Asia (Page 2,501)

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “murdering Mother India” in violence-hit Manipur state.

“They killed India in Manipur. Their politics killed India in Manipur,” Mr Gandhi said in parliament amid uproar from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

He was speaking during a no-confidence motion debate that the opposition have brought against Mr Modi’s government.

A vote is due on the motion on Thursday after the debate ends.

Mr Modi’s government won’t lose the vote as his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies have a majority in parliament.

But opposition leaders say the debate will force Mr Modi to speak on the ongoing ethnic clashes in Manipur state.

More than 150 people have died and tens of thousands have been displaced in Manipur since early May, when ethnic clashes broke out between the majority Meitei group and the tribal Kuki minority. Mr Modi only publicly addressed the violence weeks later, after a video that showed two women being paraded naked by a mob sparked global outrage.

Speaking in the house, Mr Gandhi said that for Mr Modi, Manipur was not important. “Our prime minister did not go to the state because for him, Manipur is not a part of India.”

The Congress party leader added, “They killed India in Manipur. Their politics has not just killed Manipur, but it has killed India in Manipur. They have murdered India in Manipur.”

Mr Gandhi’s comments sparked protests from BJP leaders who accused him of trivialising India’s name.

“You are not India, for India is not corrupt. India believes in merit, not in dynasty,” BJP MP and federal minister Smriti Irani said. The comment was a reference to the Nehru-Gandhi family, one of India’s most renowned political dynasties, that ruled India for much of its history since independence in 1947.

Mr Gandhi’s speech came days after he returned to parliament for the first time since he was convicted in a criminal defamation case.

He had lost his lawmaker status in March after he was sentenced to two years in jail. He was reinstated as MP on Monday, two days after the Supreme Court suspended his conviction.

On Monday, he visited the parliament building after paying respects to the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the complex where he was welcomed by opposition leaders.

The parliament session, which began on 20 July, has been marked by protests from opposition leaders who have demanded that Mr Modi address the house on the violence in Manipur.

This is the second time that Mr Modi’s government is facing a no-confidence motion since it came to power in 2014. In 2018, a lawmaker had moved a motion over the issue of granting a special category status to Andhra Pradesh state. It was defeated after a 12-hour debate.

The ongoing no-confidence debate is also a chance for a newly-formed opposition alliance of 26 parties – called INDIA – to display their unity. The alliance, which was formed in July – aims to take on Mr Modi’s BJP in the general elections next year.

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In just a matter of days, the 25th World Scout Jamboree in South Korea was crippled by a heatwave, looming typhoon, Covid outbreak and misconduct allegations.

Complaints were followed by accusations of lack of preparation by the organisers.

Described as the world’s largest youth camp, the jamboree – or festival – gathers young Scouts from around the world every four years.

About 43,000 participants – mainly scouts aged 14-18 – gathered on 1 August for the 12-day event on South Korea’s western coast.

But campsite problems led to contingents pulling out. On Monday, an incoming typhoon which turned into a tropical storm forced organisers to call quits and evacuate all participants from the Saemangeum area- a vast, treeless flatland.

Scout groups are now scattered at sites across the country, including hundreds of kilometres north in the capital Seoul.

But the jamboree’s problems began long before the storm.

In the week preceding the event, heavy rainfall turned the campsite into a muddy swamp and breeding ground for mosquitoes and flies.

Days later, a heatwave shot temperatures up to 35C (95F) as the event began. About 400 cases of heat exhaustion were reported on the first night – with many people having to be treated at a makeshift hospital on the baking grounds. A Covid-19 outbreak also spread to about 70 campers.

The South Korean organising committee deployed additional medical staffers to the event, and provided more shade and air conditioners on site, but it wasn’t enough, campers said.

Participants complained about poor sanitation, rotten food, a lack of shelter and privacy.

A man from the Thai delegation was caught walking into the female shower facility. He said it was an accident, and he had not seen a sign designating gender. After the incident, all 85 South Korean scouts and leaders withdrew from the jamboree, saying organisers did not do enough to protect women.

