Category: 2. World

The United Nations on Friday reported a significant surge in the number of Rohingya refugees fleeing to Bangladesh from Myanmar, marking the largest influx of the Asian country’s largely Muslim minority since the mass exodus nearly a decade ago.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said that Bangladesh has registered the arrival of up to 150,000 Rohingya refugees in the Cox’s Bazar camps since early 2024.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva,  UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch said: “Targeted violence and persecution in Rakhine State and the ongoing conflict in Myanmar have continued to force thousands of Rohingya to seek protection in Bangladesh.

“This movement of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh, spread over months, is the largest from Myanmar since 2017, when some 750,000 fled the deadly violence in their native Rakhine State.”

Baloch hailed Bangladesh for generously hosting Rohingya refugees for generations.

Even before the latest influx, around a million members of the persecuted and mostly Muslim Rohingya were living in squalid relief camps in Bangladesh, most of them after fleeing the 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar.

Those camps, crammed into just 24 square kilometres (nine square miles), have thus become “one of the world’s most densely populated places”, said Baloch.

During a trip on Friday to look at the devastation caused by the catastrophic flooding in Texas, Donald Trump claimed that state and federal officials had done an “incredible job”, saying of the disaster that he had “never seen anything like this”.

The trip comes as he has remained conspicuously quiet about his previous promises to do away with the federal agency in charge of disaster relief.

The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Trump administration has backed away from plans to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), but administration officials continue to dodge questions about the agency’s future and many are still calling for serious reforms, potentially sending much of its work to the states.

Since the 4 July disaster, which has killed at least 120 people, the president and his top aides have focused on the once-in-a-lifetime nature of what occurred and the human tragedy involved rather than the government-slashing crusade that has been popular with Trump’s core supporters.

Speaking at a roundtable in Kerrville, Texas, Trump said that Fema deployed multiple emergency response units and he praised all the officials involved in what he said was an effective and swift response.

“Every American should be inspired by what has taken place,” Trump said. He likened the flooding to “a giant, giant wave in the Pacific Ocean that the best surfers in the world would be afraid to surf”.

Trump called a reporter a “bad person” for asking a question about families of the dead who are saying that their loved ones could have been saved had emergency warnings gone out before the flooding. Trump said: “I think this has been heroism. This has been incredible, the job you’ve all done.”

In an NBC News interview on Thursday, Trump said: “Nobody ever saw a thing like this coming.” He added: “This is a once-in-every-200-years deal.” He has also suggested he would have been ready to visit Texas within hours but did not want to burden authorities still searching for the more than 170 people who are still missing.

Trump’s shift in focus underscores how tragedy can complicate political calculations, even though the president has made slashing the federal workforce and charging ally turned antagonist Elon Musk with dramatically shrinking the size of government centerpieces of his administration’s opening months.

The president traveled to Texas on Air Force One with Melania Trump, the first lady; Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary; Scott Turner, the housing secretary; the small business administrator, Kelly Loeffler; and senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas, among others. Trump is expected to do an aerial tour of some of the hard-hit areas.

Before arriving at the Happy State Bank Expo Hall in Kerrville, where he delivered remarks, the president and his motorcade stopped at an area near the Guadalupe River in Kerrville next to an overturned tractor-trailer and downed trees. Damage appeared to be more extensive near the riverbank. Trump, his wife and the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, took a briefing about flooding there from local officials.

Trump has used past disaster response efforts to launch political attacks. While still a candidate trying to win back the presidency, Trump made his own visit to North Carolina after Hurricane Helene last year and accused the Biden administration of blocking disaster aid to victims in Republican-heavy areas.

During his first weekend back in the White House, Trump again visited North Carolina to survey Helene damage and toured the aftermath of devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. But he also used those trips to sharply criticize the Biden administration and California officials.

During Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, Trump praised the federal flooding response. Turning to Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, which oversees Fema, he said: “You had people there as fast as anybody’s ever seen.”

Noem described traveling to Texas and seeing heartbreaking scenes, including around Camp Mystic, the century-old all-girls Christian summer camp where at least 27 people were killed.

“The parents that were looking for their children and picking up their daughter’s stuffed animals out of the mud and finding their daughter’s shoe that might be laying in the cabin,” she said.

Noem said that “just hugging and comforting people matters a lot” and “this is a time for all of us in this country to remember that we were created to serve each other”.

But the secretary is also co-chairing a Fema review council charged with submitting suggestions for how to overhaul the agency in coming months.

