YANGON: A UN visit to Myanmar’s conflict-battered Rakhine state was postponed Thursday, thwarting efforts to reach the epicenter of violence for the first time since the start of a massive exodus of minority Rohingya Muslims.
The United Nations has urged Myanmar to allow humanitarian access to northern parts of Rakhine state since violence erupted in late August, forcing around 480,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee.
On Wednesday the UN said it had been told its representatives could join a government-steered trip to the area on Thursday — but the visit did not take place.
“The government-organized visit was postponed to next week because of weather conditions,” a spokesman from the Office of the UN Resident Coordinator in Myanmar said, without giving further details.
Access to the area by relief agencies and global media has been heavily controlled by Myanmar’s army and government.
That has made it impossible to independently assess the humanitarian situation or allegations of widespread abuses.
Rohingya refugees who have made it to Bangladesh have brought with them multiple accounts of murder and systematic arson of their villages by Myanmar soldiers and mobs of ethnic Rakhine, who are Buddhists.
International aid groups fear tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who remain in northern parts of Rakhine are in urgent need of food, medicine and shelter after over a month of military operations.
But foreign aid agencies are receiving hostility across Myanmar — and inside Rakhine in particular — accused by many in the Buddhist-majority country of harboring a pro-Rohingya bias.
Myanmar had around 1.1 million Rohingya before August 25 attacks by militants from the minority group sparked a massive security crackdown.
The number has halved since then.
Rakhine has long been a cauldron of ethnic and religious tensions, but the last five years has seen communal relations plunge to their worst yet.
The UN Security Council is due to meet on the crisis later Thursday.
UN visit to Myanmar's Rakhine state thwarted by 'bad weather'
UN visit to Myanmar's Rakhine state thwarted by 'bad weather'
Ketamine ‘epidemic’ among UK youth raises alarm
- The first time Barney Casserly used ketamine at a UK music festival he thought he had found “nirvana“
“I would never, ever have imagined that this would happen to us as a family,” said his mother, Deborah Casserly, still grieving for Barney who died in April 2018, aged 21.
Ketamine, an affordable recreational drug that induces a sense of detachment from reality, has reached unprecedented levels of popularity among young people in the UK, with some experts even calling it an “epidemic.”
The extent of the crisis prompted the government in January to seek advice from an official advisory body on whether to reclassify ketamine as a Class A substance.
That would bring it in line with other drugs such as heroin, cocaine and ecstasy, meaning supplying ketamine could carry terms of up to life imprisonment.
In the consulting room of doctor Niall Campbell, a leading specialist in addiction treatment at Priory Hospital, Roehampton, Casserly, 64, showed pictures of her son — a smiling young man with dark hair and bright eyes.
Tearfully, she recalled how her son’s life fell apart as his ketamine addiction took hold.
Barney was just 16 when he went to the Reading music festival in southern England and used ketamine for the first time, writing about it in ecstatic terms in his journal.
But he swiftly became addicted to the drug, a white crystalline powder that is crushed and then sniffed. Alternatively it can be swallowed in liquid form.
“His usage moved from being used in a party context to being used at home alone... a tragic, sad, desperately lonely experience,” said his mother.
His family sent him to private rehabs but he relapsed, would use every day, and was in an “excruciating amount of pain.”
“He would spend long parts of the day in the bath, in hot water... because the cramps were so bad. He was not able to sleep properly at night because he was constantly getting up to urinate,” said his mother.
Barney suffered from ulcerative cystitis, also known as “ketamine bladder,” which is when “the breakdown products of ketamine basically cause the bladder to rot,” said Campbell.
“Mum, if this is living, I don’t want it,” said Barney on April 7, 2018. The next morning his mother found him dead in his bed.
An anaesthetic drug invented in 1962, ketamine is used for both human and veterinary medicine often as a horse tranquillizer.
“Some people love that dissociative, detached from reality, kind of effect” the drug brings, said Campbell.
Users “go right down into what we call a K hole, which is just to the point of collapsing and being unconscious.”
