AFP Asia

Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra faced mounting calls to resign on Thursday after a leaked phone call she had with former Cambodian leader Hun Sen provoked widespread anger and a key coalition partner to quit.The coalition government led by Paetongtarn’s Pheu Thai party is on the brink of collapsing and throwing the kingdom into a fresh round of political instability as it seeks to boost its spluttering economy and avoid US President Donald Trump’s swingeing trade tariffs.The conservative Bhumjaithai party, Pheu Thai’s biggest partner, pulled out on Wednesday saying Paetongtarn’s conduct in the leaked call had wounded the country and the army’s dignity.Losing Bhumjaithai’s 69 MPs leaves Paetongtarn with barely enough votes to scrape a majority in parliament, and a snap election looks a clear possibility — barely two years after the last one in May 2023.Two coalition parties, the United Thai Nation and Democrat Party, will hold urgent meetings to discuss the situation later on Thursday.Losing either would likely mean the end of Paetongtarn’s government and either an election or a bid by other parties to stitch together a new coalition.- Resignation calls -The main opposition People’s Party, which won most seats in 2023 but was blocked by conservative senators from forming a government, called on Paetongtarn to call an election.”What happened yesterday was a leadership crisis that destroyed people’s trust,” People’s Party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut said in a statement.”People want a government that can solve problems and only way to do that is to have a legitimate government.”The Palang Pracharath party, which led the government up to 2023 and is headed by General Prawit Wongsuwan — who supported a 2014 coup against Paetongtarn’s aunt Yingluck — called for the premier to resign.A statement from the party said the leaked recording showed Paetongtarn was weak and inexperienced, and incapable of managing the country’s security.Hundreds of anti-government protesters, some of them veterans of the royalist, anti-Thaksin “Yellow Shirt” movement of the late 2000s, demonstrated outside Government House demanding Paetongtarn quit.In the leaked phone call, Paetongtarn is heard discussing an ongoing border dispute with Hun Sen — who stepped down as Cambodian prime minister in 2023 after four decades but still wields considerable influence.She addresses the veteran leader as “uncle” and refers to the Thai army commander in the country’s northeast as her opponent, a remark that sparked fierce criticism on social media, particularly on Pheu Thai page and Royal Thai Army page.Thailand’s armed forces have a long played a powerful role in the kingdom’s politics, and politicians are usually careful not to antagonise them.The kingdom has had a dozen coups since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, and the current crisis has inevitably triggered rumours that another may be in the offing.If she is ousted she would be the third member of her family, after her aunt Yingluck and father Thaksin Shinawatra, to be kicked out of office by the army.- Awkward coalition -Paetongtarn, 38, came to power in August 2024 at the head of an uneasy coalition between Pheu Thai and a group of conservative, pro-military parties whose members have spent much of the last 20 years battling against her father.Growing tensions within the coalition erupted into open warfare in the past week as Pheu Thai tried to take the interior minister job away from Bhumjaithai leader Anutin Charnvirakul.The loss of Bhumjaithai leaves Pheu Thai’s coalition with just a handful more votes than the 248 needed for a majority.The battle between the conservative pro-royal establishment and Thaksin’s political movement has dominated Thai politics for more than 20 years.Former Manchester City owner Thaksin, 75, still enjoys huge support from the rural base whose lives he transformed with populist policies in the early 2000s.But he is despised by Thailand’s powerful elites, who saw his rule as corrupt, authoritarian and socially destabilising.Thaksin returned to Thailand in 2023 as Pheu Thai took power after 15 years in self-exile overseas.The current Pheu Thai-led government has already lost one prime minister, former businessman Srettha Thavisin, who was kicked out by a court order last year, bringing Paetongtarn to office.

