Politics
Rescuers in Afghanistan race to reach remote quake-hit mountain villages
- Late night magnitude-6 quake comes as one of Afghanistan’s worst tremors.
- Rescue efforts focus on remote mountain areas, hindered by terrain, weather.
- WHO highlights overwhelmed local health system and aid delivery challenges.
Rescuers in Afghanistan will try to reach isolated villages in the eastern region of Kunar, the epicentre of an earthquake that killed over 800 people and injured more than 2,800, authorities told Reuters on Tuesday.
Rescue operations were carried out in four villages in Kunar on Monday after the quake struck and efforts will now be focused on reaching more remote mountain areas, said Ehsanullah Ehsan, the provincial head of disaster management.
“We cannot accurately predict how many bodies might still be trapped under the rubble,” said Ehsan. “Our effort is to complete these operations as soon as possible and to begin distributing aid to the affected families.”
One of Afghanistan’s worst earthquakes, with a magnitude of 6, struck around midnight local time on Monday, at a shallow depth of 10 km (6 miles), killing 812 people in the eastern provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar.
Mountainous terrain and inclement weather have hindered rescuers reaching remote areas along the Pakistani border where the quake flattened mudbrick homes.
Gaining access for vehicles on the narrow mountain roads was the main obstacle for relief work, said Ehsan, adding machinery was being brought in to clear roads of debris.
On Tuesday, a line of ambulances was on the damaged mountain road trying to reach Kunar villages, as helicopters flew in, bringing aid supplies and taking the injured to hospitals, according to a Reuters witness.
Some of those injured have been transferred to hospitals in Kabul and the adjacent province of Nangarhar, said Ehsan.
Taliban soldiers were deployed in the area, providing help and security. The disaster has further stretched the war-torn nation’s Taliban administration, already grappling with a sharp drop in foreign aid and deportations of hundreds of thousands of Afghans by neighbouring countries.
“National and international organisations are present in the area, have organised their assistance, and, God willing, aid will be distributed in an orderly manner,” said Ehsan.
Rescue teams and authorities are trying to dispose of animal carcasses quickly so as to minimise the risk of contamination to water resources, a UN official said on Monday.
“Damaged roads, ongoing aftershocks, and remote locations of many villages severely impede the delivery of aid,” the World Health Organisation said in a situation update, adding that over 12,000 people had been affected by the quake.
“The pre-earthquake fragility of the health system means local capacity is overwhelmed, creating total dependence on external actors,” said the update.
Afghanistan is prone to deadly earthquakes, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountain range, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
A 6.1-magnitude earthquake that killed 1,000 people in the eastern region in 2022 was the first major natural disaster faced by the Taliban government.
- Indian envoy summoned to express “grave concern”, says ministry.
- India dismissed reports of vandalism as “misleading propaganda”.
- Bangladesh-India ties deteriorate since ex-PM Hasina fled New Delhi.
DHAKA: Bangladesh on Tuesday summoned the top Indian envoy as fresh protests erupted outside its high commission in New Delhi over the mob lynching of a Hindu worker in Dhaka.
The garment worker was accused of blasphemy and lynched on December 18 as anti-India sentiment rises in the neighbouring majority Muslim nation. Seven suspects have been arrested over the killing.
On Tuesday, hundreds of demonstrators converged near Bangladesh’s High Commission in New Delhi waving saffron flags and banners, including one that read: “Stop Killing Hindus in Bangladesh”.
“Hindus are warning Bangladesh that it is taking the wrong approach,” said Puneet Gautam, 37, a protester and member of the right-wing Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) organisation.
VHP members and security personnel clashed outside Dhaka’s outpost as the crowd shoved its way through yellow metal barricades around 300 metres from the building.
Earlier on Tuesday, Bangladesh’s foreign ministry had summoned Indian High Commissioner Pranay Verma to express “grave concern” over previous protests outside its visa centres.
In its statement, the ministry cited “regrettable incidents” and vandalism outside its visa centres in New Delhi and Siliguri last week. India has dismissed reports of vandalism as “misleading propaganda”.
Ties between the neighbours have deteriorated since ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled the pro-democracy uprising last year and sought refuge in India.
India says it is still considering Dhaka’s requests to extradite Hasina, who was sentenced to death in absentia for orchestrating a deadly crackdown on the uprising.
