Category World News

Iranian-born author and professor Trita Parsi joins Centre Stage to unpack the tumultuous history between the US and Iran, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its role as a strategic player in an increasingly divided world. He also breaks down Tehran’s relationships with groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and how those alliances have shaped its regional position.

Dozens of people have been killed in Southeast Asia as the rainy season unleashes landslides.

At least 18 people have been killed in Indonesia over the past week, authorities said on Monday. In Vietnam, six people were killed late on Sunday when a bus was swept off a road in the centre of the country.

The deaths in Indonesia happened in two regions in Central Java province.

A landslide in the city of Cilacap buried a dozen houses in Cibeunying village, the disaster mitigation agency said.

Search and rescue efforts have been challenging, it noted, with victims buried in mud 3m to 8m (10ft to 25ft) deep.

Authorities have counted at least 16 people killed while another seven are missing, said M Abdullah, head of the local division of the search and rescue agency.

Excavators were deployed to dig through dirt, footage from news channel KompasTV showed on Monday.

Separately, two people died and 27 were missing after a landslide on Saturday in the region of Banjarnegara, the disaster mitigation agency said, with up to 30 houses damaged.

Increasingly destructive and frequent

In Vietnam, a landslide buried a passenger bus on a treacherous mountain pass. Six people are reported to have been killed with 19 injured, according to state media.

The bus carrying 32 people was en route from Da Lat to Nha Trang when the incident happened, reports said.

The landslide on Khanh Le Pass, triggered by heavy rain, crushed the front of the bus, trapping many passengers.

Rescuers struggled for hours to reach the scene as heavy rain also caused landslides on both sides of the pass, cutting off access.

Vietnam and Indonesia are among the world’s most flood-prone countries with nearly half their populations living in high-risk areas.

Scientists warn that a warming climate is making the rainy season, which runs from October to March across parts of Southeast Asia, more hazardous as the length and severity of the season are affected.

Storm patterns are being altered, leading to heavier rain, flash flooding, stronger wind gusts, and increasingly destructive and frequent landslides.

Vietnam was hit hard earlier this month by Typhoon Kalmaegi. The storm had earlier torn through the Philippines, killing at least 188 people.

In Indonesia, flash floods and landslides in a remote area of the eastern Papua region killed at least 15 people and left eight missing in early November.

Tensions are high in Bangladesh as a tribunal has convicted fugitive former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on charges of crimes against humanity.

Security was beefed up in the capital Dhaka and across the country as rival factions anticipated the ruling of the special tribunal, which was announced on Monday.

The prosecution is seeking the death penalty for Hasina, 78, who has been in exile in India since an uprising last year that killed hundreds of people and ended her 15-year rule.

The United Nations says up to 1,400 people were killed and thousands injured in a crackdown as Hasina tried to cling to power.

Bangladesh has been led by an interim government since, and has been mired in political turmoil. Violence has marred campaigning for elections, expected in February 2026, that will choose a new government.

Authorities and the military are braced for potential violence.

Security forces have surrounded the court since the date of the verdict was set on Thursday, with armoured vehicles manning checkpoints.

Dhaka Municipal Police spokesman Talebur Rahman said the force would remain on high alert, and that almost half the city’s 34,000 police would be on duty on Monday.

‘Kangaroo court’

Hasina defied court orders that she return from India to attend the trial. The former-PM’s Awami League party has labelled the tribunal a “kangaroo court” and called for a nationwide shutdown.

In a message to supporters, Hasina insisted that the allegations against her are false.

“Let them issue a verdict. I don’t care. God gave me life, God will take it, but I will keep working for the people of my country. I have lost my parents, my siblings, and they burned down my home,” the former leader said, according to India’s NDTV.

“I am telling my party workers: Don’t worry, it is a matter of time. I know you are suffering, we will not forget this, everything will be accounted for,” she added.

‘Use lethal weapons’

Prosecutors have filed five charges against Hasina, including failure to prevent murder, which amount to crimes against humanity under Bangladeshi law.

Secret phone call recordings, accessed by Al Jazeera, have revealed that Hasina “issued an open order” to “use lethal weapons” on protesters and shoot “wherever they find them”.

“Justice will be served according to the law,” Chief Prosecutor Tajul Islam told reporters when the verdict date was set last week.

The trial has heard months of testimony alleging that the former leader ordered mass killings. Hasina has called the trial a “jurisprudential joke”.

Her co-accused include former Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal – also a fugitive – and former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, who is in custody and has pleaded guilty.

Hasina was assigned a state-appointed lawyer for the trial, but she has refused to recognise the court’s authority.

Hasina’s son, Sajeeb Wazed, who was also an adviser to her government, earlier predicted to reporters that his mother would be found guilty and sentenced to death.

Japanese shares linked to the tourism industry have nosedived following China’s warning to its citizens against travelling to Japan.

Relations between Tokyo and Beijing have plummeted since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested earlier this month that Japan’s military could intervene to stop China from taking control of Taiwan.

In a sharp escalation of the dispute on Friday, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs advised citizens to avoid travel to the East Asian country, claiming that Takaichi’s comments had increased risks to their “personal safety and lives”.

The issue continued to reverberate as Japan’s stock market reopened on Monday after the weekend break, with shares of airlines and retail outlets taking sharp falls.

Department store group Isetan Mitsukoshi fell more than 11 percent in afternoon trading, while its rival Takashimaya tumbled about 5 percent.

Japan Airlines fell about 4 percent, while Uniqlo owner Fast Retailing dipped about 5 percent. Cosmetics company Shiseido plunged about 9.5 percent.

China is Japan’s biggest source of foreign tourists, accounting for almost one-quarter of the 31.65 million arrivals in the first nine months of this year, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.

Ryota Abe, an economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, said Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP) could shrink by about 0.5 percent in the event of a total collapse in Chinese arrivals and by about 0.1-0.2 percent if arrivals decreased by about one-third.

“Even if the number of visitors decreases 30 percent because of the heightened tensions, the negative impact will be around 0.1-0.2 percent,” Abe told Al Jazeera.

Japan’s economy shrank by 0.4 percent in the three months to September, official data released on Monday showed, the first contraction in six quarters.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a regular news briefing on Monday that Beijing’s travel warning was inconsistent with mutually beneficial ties and that Tokyo had requested “appropriate steps” from the Chinese side.

Japan’s top official for Asia Pacific affairs, Masaaki Kanai, departed for China on Monday for talks aimed at lowering tensions between the sides, Japanese media reported.

Masaaki Kanai will meet his Chinese counterpart, Liu Jinsong, in Beijing, where he is expected to clarify that Tokyo has made no change to its security policy despite Takaichi’s comments on Taiwan, the reports said.

Japan has long viewed China’s threats to take control of Taiwan with concern due to the self-ruled island’s close proximity to Japanese territory and its location in waters that carry large volumes of trade.

China considers Taiwan part of its territory and has pledged to “reunify” the island with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary.