Myanmar troops deployed to flood-hit parts of the country Sunday to help with relief efforts after the death toll from a deadly landslide jumped to 48.

Every year monsoon rains hammer Myanmar and other countries across Southeast Asia, submerging homes, displacing thousands and triggering landslides.

But the disaster Friday in southeastern Mon state was the worst in recent memory, and hundreds of emergency response workers were still pulling bodies out of the muddy wreckage early Sunday.

“The total death toll reached 48. Search and rescue is still ongoing,” Paung township administrator Zaw Moe Aung told AFP.

Heavy rains pounded Mon, Karen and Kachin states, flooding roads and destroying bridges.

As the rainy season reaches its peak, the country’s armed forces are pitching in.

“Our regional military commands are working to help with the search and rescue process in disaster areas,” Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun told AFP. “Helicopters will be used to supply food.”

The bulk of the effort is focused on hard-hit Mon state, which sits on the coast of the Andaman sea.

Floodwaters have submerged more than 4,000 houses in the state and displaced more than 25,000 residents who have sought shelter in monasteries and pagodas, according to state-owned Global New Light of Myanmar.

Vice President Henry Van Thio visited landslide survivors in a Paung township village Saturday and “spoke of his sorrow” while promising relief assistance, the paper reported.

Around 89,000 people have been displaced by floods in recent weeks, although many have since been able to return home, according to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

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From: MeNeedIt

A powerful typhoon left at least 28 people dead in southeastern China, after a landslide backed up a river that broke through debris and inundated homes, state media reported Sunday.

Another 20 people remained missing in Zhejiang province, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Typhoon Lekima made landfall at 1:45 a.m. Saturday in Wenling city, about 300 kilometers (190 miles) south of Shanghai, the China Meteorological Administration said.

The deaths occurred in Yongjia county on the outskirts of Wenzhou, a major port city. The river blocked by a landslide rose to a level of 10 meters (30 feet) within 10 minutes, trapping 120 villagers, Xinhua said.

More than 1 million people were evacuated before the storm struck, including 253,000 in Shanghai.

Shanghai Disneyland was closed, as were some popular tourist areas along the riverfront in the city’s historic Bund district.

“Of course, it’s a little disappointing, but it’s because of the weather so we can all understand, right. This is a natural disaster, isn’t it?” said Wang Chunguang, who was visiting from Jiangsu province north of Shanghai.

CCTV said 3,023 airline flights in Shanghai, Hangzhou and other cities and some train services were canceled. Authorities in Shanghai also shut down the high-speed magnetic levitation train to Pudong International Airport.

Lekima, downgraded to a tropical storm, was heading slowly northward along China’s east coast Sunday morning.
 

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From: MeNeedIt

A gunman armed with multiple weapons opened fire in a mosque near Oslo Saturday, injuring one person before being overpowered by an elderly worshipper and arrested, Norwegian police and witnesses said.

Hours after the attack, the body of a young woman related to the suspect was found in a home in the suburb of Baerum where the shooting took place earlier in the day, police said Saturday evening.

Investigators are treating her death as suspicious and have opened a murder probe.

The head of the mosque described the assailant as a young white man dressed in black and said he was wearing a helmet and bulletproof vest.

He said only three people had been inside the al-Noor Islamic center at the time of the attack.

Police were alerted to the shooting shortly after 4 p.m. local time (1400 GMT).

A lone gunman

Officers first reported that a victim had been shot, but later clarified one person had sustained “minor injuries” and that it was unclear if they were gunshot wounds.

Police said the suspect appeared to have acted on his own.

“It is a Norwegian young man, with a Norwegian background. He lives in the vicinity,” Oslo police spokesman Rune Skjold had told a press conference earlier Saturday. 

Skjold added that the suspect had been known to police before the incident but could not be described as someone with a “criminal background.”

The man, who is in his early 20s, was taken into custody, police said in a press release carried by Norwegian media.

Norway was the scene of one of the worst-ever attacks by a right-wing extremist in July 2011, when 77 people were killed by Anders Behring Breivik. 

‘Sitting on the perpetrator’

“One of our members has been shot by a white man with a helmet and uniform,” Irfan Mushtaq, head of the mosque, told local media.

Mushtaq said that the man had carried multiple weapons, but that he had been subdued by a member of the mosque.

Mushtaq arrived at the scene shortly after being alerted about the gunman and had gone to the back of the building while waiting for police to arrive.

“Then I see that there are cartridges scattered and blood on the carpets, and I see one of our members is sitting on the perpetrator, covered in blood,” Mushtaq told Norwegian newspaper VG. 

