World

Bangkok, Sep 14 (IANS) A shooting incident at a Thai army college in Bangkok on Wednesday claimed the lives of two people and injured another person, a military spokesperson said.

The gunman, a 59-year-old staff worker at the Royal Thai Army War College, shot at his colleagues at around 8.55 a.m., Xinhua news agency quoted deputy army spokesperson Sirichan Ngathong as saying.

The perpetrator was taken into custody after he surrendered to the police and the motive for the shooting is still unclear, he said.

According to the spokesperson, the injured person is hospitalised and the army will set up a special team to investigate the incident.

In the past year, there have been at least two other cases of shooting murders by serving soldiers, according to the Bangkok Post.

In 2020, in one of the country's deadliest incidents in recent years, a soldier gunned down 29 people in a 17-hour rampage and wounded scores more before he was shot dead by commandos.

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Washington, Sep 14 (IANS) Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has introduced a legislation that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy across the country.

The bill would prohibit doctors from performing abortions after 15 weeks gestation except in situations involving rape, incest, or risks to the life and physical health of the mother, reports Xinhua news agency.

Graham told reporters on Tuesday that the measure "will put the United States abortion policy in line with other developed nations".

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded by issuing a statement that "this bill is wildly out of step with what Americans believe."

In June, the Supreme Court overturned the 50-year-old landmark Roe v. Wade legislation, which eliminated the constitutional protection of abortion rights for women.

Without Roe v. Wade, states are able to impose their own legislation on the medical procedure.

Abortion has been one of the most divisive issues in the US.

According to a Pew Research Center survey last month, a majority of American voters said the issue of abortion would be very important in their midterm vote.

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Paris, Sep 14 (IANS) Wildfires have burned over 3,200 hectares of land in France's southwestern department of Gironde, forcing 840 people to be evacuated, the local government announced in a statement.

"More than 900 firefighters from Gironde and other departments will be mobilized, thanks to the arrival of reinforcements from other departments in the coming hours. Two Canadairs, one Dash (plane) and three water bomber helicopters have been deployed since this morning," Xinhua news agency quoted the statement issued late Tuesday as saying.

The local government said emergency accommodations are being offered to evacuees in Le Porge and other municipalities.

No further evacuations are planned at this time, it added.

More than 30,000 hectares of land had been burned in the department of Gironde this summer due to dry weather and heatwaves, according to media reports.

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Jakarta, Sep 14 (IANS) Representatives of G20 countries have agreed to introduce an assessment instrument to measure how far each country's policies have accommodated the needs of people with disabilities.

The agreement was concluded at the Sixth G20 Employment Working Group (EWG) meeting in Bali, which mainly discussed inclusive job opportunities.

"We aim to ensure that workers with disabilities could have the same opportunities as other workers. Thus, we agree to formulate an instrument that can evaluate whether the policies in every country have been friendly with the disabled people and how far their realisations of affirmative actions for the people with disabilities," Secretary General of Indonesia's Manpower Ministry Anwar Sanusi said on Tuesday in a written statement released after the G20 EWG meeting.

The G20 EWG, he added, also raised other development issues, including the development of capacity of human resources and social protection in the working environment.

"Inclusive job creation is one of the issues raised by Indonesia's G20 Presidency at the EWG meeting that will later be discussed further at the Labor and Employment Ministers Meeting held tomorrow (Wednesday)," Sanusi said.

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Los Angeles, Sep 14 (IANS) The US now joins a list of nearly 30 other countries with circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) identified by the WHO, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

The polioviruses found in New York, both from the case of paralytic polio in an unvaccinated adult in Rockland County in New York and in several wastewater samples from communities near the patient's residence, meet the WHO's criteria for cVDPV, according to the CDC.

It means that poliovirus continues to be transmitted in Rockland County and surrounding areas, said the US health agency.

The virus' genetic sequences from the patient from Rockland County and wastewater specimens collected in New York have been linked to wastewater samples in Jerusalem, Israel, and London, indicating community transmission, according to the health agency.

