At least 53 people, including 11 children, were killed and 16 people were reported missing in a massive blaze that broke out at a shopping mall in Russia’s Kemerovo city, according to authorities.

The bodies were recovered early Monday morning, Russian Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko told Sputnik news.

Twenty people have been rescued and about 100 others evacuated.

The fire at the Winter Cherry (Zimnyaya Vishnya) shopping mall erupted on Sunday afternoon on the top floor of the four-storey building engulfing an area of some 1,500 sq.metres, reports TASS news agency.

There has been no official information on the cause of the fire.

Amid conflicting reports, some have described the source of the fire as the children’s playground, suggesting that the trampoline there caught fire after a child allegedly misused a lighter, reports RT News.

Another version suggests that electrical wiring at the playground had short-circuited.

The fire has been contained and a criminal investigation has been launched.

Russian Deputy Emergencies Minister Vladlen Aksyonov said: “Two out of three cinema halls caved in from the fourth to the third floor of the building.”

A group of children from a school in Terescevsky were at a movie theatre near the centre of the blaze.

According to local KP News, some of the trapped children called their families from inside the theatre.

“Tell mom that I loved her. Tell everyone that I loved them,” a 12-year-old girl told her aunt before her phone switched off.

The mall with an overall area of 23,000 square.metres was opened in 2013. It has a parking lot for 250 cars, shops, a bowling alley, a children’s centre, cinemas, food courts and a petting zoo.

State-run Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) would make space grade lithium-ion (Li-Ion) cells for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) under technology transfer, the space agency said on Friday.

“We have entered into a technology transfer agreement with BHEL to make space grade Li-Ion cells,” it said in a statement here.

The agreement was signed on Thursday in the presence of ISRO Chairman K. Sivan and BHEL Managing Director Atul Sobti at the space agency headquarters here.

“The Li-Ion batteries are used as power sources for our satellite and launch vehicle applications due to their high energy density, reliability and long cycle life,” noted the statement.

The ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala has developed the technology to produce space grade Li-Ion cells, demonstrated its performance under testing conditions and established its cycle life characteristics in accelerated mode.

The cells are being used for various satellite and launch vehicle applications.

The technology transfer will enable BHEL to produce space grade Li-Ion cells to meet the country’s space programme requirements.

“The technology can also be adopted to cater to the Li-Ion cell requirement for other national needs,” the statement added.

Citing ongoing political turmoil, malnutrition, and a cholera outbreak, UN says millions need aid in the DRC.

by Al Jazeera

Humanitarian needs caused by conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have doubled over the last year, the UN Security Council said.

Speaking on Monday, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General Mark Lowcock said 13 million people are affected by internal conflict gripping the country and require humanitarian assistance.

“More than 4.6 million children are acutely malnourished, including 2.2 million suffering from severe acute malnutrition,” Lowcock said.

“We’re seeing mushrooming epidemics including the worst outbreak of cholera in 15 years. There’s also an epidemic of sexual violence – most of it unreported and unaddressed – and much of it against children.”

Fighting in the central African country has much to do with the long-delayed vote to replace President Joseph Kabila.

While elections were initially set for November 2016, they were pushed to December 2018. But the electoral commission has since said voting may not be possible until April 2019.

In the meantime, political opposition has been building up and a report released by the UN on Monday said at least 47 people were killed in the past year in demonstration-related violence.

Various warlords
Speaking from the UN headquarters in New York City, Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna said the UN Security Council is drawing attention to the crisis in DRC – one that involves many layers.

“There’s the ongoing political uncertainty with a president who has overstayed his constitutional term in office,” Hanna said.

“There’s been ongoing conflict particularly in the north of the country where there are rebel groups still operating. There are also military groups associated with various warlords in the particular region.”

This has resulted in a massive amount of internally displaced people, Hanna said.

The UN has scheduled a donor’s conference on April 13, where Lowcock said $1.7bn in aid is needed for this year. To date, only four percent of the funds needed for 2018 has been received by the UN.

“Underfunding is the largest single impediment to the humanitarian response in the DRC,” Lowcock said, adding the crisis will continue to escalate if there is no successful political transition and a halt to the violence.

by Al Jazeera

Sri Lanka’s president announced he has lifted the nationwide state of emergency that was imposed after communal clashes resulted in the deaths of three people.

The latest series of violence began on March 4, after a Buddhist Sinhalese man was beaten to death by a group of Muslim men following a traffic accident in Teledeniya town in Kandy.

Several dozen people were wounded in the riots, in which mobs vandalised mosques and scores of Muslim homes and businesses.

“Upon assessing the public safety situation, I instructed to revoke the State of Emergency from midnight yesterday,” President Maithripala Sirisena said on Twitter.

The measure was imposed on March 6 after police failed to control the riots and the military was deployed. Internet access was also blocked across the country.

