landmine casualties surge after coup’

LANDMINES and unexploded munitions injured or killed more than one person every day in Myanmar last year, the United Nations said, pointing to a 40 percent spike in casualties compared to 2021.

The military’s toppling of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in 2021 sparked renewed fighting with ethnic rebel groups and the formation of dozens of “People’s Defense Forces” in areas previously untouched by decades of conflict in Myanmar.

The Southeast Asian nation is not a signatory to the United Nations convention that prohibits the use, stockpiling or development of antipersonnel mines.

The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, on Tuesday reported 390 people had been wounded or killed by landmines or unexploded ordnances in 2022, an almost 40 percent spike compared to the previous year.

Around two-thirds of the incidents were reported in border areas where ethnic rebels have

A US grand jury probing attempts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss in the key state of Georgia has recommended multiple indictments, the forewoman revealed Tuesday.

In unusually public remarks on the closed-door legal process, especially since no indictments have been formally announced, Emily Kohrs said her 23-member panel had recommended charges against more than a dozen people, without naming anyone. “There are certainly names battled the army and each other for decades over autonomy and control of resources like timber, jade and the drugs trade.

And almost one-fifth of the casualties were reported in northern Sagaing region, an area that was largely peaceful before the coup but has since emerged as a hotspot of resistance to military rule.

In 2020, the year before the coup, there were 254 victims, according to UNICEF.

Myanmar’s military has been repeatedly accused of atrocities and war crimes during decades of internal conflict.

Last year Amnesty International said its troops were laying landmines on a “massive scale” as they battled anti-coup fighters, including around churches and on paths to rice fields.

The UNICEF figures did not include casualties resulting from the targeting of “local administrations and security forces” by anti-junta fighters, the agency said. AFP

THE families of victims of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks cannot seize $3.5 billion in funds belonging to Afghanistan’s central bank, a New York federal judge ruled Tuesday.

The assets, held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, were frozen on August 15, 2021 – the day the Taliban entered Kabul and toppled the US-backed Afghan government. US President Joe Biden later said the money could be made available to the families of 9/11 victims.

A group of families—who years earlier sued the Taliban for their losses and won—has since moved to seize the funds to pay off the judgment debt.

But Judge George Daniels of the Southern District of New York said Tuesday that the federal courts lack the jurisdiction to seize the funds from Afghanistan’s central bank.

“The Judgment Creditors are entitled to collect on their default judgments and be made whole for the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history, but they cannot do so with the funds of the central bank of Afghanistan,” Daniels explained in a 30-page opinion.

“The Taliban – not the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or the Afghan people – must pay for the Taliban’s liability in the 9/11 Attacks.” Daniels also said he was “constitutionally restrained” from awarding the assets to the families because it would effectively mean recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. AFP that you would recognize, yes,” she told NBC News in a televised interview. “There are names also that you might not recognize.”

She told several outlets that in the jury’s final report, the result of seven months of work, the people and crimes referenced “is not a short list.”

Prosecutors have spent two years looking into whether the former president and his allies committed crimes in their bid to overturn his defeat in the southern state to Joe Biden by fewer than 12,000 votes. AFP

US judge rules 9/11 victims can’t seize $3.5b Afghan funds Nokor

NORTH Korea rejected on Wednesday condemnation by the United Nations chief of its recent ballistic missile launches, saying it was “unfair and unbalanced” and ignored Pyongyang’s right to selfdefense. The nuclear-armed North has fired three banned missiles in the past five days, including an intercontinental ballistic missile test Pyongyang said showed its capacity for a “fatal nuclear counterattack on the hostile forces.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio

Guterres responded to Saturday’s ICBM launch with a statement calling for Pyongyang to “immediately desist from taking any further provocative actions.”

North Korea’s vice foreign minister expressed “strong discontent and protest against the extremely unfair and imbalanced attitude” of Guterres, according to a statement carried by KCNA state media. Kim Son Gyong said Guterres’ assessment ignored “dangerous” joint military drills by Washington and Seoul and that he should “adopt a fair and balanced attitude.”

Kim described North Korea’s missile launches as a justified “countermeasure” to the recent US deployment of strategic bombers to the Korean peninsula.

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, had already said Pyongyang was closely monitoring moves by Washington and Seoul to deploy more US strategic assets to the region. “The frequency of using the Pacific as our firing range depends upon the US forces’ action character,” she said in a statement on KCNA on Monday. Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in decades. North Korea declared itself last year an “irreversible” nuclear power and Kim Jong Un called for an “exponential” increase in weapons production, including tactical nuclear weapons. AFP