Police arrest over 100 striking Samsung factory workers in India
Police in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu have detained nearly 150 Samsung plant workers and union leaders for planning a protest march without permission.
Several hundred workers have been on strike protesting low wages in a makeshift tent near the Samsung Electronics plant outside the state capital of Chennai for over a week. The workers have been demanding higher wages, better working hours, and recognition of a union backed by influential labour group the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, or CITU.
The protesting workers and CITU members were detained on Monday while they were marching towards the Kanchipuram district collectorate to hand over a memorandum on the eighth day of the strike.
“It is the main area which would become totally paralysed and the protest would disturb public peace,” senior Kancheepuram district police officer K Shanmugam told Reuters.
He cited the presence of schools, colleges and hospitals in the area to justify denying permission to the protest march.
“We have detained them in wedding halls as all of them can’t be in stations,” he added.
The Samsung protest has cast a shadow on prime minister Narendra Modi’s plan to woo foreign investors to “Make in India” and triple the country’s electronics production to $500bn in six years. Lured by cheap labour, some foreign companies have been manufacturing in India to diversify their supply chains beyond China.
Samsung is not keen to recognise any union backed by a national labour group such as the CITU and talks with its workers, as well as state government officials, have not yielded a resolution.
The factory employs nearly 1,800 workers to produce appliances like refrigerators, TVs and washing machines.
This is the first strike at the plant since it came up in 2008, the Hindu Businessline reported. “For 16 years, these workers have been without a registered union, but the management’s attitude, prudishness, abusive practices, and workload have prompted the workers to form a union,” a strike notice read.
S Kannan, the CITU state deputy general secretary, condemned the police action. “This is an archaic move by the state government,” he said.
In spite of Monday’s police action, 12 labour groups, including one affiliated with the ruling party of Tamil Nadu, said they would stage a protest in support of the striking workers in Chennai this week.
“We are going ahead with Wednesday’s protest,” A Jenitan, a local leader of the CITU, confirmed. “No changes to the plan.”
The protest adds to Samsung’s challenges in India, a key growth market.
The South Korean company is planning job cuts of up to 30 per cent of its overseas staff in some divisions, including in India, risking blowback.
India’s antitrust body has found that Samsung and other smartphone makers colluded with e-commerce platforms to launch devices exclusively, violating competition laws.
Additional reporting by agencies.
Taliban suspends polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, UN says
The Taliban have suspended polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan, the UN said Monday.
Afghanistan is one of two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralysing disease has never been stopped. The other is Pakistan.
News of the suspension was relayed to UN agencies right before the September immunization campaign was due to start. No reason was given for the suspension, and no one from the Taliban-controlled government was immediately available for comment.
A top official from the World Health Organization said it was aware of discussions to move away from house-to-house vaccinations and instead have immunizations in places like mosques.
The WHO has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023.
“The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is aware of the recent policy discussions on shifting from house-to-house polio vaccination campaigns to site-to-site vaccination in parts of Afghanistan,” said Dr. Hamid Jafari from the WHO. “Partners are in the process of discussing and understanding the scope and impact of any change in current policy.”
Anti-polio campaigns in neighboring Pakistan are regularly marred by violence. Militants target vaccination teams and police assigned to protect them, falsely claiming that the campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
The suspension of the September campaign is a blow for the eradication of polio in Afghanistan.
As recently as August, the WHO reported that Afghanistan and Pakistan were continuing to implement an “intensive and synchronized campaign” focusing on improved vaccination coverage in endemic zones and an effective and timely response to detections elsewhere.
During a June 2024 nationwide campaign, Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, the WHO said.
But southern Kandahar province, the base of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, used site-to-site or mosque-to-mosque vaccination campaigns, which are less effective than going to people’s homes.
Kandahar continues to have a large pool of susceptible children because it is not carrying out house-to-house vaccinations, the WHO said. “The overall women’s inclusion in vaccination campaigns remains around 20% in Afghanistan, leading to inadequate access to all children in some areas,” it said.