In the year ending March 2024, an estimated 269,000 people aged 16 to 59 had reported using ketamine, a government minister said.
And among young people aged 16-24 “the misuse of ketamine... has grown in the last decade” by 231 percent, said junior interior minister Diana Johnson, in her letter asking for advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.
There were 53 deaths in England and Wales in 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics.
“It’s really commonplace now, it’s everywhere,” said Laiden, a London drug dealer using an assumed name.
“It’s a cheap drug with a strong effect on people and people aren’t concerned about selling it to youngsters,” added Laiden.
Ketamine costs between £20 and £30 ($27.50 and $41) a gram while cocaine, which remains his top seller, is around £100 a gram, he said.
“This epidemic is having a huge effect on the nation,” said Campbell.
Ketamine is very addictive and “by the time they get to see us, the party’s over. They’re not out in the nightclubs. They’re sitting on their own at home, secretly doing this stuff, killing themselves,” he added.
But others argue that ketamine can have healing benefits.
Married therapists Lucy and Alex da Silva run a psychedelic therapy wellness center in London, and use ketamine prescribed by doctors in lozenge form to treat depression and trauma.
“We want people to see what the healing benefits of ketamine, when it’s controlled in the right way, can do,” said Lucy da Silva.
But she agreed there was “a need for education around the dangers of street ketamine and the lives that it’s taking.”
Renters struggle to survive in Portugal housing crisis
- Housing prices in Portugal have jumped 124 percent since 2015, well above the EU average of 53 percent, according to Eurostat
- The current government has made tackling the crisis a priority
LISBON: With sky-high rents beyond his modest pension, Antonio Lemos has no choice but to live in an abandoned house in Lisbon without electricity or running water as Portugal’s perennial housing crisis spirals.
The former kitchen assistant, 80, has never found a stable home since foreign investors bought his apartment and has placed his hopes on a charitable institution to find a solution.
“How can you pay a rent of 400 or 500 euros for a room?,” asked Lemos, whose monthly pension barely amounts to 500 euros ($580). “Age is catching up, and I’m scared.”
Successive governments of all political stripes have tried and failed to solve the problem, according to Luis Mendes, a researcher at the University of Lisbon’s Institute for Geography and Territorial Organization.
“Year after year, real estate breaks new records,” Mendes told AFP.
The market spike began during the eurozone financial crisis in 2011, when the country attempted to resuscitate its stricken economy by attracting foreign capital through so-called “golden visas.”
The scheme offered visas to foreigners who invested in real estate and tax advantages to retirees or globe-trotting digital nomads but is viewed as having contributed to the problem.
Housing prices in Portugal have jumped 124 percent since 2015, well above the EU average of 53 percent, according to Eurostat.
The current center-right government has made tackling the crisis a priority, but in the first three months of 2025 prices spiked by more than 16 percent, according to the Portuguese national statistics institute.
Falling interest rates and public guarantees for young people’s mortgages, a measure introduced by the government last year, has driven the latest increase.
A group campaigning for the right to housing has called for protests this weekend in a dozen cities.
Similar to neighboring Spain, public housing only represents two percent of households and many properties are converted into short-term holiday lets in the popular tourist destination.
Renters like Carlos are bearing the brunt.
The municipal gardener, who declined to give his surname, has been living for five years in a freight container surrounded by building sites in the Portuguese capital.
A basic mattress, a handful of personal belongings and some birds in a cage to keep him company make up the interior of his humble abode.
The 55-year-old used to live with his mother, but after her death the lease was canceled and he found himself homeless overnight.
“I have found nothing at less than 800 euros. To have a salary and not be able to pay rent is unacceptable!” Carlos, whose income reaches around 1,000 euros, told AFP.
In a country where more than 70 percent of the population own their home, the new center-right government that emerged victorious from May’s snap election intends to build almost 60,000 new social homes.
It also plans to simplify public aid for renters, convert vacant public buildings and offer fiscal advantages in a bid to accelerate renovation and construction.
But for Mendes, “it is not with more homes that this crisis will be solved” because it risks “overheating the market.”