He said the man who apparently overpowered the shooter was 75 years old and had been reading the Koran after a prayer session.

According to Mushtaq, the mosque had not received any threats ahead of the shooting.

The attack took place on the eve of the Muslim celebration of Eid Al-Adha, marking the end of the Muslim pilgrimage Hajj. 

Police said Saturday they would be sending out more officers so that those celebrating would “be as safe as possible.”

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From: MeNeedIt

Jeffrey Epstein, the U.S. financier facing federal sex trafficking charges, committed suicide on Friday night in his lower Manhattan jail cell, several U.S.media outlets reported on Saturday.

This is a developing story. More information will be published as it becomes available.

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From: MeNeedIt

Ozaguin, considered the most popular singer-songwriter in the Central African Republic, recently came to the U.N.’s European headquarters in Geneva to awaken the world to the struggles faced by his country, which has been mired in civil war since 2012. 

Ozaguin sings about the difficulties confronting his people.  He sings about the constant search for food in a country where insecurity prevents people from farming and harvesting their crops.  He sings about people fleeing into the bush to escape the violence of armed groups.  He sings about the same armed groups manipulating vulnerable people into doing their bidding so they can feed their families.

Violence in C.A.R. Sends Thousands Fleeing

A recent flare-up in violence in northwest Central African Republic has sent thousands fleeing for their lives. The U.N. refugee agency reports more than 5,000 refugees from CAR have arrived in southern Chad since December 27.

The new year is off to a bad start for thousands of people forced to flee clashes involving armed groups in the northwestern CAR town of Paoua. The U.N. refugee agency reports an estimated 5,600 refugees have fled to Chad.

The musician and activist recounts the difficulties he, himself, has faced in life.  He says he was forced to quit school in the fourth grade to earn money as he was the sole support of his mother and four younger sisters.  He tells VOA there were no jobs in the C.A.R., so he went to Brazzaville in search of work.

“Et moi, il m’en refuse…

Ozaguin says no one would hire him because he was too young and too small.  He says he had no choice, but to live on the streets.  He says he spent four years as a homeless street child, scrounging for food, dodging the police, fighting off the mosquitos.  What saved him, he says, was his music.

He says this experience also sensitized him to the plight of street children and prompted him to eventually create a foundation to help homeless youngsters.

“A ce moment, il y’a…

The musician notes money raised through his concerts helps to support 32 homeless children, including 10 Muslim children who live in a separate district in Bangui.  He explains Muslims and Christians live in segregated areas in the capital.  He says he is working to end this separation and to bring the two communities together.

The United Nations calls the Central African Republic a forgotten crisis.  War has displaced more than one million of the country’s five million population, nearly half that number are refugees in neighboring countries.

The World Food Program reports currently, more than 1.8 million people are suffering from serious food shortages.  WFP spokesman, Herve Verhoosel, says these people do not know from where their next meal will come.

“Le programme alimentaire…

He says WFP distributes food rations to 600,000 people a month.  He says the agency would like to increase that number to 800,000.  But to make that possible, he says WFP urgently needs $35.5 million until the end of the year.

In the meantime, Ozaguin says he will continue to raise his voice in song on behalf of the 4.8 million Central Africans, half of whom continue to live in a state of physical and food insecurity.

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From: MeNeedIt

Malta says it is willing to take in 39 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean Sea early Saturday by a Spanish NGO’s ship.

Malta said, however, it would not take the 121 people who were already on the vessel who were plucked from the sea last week.

Malta said its military had already mounted an effort to rescue the 39.  

Proactive Open Arms, the migrant rescue group, recovered the 39 instead and has refused to disembark the group if Malta does not take the group of 121 migrants.

Malta said in a statement that the larger group was rescued in “an area where Malta is neither responsible nor the competent coordinating authority.  Malta can only shoulder its own responsibility since other solutions are not forthcoming.”

Oscar Camps, the founder of Proactive Open Arms, said Malta’s decision not to take the 121 migrants has “caused a serious security problem” on the ship.  “The anxiety of these people is unbearable.”

Actor Richard Gere who brought food and water to the ship Friday, said, “The most important thing for these people here is to be able to get to a free port, to be able to get off the boat, to start a new life for themselves.”

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From: MeNeedIt

A landslide buried more than a dozen village houses in southeastern Myanmar, killing at least 10 people and injuring nearly 30, media reported Saturday.

Rescuers were using backhoes and bulldozers to clear the mud and debris from the village in Paung township. The Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported that some residents were still missing.