Police have arrested the suspected instigators of the riots.

The United Nations condemned the string of anti-Muslim attacks in Sri Lanka last week.

Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman told the Sri Lankan government the people behind the violence should be brought to justice.

During his visit, Feltman “condemned the breakdown in law and order and the attacks against Muslims and their property”, a UN statement said.

The violence has raised fears of instability in Sri Lanka, a South Asian island nation still struggling to recover from nearly three decades of ethnic civil war.

by Al Jazeera

Buddhist flags hang limply from bamboo poles at the entrance to Koe Tan Kauk, a “model” village for ethnic Rakhine migrants shuttled north to repopulate an area once dominated by Muslim-majority Rohingya.

The new arrivals are moving to parts of Rakhine state mostly “cleared” of its Rohingya residents, whose villages were bulldozed and reduced to muddy stains on a landscape of lush farmland.

The Rakhine migrants, who come from the poor but relatively stable south, are – for now – few in number.

But they carry great expectations as the pioneers of a donor-led “Rakhinisation” plan to upend the demography of the once majority-Muslim area.

“We were really afraid of those Kalars and didn’t plan to come here,” Chit San Eain, a 28 year old who has moved with her husband and toddler into a basic hut in Koe Tan Kauk told AFP news agency, using a pejorative term for Muslims.

“But now that they are no longer here, we have the chance to meet again with our relatives who live up here,” she added, the ruins of a Rohingya settlement lying a few kilometres away.

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from northern Rakhine into Bangladesh since August 25 last year by the Myanmar army, which has used attacks by armed Rohingya fighters as a pretext for its brutal campaign.

Another 300,000 Rohingya were pushed out from the south and centre of Rakhine by army campaigns stretching back to the late 1970s.

The UN has branded last year’s military crackdown as ethnic cleansing, with a top official saying it carried all the “hallmarks of genocide”.

Myanmar vigorously denies the allegations and says refugees are welcome to return.

But so far it has agreed to allow back only 374 of 8,000 refugees whose names have been put forward for the initial phase of repatriation.

Many traumatised Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar camps are also refusing to be repatriated to Rakhine – where holding camps and hostile neighbours await them.

In their absence a blizzard of development projects, government and army-sponsored or privately funded, are transforming northern Rakhine.

Taking space vacated by fleeing Rohingya is an old game in a state seen as the front line of a Buddhist nation’s fight against encroaching Islam.

“The military has been engineering the social landscape of northern Rakhine State so as to dilute the Rohingya population since the early 1990s,” says Francis Wade, author of Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of the Muslim ‘Other’.

The Muslim minority are denied citizenship and labelled “Bengalis”, outsiders who – the logic runs – have successfully been pushed back to their country of origin.

In a pattern with echoes of “the Israeli settler project in the West Bank” Buddhist communities then move in, altering the “facts on the ground” gradually rubbing out Muslim rights to the land, he added.

“I’d expect to see more Buddhists settle there over the coming years. And then we’ll forget what the area once was, and that process of erasure will be complete.”

Rohingya out, Rakhine in
Chit San Ean is the beneficiary of the Ancillary Committee for the Reconstruction of Rakhine National Territory in the Western Frontier (CRR), a private scheme established shortly after the refugee crisis began.

In a zone under a strict army lockdown the resettlement plan could not fly without military consent.

Funded by ethnic Rakhine donors, the CRR’s ambition is to establish a “Muslim-dry” buffer zone running the nearly 100km from state capital Sittwe to Maungdaw town, according to Oo Hla Saw, a Rakhine MP who advises the committee.

“All of this area was under the influence of Muslims. After the military operations, they had to flee … so we have to establish this area with the Rakhine population,” he told AFP.

The CRR will fund jobs and homes “so this little population can grow and grow,” he added.

It’s a trickle so far, with around 64 households – some 250 people – moved by the CRR, with 200 more families on a waiting list.

They are among the poorest of the poor, mostly daily wage labourers from Thandwe around 600km to the south or squatters from Sittwe.

Two village tracts, Koe Tan Kuak near Rathedaung and Inn Din near Maungdaw, have been designated for the scheme so far.

The army concedes the second site was the scene of extrajudicial killings of Rohingya captives as violence engulfed the region last August.

Koe Tan Kauk was a similarly mixed settlement of Buddhist and Muslim homes.

The CRR-sponsored hamlet promises a rudimentary existence.

There is little work, no electricity or running water but donors have gifted each family a $450 shack on stilts, made from plywood and metal sheeting.

New residents hope to eventually own land, a prospect previously beyond their reach in Myanmar’s second-poorest state.

Rakhine nationalists say the CRR is a bulwark against Islam and a means to ensure their ethnic group has a say in development projects driven by the Burmese-dominated central state, who they distrust deeply.