The Lisbon renters’ association has criticized “the illusion of supply as the only solution” and singled out a “lack of regulation and political courage.”
The European Commission has suggested Portugal regulate rents to protect the most affected groups of people or introduce more controls for short-term tourist lets.
Trump says US has signed a deal with China on trade, without giving details
BANGKOK: The US and China have signed an agreement on trade, President Donald Trump said, adding he expects to soon have a deal with India.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg TV that the deal was signed earlier this week. Neither Lutnick nor Trump provided any details about the agreement.
“We just signed with China the other day,” Trump said late Thursday.
Lutnick said the deal was “signed and sealed” two days earlier.
It follows initial talks in Geneva in early May that led both sides to postpone massive tariff hikes that were threatening to freeze much trade between the two countries. Later talks in London set a framework for negotiations and the deal mentioned by Trump appeared to formalize that agreement.
“The president likes to close these deals himself. He’s the dealmaker. We’re going to have deal after deal,” Lutnick said.
China has not announced any new agreements, but it announced earlier this week that it was speeding up approvals of exports of rare earths, materials used in high-tech products such as electric vehicles. Beijing’s limits on exports of rare earths have been a key point of contention.
The Chinese Commerce Ministry said Thursday that Beijing was accelerating review of export license applications for rare earths and had approved “a certain number of compliant applications.”
Bangladesh pushes solar to tackle energy woes
- The South Asian nation of 170 million people has set itself a target of generating 20 percent of its power from renewable energy by 2030
DHAKA: Bangladesh’s caretaker leader has ordered all government institutions including ministry buildings and schools to install solar panels to ease chronic power problems in a country regularly hit by deadly heatwaves.
The South Asian nation of 170 million people has set itself a target of generating 20 percent of its power from renewable energy by 2030 — a four-fold increase — and rising to 30 percent by 2040, the government said in a statement.
“Bangladesh is lagging far behind its neighboring countries,” the statement issued by the office of interim leader Muhammad Yunus read.
“Only 5.6 percent of our total requirement is currently met from renewable sources,” it added, noting that in neighboring India, it is 24 percent and in Sri Lanka, nearly 40 percent.
The government’s rooftop solar program will see all government offices, schools, colleges and hospitals installed with panels immediately, the statement issued late Thursday said.
The micro-finance pioneer said the panels would be installed and operated by private sector companies, unlike the largely failed push by since-ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina to install panels by using government power agencies.
“The private sector will handle overall maintenance and keep the systems operational for their own business interests,” the statement said.
“The government will only provide them with rooftop access.”
The government has also initiated tender processes for 55 solar power plants with a total 5,238 megawatts capacity.
Bangladesh relies heavily on importing cross-border power from neighboring India, as well from Nepal, especially when demand soars during the blistering heat when consumers rely on energy-hungry air conditioners to keep cool.
Dhaka also began construction of the Russia-backed nuclear plant at Rooppur in 2017.
The much-delayed 2,400-megawatt project will be Bangladesh’s largest power station by generating capacity once fully operational.
Brazil’s outspoken first lady is coming under fire, but she refuses to stop speaking out
- Lula’s government is grappling with unpopularity, some analysts including members of his government, attribute this partly to his wife’s perceived overstepping in what was once a ceremonial role
SAO PAULO: In early May, an air of triumph filled a dinner in Beijing, where Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva celebrated a diplomatic victory: businessmen traveling with him said they had secured billions of dollars in investments as the veteran leader renewed his international prestige standing alongside his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
But then Brazilian first lady Rosângela da Silva, better known as Janja, raised her hand.
Although no one was expected to speak, da Silva addressed Xi, saying that Chinese social media company TikTok posed a challenge for leftists, claiming its algorithm favors right-wingers. China’s president reportedly answered. The exchange was leaked to Brazilian media by the time dessert was served.
Lula’s government is grappling with unpopularity that has dented his credentials as the frontrunner for reelection next year. Some analysts, including members of his government, attribute this partly to his wife’s perceived overstepping in what was once a ceremonial role.