Any setback in Afghanistan poses a risk to the program in Pakistan due to high population movement, the WHO warned last month.
The campaign suspension is the latest obstacle in what has become a problematic global effort to stop polio. The initiative, which costs about $1 billion every year, has missed multiple deadlines to wipe out the disease and technical mistakes in the vaccination strategy set by WHO and partners have been costly.
The oral vaccine has also inadvertently seeded outbreaks in dozens of countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East and now accounts for the majority of polio cases worldwide.
This was seen most recently in Gaza, where a baby was partially paralyzed by a mutated strain of polio first seen in the oral vaccine, marking the territory’s first case in more than 25 years.
Philippines withdraws ship from disputed South China Sea shoal
The Philippines has withdrawn a vessel that was keeping watch over a shoal in the South China Sea following a months-long standoff with China over a territorial dispute.
The BRP Teresa Magbanua, the Southeast Asian country’s largest coast guard vessel, returned to port on Sunday from the disputed Sabina Shoal after a five-month deployment.
It was deployed in April to monitor what Manila claims to be China’s small-scale land reclamation activities in the region.
The shoal became the latest flashpoint between the two countries after China responded by sending a larger ship. The Philippines alleged that China blocked its efforts to resupply the crew.
The Philippines and China have exchanged accusations of intentionally ramming each other’s vessels in the disputed waters in recent months, including a violent clash in June that resulted in a Filipino sailor losing a finger.
The ship’s return was not related to China’s demand for Manila to withdraw its vessel, Philippine coast guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela claimed. The vessel returned for repairs and to get its crew medical attention.
He said Manila will continue to deploy vessels in the contested reef and “sustain presence over these waters”.
Sabina Shoal, which China refers to as Xianbin Reef and the Philippines as the Escoda Shoal, is a coral atoll in the disputed Spratly Islands, west of the Philippine province of Palawan.
It is close to the Second Thomas Shoal, which is occupied by the Philippines and has seen many confrontations between the coast guards of the two countries in recent years.
“Regardless of what size of vessel, regardless of how many vessels, the main objective and the commitment of the commandant … is to make sure that at any one time, there will be a coast guard presence in the shoal,” Mr Tarriela said.
The Philippines will send another vessel to replace the BRP Teresa Magbanua, in a move that could further irk China.
China’s coast guard said on Sunday it will continue to carry out law enforcement activities in the waters under Beijing’s jurisdiction in accordance with the law and safeguard its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.
Beijing claims sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. Its claims overlap with those of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
“The Philippine side’s actions have seriously infringed on China’s territorial sovereignty,” Liu Dejun, a spokesperson for China’s coast guard, said in a statement.
A series of clashes around Sabina Shoal has caused fears that any misstep at sea could unintentionally spill over into an armed conflict, potentially drawing in the US, the chief ally of the Philippines.
Three dead after fishing boat capsizes off South Korea
At least three people were killed after a fishing vessel with eight people on board capsized off South Korea‘s west coast on Monday morning.
The 35-tonne fishing boat capsized near Gunsan city in North Jeolla province at around 7.36 am local time, prompting Korean authorities to launch a helicopter and patrol vessel.
All eight people were rescued and taken to a hospital, where three of them succumbed to injuries. The victims were identified as a Korean national, who was the captain of the vessel, a Korean engineer, and an Indonesian sailor, Yonhap news agency reported.
The remaining five survivors – three Vietnamese nationals and two Indonesian crew members – were reported to be safe.
President Yoon Suk Yeol had ordered the oceans and fisheries minister and the head of the coast guard to deploy all available personnel and equipment to conduct a rescue, his office said.
The coast guard said they were investigating the possibility of a collision after witnesses said the incident took place after a 1,618-tonne petroleum product carrier passed by the vessel.
A coast guard official told the news agency they planned to investigate the exact circumstances of the accident once the injured had recovered.
