Damaged roads and debris slow relief operations after deadly floods in Asia.


ACEH TAMIANG, Indonesia — Emergency crews were racing against time on Friday after last week’s catastrophic floods and landslides struck parts of Asia, killing more than 1,500 people. Relief operations are underway, but the scale of need is overwhelming the capabilities of rescuers.

Authorities said 867 people were confirmed dead in Indonesia, 486 in Sri Lanka and 185 in Thailand, as well as three in Malaysia.

Many villages in Indonesia and Sri Lanka remained buried under mud and debris, with nearly 900 people still unaccounted for in both countries, while recovery was further along in Thailand and Malaysia.

As the waters recede, survivors find that the disaster has crippled their villages’ lifelines. Roads that once connected the cities and districts to the outside world are severed, leaving some areas accessible only by helicopter. Transmission towers collapsed under the weight of landslides, plunging communities into darkness and causing internet outages.

In Aceh Tamiang, the hardest-hit area in Aceh province, infrastructure is in ruins. Entire villages in the lush hills district lie submerged beneath a thick blanket of mud. More than 260,000 residents fled homes once on green farmland.

With wells contaminated and pipes shattered, the floodwaters have turned necessities into luxuries. Food is scarce, and the stench of decay hangs heavily in the air.

Helicopters began deploying to drop food, medicine, and blankets into Aceh Tamiang’s isolated pockets, where clean water, sanitation and shelter top the list of urgent priorities. For many, survival hinges on the speed of aid.

Trucks carrying relief supplies crawl along roads connecting North Sumatra’s Medan city to Aceh Tamiang, which reopened almost a week after the disaster, but distribution is slowed by debris on the roads, said National Disaster Management Agency’s spokesperson Abdul Muhari.

Television reports showed widespread devastation in Aceh Tamiang after flash floods tore through the area, with cars overturned and homes badly damaged. Animal carcasses are scattered among the debris.

Two hospitals and 15 community health centers stood idle. Medical teams improvised in crowded shelters, battling shortages of medicine and staff as waterborne diseases loom.

On a battered bridge spanning the swollen Tamiang River, families cling to survival under makeshift tarpaulins. Children shiver in damp clothes. A survivor there, Vira, broke down in tears, “We have nothing left,” she cried.

“We drank floodwater from discarded bottles and scavenged for scraps ... whatever the current carried to us,” Vira, who goes by a single name, said in a television interview on Thursday.

Another resident, Angga, recounted how he and 13 relatives and neighbors clung to the tin roof of a shattered building for four nights.

“Even now, eight days after the floods erased our village, no aid has reached us — no helicopters, no rescue teams,” Angga said. “We had no choice but to drink the very water that destroyed our homes.”

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Karmini reported from Jakarta. Krishan Francis in Colombo, Sri Lanka, contributed reporting.

Binsar Bakkara And Niniek Karmini, The Associated Press

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates told AFP on Thursday it is “tragic” that child deaths will increase worldwide for the first time this century because wealthy Western countries have slashed international aid.

The United States has cut the deepest, with Gates saying fellow billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was “responsible for a lot of deaths”.

However Britain, France and Germany have also “disproportionately” slashed aid, Gates, a major funder of numerous global health programmes, said in a video interview from Seattle.

The cuts mean that the number of children dying before their fifth birthday is projected to increase to 4.8 million this year, up 200,000 since 2024, according to the Gates Foundation’s annual Goalkeepers report released Thursday.

Gates said it was a “tragedy” to see child mortality rise after it had steadily fallen from around 10 million annual deaths at the turn of the millenium.

Aid for developing countries has plummeted by 27 per cent this year, threatening progress against a range of diseases including malaria, HIV and polio, the report said.

If global aid cuts of around 30 per cent are permanent, 16 million more children could die by 2045, according to modelling by the Gates-funded Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

“That’s 16 million mothers who are experiencing something that no one wants to or should have to deal with,” Gates said.
‘Chaotic’ DOGE cuts

Gates criticised the “chaotic situation” earlier this year when Musk’s DOGE abruptly cut off grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which has been dismantled since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.

“I’m talking to President Trump about encouraging him to restore aid so that it is at most a modest cut -- I don’t know if I’ll be successful with that,” the 70-year-old said.