The cVDPV occurs when local immunity to poliovirus is low enough to allow prolonged transmission of the original weakened virus in the oral polio vaccine, according to the CDC.

As the virus circulates and more genetic changes occur, the virus can regain its ability to infect the central nervous system and cause paralysis, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Polio vaccination is the safest and best way to fight this debilitating disease and it is imperative that people in these communities who are unvaccinated get up to date on polio vaccination right away," said Jose R. Romero, Director of CDC's National Centre for Immunisation and Respiratory Diseases.

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Gaza, Sep 14 (IANS) Dozens of Palestinians rallied in western Gaza against an Israeli blockade imposed on the Palestinian enclave for more than 15 years.

During the rally, which was organised on Tuesday by several Palestinian factions including Gaza's ruling faction Hamas, demonstrators demanded the Palestinians' right to natural resources, mainly the gas fields discovered in 2000 off the coast of the Gaza Strip.

They waved Palestinian flags and carried banners in both Arabic and English that read, "It is our right to travel freely and with dignity" and "Our gas is our right".

"The ongoing Israeli siege on Gaza has deprived thousands of students of freedom of movement and thousands of patients of their right to medical treatment," Suhail al-Hindi, a senior Hamas member, told the rally.

He called for efforts to put pressure on Israel to lift the siege on the Gaza Strip and uphold the Palestinians' right to exploit their natural resources, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Israel continues to deprive Gazans' rights to natural resources, communicating with the world through a sea corridor, and building a port and an airport," Al-Hindi said.

Later, dozens of boats carrying flag-waving Palestinians held a sea march, with drones belonging to armed Palestinian factions flying around to protect them.

A gas field 36 km west of Gaza city was discovered in 2000, but no major progress has been made in its development and exploitation so far.

Israel has maintained a land, air and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip since Hamas violently took over the territory from the Palestinian Authority in 2007.

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New Delhi, Sep 14 (IANS) Pakistan has formally written a letter to the Afghan authorities regarding the presence of Maulana Masood Azhar, the founding head of the banned terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), in Afghanistan.

The letter clarified that Masood Azhar is likely to be in Nangarhar and Kunhar areas of Afghan province.

It demanded that the defunct JeM chief be found and reported to the Pakistani authorities and arrested.

The letter for the arrest of Masood Azhar has been written by Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, no further details have been brought forward by the latter on this matter.

On May 1, 2019, the UN added the name of Masood Azhar to the list of global designated terrorists.

After the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2008, the US added JeM to the list of Foreign Terrorist Organisation.

India has been trying to ask the UN Security Council to declare JeM and Masood Azhar as global terrorist organisations, but China has been vetoing this effort.

--IANS
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By Yashwant Raj
Washington, Sep 13 (IANS) Former US President Donald Trump is back with another Hindi slogan: "Bharat and US Sabse Achhe Dost (India and US are best friends)".


Trump recorded this new catchphrase at his Mar-a-Lago residence recently for Shalabh Kumar, a Chicago-based businessman, Republican donor and strategist, who was also behind Trump's first Hindi slogan in 2016: "Ab ki bar, Trump Sarkar", which was inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's poll slogan "Ab ki bar, Modi sarkar".

Kumar said Trump, who doesn't speak any Hindi at all, had an easier time recording the slogan than many people in Kumar's own team, who had trouble pronouncing the word 'Bharat' correctly. Most of them couldn't get it right, Kumar recalled with a laugh, despite "hundreds of takes".

The former President got it in "just three takes", Kumar said.

Trump had a far more difficult time with the first slogan though. In Kumar's telling, Trump had done 12 takes to finally get it right, recording it at his campaign headquarters at Trump Tower, which also served as the head office of the Trump Organization and, then, his residence. The former President now lives in Florida at his Mar-a-Lago club resort.

"We will use the slogan in the upcoming midterm elections in November," Kumar said, discussing the creation of the new slogan exclusively with this reporter.

The slogan is intended to mobilise Indian/Hindu American voters in support of Republicans, especially the key candidates endorsed by the former President - J.D. Vance in Ohio, Herschel Walker in Georgia, Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin - and party candidates in Arizona, a one-time Republican stronghold that President Joe Biden, a Democrat, won in 2020, blocking Trump's path to re-election.

