Politics
7.7 magnitude earthquake rocks Thailand and Myanmar – National TenX News
A 7.7 magnitude earthquake rocked Thailand and neighbouring Myanmar midday on Friday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed, and prompting Myanmar to declare a widespread state of emergency.
The midday temblor with an epicenter near Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city, was followed by a strong 6.4 magnitude aftershock.
Myanmar’s military-run government declared a state of emergency in six regions and states including the capital Naypyitaw and Mandalay, but with the country in the midst of a prolonged bloody civil war it was not clear how help would get to many regions.
The Red Cross said downed power lines are adding to challenges for their teams trying to reach Mandalay and Sagaing regions and southern Shan state.
“Initial reports from the ground suggest the earthquake has caused significant damage,” the Red Cross said. “Information on humanitarian needs is still being gathered.”
Crane-topped building collapsed in a cloud of dust
In Bangkok, a construction worker was killed when rubble from the collapsing building site hit his truck and another was crushed by the falling debris, rescue worker Songwut Wangpon told reporters.
Defense Minister Phumtham Wechayachai said in all three people were killed at the site and 90 are missing. He offered no more details about the ongoing rescue efforts but first responders said that seven people had been rescued so far from outside the collapsed building.
Rescue workers say the rubble is still too unstable for them to try and find people possibly trapped beneath.
A dramatic video of the building’s collapse near Bangkok’s popular Chatuchak market circulated on social media showed the multi-story building with a crane on top toppling into a cloud of dust, while onlookers screamed and ran.
Elsewhere, people in Bangkok evacuated from their buildings were cautioned to stay outside in case there were more aftershocks.
The U.S. Geological Survey and Germany’s GFZ center for geosciences said the earthquake was a shallow 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), according to preliminary reports.
Screaming and panic as buildings swayed
The sound of sirens echoed throughout central Bangkok and vehicles filled the street, leaving some of the city’s already congested streets gridlocked. The elevated rapid transit system and subway were shut down.
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City hall declared the city a disaster area to facilitate interagency aid and emergency help. The greater Bangkok area is home to more than 17 million people, many of whom live in high-rise apartments.
April Kanichawanakul, who works in an office building in Bangkok’s city center, at first didn’t even realize it was an earthquake, the first she’d ever experienced. “I just thought I was dizzy,” she said.
She and her colleagues ran downstairs from the tenth floor of their building, Tonson Tower, and waited outside for a signal that it was safe to go back in.
“All of a sudden the whole building began to move. Immediately there was screaming and a lot of panic,” said Fraser Morton, a tourist from Scotland, who was in one of Bangkok’s many malls shopping for camera equipment.
“I just started walking calmly at first but then the building started really moving, yeah, a lot of screaming, a lot of panic, people running the wrong way down the escalators, lots of banging and crashing inside the mall.”
A woman reacts as she watches rescuers at the site of a high-rise building under construction that collapsed after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, March 28, 2025.
AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn
Like Morton, thousands of people poured into Benjasiri Park from nearby shopping malls, high rises and apartment buildings along Bangkok’s busy Sukhumvit Road.
Many were on phones trying to reach loved ones as others sought shade from the hot early afternoon sun. Others stared up fearfully at the tall buildings in the densely packed part of the city.
“I got outside and then looked up at the building and the whole building was moving, dust and debris, it was pretty intense,” Morton said. “Lots of chaos.”
Voranoot Thirawat, a lawyer working in central Bangkok, said her first indication that something was wrong came when she saw a light swinging back and forth. Then she heard the building creaking as it moved back and forth from the shockwaves.
She and her colleagues ran down 12 flights of stairs. “In my lifetime, there was no earthquake like this in Bangkok,” she said.
Paul Vincent, a tourist visiting from England, was at a streetside bar when the quake struck.
“The next thing, everybody came on the street, so there was a lot of screaming and panicking, which obviously made it a lot worse,” he said.
As he came onto the street himself, he said he saw a high-rise building swaying and water falling from a rooftop pool.
“When I saw the building, oh my God, that’s when … it hit me,” he said. “There was people crying in the streets and, you know, the panic was horrendous really.”
People wait to be told it is safe to go back inside the Sathorn Gardens condominium building after an earthquake in Bangkok, Friday, March 28, 2025.
AP Photo/Brian P. D. Hannon
Bridge collapses in Myanmar and injuries reported in China
In Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city and close to the epicenter, the earthquake damaged part of the former royal palace and buildings, according to videos and photos released on Facebook social media.
While the area is prone to earthquakes, it is generally sparsely populated, and most houses are low-rise structures.
In the Sagaing region just southwest of Mandalay, a 90-year-old bridge collapsed, and some sections of the highway connecting Mandalay and Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, were also damaged.
Residents in Yangon rushed out of their homes when the quake struck. There were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths.