Shubman Gill will be in the spotlight as a new-look India, without star batsmen Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, bid to end their 18-year wait for a Test series win in England.Gill succeeded Rohit as captain after the latter announced his retirement from Test cricket last month.Just days later, Kohli said he was bowing out of red-ball internationals as well.Gill also has the additional responsibility of filling Kohli’s shoes at number four in the batting order.India vice-captain Rishabh Pant on Wednesday revealed that was where his new skipper would bat in the first of a five-Test series against England starting at Headingley on Friday.The 25-year-old Gill has a modest Test batting average of 35 in 32 matches, a figure that drops to 29 in away games and declines even further to under 15 in three matches in England.India’s number four position has been dominated during the past three decades by all-time batting great Sachin Tendulkar and Kohli, who in that specific position scored 21,056 runs between them in 278 Tests.Gill’s first challenge will be ensuring the demands of captaincy don’t detract from his batting in England, where India have won just three Test series — in 1971, 1986 and 2007.Thus far Gill has made all the right noises, saying last month: “I believe in leading by example — not just by performance, but, I think, off the field by discipline and hard work.”He will have the ebullient Pant to lean on after the wicketkeeper-batsman’s return from a life-threatening car crash in 2022, while opener Yashavsi Jaiswal is one of the game’s rising stars.But it is not just in batting where India — who have had limited warm-up time in England — must cope without stalwart performers.Jasprit Bumrah is arguably the best all-format bowler in world cricket at present but, following a back injury lay-off, the quick may only play in three of the five Tests given the tight schedule.Veteran off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has retired from Test cricket, while experienced Mohammed Shami, not fully fit following ankle surgery last year, has been omitted.- ‘They have enough ammunition’ -If there are concerns about India’s ability to take the 20 wickets they need to win a match, those doubts apply to England as well.Beaten 4-1 in India last year, Ben Stokes’ men are tipped to turn the tables on home soil in a series that launches the new cycle of the World Test Championship following South Africa’s dramatic defeat of Australia in last week’s final at Lord’s.England, however, are without the retired duo of James Anderson and Stuart Broad, their two most successful Test bowlers of all time with a combined 1,308 wickets between them.”It feels so good when both of them are not there,” said Pant, adding: “But at the same time, they have enough ammunition in the England bowling line-up.”We don’t want to take anyone lightly because our team is also young and still looking to develop themselves.”England’s desire to field an attack including both Jofra Archer and Mark Wood has been hampered by repeated injuries to the fast bowlers.Both Archer and Wood will be missing at Headingley, where Durham paceman Brydon Carse is set to make his home debut in an attack where Chris Woakes, who missed most of the start of the season with an ankle injury, is the senior seamer.”There’s no hiding away from the fact that, over a number of years, England have had Broad and Anderson as the main two bowlers, so it is slightly more inexperienced,” said Carse.The 29-year-old added: “I think it’s a good chance for a couple of younger players, with slightly less experience, to stamp down some authority throughout the series.”Broad, however, told The Times: “Looking at England, with all the injuries they’ve got — where are they getting 20 wickets?”

More than 200 victims of last week’s Air India jet crash have been identified through DNA testing, a hospital official said Wednesday, inching towards ending an agonising wait for relatives.   There was one survivor out of 242 passengers and crew on board the London-bound plane on Thursday when it slammed into a residential area of Ahmedabad, killing at least 38 people on the ground. Distraught relatives have been providing DNA samples to help identify their loved ones, in a painstakingly slow process. As of Wednesday, 208 victims had been identified, the civil hospital’s medical superintendent Rakesh Joshi told journalists.The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner erupted into a fireball when it crashed moments after takeoff, with witnesses reporting seeing badly burnt bodies and scattered remains.Indian authorities are yet to announce the cause of the crash and investigators from Britain and the United States have joined the probe.Investigators are aiming to retrieve vital information from both black boxes recovered from the site — the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau upgraded a laboratory this year where black boxes can be analysed.Following the crash, the civil aviation regulator ordered inspections of Air India’s Dreamliners. Air India said Wednesday it would also carry out “enhanced safety checks on its Boeing 777 fleet”, in a note announcing a decision to cut its international flights on widebody planes by 15 percent until mid-July.Routes affected include those flown by the Boeing 787-8 and 777 models. The move follows 83 cancellations since the crash, due to “compounding circumstances”, according to Air India.”Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, night curfew in the airspaces of many countries in Europe and East Asia, the ongoing enhanced safety inspections, and also the necessary cautious approach being taken by the engineering staff and Air India pilots,” have led to the spate of scrapped flights, the airline said.Initial checks on Air India’s fleet “did not reveal any major safety concerns”, the civil aviation regulator said late Tuesday.”The aircraft and associated maintenance systems were found to be compliant with existing safety standards,” it said.