In March, at least eight crew members died after a South Korean tanker carrying 995 tonnes of acrylic acid capsized off the coast of an island in southwestern Japan.
The ship was en route from the Japanese port of Himeji to Ulsan in South Korea, the coast guard said. The captain was South Korean and the crew included a South Korean national, a Chinese and eight Indonesians.
Australian couple acquitted in murder of teen mother Amber Haigh
A 64-year-old couple was acquitted in the murder trial of Amber Haigh, a 19-year-old intellectually disabled mother who disappeared in 2002.
On Monday, Justice Julia Lonergan delivered the verdict in the New South Wales Supreme Court, citing insufficient evidence to prove the prosecution’s alleged motive in the case that gripped Australian media.
Robert and Anne Geeves, both 64, were accused of killing Haigh to take the five-month-old baby she allegedly had in January 2002 with Mr Geeves. They were charged with her murder in 2022.
The couple, however, consistently denied harming Haigh or having any involvement in her disappearance. They claimed they drove Haigh from their home in Kingsvale to the Campbelltown railway station on 5 June 2002, so she could visit her dying father.
According to the Geeveses, Haigh voluntarily left her infant son with them before departing. However, she failed to arrive at the nearby Mt Druitt hospital for a scheduled visit with her ailing father, sparking concerns about her disappearance.
Despite extensive police investigations, a coronial inquiry, and a million-dollar reward for information, Haigh’s body was never found. The prosecution relied on witness testimony and documentation to support their theory, including accounts of Haigh’s vulnerable state and alleged abuse by Robert Geeves.
However, the defence argued the allegation was baseless and the investigation flawed. They said the couple had been seen by the surrounding community through a “haze of mistrust and suspicion” which impacted witnesses.
Justice Lonergan criticised the prosecution’s case, stating, “cases are not decided on rumor, speculation, or suspicion”.
She, however, noted, “there was little sign, in the sea of evidence in this case, that Amber was ever shown the love she needed or deserved.”
The judge described Haigh’s life as marked by “disruption and disadvantage”. She said Haigh was “physically attacked and abused” by people she trusted and made to feel unsafe by her own family. Haigh’s short life was characterised by her search for love and solace, which ultimately remained unfulfilled.
The prosecution sought to prove two “indispensable facts”: that the Geeveses had a shared motive to kill Haigh to assume control of her baby, and that they did not drive Haigh to the train station on the evening of 5 June 2002.
However, Justice Lonergan said, “I am not persuaded that either indispensable fact is proved”.
“Mr and Mrs Geeves are not guilty and ought be released from the dock,” she said.
The verdict was met with emotional reactions from Haigh’s relatives, with some breaking down in tears outside court.
One member of the public gallery stormed out of the courtroom, screaming, reported BBC News. The Geeveses were released from custody immediately, having spent two years in prison awaiting trial.
As the acquittal brought an end to the high-profile trial, Justice Lonergan reflected, “Amber went back and forth between places and people, looking for love and solace. She never found it. She was still looking for it when she disappeared.”
Indian opposition leader Kejriwal announces shock resignation
One of India’s top opposition leaders, Arvind Kejriwal, has announced his resignation as chief minister of the national capital Delhi, two days after he was granted bail in a corruption case.
Mr Kejriwal, a fierce critic of prime minister Narendra Modi, was arrested nearly six months ago in the lead up to the country’s general election on charges of receiving bribes from a liquor distributor.
India’s top court released him on bail on Friday, on the condition that he refrain from commenting publicly on the merits of the case.
Mr Kejriwal is the leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, which originated as a popular anti-corruption movement, and has consistently dismissed the allegations against him as politically motivated. Though it has underperformed in national elections, the party has led the Delhi legislative assembly since 2015.
Addressing his party members and supporters from the AAP party headquarters on Sunday, Mr Kejriwal announced he would step down from the office of chief minister of Delhi in two days’ time.
“Today I have come to ask the public whether you consider Kejriwal honest or a criminal,” he said.
