At least 15 Rohingya refugees drown after boat sinks off Bangladesh

Saint Martin's Island, Feb 12: At least 15 women and children drowned and more than 50 others were missing after a boat overloaded with Rohingya refugees sank off southern Bangladesh as it tried to reach Malaysia Tuesday, officials said.

Some 138 people -- mainly women and children -- were packed on a trawler barely 13 metres (40 feet) long, trying to cross the Bay of Bengal, a coast guard spokesman told news agency.

"It sank because of overloading. The boat was meant to carry maximum 50 people. The boat was also loaded with some cargo," another coast guard spokesman, Hamidul Islam, added.

Nearly one million Rohingya live in squalid camps near Bangladesh's border with Myanmar, many fleeing the neighbouring country after a 2017 brutal military crackdown.

With few opportunities for jobs and education in the camps, thousands have tried to reach other countries like Malaysia and Thailand by attempting the hazardous 2,000-kilometre journey.

In the latest incident, 71 people have been rescued including 46 women. Among the dead, 11 were women and the rest children.

Anwara Begum said two of her sons, aged six and seven, drowned in the tragedy.

"We were four of us in the boat... Another child (son, aged 10) is very sick," the 40-year-old told news agency.

Fishermen tipped off the coast guard after they saw survivors swimming and crying for help in the sea.

The boat's keel hit undersea coral in shallow water off Saint Martin's Island, Bangladesh's southernmost territory, before it sank, survivors said.

"We swam in the sea before boats came and rescued us," said survivor Mohammad Hossain, 20.

Coast guard commander Sohel Rana said three survivors, including a Bangladeshi, were detained over human trafficking allegations.

An estimated 25,000 Rohingya left Bangladesh and Myanmar on boats in 2015 trying to get to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Hundreds drowned when overloaded boats sank.

Begum said her family paid a Bangladeshi trafficker $450 per head to be taken to Malaysia.

"We're first taken to a hill where we stayed for five days. Then they used three small trawlers to take us to a large trawler, which sank," she said.

Shakirul Islam, a migration expert whose group works with Rohingya to raise awareness against trafficking, said desperation in the camps was making refugees want to leave.

"It was a tragedy waiting to happen," he said.

"They just want to get out, and fall victim to traffickers who are very active in the camps."

Islam said in the past two months dozens of Rohingya reported approaches from traffickers to his OKUP migration rights group.

"Human smuggling and trafficking in the Bay of Bengal is particularly difficult to address as it requires concerted effort from multiple states," the Bangladesh head of UN agency the International Organization for Migration, Giorgi Gigauri, told news agency.

"The gaps in coordination are easily exploited by criminal networks."

Since last year, Bangladeshi authorities have picked up over 500 Rohingya from rickety fishing trawlers or coastal villages as they waited to board boats.

Trafficking often increases during the November-March period when the sea is safest for the small trawlers used by traffickers.

Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a repatriation deal to send back some Rohingya to their homeland, but none have agreed to return because of safety fears.

The charity Save the Children called on Myanmar to "take all necessary steps to ensure the Rohingya community can return to their homes in a safe and dignified manner".

"The tragic drowning of women and children... should be a wake-up call for us all," the group's Athena Rayburn said in a statement.

Washington, Jan 15: The historic impeachment trial of US President Donald Trump will begin on Tuesday next week, Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate's Republican majority, has announced.

Earlier on Tuesday (January 14), Speaker Nancy Pelosi ended the standoff between the Senate and the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives saying that it would vote on next Tuesday to send the impeachment documents to the upper house so it can hold the trial on charges that Trump obstructed Congress and abused presidential powers.

This will be only the third time in the nation's history that a US president is tried after impeachment and Trump can expect to be acquitted like his two predecessors - Bill Clinton in 1998 and Andrew Johnson in 1868 - because there won't be a two-thirds majority to convict and remove him from office.

McConnel told reporters on Tuesday that preparations like swearing in the Senators as jurors for the trial could begin this week ahead of the formal start on next Tuesday.