India has a “clear intent” to target members of a Sikh separatist movement in North America, a Canadian intelligence report said Wednesday after leaders of the two nations agreed to turn the page on a bitter spat over an assassination.Prime Minister Mark Carney, who took office in March, welcomed his counterpart Narendra Modi to the Canadian Rockies as a guest at a summit of the Group of Seven major economies.They agreed during bilateral talks on Tuesday to name new high commissioners, as ambassadors are known between Commonwealth nations, in hopes of restoring normal operations for citizens and businesses.A rift had emerged after Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau publicly accused India of involvement in the assassination of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil and expelled the Indian ambassador, triggering a furious reciprocal response from India.In a report published on Wednesday, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said the slaying of Hardeep Singh Nijjar near Vancouver signaled “a significant escalation in India’s repression efforts against the Khalistan movement and a clear intent to target individuals in North America.”CSIS also identified India as a persistent foreign interference threat, along with China, Russia and others.”Canada must remain vigilant about continued foreign interference conducted by the government of India, not only within ethnic, religious and cultural communities, but also in Canada’s political system,” CSIS said.The agency said it would continue to monitor India’s activities in Canada, while a police investigation into Nijjar’s murder continued.Canada is home to the largest Sikh diaspora outside India. Making up about two percent of the Canadian population and clustered in suburban swing areas, the community has exerted growing political influence.Nijjar, a naturalized Canadian citizen who advocated for an independent Sikh state called Khalistan, was shot dead in the parking lot of a Sikh temple in British Columbia in June 2023.India has denied involvement in the killing and said Canada should take more action against violent advocates for Khalistan, which has been reduced to a fringe movement inside India.The United States has also accused an Indian agent of involvement in an unsuccessful plot against a Sikh separatist on US soil.At the conclusion of the G7 summit in Kananaskis, all of the leaders issued a statement that condemned state-sponsored “transnational repression,” including targeted assassinations.

Rishabh Pant hopes his side’s Test series in England can start to “make India happy again” after one of the world’s worst plane crashes left the country in mourning.A total of 279 people were killed when an Air India flight heading to London’s Gatwick Airport crashed shortly after take-off in Ahmedabad last Thursday.There was only one survivor out of 242 passengers and crew, with at least 38 people on the ground dying as well when the plane slammed into a residential area of the western city.The Indian team wore black armbands and observed a minute’s silence during an intra-squad warm-up match in Beckenham.And India vice-captain Pant hopes they can do something to raise national morale when the first Test of a five-match series starts at Headingley on Friday.”What happened with the aircraft, the whole of India was saddened by it,” Pant told a pre-match press conference on Wednesday.”The only thing for us is how can we make India happy again? The emotion is going to be high always because of what happened in the crash, but at the same time we are going to put our best foot forward for the country.”How we can make them happy is an added responsibility.”India have arrived in England without two star names in Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma after both batsmen retired from Test cricket last month.Shubman Gill has succeeded Rohit as captain, with Pant saying Wednesday the new skipper would replace Kohli at number four in the batting order. “Obviously, it’s a new start for us,” said Pant. “Big people have left, definitely.”Yes, there will be a gap, but at the same time it’s an opportunity for us to build a new culture from here or take a culture forward from there.”The 27-year-old wicketkeeper-batsman added: “I think the idea is very simple: look to play positive, brave cricket, but at the same time, know you’ve got to respect the conditions.”