“Who should be given priority other than Rakhines in Rakhine State?” explained Than Tun, General Secretary of the CRR.

Cronies and soldiers
For its part, Myanmar’s government has enlisted powerful businessmen to rebuild the infrastructure of the battered state.

The army is running other projects including beefing up its security apparatus – in what appears to be a multi-pronged effort to keep out the Rohingya.

An Amnesty International report this week detailed how roads, helipads and security installations are being built, often on top of razed Rohingya settlements.

They labelled the activity a massive “land grab” that threatens to erase evidence of alleged atrocities, including at Inn Din.

Across northern Rakhine, abandoned land and rice fields have been commandeered by the army in an area with access tightly controlled to media, investigators and most aid groups.

The Rohingya lost their legal status in 1982, under a junta-era Citizenship Law. Now their ancestral lands are being stripped away.

That makes return impossible, according to legislator Oo Hla Saw.

“These people want to be recognised as ‘Rohingya’ ethnicity … to enjoy citizenship, to resettle in their native grounds,” he says. “Their demands are unreasonable.”

Despite their dangerous new neighbourhood, the arrivals at Koe Tan Kauk say they are there to stay.

“I will end my life here,” said a 69-year-old woman called Osar. “I’m not going anywhere.”

London: Nobel Prize-winning physicist Professor Stephen Hawking, who shaped modern cosmology and inspired millions despite suffering from a life-threatening condition, died on Wednesday. He was 76.

His family released a statement in the early hours of Wednesday confirming his death at his home in Cambridge, The Guardian reported.

“We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today. He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years,” Hawking’s children said in a statement.

“His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world. He once said, aIt would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him for ever,” the statement added.

Hawking is survived by three children — Robert, Lucy and Timothy — from his first marriage to Jane Wilde, and three grandchildren.

Hawking was born on Januart 8, 1942 in Oxford, England.

Known the world over for his acclaimed book “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes”, Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — a progressive neuro-degenerative disease — in 1963 at age 21.

Hawking’s doctors gave him nearly two years to live but he defied the medical history and survived for decades.

For the rest of his life, the physicist used a wheelchair to move around and a speech synthesizer that allowed him to speak in a computerised voice with an American accent.

For Hawking, the early diagnosis of his terminal disease ignited a fresh sense of purpose.

“Although there was a cloud hanging over my future, I found, to my surprise, that I was enjoying life in the present more than before. I began to make progress with my research,” he once said.

“My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all,” Hawking added.

With fellow physicist Roger Penrose, Hawking merged Einstein’s theory of relativity with quantum theory, suggesting that space and time would begin with Big Bang and end in black holes.

In 1974, Hawking proposed what is known as his most significant theory that black holes can emit sub-atomic particles.

Published for the first time in 1988, “A Brief History of Time” stayed on the Sunday Times bestsellers list for an unprecedented 237 weeks. It sold 10 million copies and was translated into 40 different languages.

Shocked Hawking fans took to Twitter to mourn his death.

“Stephen Hawking, confined to a wheel chair, had thoughts flicker in his brain that changed the world more than entire generations of modern politicians. With some luck, with his passing will come some perspective as well as appreciation,” wrote David Rothkopf.

The physicist’s inspiring story gave birth to the 2014 movie “The Theory of Everything,” which was based on a memoir by Hawking’s first wife Wilde.

Actor Eddie Redmayne’s portrayal of Hawking in the film won him an Oscar for Best Actor.

(IANS)

by Al Jazeera

Myanmar is building military bases over flattened Rohingya villages, an international rights group said.

Security forces have bulldozed houses and started constructing at least three new security facilities in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, said Amnesty International’s Remaking Rakhine State report, which was published on Monday.

The report, which said construction of the three army outposts began in January, is based on satellite imagery and witness statements from Rohingya refugees.

“What we are seeing in Rakhine state is a land grab by the military on a dramatic scale. New bases are being erected to house the very same security forces that have committed crimes against humanity against Rohingya,” Tirana Hassan, Amnesty’s crisis response director, said.

“The new construction is entrenching the already dehumanising discrimination they have faced in Myanmar.”

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar since last August as a result of a government crackdown launched in the wake of deadly attacks on military posts by members of the Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army (ARSA).

Eyewitnesses told Amnesty that Rohingya in Buthidaung township had been forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for the development. Al Jazeera was not able to independently verify those claims.

‘Not a military land grab’

Myint Khine, a government administrator in Rakhine, told Al Jazeera the developments were not a “military land grab”.

“We have been using bulldozers for building roads and construction … not for military [purposes],” Khine said.

Hundreds of Rohingya villages have been torched and at least 55 settlements completely bulldozed, since the ongoing crisis began, according to Human Rights Watch.

The majority of those displaced have sought refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh.

According to the UN, the exodus marks the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world.