"This Impeachment Hoax is an outrage," Trump tweeted, repeating his longstanding complaint about it, when the move to hold the trial finally appeared to gain traction.

"The American people deserve the truth and the Constitution demands a trial," Pelosi said.

She had held on to the Articles of Impeachment - the chargesheet against Trump - that the House voted on December 18 in a bid to pressure McConnell to accept her terms for holding the trial and in an attempt to get some Republican senators to break ranks on procedural matters.

But she has agreed to let the process move forward, without an agreement on the main Democratic demand to call in their witnesses at the trial and to introduce new evidence.

The House Intelligence Committee, which conducted the investigation against the president, on Tuesday released what it said was new evidence from Lev Parnas, a former associate of Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Parnas is facing criminal charges.

Pelosi said that starting the trial without witnesses or documents "a pure political cover-up."

The impeachment process is only an investigation by the House and the framing of the chargesheet for the Senate trial that will be presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts with the Senators as jurors and nominees of the House as prosecutors.

While there is no chance for removal of Trump from office, Democrats see the Senate trial as a propaganda mechanism ahead of the elections in November by giving the charges against Trump another public airing and turning voter opinion against Republican senators facing re-election.

Trump called for an outright dismissal of the impeachment by the Senate, but McConnell said, "There is little or no sentiment in the Republican conference for a motion to dismiss."

He added, "Our members feel that we have an obligation to listen to the arguments."

Trump tweeted that by not dismissing the impeachment out of hand, the Senate trial was giving "credence to a trial based on the no evidence, no crime" and "the partisan Democrat Witch Hunt credibility."

Pelosi had hoped to make some Republican senators break ranks with the leaders on the procedures for the trial and has partially succeeded in this as at least four of them appear open to witnesses being called.

While Trump's conviction and ouster from office is virtually impossible because of the two-thirds vote requirement in the 100-member Senate, only a simple majority is required on procedural matters. The Republicans have 53 members and four of them shifting positions could make a difference here.

McConnell appeared confident that he would have a hold on his party senators to set the rules for the trial.

Whether witnesses would be called to testify is still open as the Republicans have said that it would be decided when the trial starts.

The main sticking point is the Democrats demand to call their witnesses to testify at the trial.

The Democrats did not allow the Republicans to call their own witnesses to testify during the impeachment proceeding in the House and Republicans did not seem inclined to oblige them in the Senate.

Trump tweeted, "'We demand fairness' shouts Pelosi and the Do Nothing Democrats, yet the Dems in the House wouldn't let us have 1 witness, no lawyers or even ask questions."

The charges against Trump stem from a July phone call he had with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he asked him as a "favour" to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Democrats say that this was an abuse power and amounted to inviting foreign interference in US elections as Biden is the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination to run against Trump in this year's election.

They also say that he withheld crucial military aid to Ukraine, a US ally against Russia, to pressure Zelensky and this endangered US national security. Trump said he delayed the aid to make sure the new government stomped out corruption.

Hunter Biden, who was made to leave the Navy because of alleged drug use and had no experience in the energy industry or in Ukrainian businesses was appointed a director of a gas company there and received monthly payments of $83,000, according to Republicans.

The former vice president, who was looking after Ukrainians affairs, had a prosecutor looking into gas company removed.

He and the Democrats say that it was because the prosecutor was corrupt, while Republicans see it as a conflict of interest.

The obstruction of Congress resulted from Trump's refusal to provide documents that the House demanded and allow some administration officials to testify at the House hearings.

Feb 26: Looking out over the world’s largest cricket stadium, the seats jammed with more than 100,000 people, India’s prime minister heaped praise on his American visitor.

“The leadership of President Trump has served humanity,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Monday, highlighting Trump’s fight against terrorism and calling his 36-hour visit to India a watershed in India-U.S. relations.

The crowds cheered. Trump beamed.

“The ties between India and the U.S. are no longer just any other partnership,” Modi said. “It is a far greater and closer relationship.”

