The toll from Myanmar’s earthquake rose to 1,700 on Sunday, as foreign rescue teams and aid rushed into the impoverished country, where hospitals were overwhelmed and some communities scrambled to mount rescue efforts with limited resources.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated a demand on Sunday for Hamas to disarm and for its leaders to leave Gaza as he promised to step up pressure on the group while continuing efforts to return hostages.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described Japan on Sunday as indispensable for tackling Chinese aggression and said implementing a plan to upgrade the US military command in the country would get under way.
Myanmar quake death toll hits 1,700 as aid scramble intensifies
The toll from Myanmar’s earthquake continued to rise on Sunday, as foreign rescue teams and aid rushed into the impoverished country, where hospitals were overwhelmed and some communities scrambled to mount rescue efforts with limited resources.
The 7.7-magnitude quake, one of Myanmar’s strongest in a century, jolted the war-torn southeast Asian nation on Friday, leaving around 1,700 people dead, 3,400 injured and more than 300 missing as of Sunday, said the military government.
The junta chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, warned that the number of fatalities could rise, and his administration faced a challenging situation, reported state media, three days after he made a rare call for international assistance.
India, China and Thailand are among Myanmar’s neighbours that have sent relief materials and teams, along with aid and personnel from Malaysia, Singapore and Russia.
“The destruction has been extensive, and humanitarian needs are growing by the hour,” said the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The US pledged $2-million in aid “through Myanmar-based humanitarian assistance organizations” and said in a statement that an emergency response team from USAID, which is undergoing massive cuts under the Trump administration, was deploying to Myanmar.
The devastation has piled more misery on Myanmar, already in chaos from a civil war that grew out of a nationwide uprising after a 2021 military coup ousted the elected government of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
Critical infrastructure — including bridges, highways, airports and railways — across the country of 55 million lie damaged, slowing humanitarian efforts, while the conflict that has battered the economy, displaced more than 3.5 million people and debilitated the health system rages on.
In some areas near the epicentre, residents told Reuters that government assistance was scarce, leaving people to fend for themselves.
“It is necessary to restore the transportation routes as soon as possible,” Min Aung Hlaing told officials on Saturday, according to state media. “It is necessary to fix the railways and also reopen the airports so that rescue operations would be more effective.”
The US Geological Service’s predictive modelling estimated that Myanmar’s death toll could eventually top 10,000 and losses could exceed the country’s annual economic output.
The quake also shook parts of neighbouring Thailand, bringing down an under-construction skyscraper and killing 18 people across the capital, according to Thai authorities.
At least 76 people remained trapped under the debris of the collapsed Bangkok building, where rescue operations continued for a third day, using drones and sniffer dogs to hunt for survivors.
Myanmar’s opposition National Unity Government, which includes remnants of the previous administration, said anti-junta militias under its command would pause all offensive military actions for two weeks from Sunday.
Netanyahu vows to up pressure on Hamas
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated a demand on Sunday for Hamas to disarm and for its leaders to leave Gaza as he promised to step up pressure on the group while continuing efforts to return hostages.
He said Israel would work to implement US President Donald Trump’s “voluntary emigration plan” for Gaza and that his Cabinet had agreed to keep pressuring Hamas, which says it has agreed to a ceasefire proposal from mediators Egypt and Qatar.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Netanyahu’s comments were a recipe for “endless escalation” in the region.
Netanyahu rejected assertions that Israel, which has resumed its bombardment of Gaza after a two-month truce and sent troops back into the enclave, was not negotiating, saying: “We are conducting it under fire, and therefore it is also effective.
“We see that there are suddenly cracks,” he said in a video statement issued on Sunday.
On Saturday, Khalil al-Hayya, the Hamas leader in Gaza, said the group had agreed to a proposal that security sources said included the release of five Israeli hostages each week. But he said laying down its arms as Israel has demanded was a “red line” the group would not cross.
On Sunday, the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday, health authorities in Gaza said at least 24 people, including several children, had been killed in Israeli strikes. Nine were killed in a single tent in the southern city of Khan Younis, they said.
Later on Sunday, the Palestinian Red Crescent Service said it had finally been able to get access to search for rescue teams that had come under Israeli fire during a rescue mission in western Rafah, a week after the attack.
It said it had recovered 13 bodies from the scene, seven of them were Palestinian Red Crescent members, another five were from the Gaza Civil Emergency Service, and another was a United Nations worker. There was no immediate Israeli comment.
Since Israel resumed its attacks in Gaza on 18 March, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands have been forced to evacuate areas in northern Gaza where they had returned following the ceasefire agreement in January.
