Rescue operation under way after boat overcrowded with people fleeing Myanmar violence sinks on its way to Bangladesh.

More than 500,000 ethnic Muslim-majority Rohingya have fled Myanmar since August 25 [File: Showkat Shafi/Al Jazeera]

by Al Jazeera

At least 12 Rohingya refugees, mostly children, drowned when their boat capsized on the way to Bangladesh, police said on Monday, the latest victims of violence in Myanmar that has forced more than half a million people from their homes.

Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) official Abdul Jalil told AFP news agency at least 12 bodies had been recovered after an all-night rescue operation, saying “they include 10 children, an elderly woman and a man”.

At least 13 Rohingya, including three women and two children, were rescued after scouring the estuary of the Naf river, Jalil said.

Area coastguard commander Alauddin Nayan said the boat sank in the mouth of the Naf river near Shah Porir Dwip, on the southern tip of Bangladesh, with nearly 100 people on board.

“It capsized near Galachar (a coastal village in Bangladesh) with nearly 100 people,” Nayan told AFP.

More than half a million Rohingya have emptied out of northern Rakhine and into Bangladesh since August 25, carrying stories of mass killings, gang rapes, and razing of whole villages.

Myanmar has denied allegations of ethnic cleansing, saying the military offensive was a “clearance operation” to flush out Rohingya fighters who had staged attacks on border posts in August.

More than six weeks after the violence erupted, Rohingya continue to arrive in Bangladesh.

Sunday’s incident is the latest in a series of deadly boat disasters involving Rohingya refugees.

Most recently, on September 28, a boat carrying about 80 refugees overturned. Seventeen survived, while 23 were confirmed dead and the remainder declared missing.

Myanmar considers the Rohingya illegal immigrants from Bangladesh despite the ethnic minority living there for generations.

Kazuo Ishiguro, best known for works including Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, wins prestigious prize.

by Al Jazeera

The 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro.

Born in Japan in 1954, the author’s family moved to England when he was five years old.

The writer, “in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world”, said the Nobel Prize committee in a statement on Thursday.

He is best known for the dystopian work Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, a book Ishiguro has said he wrote in just four weeks.

The 62-year-old also writes screenplays.

Ishiguro studied at the University of Kent, receiving an undergraduate degree in English and Philosophy and later received a Master’s degree from the University of East Anglia in Creative Writing.

His latest book, The Buried Giant, was published in 2015.

Social media users took to Twitter to congratulate Ishiguro on the high acclaim.

“Congrats to Kazuo Ishiguro on the Nobel! REMAINS OF THE DAY was perfect, emotionally, politically, structurally. Makes me burn with envy,” tweeted author Raj Balasubramanyam.

“Kazuo Ishiguro! The Nobel committee somewhat begins to redeem itself after last year’s blooper,” said writer and journalist Abubakar A Ibrahim, in an apparent dig at the 2016 decision to award Bob Dylan.

UN rights experts urge Myanmar to ‘vigorously prosecute cases of violence’ against Rohingya women and children.

More than 500,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh [Showkat Shafi/Al Jazeera]

by Al Jazeera

UN rights experts have warned that the violence against women and children in Rakhine State “may amount to crimes against humanity”.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Committee on the Rights of a Child called on Myanmar authorities to “promptly and effectively investigate and vigorously prosecute cases of violence against women and children” in northern Rakhine.

“We are particularly worried about the fate of Rohingya women and children subject to serious violations of their human rights, including killings, rape and forced displacement,” the committees said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Such violations may amount to crimes against humanity and we are deeply concerned at the state’s failure to put an end to these shocking human rights violations being committed at the behest of the military and other security forces, and of which women and children continue to bear the brunt.”

More than 507,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since Myanmar’s army launched a military crackdown in response to an attack by Rohingya fighters on dozens of police posts and an army base on August 25.

Rohingya who have fled have told stories of rape and other sexual abuse, indiscriminate killings and arson by Myanmar security forces.

The UN has previously called the Rohingya exodus from Myanmar to Bangladesh “the most urgent refugee crisis in the world”.

The mainly Muslim minority, who live primarily in Rakhine State, is not recognised as an ethnic group in Myanmar, despite having lived there for generations. They have been denied citizenship and are stateless.

On Monday, Bangladesh’s foreign minister said Myanmar proposed taking back Rohingya refugees who had fled to his country.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Myanmar official Kyaw Tint Swe, Bangladesh Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali said both countries agreed to form a joint working group to begin work on the massive repatriation.