Mizan Hossain fell 10 metres (33-foot) from the top of a ship he was cutting up on Chittagong beach in Bangladesh — where the majority of the world’s maritime giants meet their end — when the vibrations shook him from the upper deck. He survived, but his back was crushed. “I can’t get up in the morning,” said the 31-year-old who has a wife, three children and his parents to support.”We eat one meal in two, and I see no way out of my situation,” said Hossain, his hands swollen below a deep scar on his right arm.The shipbreaking site where Hossain worked without a harness did not comply with international safety and environmental standards.Hossain has been cutting up ships on the sand without proper protection or insurance since he was a child, like many men in his village a few kilometres inland from the giant beached ships. One of his neighbours had his toes crushed in another yard shortly before AFP visited Chittagong in February.Shipbreaking yards employ 20,000 to 30,000 people directly or indirectly in the sprawling port on the Bay of Bengal. But the human and environmental cost of the industry is also immense, experts say.The Hong Kong Convention on the Recycling of Ships, which is meant to regulate one of the world’s most dangerous industries, is set to come into effect on June 26. But many question whether its rules on handling toxic waste and protecting workers are sufficient or if they will ever be properly implemented.Only seven out of Chittagong’s 30 yards meet the new rules about equipping workers with helmets, harnesses and other protection as well as protocols for decontaminating ships of asbestos and other pollutants and storing hazardous waste. – No official death tolls – Chittagong was the final destination of nearly a third of the 409 ships dismantled globally last year, according to the NGO coalition Shipbreaking Platform. Most of the others ended up in India, Pakistan, or Turkey. But Bangladesh — close to the Asian nerve centre of global maritime commerce — offers the best price for buying end-of-life ships due to its extremely low labour costs, with a minimum monthly wage of around $133 (115 euros).Chittagong’s 25-kilometre stretch of beach is the world’s biggest ship graveyard. Giant hulks of oil tankers or gas carriers lie in the mud under the scorching sun, an army of workers slowly dismembering them with oxyacetylene torches.”When I started (in the 2000s) it was extremely dangerous,” said Mohammad Ali, a thickset union leader who long worked without protection dismantling ships on the sand.”Accidents were frequent, and there were regular deaths and injuries.” He was left incapacitated for months after being hit on the head by a piece of metal. “When there’s an accident, you’re either dead or disabled,” the 48-year-old said. At least 470 workers have been killed and 512 seriously injured in the shipbreaking yards of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan since 2009, according to the Shipbreaking Platform NGO. No official death toll is kept in Chittagong. But between 10 and 22 workers a year died in its yards between 2018 and 2022, according to a count kept by Mohamed Ali Sahin, founder of a workers’ support centre.There have been improvements in recent years, he said, especially after Dhaka ratified the Hong Kong Convention in 2023, Sahin said.But seven workers still died last year and major progress is needed, he said. The industry is further accused of causing major environmental damage, particularly to mangroves, with oil and heavy metals escaping into the sea from the beach. Asbestos — which is not illegal in Bangladesh — is also dumped in open-air landfills. Shipbreaking is also to blame for abnormally high levels of arsenic and other metalloids in the region’s soil, rice and vegetables, according to a 2024 study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials.- ‘Responsibility should be shared’ – PHP, the most modern yard in the region, is one of few in Chittagong that meets the new standards.Criticism of pollution and working conditions in Bangladesh yards annoys its managing director Mohammed Zahirul Islam. “Just because we’re South Asian, with dark skin, are we not capable of excelling in a field?” he told AFP.”Ships are built in developed countries… then used by Europeans and Westerners for 20 or 30 years, and we get them (at the end) for four months. “But everything is our fault,” he said as workers in helmets, their faces shielded by plastic visors to protect them from metal shards, dismantled a Japanese gas carrier on a concrete platform near the shore.”There should be a shared responsibility for everyone involved in this whole cycle,” he added.His yard has modern cranes and even flower beds, but workers are not masked as they are in Europe to protect them from inhaling metal dust and fumes.But modernising yards to meet the new standards is costly, with PHP spending $10 million to up its game. With the sector in crisis, with half as many ships sent for scrap since the pandemic — and Bangladesh hit by instability after the tumultuous ousting of premier Sheikh Hasina in August — investors are reluctant, said John Alonso of the International Maritime Organization (IMO).Chittagong still has no facility to treat or store hazardous materials taken from ships. PHP encases the asbestos it extracts in cement and stores it on-site in a dedicated room. “I think we have about six to seven years of storage capacity,” said its expert Liton Mamudzer. But NGOs like Shipbreaking Platform and Robin des Bois are sceptical about how feasible this is, with some ships containing scores of tonnes of asbestos. And Walton Pantland, of the global union federation IndustriALL, questioned whether the Hong Kong standards will be maintained once yards get their certification, with inspections left to local officials. Indeed six workers were killed in September in an explosion at SN Corporation’s Chittagong yard, which was compliant