In the capital Naypyitaw, the quake damaged religious shrines, sending parts toppling to the ground, and some homes.
To the northeast, the earthquake was felt in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces in China and caused damage to houses and injuries in the city of Ruili on the border with Myanmar, according to Chinese media reports.
Rescuers walk at the site of a high-rise building under construction that collapsed after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, March 28, 2025.
AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit
Videos that one outlet said it had received from a person in Ruili showed building debris littering a street and a person being wheeled in a stretcher toward an ambulance.
The shaking in Mangshi, a Chinese city about 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of Ruili, was so strong that people couldn’t stand, one resident told The Paper, an online media outlet.
A resident of Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, told The Paper that her ceiling lamp was swinging wildly and the shaking lasted more than 10 seconds.
Thailand’s Department of Disaster Prevention said the quake was felt in almost all regions of the country.
Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra called an emergency meeting to assess the impact of the quake.
Adam Schreck, Haruka Naga, Jerry Harmer, Grant Peck and Penny Wang in Bangkok, Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said she presented her Nobel Peace Prize medal to President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday even as he has questioned her credibility to take over her country after the U.S. ousted then-President Nicolás Maduro.
The Nobel Institute has said Machado could not give her prize to Trump, an honour that he has coveted. Even if the gesture proves to be purely symbolic, it was extraordinary given that Trump has effectively sidelined Machado, who has long been the face of resistance in Venezuela. He has signalled his willingness to work with acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who had been Maduro’s second in command.
“I presented the president of the United States the medal, the Nobel Peace Prize,” Machado told reporters after leaving the White House and heading to Capitol Hill. She said she had done so “as a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom.”
Trump confirmed later on social media that Machado had left the medal for him to keep, and he said it was an honour to meet her.
“She is a wonderful woman who has been through so much. María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done,” Trump said in his post. “Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you María!”
The White House later posted a photo of Machado standing next to Trump in the Oval Office as he holds the medal in a large frame. A text in the frame reads, “Presented as a personal symbol of gratitude on behalf of the Venezuelan people in recognition of President Trump’s principled and decisive action to secure a free Venezuela.”
Trump has raised doubts about his stated commitment to backing democratic rule in Venezuela, giving no timetable on when elections might be held. Machado indicated that he had provided few specifics on that front during their discussion.
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She did not provide more information on what was said.
‘We can count on President Trump’
After the closed-door meeting, Machado greeted dozens of cheering supporters waiting for her near the White House gates, stopping to hug many.
“We can count on President Trump,” she told them without elaborating, prompting some to briefly chant, “Thank you, Trump.”
Before her visit to Washington, Machado had not been seen in public since she travelled last month to Norway, where her daughter received the peace prize on her behalf. She had spent 11 months in hiding in Venezuela before she appeared in Norway after the ceremony.
The jubilant scene after her meeting with Trump stood in contrast to political realities in Venezuela. Rodríguez remains in charge of day-to-day government operations, along with others in Maduro’s inner circle. In her first state of the union speech Thursday, the interim president promoted the resumption of diplomatic ties between the historic adversaries and advocated for opening the state-run oil industry to more foreign investment after Trump pledged to seize control of Venezuelan crude sales.
Trump has said it would be difficult for Machado to lead because she “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.” Her party is widely believed to have won 2024 elections rejected by Maduro.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Machado “a remarkable and brave voice” but also said the meeting didn’t mean Trump’s opinion of her changed, calling it “a realistic assessment.”
Leavitt told reporters that Trump supported new Venezuelan elections “when the time is right” but did not say when he thought that might be.
A ‘frank and positive discussion’ about Venezuela
Leavitt said Machado had sought the face-to-face meeting without setting expectations for what would occur. She spent about two and a half hours at the White House.
“I don’t think he needs to hear anything from Ms. Machado,” the press secretary said while the meeting was still going on, other than to have a ”frank and positive discussion about what’s taking place in Venezuela.”
After leaving the White House, Machado went on to a closed-door meeting with a bipartisan group of senators.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Machado told them that “if there’s not some progress, real progress towards a transition in power, and/or elections in the next several months, we should all be worried.”
“She reminded us that Delcy Rodríguez is, in many ways, worse than Maduro,” he added.
Asked if Machado had heard any commitment from the White House on holding elections in Venezuela, Murphy said, “No, I don’t think she got any commitment from them.”
Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, was exultant following the meeting, saying Machado “delivered a message that loud and clear: What President Trump did was the most important, significant event in Latin America. That getting rid of Maduro was absolutely essential.”
Machado’s Washington stop coincided with U.S. forces in the Caribbean Sea seizing another sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration says had ties to Venezuela. It is part of a broader U.S. effort to take control of the South American country’s oil after U.S. forces captured Maduro and his wife less than two weeks ago at a heavily guarded compound in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and brought them to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges.
