World News Roundup

INTERNATIONALARAB TIMES, FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2016

16

Asia

Subcontinent

Tourists jump for lives: More than 40 tourists, many of them elderly Chinese, were recovering Thursday after jumping into life rafts when the catamaran they were aboard caught fire in Australia.

The Spirit of 1770 got into trouble 10 nautical miles off the coastal town of 1770 following a day-trip to Lady Musgrave Is-land on the Great Barrier Reef, apparently when a fire started in the engine room.

The local Gladstone Observer news-paper said the 42 passengers and four crew abandoned ship and jumped into the water before swimming to life rafts late Wednesday.

They drifted for several hours before three rescue boats arrived and ferried them ashore, where pictures showed them huddled under blankets as they were treated by paramedics.

“Of the 46 people on board, 19 received treatment for non-life threatening injuries at hospitals in Bundaberg and Gladstone,” Queensland police said in a statement.

“The vessel caught fire around 4 pm (on Wednesday) and was subsequently abandoned around 4.30 pm prompting a search and rescue operation.

“Investigations into the incident are continuing.”

The Observer said many of the tourists were elderly Chinese, with others from Canada, New Zealand and Britain. (AFP)

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Group rescued off Solomons: Fourteen people, including children, have been rescued off the Solomon Islands after being lost at sea for more than five weeks, surviving on betel nut skins, reports said Thursday.

Another woman on their boat died from dehydration and her body was thrown overboard, with two of those picked up seriously ill.

The Papua New Guineans were at-tempting to travel between two islands on their country’s east coast on April 4 but they had engine problems and ended up “helplessly drifting around parts of the Pacific Ocean”, PNG’s Post Courier newspaper said.

The four men, seven women and three children were seen off the Solomons, more than 1,000 kms (620 miles) southeast of PNG, by a sea plane on Tuesday, PNG’s High Commissioner in the Solomon Islands Fred Yakasa said.

“They were spotted by a sea plane ... which transferred these people to another fishing vessel called Majestic Sun, which ferried them to safety in Honiara,” Yakasa told the Australian Broadcasting Corpora-tion, referring to the Solomons capital.

“I think the people back at home, they probably have assumed they are lost for good ... it’s a long time at sea.”

He gave no other precise details about where they were found or the boat they were on.

Yakasa said the survivors threw the body of the dead woman, believed to be in her late 40s or early 50s, overboard after waiting two days. They survived the ordeal by eating betel nut skins they had on board, he added. (AFP)

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4 missing at sea found alive: Four people, including three foreigners, who went missing 11 days ago in Malaysian waters are safe after they were apparently picked up by Vietnamese fishing vessels, officials said Thursday.

Spanish nationals David Hernandes Gasulla and Martha Miguel, Hong Kong citizen Tommy Lam Wai Yin, and Malay-sian Armilla Alihassan went missing in their small boat on May 2 in waters off the northern tip of Borneo island.

But Malaysian coast guard and naval ships conducting a search discovered them aboard Vietnamese fishing trawlers Thursday morning during an inspection of the vessels, the coast guard said.

“All four missing people are alive. They

Thai users data notgiven to govt – FBBANGKOK, May 12, (AP): Face-book is seeking to reassure Thai users that it safeguards their private data, after a series of arrests raised concerns the social network had failed to pro-tect personal information from Thai-land’s military government.

A statement by Facebook’s Asia-Pacific spokeswoman, Charlene Chi-an, said the company has not given any account information to the Thai government and its systems remain secure. It said it publicly lists govern-ment requests for data or blocking sites and responds according to law.

“Facebook uses advanced systems to keep people’s information secure and tools to keep their accounts safe, and we do not provide any govern-ment with direct access to people’s data,” said the statement.

A Bangladeshi boatman makes his way through hyacinth plants in the Buriganga River during a strike called by the Jamaat-e-Islami religious political party to protest against the execution of leader Motiur Rahman Nizami in Dhaka on May 12, 2016. (Inset): Bangladeshi activists shout slogans during a protest amid a strike called by the Jamaat-e-Islami religious political party to protest against the execution

of leader Motiur Rahman Nizami in Dhaka. (AFP)

Supporters of Pakistan’s Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) offer ab-sentia funeral prayers for the leader of Bangladesh’s top Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, Motiur Rahman Nizami, during a protest against the execution of Nizami in Islamabad on

May 11, 2016. (AFP)

Bangladesh

Security tight for strike over Islamist’s hanging

ANKARA, May 12, (AFP): Turkey on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Bangladesh for consultations after strongly protesting the execution in the country of a top Islamist leader, the state-run Anatolia news agency said.

Motiur Rahman Nizami, leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged at a Dhaka jail late Tuesday for the massacre of intellectuals dur-ing the 1971 independence war with Pakistan.

Turkey’s ambassador to Dhaka, Devrim Ozturk, is due to arrive back in Turkey on Thursday, the news agency added.

The Turkish foreign ministry had already strongly condemned the ex-ecution, saying it did not believe that “Nizami deserved such a punish-ment”.

It said that Turkey, which has abol-ished capital punishment, feared that the use of such methods risked creat-ing “rancour and hatred between our Bangladeshi brothers”.