with the convention. Shipbreaking Platform said it was symptomatic of a lack of adequate “regulation, supervision and worker protections” in Bangladesh, even with the Hong Kong rules. – ‘Toxic’ Trojan horse -The NGO’s director Ingvild Jenssen said shipowners were using the Hong Kong Convention to bypass the Basel Convention, which bans OECD countries from exporting toxic waste to developing nations. She accused them of using it to offload toxic ships cheaply at South Asian yards without fear of prosecution, using a flag of convenience or intermediaries.In contrast, European shipowners are required to dismantle ships based on the continent, or flying a European flag, under the much stricter Ship Recycling Regulation (SRR). At the Belgian shipbreaking yard Galloo near the Ghent-Terneuzen canal, demolition chief Peter Wyntin told AFP how ships are broken down into “50 different kinds of materials” to be recycled.Everything is mechanised, with only five or six workers wearing helmets, visors and masks to filter the air, doing the actual breaking amid mountains of scrap metal.A wind turbine supplies electricity, and a net collects anything that falls in the canal. Galloo also sank 10 million euros into water treatment, using activated carbon and bacterial filters.But Wyntin said it is a struggle to survive with several European yards forced to shut as Turkish ones with EU certification take much of the business. While shipbreakers in the EU have “25,000 pages of legislation to comply with”, he argued, those in Aliaga on the western coast of Turkey have only 25 pages of rules to respect to be “third-country compliant under SRR”.Wyntin is deeply worried the Hong Kong Convention will further undermine standards and European yards with them. “You can certify yards in Turkey or Asia, but it still involves beaching,” where ships are dismantled directly on the shore. “And beaching is a process we would never accept in Europe,” he insisted.- Illegal dumps -Turkish health and safety officials reported eight deaths since 2020 at shipbreaking yards in Aliaga, near Izmir, which specialises in dismantling cruise ships. “If we have a fatality, work inspectors arrive immediately and we risk being shut down,” Wyntin told AFP.In April, Galloo lost a bid to recycle a 13,000-tonne Italian ferry, with 400 tonnes of asbestos, to a Turkish yard, Wyntin said.Yet in May, the local council in Aliaga said “hazardous waste was stored in an environmentally harmful manner, sometimes just covered with soil.” “It’s estimated that 15,000 tons of hazardous waste are scattered in the region, endangering human and environmental health due to illegal storage methods,” it said on X, posting photos of illegal dumps. In Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch and the Shipbreaking Platform have reported that “toxic materials from ships, including asbestos” are sometimes “resold on the second-hand market”. In Chittagong everything gets recycled.On the road along the beach, shops overflow with furniture, toilets, generators and staircases taken straight from the hulks pulled up on the beach a few metres away.Not far away, Rekha Akter mourned her husband, one of those who died in the explosion at SN Corporation’s yard in September. A safety supervisor, his lungs were burned in the blast.Without his salary, she fears that she and their two young children are “condemned to live in poverty. It’s our fate,” said the young widow.

A ban on smartphones in schools issued by Taliban authorities in southern Afghanistan came into force, students and teachers confirmed to AFP on Wednesday, over concerns of “focus” and “Islamic law”.The directive by the provincial Education Department in Kandahar applies to students, teachers and administrative staff in schools and religious schools.”This decision has been made to ensure educational discipline, focus”, the statement said, adding that it was taken from a “sharia perspective” and that smartphones contribute to “the destruction of the future generation”.The policy, which has already taken effect in schools across the province, has divided opinion among teachers and students. “We did not bring smart phones with us to school today”, Saeed Ahmad, a 22-year-old teacher, told AFP. “I think this is a good decision so that there is more focus on studies,” he added.Mohammad Anwar, an 11th grader, said “the teachers are saying if anyone is seen bringing a phone, they will start searching the students.”Another 12th-grade student, refusing to give his name, said the ban would hinder learning in a country where girls are barred from secondary school and university as part of restrictions the UN has dubbed “gender apartheid”.”When the teacher writes a lesson on the board, I often take a picture so I could write it down later. Now I can’t. This decision will negatively affect our studies.”- ‘Complete ban’ -The ban has also taken root in religious schools known as madrassas. “Now there’s a complete ban. No one brings smartphones anymore,” Mohammad, 19 years old madrassa student said.A number of countries have in recent years moved to restrict mobile phones from classrooms such as France, Denmark and Brazil.The Taliban authorities have already introduced a ban on images of living beings in media, with multiple provinces announcing restrictions and some Taliban officials refusing to be photographed or filmed.The Taliban’s Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada called last week on officials and scholars to reduce their use of smartphones.”This is the order of the leaders, and we must accept it,” a 28-year-old security forces member told AFP without giving his name as he was not authorized to speak to the media.”I have now found a brick phone … I used WhatsApp on my smartphone sometimes, but now I don’t use it anymore,” he added.Some Taliban officials in Kandahar have started sharing their numbers for brick phones and switching off online messaging apps.   