“We as a federal government don’t manage these disasters. The state does,” Noem told Trump on Tuesday.

She also referenced the administration’s government-reducing efforts, saying: ”We’re cutting through the paperwork of the old Fema. Streamlining it, much like your vision of how Fema should operate.”

Pressed this week on whether the White House will continue to work to shutter Fema, Karoline Leavitt would not say.

“The president wants to ensure American citizens always have what they need during times of need,” the White House press secretary said. “Whether that assistance comes from states or the federal government, that is a policy discussion that will continue.”

Before Trump left on Friday, Russell Vought, director of the office of management and budget, similarly dodged questions from reporters at the the White House about Fema’s future – instead noting that the agency had billions of dollars in its reserves “to continue to pay for necessary expenses” and that the president has promised Texas: “Anything it needs, it will get.”

“We also want Fema to be reformed,” Vought added. “The president is going to continue to be asking tough questions of all of us agencies, no different than any other opportunity to have better government.”

Kerr County officials were told flooding began an hour before they sent first alertpublished at 15:31 British Summer Time

15:31 BST

Brandon Drenon
Reporting from Washington DC

A Texas firefighter located upstream of the deadly floods in Kerr County asked if emergency flood alerts could be sent to residents about an hour before the first warnings were received, audio reveals.

In the recording, obtained by US outlets, the firefighter asks at 04:22 on 4 July if a CodeRED alert can be issued. The dispatcher replies that a supervisor needs to approve the request.

Residents didn’t begin receiving the alert until an hour later – for some it took up to six hours, according to reports.

In the recording of the firefighter’s dispatch call, the emergency responder can be heard saying: “The Guadalupe Schumacher sign is underwater on State Highway 39.

“Is there any way we can send a CodeRED out to our Hunt residents, asking them to find higher ground or stay home?”

“Stand by, we have to get that approved with our supervisor,” the dispatcher replied.

Local officials are now facing mounting questions over when Kerrville’s residents were notified about deadly flash floods that killed 96 in Kerr County alone, with over 160 others still missing.

Asked about a possible police radio failure at a press conference on Thursday – almost a week after 4 July flooding – Kerrville Police community services officer Jonathan Lamb said, “I don’t have any information to that point.”

The questioning followed a tense exchange the day before when reporters asked officials repeatedly about a possible lag in emergency communications.

Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha earlier this week declined to offer specifics about timing, saying that officials were instead focused on rescue and recovery efforts.

Leitha said he was first notified around the “four to five area”, and told local media, “we’re in the process of trying to put a timeline” about what exactly happened in the pre-dawn hours.

“That’s going to take a little bit of time,” he told them. “That is not my priority this time.”

Thousands of mourners on Friday commemorated in Srebrenica the genocide committed 30 years ago by Bosnian Serb forces, one of Europe’s worst atrocities since World War II.

The remains of seven victims were laid to rest during the commemorations, which mark the bloodiest episode of Bosnia’s inter-ethnic war in the 1990s.

They included those of Sejdalija Alic, one of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed by Bosnian Serb forces after they captured the eastern town on July 11, 1995.

His granddaughter Anela Alic, whose father was also killed in the massacre and was buried earlier, came to attend the funeral.

“I never saw my father … and today, my grandfather is being buried, just some of his bones, next to his son.

“It’s a deep sadness… I have no words to describe it,” the 32-year-old added, in tears. She was born in early 1994 after her pregnant mother was evacuated in a Red Cross convoy from the ill-fated town.

The victims of Srebrenica, which was at the time a UN-protected enclave, were buried in mass graves. So far, about 7,000 victims have been identified and buried, while about 1,000 are still missing.

In a bid to cover up the crime, the Bosnian Serb forces had the remains removed to secondary mass graves, causing many of the bodies to be shredded by heavy machinery, according to experts.

‘Tombstone to caress’

“For 30 years we have carried the pain in our souls,” said Munira Subasic, president of the association Mothers of Srebrenica. She lost her husband, Hilmo and 17-year-old son, Nermin, in the massacre.

“Our children were killed, innocent, in the UN-protected zone. Europe and the world watched in silence as our children were killed.”

The seven victims buried under white tombstones on Friday at the memorial centre after a joint prayer included a 19-year-old man and a 67-year-old woman.

The remains of most of the victims are incomplete and in some cases consist only of one or two bones, experts said. Families have waited for years to bury their loved ones, hoping that more remains would be found.

But Mevlida Omerovic decided not to wait any longer to bury her husband, Hasib. He was killed at the age of 33, at one of five mass-execution sites of the massacre, the only atrocity of Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war, which was qualified as genocide by international justice institutions.

