Foreign News
Dozens killed as fire engulfs Turkish ski hotel

At least 76 people have been killed in a fire that engulfed a popular Turkish ski resort hotel, leaving some to jump out of windows.
The fire broke out at the wooden-clad 12-storey Grand Kartal Hotel in Bolu at 03:27 local time (00:27 GMT) during a busy holiday period when 234 people were staying there.
An initial toll of 10 dead was raised significantly in the hours after the fire by Turkey’s interior ministry. At least two people died after trying to jump to safety.
It took 12 hours for the fire to be put out. Nine people have been arrested, including the owner, the justice minister says.
The identities of all 76 are yet to be confirmed, but among those released so far are Vedia Nil Apak, a 10-year-old swimmer with Fenerbahce Sports Club in Istanbul, and her mother Ferda. The club said it had learned of the news with “deep sorrow” in an Instagram post on Tuesday.
Eslem Uyanik, a young chef at the hotel, died along with Ceren Yaman Dogan, the daughter of a well-known local businessman, and her 17-year-old daughter Lalin.
Nedim Turkmen, a writer for Sozcu newspaper, his wife Ayse Neva, and their two children aged 18 and 22 were also named, along with Prof Atakan Yalcin, who was dean of Ozyegin University Business School.
Dilara Ermanoglu, 24, was among the victims, and her father who had gone to Bolu to look for her was treated by health workers for a heart attack.
Health minister Kemal Memisoglu said that of the 51 injured people, one was receiving treatment in intensive care, and 17 people had been discharged.
Footage circulating in Turkey showed linen hanging from windows which was used by those trying to escape the burning building.
Ski instructor Necmi Kepcetutan told the BBC he was on the second floor of the hotel when the fire broke out and managed to get out via the ski room. He then helped with relief efforts.
Eyewitnesses said the family that owned the hotel had been there at the time of the fire and Mr Kepcetutan said he saw some of the family outside.
The cause of the fire has not yet been found, but Bolu governor Abdulaziz Aydin said initial reports suggested it had broken out in the restaurant section of the hotel’s fourth floor and spread to the floors above.
Aydin said the distance between the hotel, in Kartalkaya, and the centre of Bolu, paired with the freezing weather conditions, meant it took more than an hour for fire engines to arrive. Emergency services sent 267 workers to the site.

The hotel was investigating whether guests, including children, were trapped in their rooms as the fire spread.
The hotel had two fire escapes, according to the interior minister, and one hotel worker said they had managed to rescue 30-35 people.
Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said prosecutors had been allocated to investigate the blaze.
The hotel was last inspected in 2024, and the tourism minister said there had been no concerns regarding the hotel’s fire safety prior to Tuesday’s disaster.
However, the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB) said that according to regulations, an automatic fire extinguisher system is needed.
“In the photos on the hotel’s website, it is seen that the automatic sprinkler system, which was supposed to be installed in 2008, was not installed,” the union said in a statement.
It added that it was unclear if other regulations had been complied with, but based on the statements of survivors, “it is understood that the detection and warning systems did not work and the escape routes could not be determined”.
The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said those responsible for negligence leading to the fire “will be held accountable”.
A day of national mourning has been declared and the Turkish flag will be flown at half-mast until sunset on Wednesday, he added in a statement on X.
The Bolu mountains are popular with skiers from Istanbul and Turkey’s capital Ankara, which is roughly 170km (105 miles) away, and the hotel was operating at high occupancy at the start of two-week school holidays.
Former UK ambassador to Turkey Sir Peter Westmacott told the BBC he had stayed in the area in the past, and that the fire “feels very personal”.
“The fact that so many people have lost their lives is just devastating news for those of us who care about Turkey,” he said.
[BBC]
Foreign News
India ‘engaging with US’ after shackled deportees spark anger

India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar has told parliament the government is working with the US to ensure Indian citizens are not mistreated while being deported.
His statement came a day after a US military flight brought back 104 Indians accused of entering the US illegally.
One of the deportees told the BBC they had been handcuffed throughout the 40-hour flight, sparking criticism.
But Jaishankar said he had been told by the US that women and children were not restrained. Deportation flights to India had been taking place for several years and US procedures allowed for the use of restraints, he added.
Deportation in the US is organised and executed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“We have been informed by ICE that women and children are not restrained,” Jaishankar said.
He added that according to ICE, the needs of deportees during transit, including for food and medical attention, were attended to and deportees could be unrestrained during bathroom breaks.
“There has been no change from past procedure,” he added.
However Jaspal Singh, one of the deportees on the flight that landed in Amritsar city in the state of Punjab on Wednesday, told BBC Punjabi that he was shackled throughout the flight.
“We were tortured in many ways. My hands and feet were tied after we were put on the plane. The plane stopped at several places,” he said, adding that he was unshackled only after the plane landed in Amritsar.