Netanyahu said Israel was demanding that Hamas lay down its arms and said its leaders would be allowed to leave Gaza. He gave no detail on how long Israeli troops would remain in the enclave but repeated that Hamas’s military and government capacities must be crushed.
“We will ensure general security in the Gaza Strip and enable the implementation of the Trump plan, the voluntary emigration plan,” he said. “That is the plan, we do not hide it, we are ready to discuss it at any time.”
Trump originally proposed moving the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza to countries including Egypt and Jordan and developing the Gaza Strip as a US-owned resort. However, no country has agreed to take in the population and Israel has since said that any departures by Palestinians would be voluntary.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after a devastating Hamas attack on Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023 that killed some 1,200 people, according to an Israeli tally, and saw 251 abducted as hostages.
The Israeli campaign has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health authorities, and devastated much of the coastal enclave, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in tents and makeshift shelters. ary pressure was the only thing that had returned hostages.
US command in Japan is being upgraded ‘to deter China’
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described Japan on Sunday as indispensable for tackling Chinese aggression and said implementing a plan to upgrade the US military command in the country would get under way.
“We share a warrior ethos that defines our forces,” Hegseth told Japanese Defence Minister Gen Nakatani at a meeting in Tokyo. “Japan is our indispensable partner in deterring communist Chinese military aggression,” including across the Taiwan Strait, he said.
Calling Japan a “cornerstone of peace and security in the Indo-Pacific”, he said Trump’s government would continue to work closely with its key Asian ally.
In July, Joe Biden’s White House announced a major revamp of the US military command in Japan to deepen coordination with Tokyo’s forces, as the two countries labelled China their “greatest strategic challenge”.
That change will place a combined operational commander in Japan, who would be a counterpart to the head of a joint operation command established by Japan’s Self-Defense Forces last week.
Hegseth’s praise of Japan contrasts with the criticism he levelled at European allies in February, telling them they should not assume the US presence there would last forever. Trump has complained that the bilateral defence treaty, in which Washington pledges to defend Tokyo, is not reciprocal. In his first term, he said Japan should pay more to host US troops.
Japan hosts 50,000 US military personnel, squadrons of fighter jets and Washington’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier strike group along a 3,000km East Asian archipelago that hems in Chinese military power.
It comes as Japan doubles military spending, including money to purchase longer-range missiles. The operational scope of its forces, however, is constrained by its US-authored constitution, adopted after its World War Two defeat, which renounces the right to make war.
Hegseth said he asked his counterpart for greater access to Japan’s strategic southwest islands, along the edge of the contested East China Sea close to Taiwan.
Netanyahu to visit Hungary, defying ICC arrest warrant
Netanyahu will travel to Hungary this week, said his office on Sunday, defying an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.
During the visit, due to begin on Wednesday and run until Sunday, Netanyahu will meet his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán, who invited him in November, soon after the ICC issued the arrest warrant.
Orbán said at the time that the warrant would “not be observed”.
All European Union member states, including Hungary, are members of the ICC, which means they are required to enforce its warrants. Orbán, a right-wing nationalist, has often been at odds with the EU over democratic standards and human rights in Hungary.
There was no immediate comment by Hungary about this week’s visit.
It will be Netanyahu’s second trip abroad since the ICC announced the warrants, following a visit to Washington in February to meet Trump.
Trump says ‘there will be bombing’ if Iran does not make nuclear deal
Trump on Sunday threatened Iran with bombings and secondary tariffs if Tehran did not come to an agreement with Washington over its nuclear programme.
In a telephone interview with NBC News, Trump said US and Iranian officials were talking but did not elaborate.
“If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” said Trump. “But there’s a chance that if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago.”
In his first 2017-21 term, Trump withdrew the US from a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers that placed strict limits on Tehran’s disputed nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
Trump also reimposed sweeping US sanctions. Since then, the Islamic Republic has far surpassed the agreed limits in its escalating programme of uranium enrichment.
Tehran has so far rebuffed Trump’s warning to make a deal or face military consequences.
Trump threatens secondary tariffs on Russian oil over Ukraine
Trump said on Sunday he would impose secondary tariffs of 25% to 50% on all Russian oil if he felt Moscow was blocking his efforts to end the war in Ukraine, and they could start within a month if there is no ceasefire.
Trump told NBC News he was angry and “pissed off” when Russian President Vladimir Putin criticised the credibility of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s leadership, NBC reported.
Trump told NBC News by phone that he planned to speak with Putin this week.
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump promised repeatedly to end what he calls a “ridiculous” war in Ukraine, and he has focused heavily on the issue since taking office on January 20. Trump himself has called for new elections in Ukraine and falsely called Zelensky a dictator.