By the end of the week, the UK and US contingents had pulled their thousands of scouts out of the campsite. They were followed by other countries including Singapore and New Zealand.

And on Tuesday, everyone else was evacuated from the Saemangeum site after South Korean authorities conceded it was no longer safe to run the event given the approaching storm.

Thousands of participants and volunteers were ferried out of the campsite in a convoy of more than 1,000 buses to other locations around South Korea. On Wednesday, one of the buses crashed, injuring three Swiss scout members who had to be taken to hospital.

Despite the evacuation from its main camp site, organisers say the jamboree, scheduled to continue to 12 August, will roll on with tours and education programmes in the new sites around the country where the scouts have been taken.

South Korea’s culture ministry also announced on Tuesday that a closing ceremony will be held at the end of the week at the Seoul World Cup Stadium, along with a K-pop concert.

A spokesman from the New Zealand contingent told the BBC it had taken their team years to raise funds for the event, and the adult volunteers were “determined to make this a positive experience” despite the challenges.

But the post-event autopsy has already begun. Some critics before the event- including local politicians- raised concerns about gathering so many people at a site that lacked natural protection from the heat.

A senior South Korean official, who was called in to the site last week, told the BBC he believed a key reason for the mess was the number of authorities involved.

“We dispatched some workers to the site, and there were reports that they couldn’t even have lunch. There were piles of lunch boxes prepared, but there was nobody to distribute it,” he told the BBC. He declined to be named as he said he was not authorised to speak to media.

On top of the Korea Scout Association, the project was also managed by the province’s officials, South Korea’s legislature, as well as three other government agencies including the ministry of gender equality and family, the ministry of tourism, and the ministry of interior and safety.

Logistical stuff-ups persist, Korean media report. For example, officials in one district prepared food and accommodation for 175 evacuated scouts of the Yemen contingent. But it turned out the scouts had not even attended the jamboree in the first place.

“This is the first time in more than 100 years of World Scout Jamborees that we have had to face such compounded challenges, from untimely floods to an unprecedented heatwave and now a typhoon!” said Ahmad Alhendawi, the Secretary-General of the World Organization of the Scout Movement, in a statement.

Natural disasters- like the typhoon – are an unforeseen calamity. The last time a typhoon had disrupted the event was at the 1971 jamboree held in Japan, a spokesman from the Scouts told the BBC.

But South Korean authorities will also be sifting through accusations of mismanagement after six years of preparation.

The jamboree is a major event. Countries bid to host the festival each time, and in 2017, South Korea won that right.

Local authorities had hoped the first world jamboree to held since the pandemic would bring in investment and tourist dollars. It was to be seen as the country’s largest undertaking in terms of international participants since the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

However, the event’s troubles have instead led to Korean media calling the event “a national disgrace.”

Scientists have identified a new species of amphibian that occupied Australia some 247 million years ago.

The finding ends a mystery that has captivated researchers since the 90s, when the creature’s fossilised remains were found by a retired chicken farmer in New South Wales.

Less than 10 fossils of the lizard-like species have been identified globally.

Experts say the discovery may “rewrite the evolution of amphibians in Australia”.

It was a broken garden wall at his home in Umina – a roughly 90-minute drive north of Sydney – that led to Mihail Mihaildis’s discovery of the extraordinary fossil, almost three decades ago.

The retired chicken farmer had purchased a 1.6 tonne sandstone slab to fix the problem. But as he sliced through the stone’s outer layers, the immortalised outline of an unknown creature revealed itself.

Mr Mihaildis contacted the Australian Museum in Sydney about his discovery, and in 1997 he handed the fossil over.

It was there in a climate-controlled display room that Lachlan Hart – the palaeontologist who would ultimately decode its petrified remains – first encountered it as a child.

“I was obsessed with dinosaurs… and so 12-year-old me saw that fossil on display back in 1997. And then 25 years later it became part of my PhD, which is insane,” Mr Hart says.

Mr Hart says it was “dumb luck” that led to his team, which was studying life in Australia’s Triassic era some 250 million years ago, being given the fossil to identify.