Bangladesh has been in political turmoil since the end of Hasina’s rule, with violence marring the campaigning ahead of next year’s election.
This month, parliamentary hopeful and vocal India critic Sharif Osman Hadi was shot by masked assailants in Dhaka, with unconfirmed reports suggesting his attackers might have fled to India.
The killing set off protests in Dhaka with arsonists torching several buildings, including two major newspapers deemed to favour India as well as a prominent cultural institution.
Mobs also pelted stones at the Indian High Commission in the port city of Chattogram, where India has since suspended visa services.
On Monday, Dhaka temporarily suspended visa services in Delhi.
Russia has urged Delhi and Dhaka to mend fences.
“The sooner this happens, the better,” Russian Ambassador to Bangladesh, Alexander G Khozin, was quoted as saying in the Dhaka Tribune.
An investigative reporter best known for exposing fraud at Silicon Valley blood-testing startup Theranos sued Elon Musk’s xAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta Platforms and Perplexity on Monday for using copyrighted books without permission to train their artificial intelligence systems.
New York Times reporter and “Bad Blood” author John Carreyrou filed the lawsuit in California federal court with five other writers, accusing the AI companies of pirating their books and feeding them into the large language models (LLMs) that power the companies’ chatbots.
The lawsuit is one of several copyright cases brought by authors and other copyright owners against tech companies over the use of their work in AI training. The case is the first to name xAI as a defendant.
Spokespeople for the defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
Unlike other pending cases, the writers are not seeking to band together in a larger class action – a type of lawsuit they said favours defendants by allowing them to negotiate a single settlement with many plaintiffs.
“LLM companies should not be able to so easily extinguish thousands upon thousands of high-value claims at bargain-basement rates,” the complaint said.
Anthropic reached the first major settlement in an AI-training copyright dispute in August, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion to a class of authors who said the company pirated millions of books.
The new lawsuit said class members in that case will receive “a tiny fraction (just 2%) of the Copyright Act’s statutory ceiling of $150,000” per infringed work.
Monday’s complaint was filed by attorneys at law firm Freedman Normand Friedland, including Kyle Roche, whom Carreyrou profiled in a 2023 New York Times article.
During a November hearing in the Anthropic class action, US District Judge William Alsup criticised a separate law firm Roche co-founded for gathering authors to opt out of the settlement in search of “a sweeter deal.” Roche declined to comment on Monday.
Carreyrou told the judge at a later hearing that stealing books to build its AI was Anthropic’s “original sin” and that the settlement did not go far enough.
- Bill limits most gun owners to four firearms, 10 for farmers.
- Main opposition Liberal party backs amendments.
- Three-quarters of Australians want tougher gun laws, shows poll.
Australia’s most populous state is set to pass tougher gun laws, ban the display of terrorist symbols and curb protests after the state parliament’s lower house cleared a bill late on Monday in an emergency sitting following the Bondi mass shooting.
The terrorism and other legislation amendment bill won support from the opposition Liberal Party in New South Wales state, and is expected to clear the upper house on Tuesday.
The ruling centre-left Labour government has proposed capping most individual gun licences at four firearms and allowing up to 10 for farmers.
Fifteen people were killed and dozens were injured in the mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi on December 14, a shock attack that has prompted calls for tougher gun laws and stronger action against antisemitism.
Police said one alleged gunman, Sajid Akram, 50, who was shot dead by officers, owned six firearms. His 24-year-old son Naveed, faces 59 charges, including murder and terrorism.
Although Australia tightened gun laws after a 1996 shooting that killed 35 people, a police firearms registry showed more than 70 people in New South Wales, which includes Sydney, each own over 100 guns. One licence holder has 298 guns.
A Sydney Morning Herald poll on Tuesday found three-quarters of Australians want tougher gun laws. The rural-focused National Party opposed the gun reforms in New South Wales, saying the amendments would disadvantage farmers.
The federal government has also pledged reforms, including tighter gun controls and a gun buyback plan but has resisted calls to set up a royal commission, the most powerful type of government inquiry, into the attack.
Instead, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who is facing mounting criticism from opponents who argue his government has not done enough to curb a rise in antisemitism, has announced an independent review of intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
“We need to get to these answers quickly, and we cannot be waiting around for years, which is what a royal commission would take,” Defence Minister Richard Marles told ABC News on Tuesday.
US economy grows at fastest pace in two years
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