NGO rescue ship with 800 migrants aboard asks Italy for safe port
Updated 05 November 2021
Reuters
ROME: German rescue charity Sea-Eye said on Thursday it had asked Italy for a safe port to disembark about 800 migrants it rescued from boats in distress in the central Mediterranean.
The charity vessel SEA-EYE 4 took onboard another 400 people from a wooden boat on Wednesday night in a seventh rescue operation since it set sail in mid-October, bringing the total to around 800, Sea-Eye said.
It said Rise Above, another rescue ship operated by NGO Mission Lifeline, reached the split-level wooden boat first and discovered several migrants in the water without life jackets, at least one of whom had to be resuscitated in a lifeboat.
SEA-EYE 4 — a larger vessel — arrived shortly after and took all the migrants onboard.
“A state of emergency is now in effect on the SEA-EYE 4. Any delay by the authorities (on port access) endangers the health and lives of the rescued people and our crew,” Sea-Eye said.
“Sea-Eye has already asked the rescue coordination center in Rome for the assignment of a safe port and the German Foreign Office for urgent assistance,” it added.
FASTFACT
Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese reiterated Italy’s frequent calls for other countries to share responsibility for migrants crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa.
Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese reiterated Italy’s frequent calls for other countries to share responsibility for migrants crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa.
“These people have to be rescued but it is enormously unfair that it should only be Italy (just) because it’s the country of first landing in Europe,” she said at the presentation of a protocol to help Afghan refugees.
The EU has tightened asylum rules and its external borders since more than a million refugees and migrants reached Europe across the Mediterranean six years ago, and it has cut deals with countries such as Turkey and Libya for people to stay elsewhere along the global routes.
Sea-Eye said its ship was now heading to Italy’s far southern island of Lampedusa as it awaits assignment to a safe port. Lampedusa is one of the main landing points for people trying to get into Europe from Africa.
So far this year, 53,836 migrants have arrived in Italy, according to interior ministry data, up from 29,267 in the same period last year.
India police volunteer convicted of shocking rape, murder of junior doctor in Kolkata
Updated 18 January 2025
Reuters
KOLKATA: An Indian police volunteer was convicted on Saturday of the rape and murder of a junior doctor at a hospital in the eastern city Kolkata, in the speedy trial of a crime that sparked national outrage over a lack of safety for women.
The woman’s body was found in a classroom at the state-run R G Kar Medical College and Hospital on Aug. 9. Other doctors stayed off work for weeks to demand justice for her and better security at public hospitals.
Defendant Sanjay Roy said in November he was “completely innocent” and was being framed. He reiterated this in court on Saturday, saying, “I have not done this.”
Roy’s lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment on the verdict. They had argued there were glaring discrepancies in the investigation and forensic examination reports.
Judge Anirban Das said circumstantial evidence had proved the charges against Roy and that the sentence, to be announced on Monday, would range from life in prison to the death penalty.
“Your guilt is proved. You are being convicted,” the judge said.
The parents of the victim, who cannot be named under Indian law, expressed dissatisfaction with the probe, saying the crime could not have been committed by just one person.
“Our daughter could not have met such a horrific end by a single man,” her father said. “We will remain in pain and agony until all the culprits are punished.”
India’s federal police, who investigated the case, described the crime as “rarest of rare” during the trial and sought the death penalty for Roy.
Several doctors chanted slogans in solidarity with the victim outside the court. Dr. Aniket Mahato, a spokesperson for the junior doctors, said street protests would continue “until justice is done.”
More than 200 armed police personnel were deployed in anticipation of the verdict as Roy was brought to court in a police car.
The investigation cited 128 witnesses, of whom 51 were examined during the trial, which that began on Nov. 11 and was fast-tracked to conclude swiftly, according to court sources.
Police also charged the officer heading the local police station at the time of the crime and the then-head of the hospital with destruction of the crime scene and tampering with evidence.
The police officer is out on bail while the former head of the hospital remains in detention in connection with a separate case of financial irregularities at the hospital.
India police volunteer convicted of rape, murder of junior doctor in Kolkata
Doctors stayed off work for weeks to demand justice for victim and better security at public hospitals
Defendant Sanjay Roy said in November he was ‘completely innocent’ and was being framed
Updated 18 January 2025
Reuters
KOLKATA, India: An Indian police volunteer was convicted on Saturday of the rape and murder of a junior doctor at a hospital in the eastern city Kolkata, in the speedy trial of a crime that sparked national outrage over a lack of safety for women.
