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Kyaw Zwar Minn was ousted for declaring loyalty to Aung San Suu Kyi after 2021 coup but refused to leave his homeMyanmar’s ousted ambassador to the UK has gone on trial on trespassing charges for refusing to leave a diplomatic residence after being unceremoniously locked out of the embassy in 2021.Shortly after Myanmar’s military seized power in 2021, triggering mass protests that spiralled into a civil war, Kyaw Zwar Minn was locked out of the embassy for declaring his loyalty to the deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Continue reading...

A frantic President Donald Trump insisted Wednesday that the U.S. maintains control of the Strait of Hormuz even as transit hit record lows and peace talks stalled, reports show. “The U.S.A. has total control over the Strait of Hormuz," wrote Trump on Truth Social. "I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT! Our Naval Blockade is being called, by everyone, ‘A WALL OF STEEL,’ and there is nothing Iran can do about it."This boast arrived as problems mount in ceasefire talks with Iran, multiple reports show. "Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict and fully re-open the strait have continued to stall," Al Jazeera reported. "Iran has continued to assert its influence over the strait as it has pursued talks with Oman on future management. Wider peace talks with the US have been largely paused amid the Iran-Oman talks, which do not include Washington."What's more, multiple news outlets report just eight vessels passed through the strait this week, compared to pre-war 130 ships a day.Nonetheless, on Truth Social, the president claimed things could not be better.“They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, their remaining soldiers are unpaid, the IRGC is decimated and fleeing, and their ‘Leadership’ is uncertain, at best!” he continued, “They have No Money - Their country is ‘shot.’”Trump also claimed Iran has a problem currently plaguing his own nation. “All they have is FAKE NEWS and 300% INFLATION, and getting worse! Iran is all talk and no action, the Bully of the Middle East No Longer," he wrote. "Praise be to Allah!”

Emergency services, residents and environmental groups say military dropping flares to destroy forests and cropsFirefighters and residents of south Lebanon have accused the Israeli military of lighting wildfires in the region, as forested areas burned down in blazes sparked by Israeli bombing.Environmental groups said the fires in recent weeks were part of a longstanding Israeli practice of targeting Lebanon’s natural environment. Continue reading...

Former CIA official Marc Polymeropoulos admitted on Wednesday morning that he was baffled by President Donald Trump’s answers about his controversial plane switch in Turkey following a NATO meeting.Appearing on MS NOW, the 26-year intelligence veteran called out the president for rambling answers during Tuesday's press conference.With the White House fending off complaints that the president put others in danger of a foreign attack while he was whisked away by a catering truck to an alternate plane, Polymeropoulos claimed Trump is now making things worse for his defenders.Saying the government had a “duty to warn” others who were put at risk by the Trump administration, the former spy called the events “pretty dramatic.”“In this case, you really look, it looks like that Air Force One, the original Air Force One, was at some risk and the secretary of state assumingly knew this, but the press corps and other members of the staff did not,” he explained. “And so I think the American people deserve to know how this decision-making process evolved,” he suggested. “And first of all — or just to kind of bookend President Trump's remarks there about the alternate aircraft being at greater risk — I have no idea what he's talking about.”“That actually flies in the face of all of this, he pointed out. “But I think that's just kind of the usual verbal kind of word salad we hear that makes no sense whatsoever,” he added. - YouTube youtu.be

President Donald Trump's plane-swap plan "to save his own skin" exposed a darker reality behind how he treats the American public and press corps, an analyst reported on Tuesday.After it was revealed that Trump used a food truck to avoid a potential Iran terror threat, "might seem like an amusing caper," it was actually a "cowardly plot hatched by Trump, Pete Hegseth, Dan Caine and Trump’s security staff," reported David Gardner for The Swamp, The Daily Beast's Substack."For a start, the president has been caught in a bare-faced lie to the American public," Gardner wrote. "For some reason, he cannot understand that the media is the proxy of the people. To mislead the press is to mislead the country."But that wasn't the only revelation behind what happened."Worse—way worse—was Trump’s acceptance that the White House press corps, his own White House and military officials and the flight crew were expendable as long as he was safe from what must have been a credible Iranian terror threat," Gardner wrote.This bombshell had a different outcome, and "left Americans as sitting ducks.""We already knew he dodged going to Vietnam because of spurious bone spurs. But that was just Trump," Gardner wrote."This was unforgivable," Gardner added.

