so dark that "we thought it was the end of our days," recalled the 49-year-old truck driver, dressed in a gray djellaba, a loosefitting traditional garment.
Yet not a single ship got stuck in the canal that day.
"Back then we didn't see many ships as big as this one," said Hassan, who, like others, spoke on the condition that only his first name be used out of fear of the government security agents that have descended upon this village.
For the past six days, the ripple effects of the Ever Given, which is wedged in the canal's eastern bank, have been felt far and wide. But in the shadow of the grounded ship's bow, there are effects that mirror the global ones, making the villagers, too, casualties of a booming global economy that demands monstrously large ships to feed the world's appetites.
As the giant eyesore hovers above their houses and fields, some residents of Manshiyet Rugola and neighboring villages are angry at the disruption to their lives. Others worry that the continued blockage of the canal will harm their nation and bring more economic distress. Most are just stunned that strong winds and a dust storm, the type of weather to which they are accustomed, could ground a ship and throw the world, including their small corner, into turmoil.
"This is the first time something like this has ever happened," said Essam Mohammed Ahmed, 48, a goateed coffee shop owner in the neighboring village of Abu Aref, who has spent his whole life along the canal. "This is stopping the entire maritime activity and earnings of the canal. It's going to affect our livelihoods. I never ever imagined this."
On Sunday, large tugs and dredgers once again attempted to dislodge the Ever Given from the sand and mud before the canal's service provider said another effort would be made Monday evening, when the tide is high. Meanwhile, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi ordered preparations to be made for the unloading of the cargo, if necessary, to lighten the vessel and allow it to float.
Manshiyet Rugola, which means "small village of manhood" in Arabic, is a small community of farmers, drivers, laborers and blacksmiths, roughly four miles from the canal's southern entrance, near the city of Suez. Unpaved paths lead inside the village, past red-brick houses, some half-built. On the dust-covered main road, peppered with military checkpoints, three-wheeled motorcycle taxis cart goods past stores and coffee shops.
For decades, the Suez Canal and its blue waters have been the area's centerpiece and a source of national pride. Before a security wall was built after the 2011 revolution that toppled Egypt's longtime autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak, the villagers used to relax along the waterway.
"I used to sit by the side of the canal before the wall was built," recalled Mohammed Kamil, 55, a tall and heavyset businessman. "We all love the canal."
First opened in 1869, the Suez Canal has had brief interruptions due to politics and war: in 1957 and 1958, when Egypt's Pan-Arab President Gamel Abdel Nasser nationalized the vital global portal; and during the two Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973. But most villagers interviewed say they cannot remember major blockages of the canal in their lifetimes.
"For two days or so, at the most," Hassan said.
Today, there's an uncomfortable tension in the village. Security agents on Sunday instructed residents not to speak with foreigners and warned them not to get close to the grounded vessel.
"You can't go to the ship," said Hamdi, 22, Hassan's relative, who was slim and wore a yellow T-shirt.
"You can't even go to the roof of a house and look at it," Hassan said.
The conversations in the villages along the canal now revolve around the Ever Given, which is visible even from portions of the main road. Some are lighthearted, and some descend into sexism.
"The reason it got stuck is because the ship's canal pilot was a woman," said Hamdi, a grin widening across his face.
He was referring to a false story widely circulated among Egyptians. The pilot in question publicly denied that she was on the ship. A senior level pilot, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, confirmed that she was not one of the Ever Given's pilots.
Most conversations about the ship are serious.
The Suez Canal Authority and the government have invested some of the canal's revenue, a major source of Egypt's foreign currency reserves, in hospitals and schools in the area, residents said. The longer the crisis, the greater chance there will be less money for roads and other infrastructure, worries Ahmed, the coffee shop owner. "For six days now, not a single dollar has entered Egypt's coffers from the canal."
Kamil, who transports fish in his boats, said some of his friends' livelihoods have already been affected by the logjam. "They supply food and laundry services to the ships, but right now no ships are coming or going," he said.
Ahmed hopes the government will learn from the crisis. Sissi, he noted, authorized $8 billion to widen parts of the canal in 2015, but not the part where the Ever Given got stuck. "This is an indication to the authorities that they should expand the canal on this side," Ahmed said.
The two villagers, like many other residents, are divided on whether a strong wind during a dust storm caused the Ever Given's mishap.
Ahmed says the wind could not have swung a 200,000-ton cargo carrier into the canal's banks. "We've had strong winds before, but nothing like this has ever happened," he said. "Perhaps it had technical difficulties."
Kamil says the erratic weather was the culprit, largely for reasons of patriotism and pride. "We trust our canal pilots," he explained.
Most residents cannot wait to see the Ever Given disappear. It has become a constant reminder of the possible economic calamity for their country, already reeling from lost income because of the coronavirus pandemic and dwindling tourism.
"When I see the ship, I see missing income for the country," said Osman Sayed Mustafa, 59, a paramedic. "I want the problem to be solved for the sake of the country's economy."
"Every day I pray to God to fix the ship quickly so that the waterway is clear again."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world A Suez Canal Village Grapples With Giant Ship Blockade Like Rest Of World