No details were provided about how such repatriation will take place and rights groups fear the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya without documents will be left in limbo.

The two UN rights committees on Wednesday pointed to how the statelessness of Rohingya women and children and “their protracted displacement had exposed them to high levels of poverty and malnutrition”.

“We urged the Myanmar authorities to address the needs of internally displace Rohingya women and children, as well as Rohingya refugee women and children living in camps in neighbouring countries, with the support of the international community,” the committees said.

Three US geneticists’ discoveries identified genes that set ‘circadian clock’ which regulates sleep and eating patterns.

Young has been on Rockefeller University’s faculty in New York since 1978 [Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Three US geneticists – Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young – have been awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for shedding light on the biological clock that governs the sleep-wake cycles of most living things.

The team’s work revealed the role of genes in setting the “circadian clock” which regulates sleep and eating patterns, hormones and body temperature, the Nobel committee said in announcing the prize on Monday.

“Their discoveries explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronised with the Earth’s revolutions.”

All life on Earth is tuned to the rotation of our planet. Scientists have long known that living organisms, including humans, have an internal timekeeper that helps them anticipate and adapt to the rhythm of the day.

Hall, 72, Rosbash, 73, and Young, 68, “were able to peek inside our biological clock and elucidate its inner workings”, the jury said.

The three scientists will share the prize of nine million Swedish kronor (about $1.1m or 937,000 euros)

They identified genes that regulate the clock, and the mechanism by which light can synchronise it.

Circadian dysfunction

A disrupted circadian clock is what causes jetlag – which happens when the internal clock and external environment move out of sync as people rapidly change time zones.

The clock also regulates sleep, which is critical for normal brain function.

Circadian dysfunction has been linked to depression, bipolar disorder, cognitive function, poor memory formation and some neurological diseases.

Studies have indicated that a chronic misalignment between a person’s lifestyle and the circadian clock – when doing irregular shift work, for example – might be associated with an increased risk for neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic disorders and inflammation.

Disruptions to the circadian clock can have serious consequences ranging from impulsive behaviour to life-threatening conditions such as obesity and cancer, the experts say.

One need only to look at the poor health records of shift workers such as nurses or factory labourers.

The World Health Organization has already raised the red flag, with a 2007 report noting that “circadian disruption” is “probably carcinogenic” – which means cancer-causing.

Scientists are working hard on methods to alter the rhythm of errant clocks as a means to “improve human health”, the Nobel jury said.

The period gene

Using the fruit fly as a model organism, this year’s laureates isolated a gene that controls the daily biological rhythm, called the period gene.

“They showed that this gene encodes a protein that accumulates in the cell during the night and is then degraded during the day,” the Nobel statement said.

“Subsequently they identified additional protein components of this machinery, exposing the mechanism governing the self-sustaining clockwork inside the cell.”

When workers force themselves to stay awake, it triggers the release of stress hormones such as cortisol – the same one that rushes into your blood in a life-or-death situation.

The chemicals may keep a person awake, but there are significant side effects.

For example, cortisol works to suppress the immune system and, in the long run, can make a person more susceptible to a range of illnesses.

Such a lifestyle also opens one up to eating outside of normal times, when the body’s metabolism might be lower and the calories are more likely to be converted into fat instead of being burned up.

Even short-term disruptions of the circadian clock can wreak havoc on the human body, such as jetlag.

Flying from Paris to Los Angeles deposits travellers nine hours earlier in time, upending eating and sleeping patterns.

The results can be blunted interaction with the world and a lack of empathy, complex thinking, or even clear memories.

In such a state, people can do “overly impulsive things – jump the red traffic light and fail to see the consequences of actions”.

Curiosity for medicine

Rosbash, born in 1944 in Kansas City, Missouri, to parents who had fled Nazi Germany, received his doctoral degree in 1970 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has since 1974 been on faculty at Brandeis University, where he worked closely with Hall on his prize-winning research.

Hall had originally planned to attend medical school when he entered Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1963, but halfway through his bachelor’s degree, his curiosity for medicine was replaced by one for basic science.

He went on to earn his doctoral degree in 1971 at the University of Washington, before joining Brandeis University in 1974. He is now retired.

Young received his doctoral degree from the University of Texas in Austin in 1975 and has been on the faculty at Rockefeller University in New York since 1978.

More than 50 people killed and 400 injured after gunman opened fire on concert-goers on the popular Las Vegas Strip.