Gates, a major donor of the Gavi alliance which distributes vaccines around the world, said he was disappointed the U.S. did not renew its funding for the organisation in June.

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr also sent a video to the Gavi fund-raising event “that repeated his extremely debunked and misguided views that these childhood vaccines shouldn’t be used,” Gates said.

“Although the Gates Foundation works with every administration -- and we find some areas of agreement with Secretary Kennedy when it comes to vaccines -- we have essentially opposite views about the roles vaccines have played in the world.”
‘Tight’ budgets

While acknowledging that “rich world budgets are very tight,” Gates regretted that international aid was being “disproportionately” targeted in European nations.

Gates said he had spoken about aid cuts with political leaders in France, where the budget has not yet been finalised.

“I talked to the prime minister and the president, among others, and said, please remember how important this is -- but it’s a very tough budget situation.”

Gates also expressed hope that new tools such as vaccines would bring child mortality rates back down in the next five years.

He particularly pointed to new vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and pneumonia, as well as a groundbreaking twice-a-year HIV-prevention injection called lenacapavir that started being rolled out in South Africa this week.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched in 2000, with Melinda French Gates departing last year after the couple’s divorce.

In May, Gates announced he would give away his more than $200 billion fortune over the next two decades, wrapping up in 2045.

Jessica Sklair, who researches elite philanthropy at the Queen Mary University of London, told AFP that Gates already wielded “an enormous influence over the world of global health”.

The aid cuts would likely increase his level of influence, she said, adding that it did not appear that private philanthropy will “step in to fill the gap”.

Other research by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, exclusively reported by AFP last month, determined that more than 22 million people could die from preventable deaths by 2030 due to the U.S. and European aid cuts.

By Daniel Lawler.

#Yemen’s Houthi rebels say mariners held since July attack on ship Eternity C are released to Oman.

#DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Yemen’s Houthi rebels say they have released mariners they have held since their attack in July on the ship Eternity C in the Red Sea.

The Houthis said Wednesday through their al-Masirah satellite news channel that Oman had taken custody of the mariners, who were flying to the sultanate.

Oman did not immediately acknowledge the release. However, a Royal Oman Air Force jet did land in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen held for over a decade by the rebels.

The Philippines on Tuesday had said it expected Filipino mariners held by the Houthis since the attack to be released.

Associated Press, The Associated Press

#ICE ordering fleet of 20 armoured vehicles from #Canadian firm.

OTTAWA — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement earmarked millions of dollars for a bulk order for 20 armoured vehicles from Canadian defence manufacturer Roshel that are built to resist bullets and bomb blasts.

U.S. government procurement records show the department laying out plans for a rush order worth the equivalent of about C$10 million for 20 Senator STANG emergency response tactical vehicles.

The justification for the sole-source order was published in a partially redacted document on a U.S. federal procurement website on Nov. 26, and the site says a contract was awarded on Nov. 28.

The procurement document declares only Roshel, which is headquartered in Brampton, Ont., meets the department’s requirements for the vehicles needed “to support agents in the field” and can complete the order within 30 days.

“Roshel is uniquely positioned to fulfil this requirement within the necessary time frame, having confirmed immediate availability of vehicles that fully meet ICE’s specifications,” said the document, produced by ICE’s Office of Acquisition Management.

“While other sources were consulted, they had limited quantities available or none could fulfil the entire requirement within the required period of performance, nor meet all technical requirements.”

The purchase was first reported by the U.K.-based newspaper The Independent.

Roshel has said it has sent hundreds of Senator vehicles to Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia, although it makes different types. Company marketing materials state the emergency response vehicle’s floor is outfitted with blast protection.

The department, commonly known as ICE, is awash in controversy and allegations of human rights abuses as U.S. President Donald Trump pursues a campaign to expel vast numbers of immigrants residing in the country illegally.

The order comes despite Trump’s “America-first” trade policy and as he pursues a protracted trade war to poach jobs and plants from the Canadian steel, manufacturing and automotive sectors.

The department turned its nose up at other U.S.-based heavy vehicle manufacturers, saying Alpine Amoring Inc., CITE Armored, Inc., DGM LLC and Lenco Armored Vehicles did not meet all of the requirements or timeline.