Ro Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya activist, told Al Jazeera that Myanmar will “never allow” the Muslim minority to return to Rakhine state.

“It is clear that as a part of genocide they have destructed the Rohingya homes and confiscated everything,” Lwin said. “They will never allow the Rohingya to return to their original villages.”

The Rohingya, one of the most persecuted communities in the world, are not recognised as citizens of Myanmar and have for decades faced widespread discrimination from authorities.

Prior to the current exodus, tens of thousands of Rohingya have already been living as refugees in several neighbouring countries.

Myanmar and Bangladesh announced a repatriation deal in January, but rights groups and Rohingya have raised concerns about the agreement, saying it does not guarantee full citizenship or safety for those who return.

‘Atmosphere of panic’
Laura Haigh, Amnesty’s Myanmar researcher, told Al Jazeera the demolition of their villages has created an “atmosphere of panic” among the Rohingya.

“What we need to see is the Myanmar government saying this is Rohingya land and saving it for them,” Haigh said.

“[Instead] there’s a growing sense this [militarisation] is going to be a threat to safety and security, and there’s worry about violence happening again.”

Although the Amnesty report refers to the construction of three security bases, in the Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships, there is growing evidence more facilities are being developed, Haigh added.

“Every time we go back to look at specific locations, we are seeing changes on a day-to-day basis. It’s not just about the scale of change, it’s also about the pace,” she said.

Border tensions
The ongoing turmoil in Rakhine state has also created flashpoints between Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh.

Earlier this month, Myanmar deployed some 200 troops to its border with Bangladesh, close to a nearby strip of land between the two that is home to about 6,000 Rohingya refugees.

The area falls within Myanmar’s territory but is widely referred to as “no man’s land” because it lies beyond the country’s border fence.

Myanmar said the move was part of an operation to target the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) fighters operating in the region.

Security forces – who reportedly issued warnings using loudspeakers for Rohingya to leave the “no man’s land” – were later pulled back after Bangladesh summoned Myanmar’s ambassador over the incident.

Kyaw Win, founder of the Burma Human Rights Network, told Al Jazeera that Myanmar authorities are still attempting to force Rohingya remaining in Rakhine into Bangladesh.

“Burma is starving remaining Rohingya in Rakhine state and this is forcing them to flee,” Win said.

On Monday, the UN’s Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee also said Myanmar’s government appeared to be pursuing a policy of starvation.

Lee, who was reporting to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, said the results of a UN fact-finding mission in Myanmar “bear the hallmarks of genocide” by the country’s authorities.

by Al Jazeera

Myanmar is continuing its “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya, while claiming it is ready to receive them back from Bangladesh, according to a UN human rights envoy.

Andrew Gilmour, UN assistant secretary-general for human rights, made the remarks in a statement on Tuesday after speaking to newly-arrived Rohingya in Bangladesh’s refugee camps on his four-day visit to Cox’s Bazar district.

“The ethnic cleansing of Rohingya from Myanmar continues. I don’t think we can draw any other conclusion from what I have seen and heard in Cox’s Bazar,” he said.

“It appears that widespread and systematic violence against the Rohingya persists,” the statement said.

His statement also said it was “inconceivable” that any Rohingya would be able to return to Myanmar in the near future, despite Myanmar’s pledges to start taking back some refugees.

“The Government of Myanmar is busy telling the world that it is ready to receive Rohingya returnees, while at the same time its forces are continuing to drive them into Bangladesh,” Gilmour said.

“Safe, dignified and sustainable returns are of course impossible under current conditions.”

“The nature of the violence has changed from the frenzied blood-letting and mass rape of last year to a lower intensity campaign of terror and forced starvation that seems to be designed to drive the remaining Rohingya from their homes and into Bangladesh.”

Persecuted community
The Rohingya, one of the most persecuted communities in the world, are not recognised as citizens of Myanmar and face widespread discrimination from the authorities.

Prior to the current exodus, tens of thousands of Rohingya have already been living as refugees in several neighbouring countries.

The plight of the Rohingya reached its peak in Myanmar six months ago when the country’s military cracked down on the minority group in Rakhine State, sparking a mass exodus.

About 700,000 Rohingya have fled over the border to Bangladesh since the violence erupted in August, bringing with them consistent testimony of murder, rape and arson by soldiers and vigilante mobs.

Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym, MSF) has estimated that at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in the first month of the crackdown alone.

Hundreds of Rohingya villages were torched, and recent satellite imagery showed at least 55 villages have since been completely bulldozed, removing all traces of buildings, wells and vegetation.

Myanmar’s military says its crackdown was needed to root out Rohingya armed rebels who attacked border police posts in August, killing about a dozen people.

In January, Myanmar and Bangladesh announced a repatriation deal, but rights groups and Rohingya have raised concerns about the agreement, saying it does not guarantee full citizenship, or safety, for those who return.