The gunman opened fire on those attending a country music concert [AP Photo/John Locher]

by Al Jazeera

At least 50 people have been killed and more than 400 injured after at least one gunman opened fire on concert-goers on the popular Las Vegas Strip in the US state of Nevada.

The mass shooting took place late on Sunday outside a building at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino during the Route 91 country festival. More than 22.000 people were in attendance at the concert.

According to the Las Vegas police, the shooter fired into the crowd from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel.

The suspected attacker was later found dead in his hotel room, a police statement said.

Cole Watson, who was at the concert with his wife and kids, said: “At first it sounded like someone was setting off a whole lot of fire crackers”.

He said when they “realised it was gunfire and everybody started running”.

“The scene was insane – it was absolute chaos,” Watson told Al Jazeera by telephone.

Wade Millward, a journalist with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, told Al Jazeera that the attack took place while country-music star Jason Aldean was performing.

“Witnesses told me they heard a sound like fireworks going off,” he said.

“Aldean played on for about thirty seconds before it dawned on everyone that this was not fireworks. Then people hit the ground and people ran.”

Watson said he saw several injured people when he and his family ran from the scene of the attack.

Another witness, Felipe Uribe, was watching the concert from the top floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel when he saw the attack take place.

“We were looking at the concert down below when we saw what appeared to be fireworks”, Uribe told Al Jazeera. “It wasn’t until later on that we realised it was actual gunshots.”

He said that people were running all over the place and “they were laying on the floor on their backs or their stomachs”.

“We didn’t know at that time the shots were coming from the hotel.”

Police later took Uribe and others he was with to a secure location where they had to wait for the situation to be cleared.

Videos posted on social media show the crowd ducking for cover as multiple shots can be heard.

“We are on lockdown now and police is going door to door checking on people,” he said.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Millward told Al Jazeera the lobby of one of the hospitals where victims were taken was packed with friends and family.

“I’ve seen people wearing bloody clothing and there is discarded bloody clothing outside.”

“There are still people walking by with blood on their shirts. There is police everywhere and there are two helicopters flying overhead.”

During a press conference, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said that at least 50 people had been killed and more 400 were injured, but added that the precise number of victims could not be given.

Two on-duty police officers were shot, one of them is still in critical condition, Lombardo said.

He also said the suspected shooter, an unnamed Las Vegas resident, was killed in a shootout with police in the hotel room where he was shot.

Lombardo added that police are still looking for a possible accomplice, who is wanted for questioning.

US President Donald Trump tweeted his “warmest condolences” to the victims of the “terrible Las Vegas shooting”.

Sunday’s attack is the deadliest mass shooting in the US since 1949.

So far in 2017, the watchdog group Gun Violence Archive has documented 273 mass shootings in the US.

The group also recorded 11,621 gun-related deaths and 23,433 firearm-related injuries during that period.

The Mandalay Bay attack comes just weeks after Spencer Hight carried out a mass shooting during a gathering at his estranged wife’s home in Plano, Texas. The assailant killed eight people and was later shot dead by police.

Ri Yong-ho, foreign minister, says ‘declaration of war’ means all options will be on the table for country’s leadership.

North Korea’s Ri told UN that targeting the US mainland with its rockets was inevitable [Eduardo Munoz/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

North Korea’s foreign minister says President Donald Trump had declared war on his country and that Pyongyang reserves the right to take countermeasures, including shooting down US bombers even if they are not in its airspace.

The increasingly heated rhetoric between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is raising fears of a risk of a miscalculation by one side or the other that could have massive repercussions.

“The whole world should clearly remember it was the US who first declared war on our country,” Ri Yong-ho said in New York City on Monday.

“Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make countermeasures, including the right to shoot down United States strategic bombers even when they are not inside the airspace border of our country.”

In a direct reference to a Twitter post by Trump on Saturday, Ri said: “The question of who won’t be around much longer will be answered then.”

US stocks fell sharply in late morning trading on Monday after Ri’s comments. The five tech companies – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet – were down between 3.7 percent and 1.05 percent.

‘Mr Evil President’

Ri told the UN General Assembly on Saturday that targeting the US mainland with its rockets was inevitable after “Mr Evil President” Trump called Kim a “rocket man” on a suicide mission.

“Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!” Trump said on Twitter on Saturday.

Al Jazeera’s Diplomatic Editor James Bays, reporting from New York, said the latest comments by Ri represent a “real ramping up” of language against the US.

