Foreign News
One dead and two missing after Channel crossing rescue
A woman has died and two people are missing after a migrant boat had to be rescued in the English Channel.
According to French maritime authorities, the boat had 50 migrants on board when it got into difficulty off the French coast on Wednesday. Passengers told rescuers three people had gone overboard.
The woman was recovered from the water but was unable to be resuscitated, the French maritime prefecture said. Two others could not be found.
Two French naval vessels and a helicopter were deployed and the other passengers on board were taken to safety.
A spokesperson for the UK government confirmed they had been notified about the incident “involving a small boat in French waters”. “French authorities are leading the response and investigation. We will not be commenting further at this stage”, they said.
It was one of several rescues that took place on Wednesday – a total of 180 people had been rescued throughout the day. Approximately 10 groups of people have tried to make the journey since Tuesday evening.
One of the boats reportedly split in half but it was close enough to where it had set off that the people on board were able to get back to dry land.
Overall, the number of attempted crossing last year fell by a third compared with 2022, but nearly 30,000 migrants still reached the UK coast.
Home Office figures show that more than 2,000 migrants have arrived in the UK so far this year.
(BBC)
Indonesia has formally joined the BRICS group, a bloc of emerging economies featuring Russia, China and others that is viewed as a counterweight to the West.
Brazil, which holds the rotating presidency of the group, declared on Monday that Indonesia was set to join as a full member. Indonesia said on Tuesday that it “welcomes” the announcement.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jakarta said in a statement that BRICS membership is “a strategic step to improve the collaborations and cooperation with other developing nations, based on the principle of equality, mutual respect, and sustainable development”.
It also expressed “gratitude to Russia,” the 2024 BRICS chair, “for its support and leadership in facilitating Indonesia’s joining”.
The foreign ministry in Brazil said earlier that Southeast Asia’s most populous country “shares with the other members the will to reform the institutions of global governance and contribute positively to cooperation within the Global South”.
It noted that Indonesia’s bid to join the bloc was approved during a summit in 2023 in Johannesburg.
Its acronym originally coined by a Goldman Sachs banker at the dawn of the century, the BRICS group was formally created in 2009 by founding members Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa joined the following year.
The bloc expanded again last year as Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates became full members.
BRICS is increasingly viewed as a counterweight to the West, with the “de-dollarisation” of international trade a key goal. Many members accuse Washington of using the greenback as a political tool, and the group has proposed a common currency.
US President-elect Donald Trump has threatned 100 percent tariffs on BRICS nations if they replace the dollar in international trade.
However, Brazil has indicated that it aims to boost the effort during its presidency of BRICS. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government has said its objective is the “development of means of payment” to facilitate trade between member countries.
Indonesia said in its statement: “This achievement shows Indonesia’s increasingly active role in global issues and commitment to strengthening multilateral cooperation to create a global structure that is more inclusive and fair.”
[Aljazeera]
Rescuers in India are racing against time to bring out miners trapped inside a flooded coal mine in the north-eastern state of Assam.
Three of the nine men inside were feared dead, Reuters reported, after the state government said rescue teams had spotted some bodies they have been unable to reach.
The men were trapped on Monday morning after water flooded the rat-hole mine, which is a narrow hole dug manually to extract coal.
Despite a ban on such mining in India since 2014, small illegal mines continue to be operational in Assam and other north-eastern states.
Divers, helicopters and engineers have been deployed to help rescue the trapped men and the state and national disaster response forces are also aiding efforts.
On Monday evening, Assam Director General of Police GP Singh had said that authorities were ascertaining the exact number of people trapped.
Reports said more than a dozen miners had managed to escape and initial reports suggested that the “numbers would be in single digits”.
The mine is located in the hilly area of Dima Hasao district.
Senior police official in the district, Mayank Kumar Jha, told Reuters that the area was very “remote” and “difficult to reach”.
Mine-related disasters are not uncommon in India’s northeast.
In December 2018, at least 15 men were trapped in an illegal mine in the neighbouring state of Meghalaya after water from a nearby river flooded it.
Five miners managed to escape but the rescue efforts for the others continued until the first week of March the following year. Only two bodies were recovered.
In January 2024, six workers were killed after a fire broke out in a rat-hole coal mine in Nagaland state.
[BBC]
At least five people have died in a winter storm that has seized a swathe of the US in its icy grip, leading to mass school closures, travel chaos and power cuts.
Seven US states declared emergencies: Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Arkansas.
More than 2,300 flights have been cancelled, with nearly 9,000 delays also reported owing to the extreme weather caused by the polar vortex of icy cold air that usually circles the North Pole.
Over 200,000 people had no power on Monday night across states in the storm’s path, according to Poweroutage.us. Snow and sleet is forecast to continue in much of the north-eastern US on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
While the precipitation will then dissipate, cold Arctic air is expected to keep conditions icy across a chunk of the country for several more weeks.
In Washington DC – where lawmakers met on Monday to certify Donald Trump’s win in November’s election – about 5-9in (13-23cm) of snow fell, with up to a foot recorded in parts of nearby Maryland and Virginia.
In front of the Washington Monument, hundreds of local residents gathered at a local park for a snowball fight, a now 15-year-old tradition.
“Just having fun,” one local man told the BBC. “Never done a snowball fight before.”
Former US Olympic skier Clare Egan was found cross-country skiing on the National Mall, the central thoroughfare of the US capital city. She told the Associated Press she had thought “my skiing days were maybe behind me”, after moving to the city.
Washington DC’s weather emergency is declared until the early hours of Tuesday as a result of the system, which was named Winter Storm Blair by the Weather Channel.
Children who had been due to go back to classes on Monday after the winter holiday break were instead enjoying a snow day as school districts closed from Maryland to Kansas.
In other parts of the US, the winter storm brought with it dangerous road conditions. In Missouri, the state’s highway patrol said at least 365 people had crashed on Sunday, leaving dozens injured and at least one dead. In nearby Kansas, one of the worst-hit states, local news reported that two people were killed in a car crash during the storm.
In Houston, Texas, a person was found dead from cold weather in front of a bus stop on Monday morning, authorities said.
In Virginia, where 300 car crashes were reported between midnight and Monday morning, authorities warned local residents to avoid driving in large parts of the state.
At least one motorist was killed, according to local media reports.
Matthew Cappucci, a senior meteorologist at the weather app MyRadar, told the BBC that Kansas City had seen the heaviest snow in 32 years.
Some areas near the Ohio River turned to “skating rinks” in the frigid temperatures, he added.
“The ploughs are getting stuck, the police are getting stuck, everybody’s getting stuck – stay home,” he said.
[BBC]
President discusses vehicle imports, tax reforms and digitalization with Finance Ministry Officials
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