Myanmar refugees allege abuses, killings by military
Bangkok, Thailand – Myanmar troops waging their biggest military offensive in almost a decade have uprooted more than 11,000 ethnic minority civilians in a campaign punctuated by torture, killings and the burning of villages, according to reports from inside the country and Thailand.
The campaign by government troops in eastern Myanmar to suppress a decades-old insurgency among the Karen people began in November.
But it has intensified in the past month, according to reports from the Free Burma Rangers, a group of Westerners and ethnic minority volunteers who provide aid to displaced people in the country formerly known as Burma.
Scores of villages have been abandoned and their inhabitants forced to flee into jungles. Some 11,000 people have fled their homes due to the onslaught, the Free Burma Rangers said.
About 1,500 refugees have fled across the border to Thailand, and aid officials fear others will follow in coming months to swell the more than 140,000 already in Thai refugee camps.
Jack Dunford, executive director of the key frontier aid agency Thailand Burma Border Consortium, confirmed the influx, saying the refugees from Myanmar’s Karen state have arrived with “stories of increased (junta) troop activity, widespread destruction of villages and crops, and human-rights abuses.”
The military-run government has denied any human-rights violations against ethnic minority groups, including the Karen, which it blames for recent bombings.
NARRAGANSETT, R.I.
Body ID’d as student last seen in rowboat
A body discovered offshore Wednesday was identified as one of three University of Rhode Island students who disappeared last month after taking a rowboat into Narragansett Bay, the state medical examiner’s office said.
A fisherman spotted the body of Daniel Donahue, 20, about 100 yards from the lighthouse at Point Judith, the western entrance to the bay. The Coast Guard retrieved the body.
Donahue and two friends – Geoffrey Wilkes, 18, and Fandia Shloul, 21, – disappeared early on March 13 after going off in a rowboat following an off-campus party. Later that day, a partially submerged aluminum rowboat was found more than 1,000 yards from shore.
FRESNO, Calif.
Spanked worker asks jury for $1.2 million
Lawyers for a woman who was spanked in front of her co-workers as part of what her employer said was a camaraderie-building exercise asked a jury Wednesday for at least $1.2 million for the humiliation she claimed to have suffered.
Janet Orlando, 53, quit her job at home-security company Alarm One Inc. and sued, alleging discrimination, assault, battery and infliction of emotional distress.
Employees were paddled with rival companies’ yard signs as part of a contest that pitted sales teams against each other, according to court documents. The winners poked fun at the losers, throwing pies at them, feeding them baby food, making them wear diapers and swatting their buttocks.
DES MOINES, Iowa
Collegians line up for free mumps shots
College students across Iowa received shots Wednesday at free clinics set up by the state in an effort to stop the nation’s biggest outbreak of mumps in decades.
The state last week announced the immunization clinics for 18-to-22-year-olds. They began Wednesday.
Iowa is at the center of a mumps outbreak across the Midwest. No deaths have been reported and there have been few hospitalizations. As of this week, the state had 1,120 probable, confirmed or suspected cases of the disease.
HONIARA, Solomon Islands
Premier’s resignation prompts celebrations
Throngs of jubilant Solomon Islanders packed the streets Wednesday, cheering and waving palm fronds to celebrate the resignation of an unpopular prime minister whose election sparked two days of violent riots.
Eight days after his election, Prime Minister Snyder Rini stepped down ahead of a no-confidence vote planned by opposition lawmakers.
Lawmakers will now have to vote in a secret ballot for a replacement, and a vote is not expected before next week, said government spokesman Johnson Honimae.
DUBLIN, Ireland
Panel: IRA members still have firearms
Commanders of the Irish Republican Army are working hard to end the group’s involvement in violence and crime, but some members are defying their leaders and have retained firearms, an expert panel reported Wednesday.
Britain and Ireland welcomed the broadly positive picture of IRA inactivity presented by the Independent Monitoring Commission.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he hoped the experts’ conclusions would promote “sufficient confidence and trust” in Northern Ireland for the province’s legislature to elect a new power-sharing administration involving Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party that represents most Catholics in the British territory.