Remarkably, the mould contains a “nearly complete skeleton”, which is almost unheard of, Mr Hart explains.

“It’s got the head and the body attached, and the fossilisation of the creature’s skin and fatty tissues around the outside of its body – all of that makes this a really rare find.”

From that data, Mr Hart and his colleagues estimate the amphibian was approximately 1.5m in length and that it had a salamander-shaped body. The newly identified species has been named Arenaepeton supinatus, which means “sand creeper on its back” in Latin.

Scientists say the carnivorous amphibian once lived in the freshwater lakes and streams of Sydney. This particular species belongs to the Temnospondyli family: resilient amphibians that survived two of the earth’s five mass extinction events, including a series of volcanic eruptions that eradicated 70-80% of all dinosaurs roughly 250 million years ago.

Only three other fossils capturing the Temnospondyli species have been successfully identified in Australia.

The findings, which were published Tuesday, show that “Australia was a great place for animals to evolve and find refuge after mass extinctions,” Mr Hart says.

The extraordinary fossil will go on full-time display at the Australian Museum later this year.

This week people in Thailand have been distracted from the endless wrangling to form a new government by the unexpected arrival, from the US, of a cheery-looking, 42 year-old Thai lawyer, visiting the country of his birth for the first time in 27 years.

Vacharaesorn Vivacharawongse is the second of four estranged sons of King Vajiralongkorn. Until now they were widely believed to have been stripped of their royal status and to have no place in the line of succession to the throne.

But the succession became problematic after the king’s eldest daughter Princess Bajrakitiyabha, the most plausible heir, collapsed last December. She is still in a coma and seems unlikely to recover.

For years there has been quiet talk in Thailand about the possibility of one of the estranged sons being rehabilitated and brought back to play a royal role.

Mr Vacharaesorn’s unannounced visit could be the start of such a rehabilitation, although there has been no official statement from the palace.

He is one of five children born to King Vajiralongkorn’s second wife Sujiranee, a former actress whom he divorced in 1996. Mr Vacharaesorn and his three brothers, who were at school in UK at the time, were in effect banished from Thailand with their mother, and have lived in the US since then. His sister, Princess Sirivanavari was brought back to Thailand to live with her father.

In the past the four sons occasionally published letters appealing for reconciliation with their father, and to be allowed to return to Thailand, to no effect.

Mr Vacharaesorn has spent his first three days in Bangkok partly as a tourist, rediscovering the city, visiting temples, enjoying Thai food and riding in a tuk-tuk. He told journalists coming back was like a dream come true for him.

But has also had what appear to be official engagements, meeting Thailand’s most senior religious figure, the Supreme Patriarch of the Buddhist Sangha who is appointed by his father, and visiting a childcare centre sponsored by the palace. Many Thais will interpret this as showcasing his potential for royal duties.

Back in the US he has been the most visible of the four sons, very active in the Thai community there and openly supportive of the Thai monarchy. He appears to be the one who is most suited to and interested in taking a higher profile role in the royal family.

Until her collapse last year Princess Bajrakitiyabha was seen as the most accomplished of the king’s children who are living in Thailand. She is a lawyer who had worked with the UN and been Thailand’s ambassador to Austria.

The King’s youngest child, Prince Dipangkorn, who is 18, is believed to suffer from some learning difficulties, and it was widely assumed that Princess Bajrakitiyabha would play the role of regent, or even become queen, on the death of her father. Thai succession law leaves it to the monarch to designate his successor, which King Vajiralongkorn has not yet done.

So could Mr Vacharaesorn, a successful and popular figure back in the US, fit the bill? It is far too soon to say.

More likely this will be seen as an exploratory first visit, with further trips in the future to see how he copes in the public spotlight, and with the rigid protocol and sometimes Byzantine politics of Thailand’s royal court.

And it is impossible to know what King Vajiralongkorn’s views are on this. People in his inner circle have been known to go in and out of favour quite suddenly, sometimes disappearing from public view.

Whoever organised this return of a prodigal son will be doing so with understandable caution.