Politics
Myanmar’s earthquake death toll jumps to 1,644 as more bodies are recovered from the rubble – National TenX News
BANGKOK — Myanmar’s ruling military said Saturday on state television that the confirmed death toll from a devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake rose to 1,644, as more bodies were pulled from the rubble of the scores of buildings that collapsed when it struck near the country’s second-largest city.
The new total is a sharp rise compared to the 1,002 total announced just hours earlier, underlining the difficulty of confirming casualties over a widespread region and the likelihood that the numbers will continue to grow from Friday’s quake. The number of injured increased to 3,408, while the missing figure rose to 139.
Rescue efforts are underway especially in the major stricken cities of Mandalay, the country’s No. 2 city, and Naypyitaw, the capital. But even though teams and equipment have been flown in from other nations, they are hindered by the airports in those cities being damaged and apparently unfit to land planes.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, is in the throes of a prolonged civil war, which is already responsible for a humanitarian crisis. It makes movement around the country both difficult and dangerous, complicating relief efforts and raising fears that the death toll could still rise precipitously.
The earthquake struck midday Friday with an epicenter not far from Mandalay, followed by several aftershocks, including one measuring 6.4. It sent buildings in many areas toppling to the ground, buckled roads, caused bridges to collapse and burst a dam.
In Naypyidaw, crews worked Saturday to repair damaged roads, while electricity, phone and internet services remained down for most of the city. The earthquake brought down many buildings, including multiple units that housed government civil servants, but that section of the city was blocked off by authorities on Saturday.
In neighboring Thailand, the quake rocked the greater Bangkok area, home to around 17 million people, and other parts of the country.
Bangkok city authorities said the number of confirmed dead was now 10, nine at the site of the collapsed high-rise under construction near the capital’s popular Chatuchak market, while 78 people were still unaccounted for. Rescue efforts were continuing in the hope of finding additional survivors.
On Saturday, more heavy equipment was brought in to move the tons of rubble, but hope was fading among friends and family members of the missing that they would be found alive.
“I was praying that that they had survived but when I got here and saw the ruin — where could they be? In which corner? Are they still alive? I am still praying that all six are alive,” said 45-year-old Naruemol Thonglek, sobbing as she awaited news about her partner, who is from Myanmar, and five friends who worked at the site.
Get daily National news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
Waenphet Panta said she hadn’t heard from her daughter Kanlayanee since a phone call about an hour before the quake. A friend told her Kanlayanee had been working high on the building on Friday.
“I am praying my daughter is safe, that she has survived and that she’s at the hospital,” she said, Kanlayanee’s father sitting beside her.
Thai authorities said that the quake and aftershocks were felt in most of the country’s provinces. Many places in the north reported damage to residential buildings, hospitals and temples, including in Chiang Mai, but the only casualties were reported in Bangkok
Earthquakes are rare in Bangkok, but relatively common in Myanmar. The country sits on the Sagaing Fault, a major north-south fault that separates the India plate and the Sunda plate.
Brian Baptie, a seismologist with the British Geological Survey, said that the quake caused intense ground shaking in an area where most of the population lives in buildings constructed of timber and unreinforced brick masonry.
“When you have a large earthquake in an area where there are over a million people, many of them living in vulnerable buildings, the consequences can often be disastrous,” he said in a statement.
Myanmar’s government said that blood was in high demand in the hardest-hit areas. In a country where prior governments sometimes have been slow to accept foreign aid, Min Aung Hlaing said that Myanmar was ready to accept outside assistance.
Myanmar’s military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, and is now involved in a civil war with long-established militias and newly formed pro-democracy ones.
Military forces continued their attacks even after the quake, with three airstrikes in northern Kayin state, also called Karenni state, and southern Shan — both of which border Mandalay state, said Dave Eubank, a former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who founded the Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian aid organization that has provided assistance to both combatants and civilians in Myanmar since the 1990s.
Eubank told The Associated Press that in the area he was operating in, most villages have already been destroyed by the military so the earthquake had little impact.
“People are in the jungle and I was out in the jungle when the earthquake hit — it was powerful, but the trees just moved, that was it for us, so we haven’t had a direct impact other than that the Burma army keeps attacking, even after the quake,” he said.
In northern Shan, an airstrike on a rebel-controlled village just minutes after the earthquake killed seven militia members and damaged five buildings, including a school, Mai Rukow, editor of a Shan-based online media Shwe Phee Myay News Agency, told the AP.
Government forces have lost control of much of Myanmar, and many places are incredibly dangerous or simply impossible for aid groups to reach. More than 3 million people have been displaced by the fighting and nearly 20 million are in need, according to the United Nations.
“Although a full picture of the damage is still emerging, most of us have never seen such destruction,” said Haider Yaqub, Myanmar country director for the NGO Plan International, from Yangon.
Satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by the AP show the earthquake toppled the air traffic control tower at Naypyitaw International Airport as if sheered from its base.
Debris lay scattered from the top of the tower, which controlled all air traffic in the capital of Myanmar, the photos showed on Saturday.
It wasn’t immediately clear if there had been any injuries in the collapse, though the tower would have had staff inside of it at the time of the earthquake Friday.
China and Russia are the largest suppliers of weapons to Myanmar’s military, and were among the first to step in with humanitarian aid.
China said it has sent more than 135 rescue personnel and experts along with supplies like medical kits and generators, and pledged around $13.8 million in emergency aid. Hong Kong sent a 51-member team to Myanmar.
Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said it had flown in 120 rescuers and supplies, and the country’s Health Ministry said Moscow had sent a medical team to Myanmar.
Other countries like India and South Korea are sending help, and the U.N. allocated $5 million to start relief efforts.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that Washington was going to help with the response, but some experts were concerned about this effort given his administration’s deep cuts in foreign assistance.
Politics
X outages reported by tens of thousands of users worldwide: Downdetector – National TenX News
X, formerly Twitter, was down for tens of thousands of users worldwide on Friday, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
There were more than 62,000 reports of issues with the social media platform as of 10:22 a.m. EST, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources.
Get daily National news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
Users in the U.K. reported around 11,000 incidents and over 3,000 issues were reported in India.
The actual number of affected users may differ from what is shown on the platform, as the reports are submitted by users.
Politics
Trump says he may tariff countries that don’t ‘go along’ with Greenland plans – National TenX News
U.S. President Donald Trump suggested Friday that he may punish countries with tariffs if they don’t back the U.S. controlling Greenland, a message that came as a bipartisan Congressional delegation sought to lower tensions in the Danish capital.
Trump for months has insisted that the U.S. should control Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, and said earlier this week that anything less than the Arctic island being in U.S. hands would be “unacceptable.”
During an unrelated event at the White House about rural health care, he recounted Friday how he had threatened European allies with tariffs on pharmaceuticals.
“I may do that for Greenland too,” Trump said. “I may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security. So I may do that,” he said.
He had not previously mentioned using tariffs to try to force the issue.
Earlier this week, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland met in Washington this week with U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
That encounter didn’t resolve the deep differences but did produce an agreement to set up a working group — on whose purpose Denmark and the White House then offered sharply diverging public views.
European leaders have insisted that is only for Denmark and Greenland to decide on matters concerning the territory, and Denmark said this week that it was increasing its military presence in Greenland in cooperation with allies.
A relationship ‘we need to nurture’
In Copenhagen, a group of senators and members of the House of Representatives met Friday with Danish and Greenlandic lawmakers, and with leaders including Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.
Delegation leader Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, thanked the group’s hosts for “225 years of being a good and trusted ally and partner” and said that “we had a strong and robust dialog about how we extend that into the future.”
Get daily National news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said after meeting lawmakers that the visit reflected a strong relationship over decades and “it is one that we need to nurture.” She told reporters that “Greenland needs to be viewed as our ally, not as an asset, and I think that’s what you’re hearing with this delegation.”
The tone contrasted with that emanating from the White House. Trump has sought to justify his calls for a U.S. takeover by repeatedly claiming that China and Russia have their own designs on Greenland, which holds vast untapped reserves of critical minerals. The White House hasn’t ruled out taking the territory by force.
“We have heard so many lies, to be honest and so much exaggeration on the threats towards Greenland,” said Aaja Chemnitz, a Greenlandic politician and member of the Danish parliament who took part in Friday’s meetings. “And mostly, I would say the threats that we’re seeing right now is from the U.S. side.”
Murkowski emphasized the role of Congress in spending and in conveying messages from constituents.
“I think it is important to underscore that when you ask the American people whether or not they think it is a good idea for the United States to acquire Greenland, the vast majority, some 75%, will say, we do not think that that is a good idea,” she said.
Along with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, Murkowski has introduced bipartisan legislation that would prohibit the use of U.S. Defense or State department funds to annex or take control of Greenland or the sovereign territory of any NATO member state without that ally’s consent or authorization from the North Atlantic Council.
Inuit council slams White House
The dispute is looming large in the lives of Greenlanders. Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said on Tuesday that “if we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark. We choose NATO. We choose the Kingdom of Denmark. We choose the EU.””
The chair of the Nuuk, Greenland-based Inuit Circumpolar Council, which represents around 180,000 Inuit from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Russia’s Chukotka region on international issues, said persistent statements from the White House that the U.S. must own Greenland offer “a clear picture of how the US administration views the people of Greenland, how the U.S. administration views Indigenous peoples, and peoples that are few in numbers.”
Sara Olsvig told The Associated Press in Nuuk that the issue is “how one of the biggest powers in the world views other peoples that are less powerful than them. And that really is concerning.”
Indigenous Inuit in Greenland do not want to be colonized again, she said.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
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.
Get breaking National news
For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.
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.
X outages reported by tens of thousands of users worldwide: Downdetector – National TenX News
Trump says he may tariff countries that don’t ‘go along’ with Greenland plans – National TenX News
Trump gifted Nobel Peace Prize by Venezuela’s María Corina Machado – National TenX News
-
Fashion10 months agoThese ’90s fashion trends are making a comeback in 2017
-
Entertainment10 months agoThe final 6 ‘Game of Thrones’ episodes might feel like a full season
-
TenX Exclusive10 months agoअमर योद्धा: राइफलमैन जसवंत सिंह रावत की वीरगाथा
-
Politics8 months agoBefore being named Pope Leo XIV, he was Cardinal Robert Prevost. Who is he? – National TenX News
-
Politics9 months agoPuerto Rico faces island-wide blackout, sparking anger from officials – National TenX News
-
Fashion10 months agoAccording to Dior Couture, this taboo fashion accessory is back
-
Tech10 months agoIndian-AI-software-which-caught-30-thousand-criminals-and-busted-18-terrorist-modules-its-demand-is-increasing-in-foreign-countries-also – News18 हिंदी
-
Politics9 months agoScientists detect possible signs of life on another planet — but it’s not aliens – National TenX News