Since coming to power in 2002, Turkey’s ruling Islamic-rooted Jus-tice and Development Party (AKP) has sought to boost the country’s power in the Muslim world well out-side its Ottoman sphere of influence.

Nizami, a 73-year-old former gov-ernment minister, was the fifth and the most senior opposition figure execut-ed since the secular government in the overwhelmingly Muslim nation set up a controversial war crimes tribunal in

2010.Turkey had last year also furiously

slammed a death sentence handed to Egypt’s deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi who was a close ally of Ankara until he was overthrown by the military in 2013.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh Thursday deployed thousands of police in the capital to prevent violence, after the main Islamist party called a nation-wide strike to protest against its lead-er’s execution for warcrimes.

Clashes erupted in the north-west and the south of the country on Wednesday, with police firing rubber bullets at stone-throwing Islamists protesting against the 73-year-old’s execution, officers said.

GruesomeJamaat called for the 24-hour shut-

down throughout Bangladesh, which is reeling from a string of gruesome murders of secular and liberal activ-ists and religious minorities by sus-pected Islamists.

But shops and other businesses were open in Dhaka and police offi-cials reported no protests in the capital or in Nizami’s hometown of Pabna in the northwest.

“Life is normal in the capital. There is no sign of any protest,” Dhaka Met-ropolitan Police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sorder told AFP.

“Still we’re on alert. Several thou-sand policemen have been deployed in Dhaka, including in key places, to

prevent any violence,” Sorder said.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s

secular government has launched a major crackdown on Jamaat support-ers since deadly violence in 2013 over the execution of other top Islamists for war crimes.

More than 500 people were killed in clashes between Islamists and po-lice in 2013. But tens of thousands of Jamaat supporters have since been arrested or detained without charge in the crackdown.

On Wednesday, the execution trig-gered violence in the northwestern city of Rajshahi where police fired rubber bullets to disperse some 500 Jamaat activists, while clashes were also reported in southern Chittagong.

Nizami, a former government min-ister, was the fifth and most senior opposition figure executed since Ha-sina’s government set up a controver-sial war crimes tribunal in 2010.

In related news, Pakistan has sum-moned a senior Bangladeshi diplomat to protest the “unfortunate hanging” of the head of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party for his alleged role in genocide and war crimes during the independence war against Pakistan in 1971.

Thousands of supporters of Nizami in Pakistan organized a special me-morial service for him on Wednesday.

Nizami is the fifth senior official from Bangladeshi opposition parties to be executed since 2013 for alleged war crimes during the 1971 conflict.

Turkey recalls B’desh ambassador

Obama Xi

India passes bankruptcy law: India has overhauled its archaic bankruptcy laws in a key reform that will make it vastly easier to wind down companies and help banks to recover bad loans.

The long-awaited bill that cleared the parliament’s upper house late Wednesday replaces a patchwork of outdated legisla-tion with a single law and lays down a host of new rules.

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 sets out a 180-day deadline to resolve bankruptcy cases -- currently it takes 4.3 years on average, World Bank data shows, among the longest in the world.

Individuals caught hiding assets or defrauding lenders during the insolvency process can be punished with up to five years in prison or a hefty fine.

At present creditors retrieve just 25.7 cents on the dollar in Indian defaults, com-pared with 80.4 cents in the US, in part because the process takes so long.

“Today is a historical day for economic reforms in India,” the finance ministry said in a statement. “In India, the legal and institutional machinery for dealing with debt default has not been in line with global standards.”

Experts lauded the move as one of the most significant financial reforms passed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s gov-ernment, second only to a new proposed goods and services tax, currently stuck in parliament. (AFP)

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3 women murdered for ‘honour’: Three young women in one family were shot dead by male relatives who suspected them of having “illicit relations” with other men, police in eastern Pakistan said Wednesday.

The women, aged 22, 28 and 29, all lived in the same house in the city of Faisalabad.

“The men suspected that the three women had illicit relations with other men and shot them in the chest and face and fled after the murders,” police investigator Mohammad Ayub told AFP.

Police have launched a manhunt, he said, added that it appeared to a case of “honour killings”.

Officials at the local police station confirmed the account.

Last week a teenage girl in the coun-try’s northwest was strangled and her body set ablaze after a village council ruled she must die for helping a friend to elope, sparking anger from rights activists.

Hundreds of women are murdered by their relatives in Pakistan each year on the pretext of defending family “honour”.(AFP)

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Lanka arrests ex-leader’s brother: A brother of former Sri Lankan presi-dent Mahinda Rajapaksa was arrested on Thursday by the police Financial Crimes Investigation Division over a land deal allegedly involving money laundering, his lawyer and police said.

Several members of the Rajapaksa family are facing police investigations for alleged financial crimes. They include Ma-hinda Rajapaksa, who was president for a decade until January 2015, his brothers Basil and Gotabaya, his wife Shiranthi and sons Namal and Yoshitha.

Rajapaksa’s younger brother, Basil, a former economic development minister, is on bail for alleged misappropriation of state funds after serving several months in prison and the court hearing is still taking place.