Janja, a 58-year-old sociologist, has drawn criticism for insulting tech billionaire Elon Musk, mocking the suicide of a pro-Jair Bolsonaro supporter and advising the president on how to use the military during the Jan. 8, 2023 riots in the capital, Brasilia. Still, she insists she will speak out whenever it serves the public interest.
A Datafolha poll released June 12 found that 36 percent of Brazilians think the first lady’s actions hurt the government, while 14 percent say they are helpful. It was the pollster’s first measure of the first lady’s approval.
The same poll showed Lula with a 40 percent job disapproval rating, an 8 percentage point increase from October 2024.
Brazil’s presidency said in a statement to The Associated Press on June 20 that da Silva adheres to the solicitor-general’s office guidelines, adding that she “acts as a citizen, combining her public visibility with the experience she has built throughout her professional career in support of relevant social issues and matters of public interest.”
‘Undue interference’
Under guidelines published by the solicitor-general’s office, the president’s spouse primarily fulfills “a symbolically representative role on behalf of the president in a social, cultural, ceremonial, political or diplomatic nature.” For many of her critics, this does not grant her the authority to speak as a government representative.
Brazilian media have reported that government ministers, lawmakers and staunch leftist campaigners are privately raising concerns about the first lady being a hindrance more than an asset. These worries have skyrocketed since the incident in China — even as Lula himself has praised his wife for speaking out.
“It looks like Brazil is governed by a couple,” said Beatriz Rey, a political science postdoctoral and research fellow at the University of Lisbon. “When (the first lady) says there won’t be any protocols to silence her, she disrespects our democratic institutions for she has no elected office, no government position. It is not about being a woman or a feminist. It is undue interference.”
‘Present and vocal’
Lula’s first wife, Maria de Lourdes, died in 1971. His second, Marisa Letícia, died in 2017. Lula, 79, and Janja said they met in 2017 and started seeing each other frequently during the leftist leader’s 580 days in jail in the city of Curitiba between 2018 and 2019. They married in 2022.
Many supporters of Lula’s Workers’ Party partly attribute the criticism against the first lady to misinformation and disinformation. In May, the party launched the “I am with Janja” social media campaign in her defense. But the week-long effort garnered less than 100,000 views and only a few hundred comments.
“Janja is an asset because she rejuvenates Lula, everyone in the government understands that, even her critics,” a Brazilian government source told the AP. “No one wants to alienate her. But many important people in Brasilia, friends and allies of Lula, do understand that by overstepping she brings some of her rejection to the president.”
The source, who spoke under condition of anonymity for lack of authorization to speak about the matter publicly, often travels with the president and the first lady.
Adriana Negreiros, a journalist who profiled the first lady for a 2024 podcast titled “Janja,” said that allies of the president who criticize her do it with extreme caution.
”(Janja) dances, sings, speaks out, appears at official events and meetings with heads of state. She insists on being present and vocal,” Negreiros said. “There’s a lot of sexism and misogyny directed at her, no doubt. But not all criticism is sexist.”
‘She will say what she wants’
Da Silva said she doesn’t go to dinners “just to accompany” her husband.
“I have common sense. I consider myself an intelligent person. So I know very well what my limits are. I’m fully aware of that,” she told a podcast of daily Folha de S. Paulo.
Da Silva did, however, express remorse during the same podcast for the expletive she used against Musk in 2024, once a close ally of US President Donald Trump.
Many of Lula’s adversaries say they want the first lady to remain in the spotlight.
“The more she speaks, the more she holds a microphone, the more she helps the right wing,” said Nikolas Ferreira, one of Brazil’s most popular right-wing lawmakers.
Ferreira, a prominent social media figure, claims the role of regulating social media is a matter for Brazil’s Congress, not for the first lady to debate with foreign leaders like Xi.
Da Silva is also expected to play as a keen hostess at the BRICS summit in Rio on July 6-7, a role her husband is almost certain not to oppose.
“She will be wherever she wants,” Lula told journalists in March following criticism for sending the first lady as his representative to a nutrition summit in Paris that month.
“She will say what she wants and go wherever she wants.”