Putin on Friday suggested Ukraine could be placed under a form of temporary administration to allow for new elections and the signature of key accords, which could effectively push out Zelensky.
“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault ... I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” said Trump.
“That would be, that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States. There will be a 25% tariff on all oil, a 25- to 50-point tariff on all oil.”
He said the tariffs on Russian oil would come within a month without a ceasefire deal.
Trump said Putin knew he was angry with him, but said he had “a very good relationship with him” and “the anger dissipates quickly ... if he does the right thing.”
Russian drone attack kills two in Kharkiv
A Russian drone strike on Ukraine’s second-largest city killed two people and wounded 35 late on Saturday, officials said, as Zelensky urged Kyiv’s partners to respond to such attacks while seeking peace in the three-year-old war.
The strike on the eastern city of Kharkiv, which damaged a military hospital among other structures, came as Ukraine seeks strong backing from Western allies to pressure Russia into ending its full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour.
Mayor Ihor Terekhov said five children were wounded in the attack, which also damaged several dozen residential buildings and a dormitory housing war refugees.
Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday that Russia had launched 111 drones and one ballistic missile overnight, causing damage in the Kharkiv, Sumy, Odesa and Donetsk regions. It said air defences shot down 65 drones and jammed another 35.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said in a daily bulletin that its forces had struck 140 districts in Ukraine, including military airfields and ammunition depots. It did not mention the hospital.
Both sides have accused one another in recent days of violating a US-brokered partial ceasefire, and Russia has continued sending regular swarms of drones over Ukraine.
In a statement on Sunday, Zelensky said Ukraine expected a response from the US and other allies to the near-daily attacks, adding that Moscow had fired more than 1,000 drones in the past week.
“Russia is dragging out the war, and we are providing our partners with full information on the strikes the Russian army is carrying out and the actions it is preparing for,” he said.
Syria’s president forms new transitional government
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa announced a transitional government on Saturday, appointing 23 ministers in a broadened Cabinet seen as a key milestone in the transition from decades of Assad family rule and to improving Syria’s ties with the West.
Syria’s new Sunni Islamist-led authorities have been under pressure from the West and Arab countries to form a government that is more inclusive of the country’s diverse ethnic and religious communities.
That pressure increased following the killings of hundreds of Alawite civilians — the minority sect from which toppled leader Bashar al-Assad hails — in violence along Syria’s western coast this month.
The Cabinet included Yarub Badr, an Alawite who was named transportation minister, while Amgad Badr, who belongs to the Druze community, will lead the agriculture ministry.
Hind Kabawat, a Christian woman and part of the previous opposition to Assad who worked for interfaith tolerance and women’s empowerment, was appointed as social affairs and labor minister.
The government will not have a prime minister, with Sharaa expected to lead the executive branch.
Martinique’s water woes drive anger at French rule
In Martinique, a French territory in the Caribbean, tourists flock to crystalline waterfalls nestling in the tropical rainforests. But the water that comes out of Christelle Marie-Sainte’s tap at home runs yellow.
“I don’t drink the tap water,” she said, outside a supermarket where she was buying locally-bottled Lafort water. A relatively low-cost brand, Lafort is double the price of an equivalent product in parts of Paris.
Anger at Martinique’s prices and poor services erupted in months of protests and unrest late last year that saw dozens of businesses targeted and burned. The protests have largely given way to a movement that has won concessions from Paris, including a promise last week of government-backed legislation to tackle grocery prices, which official data show are on average 40% higher than on the mainland.
Like many contentious issues in Martinique, water is intertwined with questions of class and race, including the prominence of a handful of families descended from white owners of enslaved people.
Known locally as Békés, the white creole families make up about 1% of the population but control swathes of the economy on the island of 350,000 people, the majority of whom are Afro-Caribbean, or descendants of Indian and Chinese indentured labourers.
The government has promised to open up the economy, but activists remain sceptical.
Prince Harry accused of bullying, harassment by charity chair
The chair of a charity Prince Harry set up to help young people with HIV and Aids in Lesotho and Botswana has accused him of “harassment and bullying at scale” after he quit this week over a dispute he described as “devastating”.
Harry, the younger son of King Charles, co-founded Sentebale in 2006 in honour of his late mother, Princess Diana. He left it, along with co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho and the board of trustees, following a dispute with chair Sophie Chandauka.
In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, Chandauka said, referring to the way Harry resigned: “At some point on Tuesday, Prince Harry authorised the release of a damaging piece of news to the outside world without informing me or my country directors or my executive director.
“And can you imagine what that attack has done for me, on me and the 540 individuals in the Sentebale organisations and their family. That is an example of harassment and bullying at scale.”