The woman’s body was found in a classroom at the state-run R G Kar Medical College and Hospital on Aug. 9. Other doctors stayed off work for weeks to demand justice for her and better security at public hospitals.
Defendant Sanjay Roy said in November he was “completely innocent” and was being framed.
Roy’s lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment on the verdict. They had argued there were glaring discrepancies in the investigation and forensic examination reports.
Judge Anirban Das said the sentence, to be announced on Monday, would range from life in prison to the death penalty.
The parents of the victim, who cannot be named under Indian law, expressed dissatisfaction with the probe, saying the crime could not have been committed by just one person.
“Our daughter could not have met such a horrific end by a single man,” her father said. “We will remain in pain and agony until all the culprits are punished.”
India’s federal police, who investigated the case, described the crime as “rarest of rare” during the trial and sought the death penalty for Roy.
Several doctors chanted slogans in solidarity with the victim outside the court. Dr. Aniket Mahato, a spokesperson for the junior doctors, said street protests would continue “until justice is done.”
More than 200 armed police personnel were deployed in anticipation of the verdict as Roy was brought to court in a police car.
The investigation cited 128 witnesses, of whom 51 were examined during the trial, which that began on Nov. 11 and was fast-tracked to conclude swiftly, according to court sources.
Police also charged the officer heading the local police station at the time of the crime and the then-head of the hospital with destruction of the crime scene and tampering with evidence.
The police officer is out on bail while the former head of the hospital remains in detention in connection with a separate case of financial irregularities at the hospital.
The attack came as Kyiv has upped its aerial attacks on Russian energy and military facilities
Updated 18 January 2025
AFP
KYIV: A Russian attack has killed four people and injured three in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, the city’s military administration said Saturday.
“We already have four dead in Shevchenkivsky district,” said Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, in a Telegram post, adding that three people were injured.
Hours earlier, Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko warned of a “ballistic missile threat” against the capital and said the city’s air defense was activated.
He later said a building in Shevchenkivsky district had its windows broken, with smoke coming from it, while a water pipeline in the area was damaged.
In addition, a metro station near the city’s center also suffered damage and was temporarily closed, with Kyiv’s trains bypassing that stop, Klitschko said.
The attack – a rare strike on the heart of the Ukrainian capital – came as Kyiv has upped its aerial attacks on Russian energy and military facilities in recent months.
Kyiv’s army has hit several Russian oil depots recently, including two major strikes on a facility near a military airfield in Russia’s Saratov region that triggered days-long blazes.
Also on Saturday, Russian forces “attacked the center” of Zaporizhzhia, injuring two people, according to local governor Ivan Fedorov. An administrative building of an industrial facility was partially damaged, he said.
India uses AI to avoid stampedes at gathering of 400 million pilgrims
Deadly crowd crushes are a notorious feature of Indian religious festivals
Kumbh Mela, with unfathomable throngs, has grim track record of stampedes
Updated 18 January 2025
AFP
PRAYAGRAJ: Keen to improve India’s abysmal crowd management record at large-scale religious events, organizers of the world’s largest human gathering are using artificial intelligence to try to prevent stampedes.
Organizers predict up to 400 million pilgrims will visit the Kumbh Mela, a millennia-old sacred show of Hindu piety and ritual bathing that began Monday and runs for six weeks.
Deadly crowd crushes are a notorious feature of Indian religious festivals, and the Kumbh Mela, with its unfathomable throngs of devotees, has a grim track record of stampedes.
“We want everyone to go back home happily after having fulfilled their spiritual duties,” Amit Kumar, a senior police officer heading tech operations in the festival, told AFP.
Pilgrims arrive at Sangam, the confluence of Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers, to take part in Shahi Snan or ‘royal bath’, to mark the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj, India on January 14, 2025 (AFP/File)
“AI is helping us avoid reaching that critical mass in sensitive places.”
More than 400 people died after being trampled or drowned at the Kumbh Mela on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.
Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in the northern city of Prayagraj.
But this time, authorities say the technology they have deployed will help them gather accurate estimates of crowd sizes, allowing them to be better prepared for potential trouble.
Police say they have installed around 300 cameras at the festival site and on roads leading to the sprawling encampment, mounted on poles and a fleet of overhead drones.
An engineer checks a drone equipped with artificial intelligence (AI), which enables the state police to surveil the crowd during the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj, India, on January 17, 2025. (AFP)
Not far from the spiritual center of the festival at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, the network is overseen in a glass-panelled command and control room by a small army of police officers and technicians.
“We can look at the entire Kumbh Mela from here,” said Kumar. “There are camera angles where we cannot even see complete bodies and we have to count using heads or torsos.”