“Thirty years have passed and I have nothing to wait for anymore,” said Omerovic, 55. She wants to be able to visit the grave of her husband, even though only his jawbone will be in the coffin.

By visiting the graves, the victims’ relatives try to find some comfort.

“I have only this tombstone to caress, to pray next to it,” said Sefika Mustafi, standing next to the graves of her sons Enis and Salim, who were both teenagers when killed. “I’d like to dream about them, but it doesn’t work. I’ve said thousands of times, ‘Come my children, Come into my dream’ … I say it when I pray, when I come here, but it doesn’t work.”

Serb denial

Canadian veteran Daniel Chenard, deployed with UN peacekeepers to Bosnia from October 1993 until March 1994, when the Dutch troops took over, attended commemorations haunted by the feeling of guilt for decades.

“I forgave myself … I found peace. I always wanted to tell them (victims’ families): ‘I apologise … I’m sorry for abandoning you’.

“We (UN troops) did what we could … but the tragedy still happened,” the 58-year-old said, in tears.

Bosnian Serb wartime political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were sentenced to life imprisonment by an international tribunal, notably for the Srebrenica genocide.

But Serbia and Bosnian Serb leaders continue to deny that the massacre was a genocide.

Last year, an international day of remembrance was established by the United Nations to mark the Srebrenica genocide, despite protests from Belgrade and Bosnian Serbs.

On Friday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic voiced condolences to the Srebrenica victims’ families on behalf of the citizens of Serbia, calling the massacre a “terrible crime”.

“We cannot change the past, but we must change the future,” he posted on X.

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that he had “positive and constructive” talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, as the two major powers vied to push their agendas in Asia at a time of tension over Washington’s tariff offensive.

The top US diplomat was in Malaysia on his first Asia trip since taking office, seeking to stress US commitment to the region at the East Asia Summit and the Regional Forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), where many countries were reeling from a raft of steep US tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump this week.

Rubio had his first in-person talks with the Chinese foreign minister, which came after Beijing warned the US against reinstating hefty levies on its goods next month and threatened retaliation against nations that strike deals with the US to cut China out of supply chains.

Wang has sharply criticised Washington during talks with Asian counterparts in Malaysia, calling the US tariffs “typical unilateral bullying behaviour”.

But both sides described the bilateral meeting as positive and constructive and Rubio said the odds of Trump meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping were high.

“We’re two big, powerful countries, and there are always going to be issues that we disagree on. I think there’s some areas of potential cooperation and I thought it was a very constructive, positive meeting, and a lot of work to do,” he told reporters.

Rubio emphasised that his sitting down with Wang was not a negotiation, but rather about establishing a constructive baseline to continue talks.

Asked about a possible Trump-Xi meeting, Rubio said both sides wanted to see it happen.

“We have to build the right atmosphere and build … deliverables, so that a visit isn’t just a visit, but it actually has some takeaways from it that are concrete. But there’s a strong desire on both sides to do it.”

China’s foreign ministry said Wang had emphasised that both countries should translate consensus reached by their leaders into policies and actions.

“Both sides agreed that the meeting was positive, pragmatic and constructive,” it said.

Trip overshadowed by tariffs

Rubio’s visit is part of an effort to renew the US focus on the Indo-Pacific region and look beyond conflicts in the Middle East and Europe that have consumed much of the administration’s attention since Trump’s return to office in January.

But that has been overshadowed by this week’s announcement of steep US tariffs on imports from many Asian countries and US allies, including 25 per cent targeting Japan, South Korea and Malaysia, 32pc for Indonesia, 36pc for Thailand and Cambodia and 40pc on goods from Myanmar and Laos.

China, initially singled out with levies exceeding 100pc, has until August 12 to reach a deal with Washington to avoid Trump’s reinstating additional import curbs that were imposed during tit-for-tat tariff exchanges in April and May.

Analysts said Rubio would use the trip to press the case that the US remains a better partner than China, Washington’s main strategic rival. Rubio met his counterparts from Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia today.

Wang has rebuked the US in Kuala Lumpur, saying no country should support or agree with its tariffs, according to remarks released by Beijing today.

He told Thailand’s foreign minister the tariffs had been abused and “undermined the free trade system, and interfered with the stability of the global production and supply chain”.

During a meeting with his Cambodian counterpart, Wang said the US levies were an attempt to deprive Southeast Asian countries of their legitimate right to development.