MV Ever Given wedged diagonally across Suez Canal. Manshiyet Rugola, Egypt: Hassan cannot forget the huge dust storm. Not the one Tues...

Asians "Have Right To Be Recognized...": Kamala Harris On Rising Attacks

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Asians 'Have Right To Be Recognized...': Kamala Harris On Rising Attacks" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-03/4acuqvro_kamala-harris-650_625x300_29_March_21.jpeg" title="Asians 'Have Right To Be Recognized...': Kamala Harris On Rising Attacks" /></div>
Among Asian American leaders, Kamala Harris is widely regarded as a source of pride.
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Vice President Kamala Harris was in Atlanta to meet with community leaders in the wake of the mass shooting two weeks ago when she summoned top aides to discuss what she would say.
Her speechwriter had called in from Washington. Others were seated in front of her in a semicircle. The attacker had killed eight, including six women of Asian descent, and a draft of Harris's speech had focused on the need for everyone to feel safe.
"That's true, but it's more than that," she told the aides, according to one person familiar with the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting. "It's about being seen as American and not as the other."
A short time later, after emerging from the meeting with local Asian American leaders, Harris told reporters: "Sadly, it's not new. Racism is real in America, and it has always been. Xenophobia is real in America, and it always has been. Sexism, too." With President Joe Biden standing behind her, she ticked through laws discriminating against Chinese immigrants in the 1860s, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and attacks against Muslim Americans after 9/11.
"Ultimately, this is about who we are as a nation," Harris said. Asians "have the right to be recognized as American - not as the 'other,' not as 'them,' but as 'us.' "
For Harris, the use of the collective pronoun was poignant. Though her late mother was an immigrant from India, Harris, 56, whose father is from Jamaica, was raised to identify as Black - a reflection of her mother's recognition that a young biracial woman would be viewed that way in a society whose racial dialogue was defined principally through a lens of Black and White.
Now, amid accounts of rising violence targeting Asian Americans, it is her South Asian heritage that has put Harris in a unique position to give voice to the pain and anger that inspired a nascent political movement.
People who have worked with her said that Harris - although she seldom talks publicly about her Indian background - has an authentic understanding of the trepidation felt by many Asian Americans and shares their sense of urgency. The question, they said, is how far she is willing or able to go to embrace the role of forceful advocate and how much pressure she will face from the Asian American community to act as an influence on Biden to follow through on his pledges to prioritize their concerns.
"Kamala's speech in Atlanta was very well done. It was clear and to the point. She spoke from a position no other vice president could," said Shekar Narasimhan, the Indian American chairman of the AAPI Victory Fund, a SuperPAC focused on bolstering political activism among the nation's 23 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Though Harris did not offer a personal reflection, "her lived experience is translating on the world stage into that authenticity," Narasimhan added. "I'm not worried about her representing us or advocating for the right causes. The only thing I preach about her to others is: 'Be patient.' She has to have time to find her footing. When she finds her legs, she will be the person we want her to be, to be advocating for us and for communities of color."
Among Asian American leaders, Harris is widely regarded as a source of pride and as an ally of their causes. Yet they cautioned that her ability to advocate for them could be compromised by her multiple responsibilities as Biden's deputy. Last week, for example, the president put Harris in charge of managing an influx of unauthorized migrants, mostly from Central America.
For months, starting during the campaign and continuing through the transition, Democrats in Congress and community leaders have expressed frustration that Biden has not named more Asian Americans to his senior ranks. Biden assembled the most racially diverse leadership team of any administration, with people of color making up half of his nominees and appointees.
But none of his nominees for the 15 statutory Cabinet positions is an Asian American, breaking two decades of precedent from Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
The impatience boiled over last week during a private call between Democratic lawmakers and Biden aides, during which Jen O'Malley Dillon, the White House deputy chief of staff, reportedly pointed to Harris in the discussion over Asian representation in the Cabinet.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who is of Chinese Thai descent, later called the remarks "insulting" and announced - along with Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, a Japanese American - that they would oppose all of Biden's nominees other than those who are racial minorities or LGBTQ. The senators withdrew their threat after the White House hastily agreed to appoint a senior official to focus on Asian American issues, a new position whose duties have yet to be defined.
Duckworth told reporters that White House aides had pointed at Harris "multiple times" over the past year in response to lawmakers' pressure. She questioned whether the White House would dare tell the Congressional Black Caucus: "Well you have Kamala, so we're not going to put any more African Americans in the Cabinet."
Biden administration officials said they are working to address lawmakers' concerns. They noted that the president has been at the forefront of the efforts to address the violence, signing an executive action in January that barred the government from using racist or xenophobic language to describe the pandemic and that instructed the Justice Department to improve hate-crime tracking and prosecutions.