“I will resign from the post of chief minister two days from today,” he said, as party members responded with a chorus of “No’s!”.
Mr Kejriwal said his party – part of the broad alliance of opposition parties called INDIA that represented the main challengers to Mr Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in June’s general election – will hold a meeting later to decide who will take over his position.
He also demanded the New Delhi elections, scheduled for February next year, be held in November instead.
“I will not sit on that chair till the people announce their verdict. Elections in Delhi are months away. I got justice from the legal court, now I will get justice from the people’s court,” Mr Kejriwal said.
Mr Kejriwal said he would personally engage with the public, stating he would visit every house and street, suggesting the party is preparing a major outreach campaign ahead of the upcoming capital elections, with Mr Kejriwal leading the effort.
A spokesperson for the BJP dubbed his resignation a “PR stunt” and said he “understood that his image among the people of Delhi is not of an honest leader but of a corrupt leader”.
Opposition parties widely condemned Mr Kejriwal’s arrest six months ago. They accused Mr Modi’s government of misusing federal investigation agencies to harass and weaken its political opponents. They pointed to several raids, arrests, and corruption investigations of key opposition figures in the months before the elections.
The shock announcement comes as Mr Kejriwal’s supporters celebrated his release by lighting fireworks and dancing in the rain outside his New Delhi residence, with many carrying placards with photos of the popular politician.
Some leaders from Mr Modi’s party warned that he was released on bail and not acquitted.
Government agencies have accused Mr Kejriwal’s party and ministers of accepting Rs1bn (£9m) in bribes from a liquor distributor nearly two years ago in return for revising a liquor sales policy in New Delhi, allowing private companies greater profits.
Several senior members of the party have been arrested in the same case. Among them was former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who spent more than 18 months in jail.
Mr Kejriwal, a former civil servant, launched the Aam Aadmi Party in 2012. He promised to rid the Indian political system and governance of corruption and inefficiency.
The party’s symbol (a broom) and its promise to sweep the administration clean of graft struck a chord with New Delhi’s residents, fed up with runaway inflation and slow economic growth.
Additional reporting by agencies
North Korea inadvertently reveals location of nuclear weapons facility
North Korea appears to have inadvertently given away the location of its secret site for building nuclear bombs, after releasing pictures of Kim Jong-un taking a tour of a uranium enrichment facility.
The images, posted online by a state-run news agency, offer an extremely rare glimpse into the isolated nation’s nuclear weapon development programme that has kept neighbouring South Korea and Japan, as well as their allies, on edge.
The photos show Mr Kim visiting a bright, sterile facility, walking between long rows of cylindrical machinery which is used to produce weapons-grade nuclear material for what the North describes as its growing arsenal.
A report accompanying the photos on the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) website did not reveal the facility’s location.
But analysis by North Korea observers and experts has revealed that the pictures were taken at the Kangson uranium enrichment plant just outside of Pyongyang.
The site in Chollima-guyok, southeast of the capital, has long garnered international attention and is thought to have been operational since the early 2000s.
Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said five images showing the inside of facility, including of the “big” hall and an annex, match features of satellite imagery of the nuclear site.
“That’s likely Kangson. It is an enrichment plant,” Mr Lewis said, adding that the annex’s odd shape and its unusual set of columns and beams are a “strong match” to the new buildings at the site that North Korea constructed this year.
North Korea is believed to have several such sites for enriching uranium.
Commercial satellite imagery from recent years has revealed construction activity at both the main Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Centre and the Kangson site, indicating potential expansion at both locations, according to experts who analysed the satellite images.
In June, Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, reported that a new annex was being constructed at the main building of the Kangson complex. He also noted that the complex shared “infrastructure characteristics with the reported centrifuge enrichment facility at Yongbyon.”
It comes as the North Korean dictator said the country would exponentially increase its stockpile of nuclear weapons in a surprise speech on the 76th anniversary of the founding of North Korea. Mr Kim said there would be no limit on the expansion of the country’s military prowess.