“He said if US bombers were to fly near North Korea even in international waters, North Korea will shoot them down. The minister’s comments on Saturday at the UN General Assembly were a blistering attack, but he’s gone even further now.”

North Korea, which has pursued its missile and nuclear programmes in defiance of international condemnation and economic sanctions, said it “bitterly condemned the reckless remarks” of Trump.

They were an “intolerable insult to the Korean people”, and a declaration of war, North Korea’s official news agency said on Monday.

Pyongyang accuses Washington, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, of planning to invade and regularly threatens to destroy it and its Asian allies.

The US and South Korea are technically still at war with North Korea because the 1950s conflict ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.

Kim’s broadside

In a rare direct statement on Friday, Kim described Trump as a “mentally deranged US dotard” whom he would tame with fire.

Kim said North Korea would consider the “highest level of hardline countermeasure in history” against the US and that Trump’s comments had confirmed his nuclear programme was “the correct path”.

Trump threatened in his maiden UN address last Tuesday to “totally destroy” North Korea if it threatened the US or its allies.

For its part, China called on Monday for all sides in the North Korea missile crisis to show restraint and not “add oil to the flames”.

Asked how concerned China was the war of words between Trump and North Korea could get out of control, Lu Kang, China’s foreign ministry spokesman, described the situation as highly complex and sensitive.

It was vitally important that everyone strictly, fully and correctly implemented all North Korea related UN resolutions, Lu said, resolutions which call for both tighter sanctions and efforts to resume dialogue.

All sides should “not further irritate each other and add oil to the flames of the tense situation on the peninsula at present”, Lu told a daily news briefing.

“We hope all sides do not continue doing things to irritate each other and should instead exercise restraint.”

Hydrogen bomb threat

North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear bomb test on September 3. Pyongyang said on Friday it might test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.

While China has been angered by North Korea’s repeated nuclear and missile tests, it has also called for the US and its allies to help lessen tension by scaling back their military drills.

US Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers escorted by fighters flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday in a show of force the Pentagon said indicated the range of military options available to Trump.

In response to a question about the exercises, Chinese spokesman Lu said: “A continued rise in tensions on the peninsula, I believe, is not in the interests of any side.”

Wang Jingdong, president of the world’s largest lender Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), said during a briefing the bank would “strictly implement UN Security Council decisions related to North Korea and carefully fulfil relevant international responsibility”.

Critics have accused the president of discriminating against Muslims in violation of US guarantees of religious liberty.

The Trump administration has replaced its travel ban with new restrictions on eight nations [Chris Carlson/AP]

by Al Jazeera

President Donald Trump slapped new travel restrictions on citizens from North Korea, Venezuela and Chad, expanding the list of countries covered by his original travel bans that have been derided by critics as targeting Muslims.

Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia were left on the list of affected countries in a new proclamation issued by the president on Sunday. Restrictions on citizens from Sudan were lifted.

“We cannot afford to continue the failed policies of the past, which present an unacceptable danger to our country,” Trump said in statement. “My highest obligation is to ensure the safety and security of the American people, and in issuing this new travel order, I am fulfilling that sacred obligation.”

Iraqi citizens will not be subject to travel prohibitions but will face enhanced scrutiny or vetting.

The current ban, enacted in March, was set to expire on Sunday evening.

The new restrictions, slated to take effect on October 18, resulted from a review after Trump’s original travel bans sparked international outrage and legal challenges.

Unlike the first ban – which sparked chaos at airports across the country – officials said they had been working for months on the new rules, in collaboration with various agencies and in conversation with foreign governments.

The addition of North Korea and Venezuela broadens the restrictions from the original, mostly Muslim-majority list.

Critics have accused the president of discriminating against Muslims in violation of constitutional guarantees of religious liberty and equal protection under the law, breaking existing US immigration law and stoking religious hatred.

Trump had called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” during his election campaign.

Speaking on background, government officials said the addition of North Korea and Venezuela demonstrated the measure was set on the basis of security and was not a “Muslim ban”, as detractors have argued.

“Religion, or the religious origin of individuals or nations, was not a factor,” a senior government official told reporters.

“The inclusion of those countries, Venezuela and North Korea, was about the fact that those governments are simply not compliant with our basic security requirements.”

Rights group Amnesty International USA condemned the new measures.