The wild capture and release of a female big cat into a nature reserve is the first step towards reintroducing a population that hasn’t been seen for 70 yearsOn 31 July, “Umit” – which means hope in Kazakh – was released into a nature reserve on the edge of Lake Balkhash after more than a decade of careful planning to return the caspian tiger to the region. With this release, Kazakhstan became the first country to restore its tiger range after they had been thought extinct, with the last reliable sighting in the country recorded more than 70 years ago.Umit – a wild-caught female tiger transported from the Russian far east – will be joined by more big cats in the coming years, with plans to establish a self-sustaining population of about 50. A wild-caught male flown from Russia is still being monitored by authorities and will be released when he is judged fit to survive alone. Two wild tiger cubs are also being reared on the reserve in special enclosures, with as little human contact as possible, and are likely to be released into the marshlands next year, to feast on boar, deer and kulans, a type of wild donkey. Continue reading...

President Donald Trump's obsession with Greenland has inspired a new harebrained business venture, Rachel Maddow told her viewers on MS NOW Monday night — and it already appears to be falling apart.But before that, she said with some bemusement, the venture actually tried to get her to promote it.Several weeks ago, she said, her office got "a totally unsolicited, totally over-the-top PR pitch offering me an embargoed, confidential sneak peek at a new project from Dr. Phil," announcing he was going to Greenland to do a TV show and asking if she'd be interested in covering it.The "footage" they offered Maddow continued, "turned out to be footage in Greenland of an American guy talking about his plans to drill for oil in Greenland, which he apparently believed he had a right to do." She put the video on."That's why we're here, to reposition the road-building equipment," said a man in the clip, adding that "for a fact" they have all the authorizations to move forward with the work."The guy they're explaining this to appears to say, 'This is unlawful,'" Maddow noted. "It's kind of hard to hear, but it sounds like that's what he says." Nonetheless, "some PR firm, in its infinite wisdom, believed that I would find it an exciting opportunity to help promote a new Dr. Phil TV show about how exciting it would be to drill for oil in Greenland."Since that PR pitch, she said, things haven't gone so well for this enterprise."First of all, you should know that in 2021, Greenland passed a national moratorium, a national ban on all future oil exploration," said Maddow. Despite this, once Trump resumed his public obsession with annexing Greenland, "for some reason, a new company formed in Texas called Greenland Energy," who "said they were going to drill for oil in Greenland." Then, in June, they visited a remote part of Eastern Greenland with no roads, and "announced to the villagers there that this company, this Texas company, had permission ... to start bringing their equipment, their oil drilling equipment to this untouched Arctic area of Greenland."Sadly for them, said Maddow, "the company later apologized and said, actually, they didn't have permits to do that. They put out a statement sort of correcting the record, saying, quote, our enthusiasm for the project led us to communicate in a way that created confusion." - YouTube youtu.be

Demonstrators accuse authorities of failing to tackle irregularities in exams for sought-after civil service jobsThousands of angry young job-seekers clashed with police in Jharkhand, one of India’s poorest states, on Monday as a weeks-long protest over alleged irregularities in recruitment drives for coveted government jobs escalated into a march on the state legislature.Police fired water cannon and teargas and swung batons as they tried to stop flag-waving demonstrators from clambering over barricades and surging towards the assembly in Ranchi, the state capital. Some of the protesters responded by dancing and cheering as jets of water drenched the crowd. Continue reading...