Author: Finance for Sight

GENEVA: The World Health Organization said on Sunday the Myanmar earthquake was a top-level emergency as it urgently sought $8 million to save lives and prevent disease outbreaks over the next 30 days. The WHO said the high numbers of casualties and trauma injuries were at high risk of infection due to limited surgical capacity in the country, while the underlying conditions in Myanmar meant the quake was likely to intensify the risk of disease. “WHO has classified this crisis as a Grade 3 emergency – the highest level of activation under its Emergency Response Framework,” the United Nations health…

CAIRO: Hamas has agreed to a Gaza ceasefire proposal it received two days ago from mediators Egypt and Qatar, the Palestinian group’s chief said on Saturday. “Two days ago, we received a proposal from the mediators in Egypt and Qatar. We dealt with it positively and accepted it,” Khalil al-Hayya said in a televised speech. “We hope that the (Israeli) occupation will not undermine (it),” said Hayya, who leads the Hamas negotiating team in indirect talks aimed at securing a ceasefire in the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza that erupted in October 2023. Security sources told Reuters on Thursday that Egypt…

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defence agency reported that an Israeli air strike on Sunday on a house and a tent sheltering displaced people killed at least eight, including five children, as Palestinians observed the first day of Eid al-Fitr. The strike occurred as both Hamas and Israel acknowledged receiving a new truce proposal from mediators aimed at halting hostilities in Gaza during the holiday. “There are eight martyrs, including five children, following a pre-dawn Israeli air strike on a house and a tent sheltering displaced people in Khan Yunis,” Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency, told AFP. A…

WEST PALM BEACH: Finnish President Alexander Stubb made a surprise trip on Saturday to meet with US President Donald Trump in Florida, where the two leaders discussed strengthening their countries’ bilateral partnership and played a round of golf. “President Stubb and I look forward to strengthening the partnership between the United States and Finland, and that includes the purchase and development of a large number of badly needed Icebreakers for the US, delivering Peace and International Security for our Countries, and the World,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. The two presidents met for breakfast, played golf and had…

ISTANBUL: Hundreds of thousands of Turks protested in Istanbul on Saturday against the jailing of Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, President Tayyip Erdogan’s main rival, sustaining the largest demonstrations Turkey has seen in more than a decade. A letter from Imamoglu was read out at the rally to cheers from the crowd. “I have no fear, you are behind me and by my side. I have no fear because the nation is united. The nation is united against the oppressor,” the letter said. “They can put me in jail and try me as much as they want, the nation has shown that…

GENEVA: A severe lack of medical supplies is hampering efforts to respond to the deadly earthquake in Myanmar, the United Nations said Saturday, adding that those affected needed urgent humanitarian aid. The UN said it was mobilising emergency response efforts, alongside humanitarian partner organisations, following the huge earthquake that struck on Friday leaving more than 1,600 people dead in Myanmar and neighbouring Thailand. “As the full scale of the disaster unfolds, urgent humanitarian assistance is needed to support those affected,” the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in a statement. It said the response was being hindered by a lack of…

PARIS: Europe’s Gaia space telescope was powered down and sent into “retirement” on Thursday after a decade revealing the secrets of the Milky Way, but its observations will fuel discoveries for decades to come. Since launching in 2013, the telescope has been charting the positions, motion and properties of nearly two billion stars to create an unparalleled map of our home galaxy, according to the European Space Agency. Gaia has been peering into the universe from a stable orbit 1.5 million kilometres (930,000 miles) from Earth called the second Lagrange point. But the neighbourhood has been getting more crowded with…

GAZA CITY: Israel’s military admitted Saturday it had fired on ambulances in the Gaza Strip after identifying them as “suspicious vehicles”, with Hamas condemning it as a “war crime” that killed at least one person. The incident took place last Sunday in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood in the southern city of Rafah, close to the Egyptian border. Israeli troops launched an offensive there on March 20, two days after the army resumed aerial bombardments of Gaza following an almost two-month-long truce. Israeli troops had “opened fire toward Hamas vehicles and eliminated several Hamas terrorists”, the military said in a statement…

MANDALAY: The death toll from a huge earthquake that hit Myanmar and Thailand passed 1,000 on Saturday, as rescuers dug through the rubble of collapsed buildings in a desperate search for survivors. The shallow 7.7-magnitude quake struck northwest of the city of Sagaing in central Myanmar in the early afternoon, followed minutes later by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock. The quake destroyed buildings, downed bridges, and buckled roads across swathes of Myanmar, with massive destruction seen in Mandalay, the country’s second biggest city and home to more than 1.7 million people. At least 1,002 people were killed and nearly 2,400 injured in…

NEW YORK: Following the White House’s decision to ban Associated Press (AP) reporters from covering White House media events, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has joined the amicus brief filed by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) outlining how the Trump administration’s decision violates the First Amendment. In an alarming retaliation against the free press in the United States, on February 12, 2025, the Trump administration barred AP from covering White House events and accessing the Oval Office and Air Force One after its decision to continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico by its internationally…