South Korea’s new National Security Adviser (NSA) Shin Won-sik warned in July that Pyongyang could be considering conducting a nuclear test close to the US presidential election in November.
KCNA reported that during his tour of the facility, Mr Kim expressed great satisfaction over the technical capabilities of North Korea’s nuclear sector and stressed the “need to further augment the number of centrifuges in order to exponentially increase the nuclear weapons”.
Colin Zwirko, a senior analytical correspondent with NK Pro, a Seoul-based website that monitors North Korea, said the photos and satellite imagery indicate the complex being visited was Kangson.
The photos show an advanced design of around 1,000 centrifuges and the hall with cascades connecting the centrifuges, suggesting that North Korea has made progress in its uranium enrichment programme, according to the experts.
“The size of the cascades and hall shown also signify substantial capacity, perhaps not to the level of ‘exponential growth’ as Kim has mandated, but significant growth, nonetheless,” said 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea monitoring programme.
It said that it was possible that these centrifuges are “North Korean designed and manufactured; however, they likely use at least some imported materials despite decades of increasingly harsh sanctions”.
Some experts have drawn a link between the timing of KCNA’s release of the images and the upcoming US election, suggesting that North Korea wants to influence American voters and send a message to the next administration that denuclearisation is no longer possible.
Additional reporting by agencies
Growing fears in UK and US of a secret Iran-Russia nuclear deal
The UK and the US have reportedly discussed their shared concern that Russia provided nuclear secrets to Iran in exchange for ballistic missiles for its Ukraine war.
Prime minister Keir Starmer and US president Joe Biden discussed the fact that Iran and Russia are strengthening their military cooperation during a summit in Washington on Friday, which also covered other key issues around Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, including Kyiv’s use of Western long-range missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia.
Mr Starmer and Mr Biden discussed intelligence pointing to a deal that would see the Kremlin providing Iran nuclear technology, sources on the British side told The Times.
If confirmed, such a deal would be especially alarming as Tehran is advancing its programme of uranium enrichment – a step towards developing a nuclear weapon.
Ukraine’s Western allies have claimed that Iran has supplied short-range ballistic missiles to Russia and the weapons would likely be used in the war against Ukraine in the coming weeks. The United States, Britain, France and Germany hit Tehran with more sanctions, condemning its “escalatory” move.
Iran has denied supplying weapons to Russia, rejecting the claims as “completely baseless and false”. Russia has not denied the reports directly, instead responding by calling Iran an “important partner” and saying their cooperation was only deepening.
Early last week the US secretary of state Antony Blinken told reporters in the UK at a press conference alongside foreign minister David Lammy that Russia had recently acquired new ballistic missiles from Iran.
He warned about Russia sharing secret nuclear data with Iran – a factor that could have implications for both Israel and the US.
“Russia is sharing technology that Iran seeks – this is a two-way street – including on nuclear issues, as well as some space information.”
“Dozens of Russian military personnel have been trained in Iran to use the FATH-360 close-range ballistic missile system, which has a maximum range of 75 miles. Russia has now received shipments of these ballistic missiles and will likely use them within weeks in Ukraine,” said the US’s top diplomat.
Iran agreed to stop pursuing nuclear weapon development as part of a 2015 deal in exchange for sanctions relief from the US and other countries. But the agreement broke down after then-US president Donald Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018.
It’s unclear how much technical expertise Tehran currently has to build a nuclear weapon or how quickly it could do so. However, collaborating with experienced Russian specialists would likely accelerate the process.
The potential deal is expected to increase pressure on the US and UK to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles – Britain’s Storm Shadows and US ATACMS – to strike military targets inside Russia. It was a key topic discussed during the Washington summit but no decision was announced.
At least five former Conservative defence secretaries – Grant Shapps, Ben Wallace, Gavin Williamson, Penny Mordaunt and Liam Fox – as well as ex-prime minister Boris Johnson, have called on Mr Starmer to ease restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Storm Shadows, though they also depend on US cooperation to be fully effective.