“Delaying this procurement to pursue a fully competitive action would significantly impact operational readiness and hinder ICE’s ability to deploy mission-critical resources in a timely manner,” the procurement document said.

Roshel, Global Affairs Canada and ICE did not immediately replied to requests for comment Tuesday.

The document says the total price tag for the vehicle fleet will likely run US$7,331,200.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 2, 2025.

#MOSCOW, December 1. Russian President Vladimir #Putin visited a frontline command center late on November 30 to hear reports on the liberation of the cities of Krasnoarmeysk in the Donetsk People’s Republic (#DPR) and Volchansk in the Kharkov Region, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said.

"Late on November 30, Russian President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin visited a command post of the Joint Force. He heard reports by Chief of the General Staff [Valery] Gerasimov, Commander of the Battlegroup Center [Valery] Solodchuk, and Commander of the Battlegroup East [Andrey] Ivanayev," Peskov said.

"Army General Gerasimov reported to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief about the liberation of the cities of Krasnoarmeysk in the DPR and Volchansk in the Kharkov Region, as well as about the results of offensive operations in other areas," he added.

Apart from that, Solodchuk reported to the president about the progress in the elimination of a Ukrainian battlegroup near the Krasnoarmeysk-Dimitrov agglomeration, "including about taking the southern part of the city of Dimitrov under the control of Russian forces, and about the situation in Krasnoarmeysk after it was liberated by our forces.".

Smith wants to work with B.C., still hopes for buy-in on lifting tanker ban.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she wants to work with British Columbia on a potential new pipeline but still hopes to convince that province to lift the federal tanker ban.

“I’m sensitive to the fact that we don’t want to see the entire coast of British Columbia, that has extensive port infrastructure. I understand that,” Smith told reporters in Calgary on Monday. “But we do have some existing ports that we can build on, and I’m hopeful that we’ll have a constructive conversation about it.”

Smith made the remarks when directly asked about comments B.C. Premier David Eby made to CTV Question Period on Sunday, who after months of vehement opposition to a bitumen pipeline, said he is open to one if the tanker ban remains in place.

“My anxiety is about this oil tanker ban, which is the foundational social license piece for tens of billions of dollars of investment in B.C.,” Eby told host Vassy Kapelos.

“If we can agree that the oil tanker ban is going to stay in place, then let’s have those conversations,” Eby later added.

Prime Minister Mark Carney and Smith signed a historic memorandum of understanding (MOU) last week, outlining the conditions that need to be met for a new oil pipeline to the Pacific to proceed.

Leading up to the MOU announcement, Eby called it “unacceptable” that his province had been excluded from those discussions and warned that a tanker ban exemption would threaten projects already in development in the B.C. north coast region and consensus among coastal First Nations.

The tanker ban was officially enacted in 2019, but a moratorium on oil tanker traffic off the B.C. north coast has existed since the ‘70s. The ban prohibits oil tankers carrying over 12,500 metric tons of crude or persistent oil from docking, loading or unloading at ports on the B.C. north coast, and applies to waters from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaskan border and encompasses the islands of Haida Gwaii.

“We will never tolerate exemptions to an oil tanker ban that has existed for over 50 years, and it is foundational to protecting our economy and our way of life,” Coastal First Nations President Marilyn Slett said to the media on Thursday, after the #MOU announcement.

Police officer killed in suicide bombing in northwest #Pakistan. The attack happened in Lakki Marwat, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, local police official Ashfaq Khan said, without providing further details.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in a statement condemned the attack.

Separately, suicide bombers and gunmen attacked a military facility overnight in Nokandi, a district in the insurgency-hit southwestern Balochistan province, according to local media reports.

The Balochistan Liberation Front, a separatist group, claimed responsibility in a statement, saying its fighters targeted an office of the Frontier Corps and that an exchange of fire with troops was ongoing.

There was no immediate comment from the military or the government.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in violence in recent years, and the government often blames Balochistan-based separatists and the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, which is separate from, but aligned with, Afghanistan’s Taliban government.

The steady rise in attacks has strained relations between Islamabad and Kabul, with Pakistani authorities accusing the TTP of operating freely inside Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in 2021. Afghanistan denies the allegation.