Indonesian police said Wednesday they had arrested three Australians who all face the death penalty for the murder of a compatriot on the resort island of Bali after a days long manhunt.Zivan Radmanovic, a 32-year-old Australian national, was shot dead in the attack on Saturday and a second man, 34-year-old Sanar Ghanim, was seriously wounded.Police had earlier said they were hunting for two men who burst into his villa in the tourist hub of Badung and at least one opened fire. “Three suspects have been arrested,” Bali police chief Daniel Adityajaya told reporters, adding that several pieces of evidence allegedly used to carry out the shooting were also recovered.He said the three suspects — all Australian men — were charged with multiple offences, including premeditated murder, which carries a maximum penalty of death, as well as murder and torture resulting in death, which carries a potential seven-year jail term.One of the suspects was detained at the international airport in the Indonesian capital Jakarta and flown back to Bali, in cooperation with immigration and national police officials, he said.”The other two already fled and were successfully returned because of the coordination between interpol countries in the Southeast Asia region,” he added, without specifying the countries involved.Bali police also showed on Wednesday several pieces of evidence to the media including a hammer, several pieces of clothing, and bullet casings.Witnesses, including Radmanovic’s wife, said the perpetrators who fled the scene after the attack were speaking in English with a thick Australian accent, according to a local police statement.The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was providing consular assistance to the family of Radmanovic and confirmed three Australians had been detained over the shooting.”DFAT is aware that three Australians have been detained and we are urgently seeking further information from local authorities,” a spokesperson told AFP in a statement.Gun crime on the island of Bali and wider Indonesia is rare, and the archipelago nation has strict laws for illegal gun possession.

Aynullah Rahimi’s family has for decades tended the old cemetery in Kabul reserved for non-Afghans, but since the country’s latest war ended and foreigners left in droves, he says few now enter the oasis of quiet in the capital.Dating back to the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century, the small plot of land in the city centre has interred and memorialised foreign fighters, explorers and devotees of Afghanistan who have died in the country over some 180 years. In the two decades of war between Western forces and the Taliban that ended in 2021 with the latter’s victory, there were a handful of burials and memorials attended by ambassadors and dignitaries at the British Cemetery. But these days, Rahimi quietly tends to the garden of roses and apricot trees, the calls of caged partridges louder than the rumbling traffic beyond the high stone wall that secludes the cemetery. “Before the Taliban came to power, many foreigners used to come here to visit every week,” he told AFP. “No one visits here much now, only sometimes a few tourists,” he said. The paint on the walls — hung with commemorative plaques for the dead of NATO countries who fought the Taliban, as well as journalists who covered the conflict — has chipped and weathered since the Taliban takeover in 2021, when Western embassies emptied. Where Kabul was once teeming with Western soldiers, diplomats, journalists and humanitarians, their presence has thinned dramatically. Adventurers from around the world are increasingly travelling to the country, despite lingering security risks and Taliban-imposed restrictions primarily targeting Afghan women — including a general ban on women entering Kabul’s parks.For those who know what’s behind the wall marked only by a small sign reading “British Cemetery”, they can pause in the shade in one of the few green spaces in the city fully open to foreign women. “This is a historical place,” Rahimi said, noting he hasn’t had interference by the Taliban authorities. Those whose countrymen are memorialised there are welcome, he added — “it’s their graveyard”.- The Ritchies -The last time the cemetery was full of the living, Rahimi said, was the burial of the latest person to be interred there — Winifred Zoe Ritchie, who died in 2019 at the age of 99.Ritchie’s family brought her body from the United States to Afghanistan to be laid to rest next to her husband, Dwight, who was killed in a car crash in southern Afghanistan 40 years earlier.  The Ritchies had worked and lived in Afghanistan, one of their sons later following in their footsteps — cementing the family’s ties to a country far from their homeland.The couple’s daughter, Joanna Ginter, has memories of her family wandering through markets, flying kites and raising pigeons in Kabul years before the city was engulfed by the first of many conflicts that wracked the country for 40 years. Their mother’s burial “was the first time (we visited) since we were there for my dad’s funeral”, Ginter told AFP, having travelled back to Kabul with relatives.  “I was very happy to get to go there, even though it was for a funeral.” Her mother’s grave marker stands out in light marble among the headstones, wobbly letters next to a long cross — a rare sight in Afghanistan. Older gravestones of some of the more than 150 people buried there bear the scars of conflict, names pockmarked into near unrecognisability by weapon fire that breached the wall. Other than thieves who broke through a fence where the cemetery backs onto a hill dotted with Muslim graves — “our graveyard”, Rahimi calls it — the caretaker says he is left mostly alone to his watch. The 56-year-old grew up helping his uncle who raised him tend to the cemetery, taking over its care from his cousin who fled to Britain during the chaotic withdrawal of foreign forces as the Taliban marched into Kabul. He had in turn taken up the post from his father, who guarded the cemetery and dug some of its graves for around 30 years. “They also told me to go to England with them, but I refused and said I would stay here, and I have been here ever since,” Rahimi said, certain one of his sons would follow in his footsteps. 

