US must 'greatly strengthen' its nuclear capability: Trump

Naypyitaw, Jul 2: A landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar has killed at least 113 people, officials say, warning the death toll is likely to rise further.

The incident took place early on Thursday in the jade-rich Hpakant area of Kachin state after a bout of heavy rainfall, the Myanmar Fire Services Department said on Facebook.

"The jade miners were smothered by a wave of mud," the statement said. "A total of 113 bodies have been found so far," it added, raising the death toll from at least 50.

Photos posted on the Facebook page showed a search and rescue team wading through a valley apparently flooded by the mudslide.

'No one could help them'

Maung Khaing, a 38-year-old miner from the area, said he saw a towering pile of waste that looked on the verge of collapse and was about to take a picture when people began shouting "run, run!"

"Within a minute, all the people at the bottom [of the hill] just disappeared," he told Reuters news agency by phone.

"I feel empty in my heart. I still have goosebumps ... There were people stuck in the mud shouting for help, but no one could help them."

Tar Lin Maung, a local official with the information ministry, said authorities had recovered more than 100 bodies.

"Other bodies are in the mud. The numbers are going to rise," he told Reuters.

Fatal landslides are common in the poorly regulated mines of Hpakant, the victims often from impoverished communities who risk their lives hunting the translucent green gemstone.

The government of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi pledged to clean up the industry when it took power in 2016, but activists say little has changed.

Official sales of jade in Myanmar were worth $750.4m in 2016-2017, according to data published by the government as part of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.

But experts believe the true value of the industry, which mainly exports to China, is much larger.

Northern Myanmar's abundant natural resources - including jade, timber, gold and amber - have also helped finance both sides of a decades-long conflict between ethnic Kachin and the military.

The fight to control the mines and the revenues they bring frequently traps local civilians in the middle.

Washington, Apr 20: The US wants to send a team of experts to China to investigate coronavirus, President Donald Trump has said, a day after he warned Beijing of "consequences" if it was knowingly responsible for the spread of COVID-19 which has killed more than 165,000 people globally, including over 41,000 in America.

Describing the coronavirus as a plague, Trump, during his White House news conference on Sunday, said that he is not happy with China where the pandemic emerged in December last year in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

“We spoke to them (Chinese) a long time ago about going in. We want to go in. We want to see what's going on. And we weren't exactly invited, I can tell you that,” the President told reporters.

“I was very happy with the (trade) deal (with China), very happy with everything and then we found out about the plague and since we found out about that I'm not happy,” he said.

The US has launched an investigation into whether the deadly virus "escaped" from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

He has repeatedly expressed disappointment over China's handling of the coronavirus disease, alleged non-transparency and initial non-cooperation from Beijing with Washington on dealing with the crisis.

“Based on an investigation, we are going to find out,” Trump told reporters.

A day earlier, he warned China that it should face consequences if it was "knowingly responsible" for the spread of the novel coronavirus, upping the ante on Beijing over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“If they (China) were knowingly responsible… then there should be consequences. You're talking about, you know, potentially lives like nobody's seen since 1917,” Trump said on Saturday.

The opposition Democratic Party said that Trump has falsely claimed he acted early by restricting travel from China when it was little too late and he continued to downplay the virus throughout February.

The number of COVID-19 deaths in the US crossed 41,000 and the total infections were more than 764,000 so far.

New York, the epicentre of the deadly COVID-19 in the US, has 2,42,000 cases and over 17,600 fatalities so far. It has registered a 50-percent decline in new cases over an eight-day period.

The novel virus, which emerged in China in December last year, has killed over 160,000 and infected more than 2.3 million people worldwide.

Islamabad, Jun 24: A plane crash which killed 97 people in Pakistan last month was because of human error by the pilot and air traffic control, according to an initial report into the disaster released Wednesday.

The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane came down among houses on May 22 after both engines failed as it approached Karachi airport, killing all but two people on board.

"The pilot as well as the controller didn't follow the standard rules," the country's aviation minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said, announcing the findings in parliament.

He said the pilots had been discussing the coronavirus pandemic as they attempted to land the Airbus A320.

"The pilot and co-pilot were not focused and throughout the conversation was about coronavirus," Khan said.

The Pakistani investigation team, which included officials from the French government and the aviation industry, analysed data and voice recorders.

The minister said the plane was "100 percent fit for flying, there was no technical fault".

The county's deadliest aviation accident in eight years came days after domestic commercial flights resumed following a two-month coronavirus lockdown.

Many passengers were on their way to spend the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr with loved ones.