The senators emphasized that their anger was not aimed at Harris, with whom they had collaborated closely when she served on the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus as a senator from California.
In May, Harris introduced a Senate resolution condemning Trump's use of "Wuhan virus" to blame China for the coronavirus pandemic, and she joined her former CAPAC colleagues for a celebratory event after the election. She has spoken out numerous times over the anti-Asian hate incidents, including on social media and in an op-ed in the California-based Asian Journal in May in which she accused Trump of "race-baiting."
Yet Asian American leaders have made clear to the White House that Harris, alone, is not enough.
"We need more than the vice president. This is a national issue that deserves the highest level of coordination and a whole-of -government approach," said Russell Jeung, an Asian American studies professor at San Francisco State University. He is a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, an advocacy group that has tallied 3,800 incidents of bias and hate directed at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders over the past year.
Biden aides responded to the criticism by noting that 15 percent of his Senate-confirmed nominees are Asian American, including U.S. Trade Ambassador Katherine Tai and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, plus two Cabinet deputies and the directors of the Office of Property Management and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Neera Tanden, an Indian American, failed last month to win Senate confirmation to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
The absence of Asian Americans at the White House has been noticeable. Last month, White House domestic policy adviser Susan Rice and senior adviser Cedric Richmond, both of whom are Black, led a videoconference with Asian American community groups.
Rohini Kosoglu, a Sri Lankan American who serves as Harris's domestic policy adviser, was the highest-ranking Asian American official in attendance, participants said.
"They got themselves into an unfortunate situation, and they are beginning to understand the problem, but it's not easy to fix," said a former Obama administration official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid.
This person called the new senior official position a "consolation prize" and said the political blowback over the Cabinet "was entirely predictable and having a voice in the White House would have foreseen it."
In some ways, Harris's position underscores the complexities of the term "Asian American," which was coined by activists during the civil rights movement of the 1960s to demonstrate political solidarity in the fight against racism. Experts said the label was purposely broad, loosely tying together a broad and diverse swath of immigrants from East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia who do not share a common language, religion or immigration history.
"The concept was a political marker and a political commitment - a commitment to act in solidarity with other Third World people, in the U.S. and abroad," said Daryl Maeda, an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "In the broadest sense, Asian America is a coalition - a highly diverse coalition filled with people of different aims, backgrounds, histories, priorities."
Harris's mother, Shyamala Gopalan - who raised her two daughters after divorcing Donald Harris when Kamala was 7 years old - was active in the civil rights movement. She recognized early on that Americans would largely view her children as Black and, though she steeped them in elements of Indian culture at home and took them on trips to India to meet relatives and learn about their heritage, she raised them to be aware of that reality.
The family worshiped at an African American church, and Kamala and her sister, Maya, were bused with other Black kids to an elementary school in a wealthier White neighborhood. Harris attended Howard University, a historically Black institution in Washington, D.C., and former classmates have said that they did not learn of her Indian heritage until years after they had graduated and she became a public figure.
In that sense, advocates said, it is through political solidarity, perhaps more so than through cultural affinity, that Harris and the Asian American community have begun to demonstrate their mutual kinship.
"When she ran for president, some criticized her for not emphasizing her Indian heritage enough," said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political scientist at the University of California at Riverside and co-founder of AAPI Data, a polling and research organization. "She generally had not done much to put herself out there, in terms of not talking much about her identity, but that changed under the glare of the presidential race. What you did see once she was tapped to be vice president was an outpouring of enthusiasm among South Asians and among Asian Americans more broadly."
They also rallied to her defense in the fall after then-Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., mocked the pronunciation of Harris's first name at a Trump campaign rally - a reminder that despite her pedigree, Harris is subject to the "perpetual foreigner" stereotype so often aimed at Asian Americans. The incident prompted a wave of support from actors Kal Penn, Kumail Nanjiani and Daniel Dae Kim, Olympian Michelle Kwan, and comedian Ken Jeong, who led a social media campaign titled #MyNameIs aimed at mobilizing Georgia voters.
Biden and Harris won the state in November, the first time Democrats carried it since 1992, and Perdue was defeated by Democrat Jon Ossoff in his re-election bid.
Asian American identity "is a complex thing," said Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council. "It's not a true identity that many in the first generation or the second or the third identify with. It's so broad. It's a political identity as much as a cultural identity. I didn't grow up eating dumplings or sushi or using chopsticks, but that doesn't make me any less or more Asian."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world Asians "Have Right To Be Recognized...": Kamala Harris On Rising Attacks