“We believe that Southeast Asian countries have the ability to cope with complex situations, adhere to principled positions, and safeguard their own interests,” he said.

In a joint communique today, Asean foreign ministers expressed concern over rising global trade tensions and the need to diversify trade, calling for a transparent and fair multilateral trading system.

Without mentioning the US, they said that unilateral tariffs were “counterproductive and risk exacerbating global economic fragmentation”.

Indispensable partnership

Rubio also met Russia’s Sergei Lavrov on Thursday and said he and Lavrov had shared some ideas on a new or different Russian approach to Ukraine.

“I don’t want to oversell it, okay, but it was constructive,” he said today. “We’ll find out, but there are some things that we will potentially explore, and I relayed that to the president and our team last night.”

Rubio also met Japan’s foreign minister and South Korea’s first vice foreign minister in Malaysia to discuss regional security and a strengthening of their “indispensable trilateral partnership”, the US State Department said in a statement.

Asked about Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s remarks on Thursday that Tokyo needs to wean itself off its dependence on Washington, Rubio said it was not a comment to be viewed negatively.

“We obviously have very strong commitments and an alliance with Japan. We continue to cooperate very closely with them,” he said.

Israel is ready to negotiate a lasting deal with Hamas to end the Gaza war when a temporary halt to hostilities begins, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.

But Netanyahu said the militants must first give up their weapons and their hold on the Palestinian territory, warning that failure to reach a deal on Israel’s terms would lead to further conflict.

His comments came as Gaza’s civil defence agency said eight children – killed as they queued for nutritional supplements outside a health clinic – were among 66 people who died in Israeli strikes across the territory Thursday.

The UN children’s agency said one victim was a one-year-old boy who according to his mother had uttered his first words only hours earlier.

Efforts to secure a 60-day halt in the 21-month war have dominated Netanyahu’s talks with US President Donald Trump in Washington.

Read More:Nearly 800 Gazans killed awaiting aid distribution: UN

Indirect negotiations have been taking place between the two sides in Qatar, and the militants have agreed to free 10 of the 20 hostages still alive in captivity since the October 7, 2023 attack which sparked the war.

Sticking points include Hamas’s demand for the free flow of aid into Gaza and Israel’s military withdrawal from the territory. It also wants “real guarantees” on a lasting peace, the group said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said “progress has been made” but admitted in an interview with Austrian newspaper Die Presse that ironing out “all complex issues” would likely take “a few more days”.

There was no agreement on the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for hostages, he told the newspaper.

He said that “initially, eight hostages are to be released, followed by two more on the 50th day” of the 60-day ceasefire. “Additionally, 18 bodies of hostages are to be handed over,” he was quoted as saying.

Saar said a lasting ceasefire would be discussed but added: “There are still major differences, especially regarding the question of how Hamas will be prevented from controlling Gaza after the war.”

He said Israel was ready to grant Hamas leaders safe passage into exile.

Netanyahu, who is under domestic pressure to end the war as military casualties mount, said disarming and neutralising Hamas were “fundamental conditions” for Israel.

“If this can be achieved through negotiations, great,” he said. “If it cannot be achieved through negotiations within 60 days, we will have to achieve it through other means, by using… the force of our heroic army.”

Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim told AFP that it would not accept “the perpetuation of the occupation of our land” or Palestinians being herded into “isolated enclaves” in the densely populated territory.

The group was particularly opposed to Israeli control over Rafah, on the border with Egypt, and the so-called Morag Corridor between the southern city and Khan Yunis, he added.

Israel announced this year that the army was seizing large areas of Gaza to be incorporated into buffer zones cleared of their inhabitants.

Naim said the group also wanted to end the delivery of aid by a US and Israel-backed group, a system which has seen scores of people killed while seeking food rations.

The Palestinian territory’s civil defence agency said eight children were among 17 people killed in an Israeli strike outside a medical clinic in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

Also Read: Billie Eilish calls Israel’s plans in Gaza “horrifying”

“The ground shook beneath our feet and everything around us turned into blood and deafening screams,” said Yousef Al-Aydi, who was in the queue for nutritional supplements when he heard a drone approaching then a blast.

Rabih Torbay, the head of US medical charity Project Hope which runs the facility, called it “a blatant violation of humanitarian law”.

Israel’s military said it had struck a Hamas militant in the city who had infiltrated Israel during the 2023 attack and that it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals”.

Overall, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 57,762 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the start of the conflict.

Hamas’s October 2023 attack led to the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

A total of 251 hostages were seized in the attack. Forty-nine are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.