The US has not given further details of how deportees were treated on the flight. Officials have said that enforcing immigration laws is “critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States” and it was US policy to “faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens”.
The US border patrol chief posted video showing deportees in shackles, saying the deportation flight to India was the “farthest deportation flight yet using military transport”.
President Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals a key policy. The US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered illegally.
Trump has said India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that the country would “do what’s right” in accepting US deportations.
In his statement on Thursday, Jaishankar said all countries had an obligation to take back their nationals who had entered other countries illegally. They often faced dangerous journeys and inhumane working conditions once they had reached their destinations, he said.
Fraudulent Indian travel agencies are known to take huge sums of money from people desperate to travel abroad for work, and then make them undertake dangerous journeys to avoid being caught by immigration officials.
Jaspal said he had taken a loan of 4m rupees ($46,000; £37,000] to travel to the US, a dangerous journey that took months and during which he saw bodies in the jungle of other migrants who had died on the route.
[BBC]
Foreign News
More than 100 women raped and burned alive in DR Congo jailbreak, UN says

More than 100 female prisoners were raped and then burned alive during a jailbreak in the Congolese city of Goma, according to the UN.
Hundreds of prisoners broke out of Munzenze prison last Monday, after fighters from the M23 rebel group began to take over the city.
Between 165 and 167 women were assaulted by male inmates during the jailbreak, an internal UN document seen by the BBC says.
The report states that most of the women were killed after the inmates set fire to the prison.
The BBC has not been able to verify the reports.
Goma, a major city of more than a million people, was captured after the Rwanda-backed M23 executed a rapid advance through eastern DR Congo.
The city was plunged into chaos, with bodies lying in the streets and missiles reportedly flying over residential homes.
Footage from last week’s jailbreak showed people fleeing from the building as smoke rose in the background. Heavy gunfire could also be heard.
[BBC]
Foreign News
Philippines feud escalates as lawmakers vote to impeach vice-president

The Philippines’ parliament has voted to impeach Vice-President Sara Duterte following complaints about alleged corruption.
Duterte has been accused of misusing millions of dollars in public funds and threatening to have President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr assassinated.
She has denied the charges and alleged she is the victim of a political vendetta.
The shock move is widely seen as an escalation of the bitter feud between Duterte and Marcos which has kept the nation on edge for months. Both are scions of Philippine political dynasties: she is the daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, while he is the son of the late strongman leader Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
A total of 215 out of 306 members of the House of Representatives voted for impeachment, well above the one-third threshold needed for the bill to pass. The bill will now be heard by the 24-member Senate, which will convene as an impeachment court.
If found guilty, Duterte faces removal from her post and would be the first vice-president in Philippine history to be impeached. She is expected to stay in office until the Senate delivers its judgement. A trial date has not been set yet.
Duterte is widely perceived as a potential successor to Marcos, who is ineligible to run again in 2028 as the constitution limits presidents to a single six-year term.
An impeachment would effectively bar her from the presidency, as she would be permanently banned from holding public office.
The move comes ahead of the mid-term elections in May, which will be seen as a referendum for Marcos halfway into his term as well a barometer of public support for Duterte.
Duterte has not commented on the impeachment vote. But her elder brother who represents their hometown of Davao in parliament, Paolo Duterte, said the administration was “treading on dangerous ground” with what he described as a “clear act of political persecution”.
Marcos has also not commented on Duterte’s impeachment. In November, he had said it would be a “waste of time” for lawmakers to impeach her when it has more important work to do.
Since the end of Ferdinand Marcos Sr’s dictatorship and the restoration of democracy in 1986, only one sitting president has been impeached – Joseph Estrada in 2000, for alleged corruption.
But his trial ended without a judgement after a popular revolt forced him from power in January 2001.
Only one impeachment trial made it to a verdict, that of former Supreme Court chief justice Renato Corona, who was convicted of corruption in 2012.
Both the Estrada and Corona impeachment trials were highly politicised and divisive affairs and dragged on for months.
What’s behind the Marcos and Duterte feud?
Duterte and Marcos had presented a picture of unity when they ran for the 2022 elections, calling themselves the “UniTeam”.
But cracks began to appear even before they assumed office, when Duterte asked to handle the defence portfolio in Marcos’ cabinet but instead was made education minister.
Their alliance unravelled further soon after they took power, as they pursued their separate political agendas while differing on crucial fronts such as diplomacy.
Their differences on the Philippines’ relationship to the US and China became more pronounced, as encounters between Philippine and Chinese ships in disputed waters became more frequent.
Marcos has pivoted the Philippines back to the US, reversing the pro-China stance of Duterte’s father.
He has also promised a less violent approach against illegal drug rings, dialling back the elder Duterte’s “war on drugs” that left over 6,000 suspects killed, according to a government count.
The lower house of parliament, where Marcos’s allies hold power, then started scrutinising Duterte’s budget requests, particularly her confidential funds which are not covered by state audits.
In July last year, she resigned from the cabinet.
The feud took a dramatic turn a few months later when, in a late-night livestreamed press conference, Duterte said she “talked to a person” to “go kill” Marcos if she were assassinated.
She later said that she was not plotting to assassinate the President and Marcos had dismissed the threat as a “storm in a teacup”.

[BBC]
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