Among Asian American leaders, Kamala Harris is widely regarded as a source of pride. Vice President Kamala Harris was in Atlanta to meet...

Troops Fire At Funeral As Myanmar Mourns Bloodiest Day Since Coup

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Troops Fire At Funeral As Myanmar Mourns Bloodiest Day Since Coup" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-03/5fp1dgfo_myanmar650_625x300_29_March_21.jpg" title="Troops Fire At Funeral As Myanmar Mourns Bloodiest Day Since Coup" /></div>
The bloodshed drew renewed Western condemnation.
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Myanmar security forces opened fire at a funeral on Sunday, witnesses said, as people across the country gathered to mourn 114 people killed the previous day in the worst crackdown on protests since last month's military coup.
Mourners fled the shooting at a service for 20-year-old student Thae Maung Maung in Bago near the commercial capital Yangon and there were no immediate reports of casualties, three people in the town told Reuters.
"While we are singing the revolution song for him, security forces just arrived and shot at us," a woman called Aye who was at the service said. "People, including us, run away as they opened fire."
Another 12 people were recorded dead in incidents elsewhere in Myanmar by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners advocacy group on Sunday, taking its total toll of civilians killed since the Feb. 1 coup to 459.
Thousands of villagers in a border area fled to Thailand after military air strikes on one of several ethnic militias that have stepped up attacks since the coup, witnesses and local media said.
There were no reports of large-scale protests in Yangon or Mandalay, which bore the brunt of the casualties on Saturday, Myanmar's Armed Forces Day. But people in Mandalay surrounded a police station late in the evening, accusing the security forces of arson after five houses burned down, residents said.
Reuters could not reach police there for comment.
At least six children between the ages of 10 and 16 were among those killed on Saturday, according to news reports and witnesses. Protesters call the victims "Fallen Stars".
ISOLATION CALL
The bloodshed drew renewed Western condemnation. The U.N. Special Rapporteur for Myanmar said the army was carrying out "mass murder" and called on the world to isolate the junta and halt its access to weapons.
Foreign criticism and sanctions imposed by some Western nations have failed so far to sway the military leaders, as have almost daily protests around the country since the junta took power and detained elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"We salute our heroes who sacrificed lives during this revolution and We Must Win This REVOLUTION," one of the main protest groups, the General Strike Committee of Nationalities (GSCN), posted on Facebook.
Heavy fighting also erupted between the army and some of the two dozen ethnic armed groups that control swathes of the country.
About 3,000 people fled to neighbouring Thailand after military jets bombed areas controlled by the Karen National Union (KNU) militia near the border, an activist group and local media said.
In an air attack by the military on Saturday, at least three civilians were killed in a village controlled by the KNU, a civil society group said. The militia earlier said it had overrun an army post near the border, killing 10 people.
Fighting also erupted on Sunday between another armed group, the Kachin Independence Army, and the military in the jade-mining area of Hpakant in the north. The Kachin forces attacked a police station and the military responded with an aerial assault, Kachinwaves media reported.
There were no reports of casualties.
A junta spokesman did not answer calls seeking comment on the killings or the fighting.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the junta leader, said during a parade to mark Armed Forces Day that the military would protect the people and strive for democracy.
'RINGING HOLLOW'
Countries including the United States, Britain, Germany and the European Union again condemned the violence.
"It's terrible, it's absolutely outrageous," U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters in Delaware. "Based on the reporting I've gotten an awful lot of people have been killed totally unnecessarily."
The EU's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, called on Myanmar's generals to stand down from what he called a "senseless path" of violence against their own people.
"We will continue to use the EU's mechanisms, including sanctions, to target the perpetrators of this violence, and those responsible for turning back the clock on Myanmar's path of democracy and peace," Borrell said in a statement.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Twitter: "We will not tolerate the military's brutal course of action against the people of Myanmar".
U.N. Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews said the junta should be cut off from funding, such as oil and gas revenues, and from access to weapons.
"Words of condemnation or concern are frankly ringing hollow to the people of Myanmar while the military junta commits mass murder against them," he said in a statement.
The top military officer from the United States and nearly a dozen of his counterparts said a professional military must follow international standards for conduct "and is responsible for protecting - not harming - the people it serves".
Myanmar's military took power saying that November elections won by Suu Kyi's party were fraudulent, an assertion dismissed by the country's election commission. Suu Kyi remains in detention at an undisclosed location and many other figures in her party are also in custody.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world Troops Fire At Funeral As Myanmar Mourns Bloodiest Day Since Coup