Indian Americans have emerged as a crucial vote bank in swing states where election outcomes can turn on thin margins, as slim as a thousand or few thousands.

A 2020 report by US think-tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace noted that "in select swing states, the Indian American population is larger than the margin of victory that separated (Democratic Presidential nominee) Hillary Clinton and Trump in the closely-contested 2016 Presidential race".

The Indian American community has grown to more than four million -- said to be slightly more than 1 pert cent of the total population -- but registered voters among them are less than the total registered voters, which stood at 160 million in 2020. They are located all over the country -- the largest concentrations are in California, Texas, New Jersey, New York and Illinois.

But they matter more in swing states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia and, now, Georgia and Arizona, where their numbers, though smaller, are more than the margins of victory or defeat -- Biden had won Wisconsin by 20,000 votes (Trump had won the state by 22,000 in 2016), Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes (Trump won it by 50,000 in 2016), and Georgia by 12,000 votes (Trump had won it by 2,11,141 votes in 2016).

Both the Democratic and Republican parties now woo Indian Americans aggressively. Kumar said Trump's slogan will feature in an ad that will play on TV channels viewed mostly by Indian Americans, starting October when candidates will be in the last month of campaigning for US House of Representatives, Senate (a third of the 100 seats) and state-wide officials such as governors and state legislatures.

Kumar has been working with Trump since 2016 but things cooled between them towards the end of the former President's terms. Kumar stayed away from Trump's 2020 re-election campaign, but is back in the good graces of the former President. They recently appeared together in an NDTV interview.

--IANS
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Islamabad, Sep 13 (IANS) Pakistan fears that floods might have caused over $40 billion economic losses and damages as the National Flood Response Coordination Centre (NFRCC) dismissed the initial assessment of $18 billion, local media reported.

The $40 billion losses were flagged in a flood response centre meeting during discussion on an interim report titled "An Early Assessment of Flood Impact on Pakistan's Economy", presented by the Ministry of Finance.

"The devastating conditions suggest that the scale of flood losses is in the range of $30 billion to over $40 billion," said Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, while talking to The Express Tribune.

Iqbal, who is also Chairman of NFRCC, a joint civil-military body set up to monitor and coordinate relief and rehabilitation work, said, "We are going through the process of a comprehensive assessment of flood damages with the help of World Bank, Asian Development Bank, provincial and federal governments."

It is for the first time that the $40 billion loss estimate has been given, which is three times more than the initial estimate of $10 billion to $12 billion. The new number is even far higher than the $30 billion figure given by United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres last week.

Although a detailed report of losses would be ready in four to six weeks, initial assessment would be finalised by the end of this week, said the NFRCC chairman.

The planning minister said that the finance ministry had presented an initial assessment of flood losses, which was based on predictive analysis but the model's outcome would depend on what input was fed into it, The Express Tribune reported.

"NFRCC has directed the Ministry of Finance to withhold the release of its flood impact report," he added.

"We will wait for the outcome of comprehensive assessment but damages are colossal and even more than $30 billion as suggested by the United Nations secretary general," said the NFRCC chairman.

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La Paz, Sep 13 (IANS) Bolivia detected 29 more cases of monkeypox in the past week, bringing the total number of cases so far to 119, Minister of Health and Sports Jeyson Auza said.

The country's action plan to contain and mitigate the spread of the virus was effective, Auza told reporters at a press conference on Monday.

"To date, we have reported 119 confirmed cases ... we are working on the containment of the disease and we can say that its spread is under control," Auza added.

Of the total, 110 cases are considered to be still "active," with the patients on the road to recovery, while nine had been discharged following a full recovery, he said.

In May, the Bolivian government declared a monkeypox epidemiological alert and armed health services in all nine departments with the protocols to follow for suspected cases, Xinhua news agency reported.

The first monkeypox case in the South American country was confirmed on August 1 in Santa Cruz, involving a 38-year-old national.

--IANS
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