Israel looking into 'grave and awful' Rafah strike - CNA

The strike was aimed at two Hamas militants responsible for "many attacks" targeting Israelis in the occupied West Bank, he said.

"They were drenched in Israeli blood, these two individuals," Hyman said.

"According to initial reports, a fire broke out after the attack. These terrorists were hiding underground, and it would appear that there were civilian casualties."

The military said that the strike, which came hours after a rocket attack from Rafah had targeted Tel Aviv, had killed Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar, both senior officials for Hamas in the West Bank.

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2024-05-27 13:32:00Z
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Israeli attack on Rafah tent camp draws global condemnation - CNA

Hospitals in Rafah, including the International Committee of the Red Cross field hospital, were unable to handle all the wounded, so some were moved to hospitals in Khan Younis further north in Gaza for treatment, medics said.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said the situation was horrifying. "Gaza is hell on earth. Images from last night are yet another testament to that," UNRWA wrote on X.

Nearly 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's offensive, Gaza's health ministry says. Israel launched the operation after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israeli communities on Oct 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel says it wants to root out Hamas fighters holed up in Rafah and rescue hostages it says are being held in the area.

But it faces an international outcry.

"On top of the hunger, on top of the starvation, the refusal to allow aid in sufficient volumes, what we witnessed last night is barbaric," Ireland's Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said.

Egypt condemned the Israeli military's "deliberate bombing of the tents of displaced people", state media reported, describing it as a blatant violation of international law.

Saudi Arabia also condemned the Israeli attack and Qatar said the Rafah strike could hinder efforts to mediate a ceasefire and hostage exchange.

Israeli tanks have probed around the edges of Rafah, near the crossing point from Gaza into Egypt, since May 6 and have entered some of its eastern districts.

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2024-05-27 11:29:00Z
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Two dead as cyclone batters Bangladesh and India - CNA

"VILLAGES ARE FLOODED"

Authorities have raised the danger signal to its highest level.

Hasan, from the disaster management ministry, told AFP, said there were no immediate reports of damages, but said "embankments in several places have been breached or submerged, inundating some coastal areas".

But in India's West Bengal, the "cyclone has blown off the roofs of hundreds of houses", and also "uprooted thousands of mangrove trees and electricity poles", senior state government minister Bankim Chandra Hazra told AFP.

Electricity was off across large parts of the affected areas.

"Storm surges and rising sea levels have breached a number of embankments," Hazra added. "Some island villages are flooded."

At least 800,000 Bangladeshis fled their coastal villages, while more than 150,000 people in India also moved inland from the vast Sundarbans mangrove forest, where the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers meet the sea, government ministers and disaster officials said.

Mallik, the Bangladeshi weather expert, said the vast mangrove forests of the Sundarbans helped dissipate the worst of the storm.

"Like in the past, the Sundarbans acted as a natural shield to the cyclone," he said.

While scientists say climate change is fuelling more storms, better forecasting and more effective evacuation planning have dramatically reduced the death toll.

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2024-05-27 04:28:00Z
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On a prime slice of Malaysia's Selangor coast, an Orang Asli tribe fights to hold onto its ancestral land - CNA

The Federal Constitution protects the rights of the indigenous people of Malaysia, including proprietary interest in their land itself.

But the National Land Code 1965 deems that all land is state land unless it has one of three things: A documentary land title, gazetted as a government reserve for a public purpose, or a mining permit and gazetted under a forestry-­related law.

“Orang Asli customary territories that are without any form of documentary land title or a reservation status are deemed as state land,” said a 2016 report about encroachment on Orang Asli land, published by Friends of the Earth Malaysia and the Orang Asli Network of Peninsular Malaysia, both non-governmental organisations (NGO).

This means that states can use the National Land Code to issue private documentary land titles – potentially to private developers or individuals – for any Orang Asli customary land.

GAZETTING ORANG ASLI LAND

Mr Amani Williams-Hunt Abdullah, an Orang Asli lawyer and activist, told CNA that parties intending to acquire state land should rightfully visit the area to first check for existing inhabitants and activities.

“If there are any Orang Asli there, by right the land shouldn’t be alienated, but many times it does not happen this way,” said Mr Amani, widely known as Bah Tony in the Orang Asli community.

This is what happened in a legal case he handled in 2015, when land in Kampung Senta, home to the Semai tribe of Perak, was leased to a private corporation despite the clear existence of a government school there, he said.

The company served an eviction notice to Semai villagers before taking legal action against them, claiming to have obtained title to part of their customary land and considering them “trespassers”.

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2024-05-26 22:00:00Z
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South Korea, China agree to launch diplomatic and security dialogue - CNA

Li told Yoon their countries should oppose turning economic and trade issues into political or security ones, and should work to maintain stable supply chains, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.

Li said China was ready to strengthen cooperation in high-end manufacturing, new energy, artificial intelligence, biomedicine and other fields.

China will further expand market access, strengthen guarantees for foreign investment and welcomes more South Korean companies do business in the country, he said. In a separate meeting with Samsung Chairman Jay Y. Lee, Li encouraged the Korean tech giant to boost its investment in China.