The top official in Mon state, Aye Zan, visited the site and villagers who were evacuated to a relief camp to escape floods following torrential rains.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that monsoon flooding had displaced more than 7,000 people this week in Mon state. Apart from the landslide in Paung, houses and a school in other townships were washed away, roads were blocked and villages were submerged.

Nearly 12,000 people have been displaced in Myanmar this week alone, bringing the total number of those in evacuation centers to more than 38,000, the U.N. said.

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From: MeNeedIt

VOA Connect Episode 82 – Before there was the Internet, there was Tradio – the local radio program to help people buy, sell or trade just about anything.   Also this week, a look at groups sharing cultures and food, as well as hobbies ranging from foam sword fighting to long distance cherry pit spitting.

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From: MeNeedIt

Radio is alive and well in middle America. In one small town in Nebraska, one of the most popular radio programs is called ‘Swap Shop,’ where listeners call in to sell or trade items on the air for free.  It’s a quick way of selling things, especially in an area where the Internet is not yet king.  

Producer/Camera: Deepak Dhobhal

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From: MeNeedIt

Members of the Belegarth Medieval Combat Society like to fight each other with swords made of foam. Participants dress up in costume and attack each other like medieval hordes of yore. And some of them don’t even really know how to hit.  

Reporter/Camera: Mike Osborne; Produced by: Martin Secrest

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From: MeNeedIt

If you like mysteries, you’ll love the Escape Room. It’s a live-action game where players use clues and solve tasks to escape from a room in a limited amount of time.  

VOA Ukrainian; Reporter: Maxim Moskalkov, Camera: Andrey Degtyarev; Adapted by:Zdenko Novacki

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From: MeNeedIt

The leader of Italy’s ruling League party, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, declared the governing coalition to be unworkable on Thursday after months of internal bickering and said the only way forward was to hold fresh elections.

The shock announcement follows a period of intense public feuding between the right-wing League and its coalition partner, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, and it throws the eurozone’s third-largest economy into an uncertain political future.

Salvini said in a statement he had told Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who belongs to neither coalition party, that the alliance with 5-Star had collapsed after barely a year in power and “we should quickly give the choice back to the voters.”

Parliament, which is now in its summer recess, could reconvene next week to carry out the necessary steps, Salvini said, referring to the need for a no-confidence vote in the government and the resignation of the premier.

Tensions came to a head on Wednesday when the two parties voted against each other in parliament over the future of a project for a high-speed train link with France.

5-Star has more parliamentary seats than the League, but Salvini’s party now has twice as much voter support, according to opinion polls, and it has often threatened to try to capitalize on that surge in popularity with new elections.

However, it remains to be seen if things will go as Salvini plans. Pushing the nation back into election mode in August, when Italians are on holiday and parliament is closed for the summer recess, is unusual and could be unpopular and risky.

President Sergio Mattarella is the only person with the power to dissolve parliament, and may be unwilling to do so ahead of preparatory work in September for the 2020 budget, which must then be presented to parliament the following month.

Italy, which has Europe’s second-largest sovereign debt burden after Greece, has already angered the European Union with an expansionary 2019 budget and Salvini wants to make major tax cuts next year, setting up the prospect of another EU clash. Italy has not held an election in the autumn in all the postwar period.

‘We are ready’

If Mattarella decides not to dissolve parliament, he could try to install an unelected “technocrat” administration, of which there have been several examples in Italy’s recent history, though an alternative parliamentary majority appears elusive.

5-Star Leader Luigi Di Maio said his party did not fear elections.

“We are ready. We don’t care in the least about occupying government posts and we never have,” he said in a statement. He accused Salvini of “taking the country for a ride” and said sooner or later Italians would turn against him for it.

Speculation about a government crisis mounted late on Wednesday when Salvini, speaking at a rally south of Rome, peppered his speech with hints that he had had enough of 5-Star, accusing it of stalling the League’s key policies.

Markets sold off Italian government bonds early on Thursday and the day proceeded with closed-door meetings between Salvini and Conte and between Conte and Mattarella.

The League issued a statement listing a raft of areas in which it had a “different vision” from 5-Star, including infrastructure, taxes, justice and relations with the EU.

The two parties were fierce adversaries ahead of an inconclusive election in March 2018, before forming their unlikely alliance that has often ruffled the feathers of financial markets and the European Commission.

5-Star was the largest party at last year’s elections but it has struggled since the government was formed, while Salvini has prospered thanks to his popular hard line on immigration and a charismatic and informal “man of the people” public image.

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From: MeNeedIt