Tensions escalated between Pakistan and Afghanistan after the Taliban government accused Pakistan of carrying out an Oct. 9 drone strike on Kabul.

Cross-border clashes followed, killing dozens of soldiers, civilians and militants before Qatar brokered a cease-fire on Oct. 19 that remains in place, though talks between the two sides ended in Istanbul without an agreement. Iran and Saudi Arabia have offered to help revive the stalled talks.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week said that Pakistan will welcome mediation by friendly countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, but Islamabad only wants Kabul to rein in the TTP and other militants and stop them from using the Afghan soil for attacks inside Pakistan.

The Associated Press

#Indonesian residents hunt for food and water after deadly floods. 193 dead in Sri Lanka. The floods, which hit Indonesia nearly a week ago, have killed 442 people — with the number expected to rise as more bodies are recovered — and displaced 290,700 people. The deluges triggered landslides, damaged roads, cut off parts of the island, and downed communication lines.

Another 402 people are missing in Indonesia’s three provinces of North Sumatra, West Sumatra and Aceh, according to the National Disaster Management Agency.

The challenging weather conditions and the lack of heavy equipment also hampered rescue efforts. Aid has been slow to reach the hardest-hit city of Sibolga and Central Tapanuli district in North Sumatra.

Videos on social media showed people scrambling past crumbling barricades, flooded roads and broken glass to get their hands on food, medicine and gas. Some waded through waist-deep floodwaters to reach damaged convenience stores.

The spokesperson for the police, Ferry Walintukan, said they received reports of people breaking into shops on Saturday evening, and that regional police had been deployed to restore order.

“The looting happened before logistical aid arrived,” Walintukan said. “(Residents) didn’t know that aid would come and were worried they would starve.”

Eleven helicopters were deployed from Jakarta to the affected areas the day after the disaster for ongoing logistics distribution operations, especially to areas where land access was cut off, Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya, said on Sunday, “but unpredictable weather often hampers aid operations.”

The Cabinet Secretariat released footage of the military airdropping supplies to the affected areas. In the village of North Tapanuli, survivors waved frantically to the helicopters carrying aid. Meanwhile, four navy ships docked at a port to support aid distribution.

Meanwhile, authorities in Sri Lanka said the death toll from floods and mudslides has risen to 193, with 228 others still missing.

Nearly 148,000 people have been displaced from their homes and are housed in temporary shelters.

Sri Lanka has been battered by severe weather since last week. Conditions worsened Thursday, with heavy downpours that flooded homes, fields and roads and triggered landslides mainly in the tea-growing central hill country.

Authorities say that Cyclone Ditwah, which developed in the seas east of Sri Lanka, is likely to move toward India’s southern coast Sunday.

France’s far-right leader hit by egg, days after flour attack. Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s far-right National Rally party, was hit on the head with an egg Saturday, just days after another incident in which a protester threw flour at him.

Bardella was at an event in Moissac, southwest France, to promote his latest book when a man broke the egg on his head.

The suspected attacker, a 74-year-old man, was arrested and taken into custody for violence against a public official, prosecutor Montauban Bruno Sauvage told AFP.

A complaint has been filed in Bardella’s name over the incident.

On Tuesday, Bardella was covered in flour during a visit to an agricultural fair at Vesoul, in the east of the country.

Police detained a 17-year-old teenage boy before releasing him the following day, and he will have to attend a course on citizenship.

“The more we make progress, the closer we get to power, the more the violence from the far left, intolerance and pure stupidity are unleashed,” Bardella posted on X late Saturday.

“But a wind of freedom, national pride and patriotism is blowing across France, and they won’t be able to stop it,” he continued, adding that he was fine.

The National Rally senses its best-ever chance of winning power in the 2027 presidential vote, with Macron having served the maximum two terms.

Its three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is barred from running after being convicted in a corruption case, but her 30-year-old lieutenant Bardella could be a candidate instead.

Dictatorship-era army officers and supporters rally in #Argentina in latest sign of political shift.

Saturday’s demonstration was seen as a provocation in the country of Nunca Más, the slogan that represents Argentina’s commitment to “never again” return to authoritarianism.

Further raising tensions, the officers gathered in Plaza de Mayo, the historic site of protests by women searching for children who had been abducted, detained and “disappeared” by the junta. Circling the plaza in silent protest every Thursday for decades, the women became known as the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.

