Hamas urges UK govt to overturn terror designation

MANDALAY: When a massive earthquake hit Myanmar last month, centuries of sacred history tumbled down -- towering Buddha idols, sky-scraping stupas and the pure-white pagoda where 83-year-old Khin Sein has prayed for most of her life.
The magnitude-7.7 tremor razed Nagayon Pagoda in the central city of Mandalay, Myanmar's last royal capital where ancient heritage was decimated in the disaster which claimed more than 3,700 lives.
For around 200 years, the temple was adorned with a carving of a sacred serpent said to have shielded the Buddha from the elements after his enlightenment.
The quake that struck one month ago on Monday reduced it to a heap of shapeless masonry, half burying the snake's bowing head.
"I cried out to pray that Nagayon Pagoda would save me when the quake started," said Khin Sein. "But my son told me that the pagoda was already gone."
"I don't think any bricklayer or architect could rebuild it the same as it once was," she told AFP, her eyes welling with tears as she paced the perimeter of the temple where she had prayed for 51 years.
"I want the original back but I know it's not possible."


The March 28 quake has left more than 60,000 people living in tent encampments, according to the United Nations, and pushed two million people into "critical need" in a country already devastated by civil war since a 2021 coup.
As the ground sheared up to six metres (20 feet), more than 3,000 monasteries and nunneries were destroyed alongside more than 5,000 pagodas, the ruling junta says.
Myanmar's second city of Mandalay and the adjacent cities of Sagaing and Inwa, dotted around the quake's epicentre, are all ancient seats of power, steeped in history and now pockmarked with ruins.
Cultural capital Mandalay was where the British captured the country's last king in 1885, beginning colonial rule of the whole nation.
The Royal Palace's crenellations have crumbled in places with ornate bastions collapsed askew.
A one-kilometre colonial-era bridge has collapsed into the Irrawaddy River towards Sagaing, where the horizon was once prickled with pinnacles of pagodas and stupas now contorted or simply gone.
Inwa served as capital for nearly 360 years until it was abandoned after a magnitude-8.2 quake struck in 1839.
Three quarters of the historic buildings inside its ancient cultural heritage zone were damaged in this year's jolt, officials say.
Thu Nanda has come to visit what remains of Me Nu Brick Monastery.
Built in 1818, entire portions of its gleaming north and west wings have been devastated, its gold filigree exterior cracked with terracotta-colour innards spilling out.
"The old things are the most valuable," said Thu Nanda, a 49-year-old monk. "The loss of historic heritage is breaking our hearts."
"Even if we are able to repair it, people will not be able to feel it in its original form. Old is just old. It cannot be restored," he said.
"I think the loss of our heritage affects not only our country but also the world."


Myanmar is still grappling with the recovery of human remains from the ruins and the oncoming summer monsoon season. Heavy rains are already forecast this week as thousands mark one month camped outside.
While surveyors have investigated damage to historic buildings, reconstruction efforts are focused on aiding the living victims with little thought yet for the restoration of heritage landmarks.
Myanmar has seen more than its fair share of destruction. The four-year war has made air strikes and sieges of urban centres commonplace.
Thousands have been killed, 3.5 million are displaced and half the population now live in poverty.
Nonetheless Thein Myint Ko, surveying the three-centuries-old Lawka Tharaphu Pagoda, says: "I have never experienced such tragedy in my 65 years alive".
He serves on the board of trustees of a building largely ruined by the force of the quake.
Its gold stupa was cracked like eggshells, and now volunteer workers from a nearby village spade at the dusty remnants beneath.
"I feel devastated," said Thein Myint Ko.
But what was left unscathed has become more precious to the annals of Myanmar.
Somehow a monumental eight-metre marble statue of the Buddha is largely undamaged -- its gold halo shattered and a crack at its base, but its serene expression unperturbed.
"No one was injured and the Buddha image survived," said one man clearing rubble at the feet of the statue. "It is such a blessed pagoda."
lmg-jts/pdw/sco

Kim Jong Un sent troops to help Russia “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers” of Kursk region

Ukraine earlier said 4,000 of at least 10,000 North Koreans troops fighting with Russian for had been killed

SEOUL, South Korea: North Korea confirmed Monday for the first time that it sent troops to Russia to support its war against Ukraine.
US, South Korean and Ukraine intelligence officials have said North Korea dispatched about 10,000-12,000 troops to Russia last fall. But North Korea hadn’t confirmed or denied its reported troop deployments to Russia until Monday.
Leader Kim Jong Un decided to send combat troops to Russia under a mutual defense treaty, the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party said in a statement.
It cited Kim as saying the deployment was meant to “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces.”
“They who fought for justice are all heroes and representatives of the honor of the motherland,” Kim said, according to the statement sent to state media.
In March, South Korea’s military said North Korea sent about 3,000 additional troops to Russia earlier this year, after its soldiers deployed on the Russian-Ukraine fronts suffered heavy casualties. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs assessed that around 4,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed or wounded.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier put the number of killed or wounded North Koreans at 4,000, though US estimates were lower at around 1,200.
In March, Kim expressed his unwavering support for Russia’s war in Ukraine during a meeting with a top Russian security official, Sergei Shoigu, in Pyongyang. State media reports said Kim and Shoigu reaffirmed their commitment to uphold the mutual defense treaty agreed upon last year. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko told Russian media the governments were discussing a potential visit by Kim to Moscow.
North Korea has been supplying a vast amount of conventional weapons to Russia as well. South Korea, the US and their partners worry that Russia could reward North Korea by transferring high-tech weapons technologies that can sharply enhance its nuclear weapons program. North Korea is expected to receive economic and other assistance from Russia as well.
North Korean soldiers are highly disciplined and well trained, but observers say they’ve become easy targets for drone and artillery attacks on Russian-Ukraine battlefields due to their lack of combat experience and unfamiliarity with the terrain.
Still, Ukrainian military and intelligence officials have assessed that the North Koreans are gaining crucial battlefield experience and have been key to Russia’s strategy of overwhelming Ukraine by throwing large numbers of soldiers into the battle for Kursk.