Kumar said the footage fed into an AI algorithm that gives its handlers an overall estimate of a crowd stretching for miles in every direction, cross-checked against data from railways and bus operators.
“We are using AI to track people flow, crowd density at various inlets, adding them up and then interpolating from there,” he added.
A state police drone operator looks at footage taken with a drone to monitor the crowd during the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj, India, on January 17, 2025. (AFP)
The system sounds the alarm if sections of the crowd get so concentrated that they pose a safety threat.
The Kumbh Mela is rooted in Hindu mythology, a battle between deities and demons for control of a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality.
Organizers say the scale of this year’s festival is that of a temporary country — with numbers expected to total around the combined populations of the United States and Canada.
Some six million devotees took a dip in the river on the first morning of the festival, according to official estimates.
With a congregation that size, Kumar said that some degree of crowd crush is inevitable.
“The personal bubble of an individual is quite big in the West,” said Kumar, explaining how the critical threshold at which AI crowd control systems ring the alarm is higher than in other countries using similar crowd management systems.
“The standard there is three people per square foot,” he added. “But we can afford to go several times higher than that.”
This satellite image taken and released by Maxar Technologies on January 17, 2025, shows an overview of the Maha Kumbh Mela along the banks of Sangam, the confluence of Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers, during the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj, India.
Organizers have been eager to tout the technological advancements of this year’s edition of the Kumbh Mela and their attendant benefits for pilgrims.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, a devout Hindu monk whose government is responsible for organizing the festival, has described it as an event “at the confluence of faith and modernity.”
“The fact that there are cameras and drones makes us feel safe,” 28-year-old automotive engineer Harshit Joshi, one of the millions of pilgrims to arrive for the start of the festival, told AFP.
Impeached South Korean president arrives for arrest warrant hearing
Yoon Suk Yeol threw the nation into chaos on Dec. 3 when he attempted to suspend civilian rule
Embattled president’s martial law bid lasted just six hours, with lawmakers voting it down
Updated 18 January 2025
AFP
SEOUL: Impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol arrived at court for the first time Saturday to attend a hearing that will decide whether to extend his detention as investigators probe his failed martial law bid.
Yoon, who has claimed his arrest is illegal, threw the nation into chaos on December 3 when he attempted to suspend civilian rule, citing the need to combat threats from “anti-state elements.”
Yoon’s die-hard supporters gathered outside the court building Saturday, even trying to surround the blue van carrying the suspended leader.
Yoon’s martial law bid lasted just six hours, with lawmakers voting it down despite the president ordering soldiers to storm parliament to stop them.
Yoon was subsequently impeached by parliament and resisted arrest for weeks, holed up in his guarded residence until he was finally detained Wednesday in a dawn raid.
South Korea’s first sitting president to be detained, Yoon has refused to cooperate during the initial 48 hours detectives were allowed to hold him.
But the disgraced president remains in custody after investigators requested a new warrant Friday to extend his detention.
A judge at Seoul Western District Court was set to review the request at a 2:00 p.m. (0500 GMT) hearing, with her decision expected Saturday night or early Sunday.
Before the hearing, Yoon’s lawyer Yoon Kab-keun said the president would attend “with the intention of restoring his honor.”
If approved, the new warrant would likely extend Yoon’s detention by 20 days, giving prosecutors time to formalize an indictment.
The Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) is probing Yoon for insurrection, a charge that could see him jailed for life or executed if found guilty.
Yoon said Wednesday he had agreed to leave his compound to avoid “bloodshed,” but that he did not accept the legality of the investigation.
His supporters have gathered in front of the court since Friday, holding South Korean and American flags and demanding judges dismiss the request to extend the president’s detention.
The court closed its entrance to the public Friday evening, citing safety concerns.
Yoon has refused to answer investigators’ questions, with his legal team saying the president explained his position when detained on Wednesday.
The president has also been absent from a parallel probe at the Constitutional Court, which is mulling whether to uphold his impeachment.
If the court rules against Yoon, he will lose the presidency and elections will be called within 60 days.
He did not attend the first two hearings this week, but the trial, which could last months, will continue in his absence.
Although Yoon won the presidential election in 2022, the opposition Democratic Party has a majority in parliament after winning legislative polls last year.
The Democratic Party has celebrated the president’s arrest, with a top official calling it “the first step” to restoring constitutional and legal order.
As challenges against the embattled leader mount, parliament passed a bill late Friday to launch a special counsel probe into Yoon over his failed martial law bid.