Basil Rajapaksa’s lawyer, Jayantha Weerasinghe, told Reuters his client had been arrested.

“He has been arrested - they say it’s regarding some private land. It’s a totally false allegation,” Weerasinghe said.

Weerasinghe later said his client had been produced in a court, freed on bail and told to appear in court again on July 20.

A senior police official who is involved in the case confirmed that Basil Rajapaksa had been arrested on a money-laundering charge in connection with the purchase of some land. (RTRS)

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Cricketer beaten to death: A teenage cricketer in Bangladesh was allegedly killed by a stump-wielding batsman after he taunted the umpire over a no-ball deliv-ery, police said Thursday.

Sixteen-year-old Babul Shikdar was wicketkeeping during a neighbourhood match with friends in the capital Dhaka on Wednesday when the batsman was given out, local police chief Bhuiyan Mahboob Hasan said.

Shikdar suggested that the umpire might again favour the batsman, by declaring the bowler’s delivery a no-ball, allowing him to remain at the crease, after the umpire made the same ruling off the previous ball.

“It enraged the batsman who picked up a stump and hit Shikdar on the back of his head. He collapsed on the field and died on the way to a clinic,” Hasan told AFP.

Police were now searching for the bats-man who fled the scene, he said. (AFP)

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2 Brits, Mexican reach Everest: Two British and a Mexican climber on Thursday became the first foreigners to scale Mount Everest in two years together with three Nepalese guides, officials said.

The six climbers reached the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) peak early Thursday and were heading to lower camps, said Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.

The Brits are Kenton Cool and Robert Richard Lucas, and the Mexican is David Liano Gonzalez.

For Cool, 42, it was his 12th success-ful climb of Everest. Gonzalez, 36, is the record holder with six successful ascents of Everest from both northern side in China and southern side in Nepal in the same season.

The Nepalese government has issued permits to 289 climbers to attempt to scale Everest. They have to do it in the next few weeks before the monsoon rains bring in bad weather.

A group of nine Nepalese guides fixing ropes for their foreign clients reached the summit on Wednesday.(AP)

Modi

Lifting of ban eyedThe White House is considering lift-ing a decades-old arms embargo against Vietnam in time for President Barack Obama’s visit to the booming Southeast Asian nation this month.

As both countries warily eye Chi-na’s military build-up in the disput-ed South China Sea, officials said Obama is weighing an end to the Cold War-era ban on lethal weapons exports.

Obama begins his first visit to Viet-nam on May 21, some 41 years after the North Vietnamese army and its Viet Cong allies marched into Sai-gon, humiliating the world’s preemi-nent superpower.

Now the former foes — who fought a murderous 19-year war that de-fined both nations and killed untold thousands — are putting ideology aside and gradually building deeper trade, military and political ties.

Washington and Hanoi have been pushed together by Vietnam’s in-creasingly vibrant 80-million-people-strong economy, Obama’s “pivot to Asia” and a mutual desire to limit China’s regional clout.

Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing has taken a more assertive stance on territorial claims in the South China Sea — deploying materiel to the dis-puted Spratly Islands.

Recent military reforms announced by Xi dramatically increased navy spending.

With that, some inside the Obama administration argue that the time has come for the United States to help bolster Vietnam with the sale of advanced military equipment.

“It is a relatively easy argument for those who favor lifting the ban,” said Christian Lewis of the Eurasia Group, a consultancy. (AFP)

No other information on the foursome’s ordeal or how they ended up on the Viet-namese ships was released immediately.

Malaysian fishermen over the weekend recovered an engine entangled in their net that was believed to be from the missing vessel, prompting fears that the boat had sunk. (AFP)

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Migrants allowed to leave camp: Australia’s conservative government said Thursday that tough immigration policies

could soften if the opposition wins elec-tions, after candidates from center-left Labor Party called for Australian-run migrant camps on two Pacific islands to be closed.

Australia Broadcasting Corp reported that asylum seekers were being allowed conditional freedom to leave Manus Island on Papua New Guinea, where the Austra-lian government has a policy of sending migrants who try to reach Australian shores by boat.

Last month, however, Papua New

Guinea’s Supreme Court ruled that Australia’s detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island was unconstitutional.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said that Nauru had given asylum seekers freedom of movement since October and Papua New Guinea “are heading down that track as well.”

Dutton singled out comments by oppo-sition Labor candidates, including Sophie Ismail, that the camps should be closed, and said Australia’s policies would soften if the Labor wins July 2 polls. (AP)

are on board some Vietnamese fishing trawlers on the high seas,” coast guard chief Ahmad Puzi told AFP.

The group was expected to be brought back to the Malaysian city of Kota Kinabalu on Borneo in the evening.

A handout photo taken by the Queensland Ambulance Service on May 11, and received on May 12, shows ambulance staff tending to more than 40 tourists, many of them Chinese, who were recovering in the town of 1770 after jumping into life rafts when the catamaran they were on caught fire in Australia. The Spirit of 1770 got into trouble 10 nautical miles off the coastal town of 1770 fol-lowing a daytrip to Lady Musgrove Island on the Great Barrier Reef, apparently

when a fire started in the engine room. (AFP)