Group of Seven leaders on Tuesday vowed greater support for Ukraine but stopped short of joint condemnation of Russia for its growing attacks, at a summit missing Donald Trump.The US president had been due to speak at the G7 summit with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, with whom he has had a volatile relationship, but flew back Monday over the Israel-Iran conflict.Zelensky met the remaining leaders at a remote lodge in the Canadian Rockies hours after Russia hit Kyiv with one of the worst bombardments since it invaded in February 2022, killing at least 10 people in the capital.Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed Zelensky and announced Can$2 billion ($1.47bn) of military support, including drones and helicopters, for Ukraine.But the G7 summit stopped short of issuing a joint statement, unlike in past years under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden when the club of major industrial democracies denounced Russian “aggression.”A Canadian official, backtracking on an earlier account of the United States trying to water down a proposed statement, said there was never an attempt to issue one due to Trump’s continued hopes of mediating with Russian President Vladimir Putin.”It was clear that it would not have been feasible to find detailed language that all G7 partners could agree to in that context,” the official said on condition of anonymity.Carney dismissed suggestions of friction, saying that all G7 leaders agreed to be “resolute in exploring all options to maximize pressure on Russia, including financial sanctions.”But he admitted that some G7 leaders “would say above and beyond” what was in the chair’s summary he issued instead of a formal statement signed by all leaders.G7 leaders, however, managed unity Monday on a joint statement on the Iran conflict that backed Israel but also called broadly for de-escalation, despite Trump contemplating greater US military involvement.- US waits on pressure -Carney earlier joined Britain in tightening sanctions on Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of ships used to circumvent international sanctions on its oil sales.”These sanctions strike right at the heart of Putin’s war machine, choking off his ability to continue his barbaric war in Ukraine,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement.US lawmakers have drafted a package of new sanctions on Russia but Trump has been hesitant to give his support and isolate Putin, to whom he spoke by telephone on the eve of the G7 summit.Trump infamously berated Zelensky in the Oval Office on February 28, saying he was ungrateful for US aid, but has since voiced disappointment that Putin has rebuffed a US proposal for at least a temporary ceasefire.Zelensky told Carney the latest Russian attack showed the need for allies’ support and pressure on Moscow — while making clear that he still backed Trump-led calls for negotiations.”It’s important for our soldiers to be strong in the battlefield, to stay strong until Russia will be ready for the peace negotiations,” said Zelensky, who cut short meetings in Canada scheduled after the summit.French President Emmanuel Macron accused his Russian counterpart of exploiting global focus on the Middle East to carry out the deadly attack.”It shows the complete cynicism of President Putin,” Macron told reporters at the summit.In Washington, the State Department also condemned the Russian strikes and offered condolences to the victims’ families.- Tough trade talks -The G7 — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — was holding its first summit since the re-election of Trump, who openly questions longstanding US alliances.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent remained to represent the United States at the summit, where discussions have also concentrated on Trump’s attempts to radically overhaul the world’s trading system.Trump has vowed to slap sweeping tariffs on friends and foes alike on July 9, although he has postponed them once.The US president, speaking to reporters on his way back from the summit, complained that the European Union was not yet offering a “fair deal” on trade.”We’re either going to make a good deal or they’ll just pay whatever we say they will pay,” he said.European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she still hoped for a negotiated solution and talks were “intense and demanding.”Trump’s negotiators have already sealed a deal with Britain and, outside of the G7, reached an agreement to lower tariffs with rival China.