In recent years, Chinese leaders and diplomats have frequently condemned the US and its allies over export controls targeting its semiconductor industry by calling on these countries to stop "overstretching the concept of national security".

Since 2021, Chinese companies and state entities have been increasingly cut off from ready access to the world's most advanced chips, many of them produced by South Korean tech giants, such as Samsung and SK Hynix.

Li expressed hopes for continuing efforts to "build consensus and resolve differences" through "equal dialogue and sincere communications."

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2024-05-26 12:15:00Z
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Taiwan President Lai Ching-te says he wants to work with China - CNA

Communications between China and Taiwan were severed in 2016 after former president Tsai Ing-wen took office, pledging to defend Taiwan's sovereignty.

Lai, who comes from the same Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), has vowed to maintain Tsai's policies of building up Taiwan's defence capabilities, while remaining open to dialogue with China and strengthening relations with the island's partners - particularly the United States.

But China said Lai's inaugural speech on Monday amounted to calls for independence, "pushing our compatriots in Taiwan into a perilous situation of war and danger".

"Every time 'Taiwan independence' provokes us, we will push our countermeasures one step further, until the complete reunification of the motherland is achieved," defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian said on Friday.

Wen-Ti Sung, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub, told AFP that Lai would "hold firm to project resolve" after this first interaction between his administration and Beijing.

"However, he will no doubt be looking to leverage other international partners and friends to help facilitate more back-channel communications with Beijing," Sung said.

INTIMIDATION TACTICS

Since 2016, Chia has upped military and political pressures on Taiwan, and its naval vessels, drones and warplanes maintain a near-daily presence around the island.

The dispute has long made the Taiwan Strait one of the world's most dangerous flashpoints.

During this week's drills, fighter jets loaded with live ammunition scrambled towards targets and bombers formed formations to combine with warships to simulate "strikes against important targets", China's state broadcaster CCTV said.

Tong Zhen, from China's Academy of Military Sciences, told state news agency Xinhua that the drills "mainly targeted the ringleaders and political centre of 'Taiwan independence', and involved simulated precision strikes on key political and military targets".

Meng Xiangqing, a professor from Beijing-based National Defense University, told Xinhua that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) vessels "were getting closer to the island than ever before" and had included the island's east - considered by the PLA the most likely direction from which external intervention could come.

"The drills have shown that we can control that eastern area," Meng said.

The United States, which does not diplomatically recognise Taiwan but is its biggest ally and arms supplier, on Saturday urged China to "act with restraint".

Experts say Beijing is seeking to intimidate and exhaust Taiwan's military.

On Sunday, two days after the drills ended, Taiwan's defence ministry reported that seven Chinese aircraft, 14 naval vessels and four coast guard ships were "operating around" the island in a 24-hour period ending at 6am (2200 GMT).

The ministry also said in a separate statement that it had found a cardboard box containing political slogans that it said was left by Beijing on a dock in Erdan, an islet part of Taiwan-controlled Kinmen next to China's Xiamen.

The defence ministry shrugged off the incident, saying it suspected it was intended to create online chatter.

"MAJOR TEST"

Lai's first week in office also saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets of Taipei to protest bills proposed by the opposition Kuomintang - regarded as pro-Beijing - and the Taiwan People's Party.

DPP lawmakers have been accusing the opposition of fast-tracking the bills - which expand parliament's powers - without proper consultation.

With Lai's DPP no longer holding the majority in parliament, his party will likely face challenges in passing his administration's policies, such as bolstering the defence budget.

"The pressures are coming fast and early for the Lai administration," Amanda Hsiao of the International Crisis Group told AFP.

"This is going to be a major test of their ability to manage multiple challenges, domestic and external, at the same time."

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2024-05-26 09:16:00Z
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China's Li Qiang lands in Seoul for trilateral summit with South Korea, Japan - CNA

SEOUL: Chinese Premier Li Qiang arrived in Seoul on Sunday (May 26) for a trilateral summit with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, their first three-way talks in more than four years.

The neighbours had agreed to hold a summit every year starting in 2008 to boost regional cooperation, but the initiative has been disrupted by bilateral feuds and the COVID-19 pandemic. Their last trilateral summit was in late 2019.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Li will adopt a joint statement on six areas including the economy and trade, science and technology, people-to-people exchanges and health and the ageing population, Seoul officials said.

Yoon is set to hold bilateral talks with Li and Kishida on Sunday, ahead of their three-way gathering on Monday.

Kishida is also expected to meet Li separately on Sunday, during which he will raise a Chinese ban of Japanese seafood imports and Taiwan, NHK reported, citing the Japanese government.

The summit comes as South Korea and Japan have been working to mend ties frayed by historical disputes while deepening a trilateral security partnership with the United States amid intensifying Sino-US rivalry.

China has previously warned that US efforts to further elevate relations with South Korea and Japan could fan regional tension and confrontation.

Seoul and Tokyo have warned against any attempts to forcibly change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, while Beijing on Tuesday criticised a decision by South Korean and Japanese lawmakers to attend Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te's inauguration.

The summit might not bring a major breakthrough on sensitive issues but could make progress in areas of practical cooperation like people-to-people exchanges and consular matters, officials and diplomats said.

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2024-05-26 03:40:00Z
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