The bloodshed drew renewed Western condemnation. Myanmar security forces opened fire at a funeral on Sunday, witnesses said, as people a...

Aladdin's Cave Of Goods Stuck In Suez Canal Logjam

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More than 360 vessels have been stranded.
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Nicosia, Cypru:
An Aladdin's cave of goods ranging from IKEA furnishings to tens of thousands of livestock is stuck in a maritime traffic jam caused by the Suez Canal blockage.
More than 360 vessels have been stranded in the Mediterranean to the north and in the Red Sea at the other end as well as in holding zones since giant container ship MV Ever Given was wedged diagonally Tuesday across the Suez, a lifeline for world trade.
Industry experts have estimated the total value of goods marooned at sea at anywhere between $3 billion and $9.6 billion.
Some 1.74 million barrels of oil a day is normally shipped through the canal, but 80 percent of Gulf exports to Europe pass through the Sumed pipeline that crosses Egypt, according to Paola Rodriguez Masiu of Rystad Energy.
According to MarineTraffic, about 100 ships laden with oil or refined products were in holding areas Sunday.
Crude prices shot up on Wednesday in response to the Suez blockage before dropping the next day.
Sanctions-hit Syria, however, on Saturday announced a new round of fuel rationing after the hold-up delayed a shipment of oil products from ally Iran.
'Adds to volatile situation'
Apart from goods, some 130,000 head of livestock on 11 ships sent from Romania have also been held up.
"My greatest fear is that animals run out of food and water and they get stuck on the ships because they cannot be unloaded somewhere else for paperwork reasons," Gerit Weidinger, EU coordinator for NGO Animals International, told British newspaper The Guardian.
Egypt, for its part, has sent fodder and three teams of vets to examine livestock stuck at sea, some bound for Jordan.
Sweden's IKEA said it has 110 containers on the stricken Ever Given and other ships in the pile-up.
"The blockage of the Suez Canal is an additional constraint to an already challenging and volatile situation for global supply chains brought on by the pandemic," an IKEA spokesperson said.
The Van Rees Group, based in Rotterdam, said 80 containers of tea were trapped at sea on 15 vessels and said there could be "chaos" for the company as supplies dried up.
Dave Hinton, owner of a timber company in northwest England, said he had a consignment of French oak stuck on a ship.
The oak had been sent from France for reprocessing into veneered flooring in China, and was on its way back to a customer in Britain, Hinton said.
"I've spoken to my customer and told him the bad news that his floor was blocking the Suez Canal. He didn't believe me, he thought I was pulling his leg," he told BBC radio on Friday.
Shipping giants such as Denmark's Maersk have re-routed ships to the longer journey around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, adding at least seven days to the travel time.
Even if the Ever Given were dislodged, Maersk estimated Saturday it would take between three and six days for the stranded ships to pass through the canal.
The company said that 32 Maersk and partner vessels would be directly affected by the end of the weekend, with 15 re-routed, and the numbers could increase unless the canal was reopened.
According to Lloyd's List, up to 90 percent of the affected cargo is not insured against delays.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/aladdins-cave-of-goods-stuck-in-suez-canal-logjam-2401338">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/aladdins-cave-of-goods-stuck-in-suez-canal-logjam-2401338</a>

news world Aladdin's Cave Of Goods Stuck In Suez Canal Logjam

More than 360 vessels have been stranded. Nicosia, Cypru: An Aladdin's cave of goods ranging from IKEA furnishings to tens of thous...