Leavitt said Venezuela’s interim authorities have been fully cooperating with the Trump administration and noted that Rodríguez’s government said it planned to release more prisoners detained under Maduro. Among those released were five Americans this week.
Trump said Wednesday that he had a “great conversation” with Rodríguez, their first since Maduro was ousted.
Machado doesn’t get the nod from Trump
Just hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump said of Machado that “it would be very tough for her to be the leader.” Machado had steered a careful course to avoid offending Trump, notably after winning the peace prize, and had sought to cultivate relationships with him and key administration voices like Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The industrial engineer and daughter of a steel magnate, Machado began challenging the ruling party in 2004, when the nongovernmental organization she co-founded, Súmate, promoted a referendum to recall then-President Hugo Chávez. The initiative failed, and Machado and other Súmate executives were charged with conspiracy.
A year later, she drew the anger of Chávez and his allies again for travelling to Washington to meet President George W. Bush, whom Chávez considered an adversary.
Almost two decades later, she marshalled millions of Venezuelans to reject Chávez’s successor, Maduro, for another term in the 2024 election. But ruling party-loyal electoral authorities declared him the winner despite ample credible evidence to the contrary. Ensuing anti-government protests ended in a brutal crackdown.
Politics
IMF chief backs Jerome Powell, U.S. Fed independence amid Trump pressure – National TenX News
International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva on Thursday underscored the importance of keeping central banks independent and threw her support behind beleaguered Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who is facing a Trump administration investigation for renovation cost overruns.
Georgieva told Reuters in an interview that there was ample evidence that central bank independence worked in the interest of businesses and households, and that evidence-based, data-based decision-making is good for the economy.
The IMF managing director said she had worked with Powell and respected his professionalism.
“I have worked with Jay Powell. He is a very good professional, very decent man, and I think that his standing among his colleagues tells the story,” she said, when asked about a letter of support signed by her predecessor, Christine Lagarde, now head of the European Central Bank, and other large central banks.
Powell on Sunday disclosed that the Trump administration had opened an investigation into him over cost overruns for a $2.5 billion project to renovate two historical buildings at the Fed’s Washington headquarters complex.
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Powell denies wrongdoing and has called the unprecedented actions a pretext to put pressure on him for not bowing to U.S. President Donald Trump’s long-running demands for sharply lower interest rates.
The probe has sparked widespread criticism from some key members of Trump’s Republican Party in the U.S. Senate, which must confirm his nominee to succeed Powell, along with foreign economic officials, investors and former U.S. government officials from both political parties.
Trump has repeatedly derided Powell’s leadership of the Fed and attacked him, often personally, over what he sees as the Fed chair’s slow moves to cut interest rates. On Wednesday, he dismissed concerns that eroding central bank independence would undermine the value of the U.S. dollar and spark inflation, telling Reuters, “I don’t care.”
Georgieva said the IMF looked carefully at issues such as monetary and financial stability, as well as the strength of a country’s institutions. It was specifically interested in the Fed, given the role of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency.
“It would be very good to see that there is a recognition … that the Fed is precious for the Americans. It is very important for the rest of the world,” she said.
Trump has also attempted to fire another Fed official, Governor Lisa Cook, who has challenged her termination in a legal case that will be argued before the Supreme Court next week.
B.C. Premier David Eby spoke to reporters on Thursday morning from Mumbai, India, during his six-day trade mission.
He said that mining and energy companies in India are showing an interest in B.C.
“They are looking strongly to LNG as one of their ways of reducing carbon intensity, as well as reducing smog in the country,” Eby said.
“And so B.C. LNG has been an item of considerable interest, especially the projects that are reaching final investment decision over the next year — LNG Canada Phase 2, KSI Lisims LNG — as well as the projects that are under construction like Woodfibre LNG.”
Eby was also asked about the rise in extortion cases in B.C.
He said the province’s extortion task force will provide an update next week.
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“We have assembled a remarkable and historic task force, RCMP, CBSA,” Eby said.
“There are more police in Surrey right now than there have ever been. The RCMP has surged resources into the community.”
Eby said he has not been happy with the fact that there has been no update from the task force and he has asked them to provide one.
“There have been some important developments, people deported, an arrest here in India, cooperation between the Indian government and the Canadian government on this at the law enforcement level,” he added.
“That needs to continue, but, bluntly, we need better results, we need to see more arrests and whatever we can do to support the police to get the job done, we will do so.”
As of Jan. 12, Surrey police said there have been 16 reported extortion incidents in the city since the beginning of the year.
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Trump gifted Nobel Peace Prize by Venezuela’s María Corina Machado – National TenX News
IMF chief backs Jerome Powell, U.S. Fed independence amid Trump pressure – National TenX News
B.C. Premier David Eby says province’s LNG, mining of interest to India TenX News
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