“Just because the original ban was especially outrageous does not mean we should stand for yet another version of government-sanctioned discrimination,” it said in a statement. “It is senseless and cruel to ban whole nationalities of people who are often fleeing the very same violence that the US government wishes to keep out. This must not be normalised.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement the addition of North Korea and Venezuela “doesn’t obfuscate the real fact that the administration’s order is still a Muslim ban”.

The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) denounced the new proclamation as “nothing but an extension of the same discrimatory policy first rolled out in January”.

“The Trump administration has now taken steps to make its Muslim ban targeting Iranians and other nationals permanent,” NIAC said in statement.

“Absent additional intervention from the courts, and a long-overdue intervention from the Republican-controlled Congress, the Trump administration will cement a racist and discriminatory campaign promise into official US policy.”

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on October 10 on whether the current ban discriminates against Muslims in violation of the US Constitution, as lower courts previously ruled.

Now the nine-justice court could skip deciding the case altogether, legal experts said.

With the travel restrictions expiring, the court has an easy way out because it could simply say the case is no longer a live issue and therefore, in legal parlance, moot.

“If the court can avoid entering into the fray, that may be appealing to them,” said Anil Kalhan, an immigration law professor at Drexel University School of Law.

Mob in Myanmar blocks relief supplies while fatal road accident hits truck carrying food to refugees in Bangladesh.

Rohingya refugees wait for aid in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh [Danish Siddiqui/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Police in Myanmar have clashed with a mob blocking an aid shipment in Rakhine state while nine people have died in a road accident involving a Red Cross truck in Bangladesh.

Wednesday’s developments hamper urgently needed relief efforts for Rohingya Muslims who have fled violence in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

A 300-strong Buddhist mob in Rakhine’s capital Sittwe gathered late on Wednesday at a jetty where a boat carrying relief goods was preparing to travel up river to Maungdaw, Reuters news agency said.

The mob forced the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) to unload the aid from the boat and prevented the vessel from leaving, state-backed Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported on Thursday, quoting Myanmar’s Information Committee.

Police officers arrived as the crowd neared the jetty, while Buddhist monks also tried to calm the mob, but people began to hurl “stones and Molotov [cocktails] at the riot police,” the report said.

Eight people were detained and several police were injured before order was restored.

The ICRC confirmed the incident and said it would continue to try and deliver relief to the area.

“We will carry on, nothing has been put on hold,” Graziella Leite Piccoli, ICRC spokeswoman for Asia, told AFP news agency.

Communal tensions remain high across Rakhine where raids by Rohingya fighters at the end of last month prompted a major army crackdown, driving more than 420,000 people into Bangladesh in what the UN calls a campaign of “ethnic cleansing”.

Aid groups fear that tens of thousands trapped in Rakhine are desperate for support, even though humanitarian access remains difficult despite the government’s promise to allow safe passage.

The crisis has prompted condemnation of the country’s de-facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, for refusing to blame Myanmar’s powerful military for the crackdown, which French President Emmanuel Macron said amounted to “genocide”.

News of the clashes in Rakhine, where security forces have been accused of razing scores of Rohingya villages, emerged as a truck hired by the Red Cross and ICRC crashed in Bangladesh, killing nine people and injuring 10 others.

“It was carrying food to Rohingya refugees on the border, including those stranded in the no-man’s land,” Yasir Arafat, deputy police chief of Bandarban border district, told AFP.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have streamed into Bangladesh since the end of August, cramming into ill-equipped camps and makeshift shelters near the border town of Cox’s Bazar.

Aid groups have been overwhelmed by the scope of the influx and warned of an unfolding humanitarian crisis in the camps, where they are struggling to build housing and provide food rations.

The Bangladesh government is building a massive new camp nearby to shelter 400,000 people, but the UN says it will take time before it is equipped with tents, toilets and medical facilities.

Myanmar’s government has come under fire by global leaders urging the country to address the crisis and condemn the military for attacks on the Rohingya, who are widely reviled as “Bengali” immigrants in Myanmar.

But Myanmar, which has been accused of playing down the violence, is insisting the crisis was easing.

“I am happy to inform you that the situation has improved,” Henry Van Thio, Myanmar’s second vice president, told the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.

He said there have been no clashes since September 5 and added that his government was committed to allowing aid in.

“Humanitarian assistance is our first priority. We are committed to ensuring that aid is received by all those in need, without discrimination,” he said.

There were more than one million Rohingyas in Myanmar before the current crisis, though nearly half have fled since the deadly attacks on military posts by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) fighters on August 25.

They have long been ostracised in Myanmar, where they are considered “illegal immigrants” and face severe restrictions.