To the army officers’ critics, including dozens of counter-protesters who also flocked to Plaza de Mayo in downtown Buenos Aires on Saturday, the brazen rally marked a worrying sign that cracks were starting to appear in Argentina’s national consensus about the bloody legacy of the dictatorship.
President Milei vows to end the army’s ‘demonization’

In a dramatic shift from past administrations, right-wing President Javier Milei has frequently justified the dictatorship’s state terrorism as a messy war against leftist guerrillas.

His vice president, Victoria Villarruel, is the daughter of an Argentine lieutenant colonel and an ultraconservative lawyer who spent years advocating for armed forces and Argentines killed by left-wing guerillas — those she calls the “other victims” of terrorism.

The government’s push for a reconsideration of crimes by the dictatorship has enraged human rights groups, which see it as an effort to legitimize the military’s systematic extrajudicial killings of civilians. The junta is estimated to have killed or disappeared as many as 30,000 Argentines.

Milei made another contentious move last week when he appointed Army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Carlos Alberto Presti to be Argentina’s new minister of defense.

His office said this makes Presti the first military official since Argentina’s 1983 return to democracy to hold a ministerial title, “inaugurating a tradition that we hope the political leadership will continue” and ”putting an end to the demonization of our officers.”
Supporters of the military send a message

That Argentine society robs the military of respect it deserves was a common complaint among the protesters who gathered Saturday to sing the national anthem and raise banners demanding freedom for imprisoned colleagues.

“We demand the moral vindication of all the veterans,” said Maria Asuncion Benedit, the rally organizer whose late husband, an army captain, helped lead a brutal 1975 campaign against guerillas in the northern province of Tucuman.

“The Argentine people follow the official narrative. Whose narrative is it? The enemy’s, the terrorists’, those who fought against our soldiers,” she said, referring to how the left-wing Peronist governments of the early 2000s made recovering memories of the dictatorship and seeking justice for perpetrators hallmarks of their administrations.

“It’s a militant, activist judiciary,” Benedit said.

She and others brandished black bandanas — a loaded answer to the white kerchiefs embroidered with missing children’s names traditionally worn by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.

Unlike other Latin American countries that offered amnesty to those who committed military crimes after restoring democracy, Argentina has tried and sentenced more than a thousand army officials and officers for their participation in state terror, many to life in prison. Hundreds are still awaiting trial.

Pedro Nieto, a dictatorship-era veteran who traveled 36 hours from the northern province of Salta to attend Saturday’s rally, said he felt he was sending a potent message by calling for the release of his imprisoned colleagues at the symbolic Plaza de Mayo.

“We are proud to have fought and eliminated the terrorists,” he said.
A counter-protest signals wider outrage

Alejandro Perez, whose uncle was abducted and disappeared by the dictatorship, said it terrified him to see veterans like Nieto who participated in the deadly state repression “here in front of the government house, protected by police, protected by fences, being able to hold an event to demand the release of the few imprisoned genocidal criminals.”

Police cordoned off the ex-military officers’ demonstration, keeping them at a safe distance from angry counter-protesters who shouted insults and held signs bearing slogans like “Never Again” and “the 30,000 are present.”

“You feel it in your bones,” Perez said, drenched in rain as he marched among human rights advocates and left-wing organizations.

The dueling demonstrations come a day after the United Nations Committee Against Torture delivered a report in Geneva that raised alarm about the Milei government’s dismantling of programs that had investigated the military’s actions during the dictatorship as well as “its budget cuts to several institutions working on issues of memory, truth and justice.”

It also criticized the government’s lack of transparency about paying reparations to victims of the dictatorship.

A radical libertarian elected in late 2023, Milei has made it his mission to achieve a fiscal surplus by slashing state spending in a country notorious for its huge deficits. But even as he cuts spending on health and education, he has committed to boosting the military’s budget.

Addressing the U.N. torture committee annual meeting earlier this month, Alberto Baños, Milei’s top human rights official, disputed the report’s findings and insisted that his government was committed to “complete, unbiased and unobtrusive historical memory.”

“Whether you like it or not, the defense of human rights became a business, and we will not tolerate that,” he said.

Cristian Kovadloff And Isabel Debre, The Associated Press