India, it seems, loves Donald Trump. It seemed obvious from the thousands who turned out to wave as his motorcade snaked through the city of Ahmedabad, and from the tens of thousands who filled the city’s new stadium. It seemed obvious from the hug that Modi gave Trump after he descended from Air Force One, and from the hundreds of billboards proclaiming Trump’s visit.

But it’s not so simple.

Because while Trump is genuinely popular in India, his clamorous and carefully choreographed welcome was also about Asian geopolitics, China’s growing power and a masterful Indian politician who gave his American visitor exactly what he wanted.

Modi “is doing this not necessarily because he loves Trump,” said Tanvi Madan, the director of the India Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. “It’s very much about Trump as the leader of the U.S. and recognizing what it is that Trump himself likes.”

Trump likes crowds — big crowds — and the foot soldiers of India’s political parties have long known how to corral enough people to make any politician look popular. In a city like Ahmedabad, the capital of Modi’s home state of Gujarat and the center of his power base, it wouldn’t take much effort to fill a cavernous sports stadium. It was more surprising that a handful of seats remained empty, and that some in the stands had left even before Trump had finished his speech.

For India, good relations with the U.S. are deeply important: They signal that India is a serious global player, an issue that has long been important to New Delhi, and help cement an alliance that both nations see as a counterweight to China’s rise.

“For both countries, their biggest rival is China,” said John Echeverri-Gent, a professor at the University of Virginia whose research often focuses on India. “China is rapidly expanding its presence in the Indian Ocean, which India has long considered its backyard and its exclusive realm for security concerns.”

“It’s very clearly a major concern for both India and the United States,” he said.

Trump isn’t the first U.S. president that Modi has courted. In 2015, then-President Barack Obama was the first American chief guest at India’s Republic Day parade, a powerful symbolic gesture. Obama also got a Modi hug, and the media in both countries were soon writing about the two leaders’ “bromance.”

Trump is popular in India, even if some of that is simply because he’s the U.S. president. A 2019 Pew Research Center poll showed that 56% of Indians had confidence in Trump’s abilities in world affairs, one of only a handful of countries where he has that level of approval. But Obama was also popular: Before he left office, he had 58% approval in world affairs among Indians.

The Pew poll also indicated that Trump’s support was higher among supporters of Modi’s Hindu nationalist party.

That’s not surprising. Both men have fired up their nationalist bases with anti-Muslim rhetoric and government policies, from Trump’s travel bans to Modi’s crackdown in Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.

And Trump’s Indian support is far from universal. Protests against his trip roiled cities from New Delhi to Hyderabad to the far northeastern city of Gauhati, although those demonstrations were mostly overshadowed by protests over a new Indian citizenship law that Modi backs.

Modi, who is widely popular in India, has faced weeks of protests over the law, which provides fast track naturalization for some foreign-born religious minorities — but not Muslims. While Trump talked about ties with India on Tuesday, Hindus and Muslims fought in violent clashes that left at least 10 people dead over two days.

In some ways, Modi and Trump are powerful echoes of each other.

They have overlapping political styles. Both are populists who see themselves as brash, rule-breaking outsiders who disdain their countries’ traditional elites. Both are seen by their critics as having authoritarian leanings. Both surround themselves with officials who rarely question their decisions.

But are they friends?

Trump says yes. “Really, we feel very strongly about each other,” he said at a New Delhi press briefing.

But many observers aren’t so sure.

“The question is how much of this is real chemistry, as opposed to what I’d call planned chemistry” orchestrated for diplomatic reasons, said Madan. “It’s so hard to know if you’re not in the room.”

Certainly, Modi understands America’s importance to India. While the two countries continue to bicker about trade issues, the prime minister organized a welcome that impressed even India’s news media, which have watched countless choreographed mass political rallies.

“There is no other country for whose leader India would hold such an event, and for which an Indian prime minister would lavish such rhetoric,” the Hindustan Times said in an editorial.

“The spectacle and the sound were worth a thousand agreements.”