Other news of the day: red alert for the temperature in Beijing. Indonesia wants to hire foreign supervisors for the construction of the new capital. Malaysia accuses four Thais of human smuggling. Assad bombards northwestern Syria.
MYANMAR
The youngest son of Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi has called for his mother to be released: “I cannot let my mother languish in prison,” Kim Aris said in a BBC interview. Aris, who is also a British citizen, said the coup military never allowed him to speak to his mother, who is being held in solitary confinement, and urged the international community to resolve the crisis in Myanmar.
CHINA
The temperature in Beijing reached 41 degrees Celsius, the highest temperature ever recorded in the capital. China has a four-tier weather alert system, with red being the most severe and currently in effect; followed by orange, yellow and blue.
INDONESIA
To speed up the construction of the new capital, Nusantara, the Indonesian government has decided to hire foreign supervisors. President Joko Widodo had set the goal of inaugurating the new capital in 2024, on August 17, Independence Day. However, some deputies highlighted the need to consider the costs of a measure that, among other things, discredits Indonesian professionals.
MALAYSIA – THAILAND
Malaysia charged four Thai nationals with human trafficking in one case from 2015, when mass graves and camps of migrant smugglers were discovered on the border. The forests between the two countries are a major node for migrants, most of them Rohingya refugees brought there by boat to flee persecution in Myanmar or overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh.
SYRIA
Three people died and six were injured in a attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against the village of Kafr Nouran, near Aleppo. The White Helmets, a volunteer humanitarian aid group, said the bombing coincided with a reconnaissance plane flying over the area and that other villages in northwestern Syria were also hit. The military escalation came at the same time that talks are taking place in Astana between Russian, Iranian, Turkish and Syrian government and opposition representatives.
RUSSIA
A Russian citizen from the Khabarovsk region, in the Far East, was arrested and charged with high treason on the advice of the FSB services, for having transferred, through third parties, some amounts in cryptocurrency to the account of a charitable foundation in Ukraine. The money would actually have been used to buy weapons for the kyiv army and drones for the guerrillas in Russia. It is the first case of this type to be registered in Russia.
TURKMENISTAN
In Turkmenistan, attempts are being made to extinguish the fire in the crater of the Darvaz gas reserve, nicknamed the “Gates of Hades”, by interrupting the flow of gas that feeds the fire pit. Virtual and partial tests will be carried out to avoid a total catastrophe, given the complex geological structure of the various strata of the deposit.