Harry and Seeiso said in a joint statement on Wednesday that it was “devastating” that the relationship between the charity’s trustees and Chandauka had broken beyond repair.
Chandauka has previously said Sentebale was beset by “poor governance, weak executive management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny [and] misogynoir”.
In an interview with the Financial Times published on Saturday, she said she was asked by Harry’s team to protect Meghan after negative media coverage, which she refused to do.
She also said the way Sentebale was run “was no longer appropriate in 2023 in a post-Black Lives Matter world ... funders were asking for locally-led initiatives”.
Ecuadorian president replaces vice-president after long-running feud
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa appointed Cynthia Gellibert, secretary general of public administration, as interim vice-president on Saturday, replacing the elected vice-president, Veronica Abad.
Over the past year, Noboa and Abad have feuded over who would represent the country as president while Noboa takes time out to campaign in the run-up to the presidential election in which he seeks a four-year term.
The country’s Constitution states that when the president campaigns, the presidency must be handed over to the vice-president.
Abad, who has also been serving as the Andean country’s ambassador to Israel, has repeatedly argued that she had the right to the presidency, but was suspended from her post by the labour ministry in November.
In the decree, Noboa stated that Abad was barred from holding public office based on legal issues and insubordination.
The ministry accused her of committing a serious disciplinary offense by not complying with a Noboa order to travel to Turkey on set dates.
Trump met with Noboa in Florida on Saturday, ahead of a tight 13 April 13 run-off election that will pit Noboa against leftist Luisa Gonzalez.
Noboa (37) was elected in 2023 to serve out the remainder of his predecessor’s term on promises to combat drug gangs that have roiled the once-placid South American country.
The son of one of Ecuador’s richest businessmen, Noboa has used state of emergency declarations to deploy the military on the streets and in prisons, implemented harsher sentencing and cheered the arrests of major gang leaders, actions he says reduced violent deaths by 15% last year.
Noboa has also announced a “strategic alliance” with Erik Prince — a prominent Trump supporter and founder of the private military firm Blackwater — to take on crime and narcoterrorism in the country of 17 million.
Rite at family grave led to deadly wildfire in South Korea, say police
South Korean police said on Sunday they had booked a man suspected of starting what grew into the country’s largest wildfire, killing at least 26 people and razing thousands of buildings, including historic temples.
Authorities believe the man, who is in his 50s, began the fire in southeastern Uiseong County when he performed an ancestral rite at a family grave on 22 March, said an official from Gyeongbuk Provincial Police.
“We are in the process of verifying evidence,” added the official.
In South Korea’s legal system, booking involves registering a suspect but may not coincide immediately with arrest or charges.
Yonhap news agency said the man had denied the allegations.
The fire burned about 48,000 hectares, destroyed an estimated 4,000 structures, and forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate. By Friday, the blaze was largely contained, although firefighters were still battling small hotspots that had sprung up on Saturday.
The Uiseong fire, as well as separate blazes across the country last week, left at least 30 people dead and sparked calls for national reforms to better tackle such disasters, which experts say are being exacerbated by climate change.
The forest service said on Sunday another wildfire broke out in a southern area near Suncheonsi, and authorities had deployed 23 firetrucks, four helicopters and 123 firefighters.
Ex-Archbishop of Canterbury says scale of abuse scandal was ‘overwhelming’
Justin Welby, the former spiritual leader of Anglicans worldwide, reiterated he had failed to ensure proper investigations into allegations of abuse within the Church of England, saying the scale of the issue was "overwhelming".
Welby stepped down as Archbishop of Canterbury in November 2024 after calls for him to resign intensified following a report that found he had taken insufficient action to stop one of the Church’s most prolific serial abusers.
The report said John Smyth, a British lawyer who volunteered at Christian summer camps, had subjected more than 100 boys and young men to “brutal and horrific” physical and sexual abuse over 40 years.
In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, Welby said: “Every day more cases were coming across the desk that ... hadn’t been dealt with adequately [in the past].
“This was just, it was another case — and yes I knew Smyth, but it was an absolutely overwhelming few weeks. It was overwhelming, one was trying to prioritise — but I think it’s easy to sound defensive over this.”
“The reality is I got it wrong. As Archbishop [of Canterbury], there are no excuses,” he added.
A spokesperson said the Church of England was “deeply sorry” for the abuse experienced by Smyth’s victims and that they continued to be offered support.
Smyth moved to Africa in 1984 and continued to carry out the abuse until close to his death in 2018, the report said.
The report found the Church had known at the highest level about the sexual abuse claims in 2013, and Welby became aware, at the latest, about the accusations in the same year, after he became Archbishop of Canterbury. DM