Fire destroys homes at Rohingya camp
DHAKA, Bangladesh -- A fire raced through a sprawling Rohingya refugee camp in southern Bangladesh on Thursday, destroying hundreds of homes, officials said. No casualties were reported.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said more than 550 homes sheltering about 3,500 people as well as 150 shops were either totally or partially destroyed in the fire.
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The fire broke out early Thursday in Nayapara Camp in Cox's Bazar district, where more than 1 million Rohingya refugees from Burma are staying. Nayapara is an old camp that was started decades ago.
Mohammed Shamsud Douza, a senior refugee official, said firefighters took two hours to get the blaze under control.
No serious injuries were reported, and the cause of the fire was not immediately known.
The U.N. agency said affected families were being provided shelter materials, winter clothes, hot meals and medical care.
Arrests made after Chinese mine blast
BEIJING -- Authorities have detained managers at a gold mine in eastern China where 22 workers have been trapped underground after an explosion Sunday. The condition of the workers trapped for more than three days remains unknown.
Managers waited more than a day to give notice of the explosion in violation of rules saying accidents must be reported within one hour, the official Xinhua News Agency said Thursday, calling that an illegal act that will not go unpunished. It wasn't clear if other accusations would be leveled against them.
The mine in Qixia, a jurisdiction under the city of Yantai in Shandong province, had been under construction at the time of the Sunday afternoon blast, the cause of which hasn't been announced.
More than 300 workers are seeking to clear obstructions while drilling a new shaft to reach the chamber and expel dangerous fumes.
4 protesters held in Brussels violence
BRUSSELS -- Four people, including two minors, remained in custody Thursday after a Brussels demonstration over the weekend death of a young Black man detained by police turned violent, the prosecutor's office said.
A spokesman for the prosecutor's office said three of the people held were suspected of arson. The fourth has been accused of rebellion after the Wednesday demonstration, when police made more than 100 arrests.
Police said most of the violence took place after the largely peaceful demonstration by about 500 people -- some holding Black Lives Matter signs -- ended in downtown Brussels.
According to a police statement, 50 to 100 people remained on the spot and threw projectiles, set fires, damaged street furniture and police vehicles. They also smashed a window and a door at a police station. Several officers were injured, the statement said.
In all, 116 people were arrested, including 30 minors, and paramedics treated one civilian, police said.
Belgian prosecutors have requested that an investigative judge be appointed after the death of the 23-year-old Black man identified by authorities only as I.B. The prosecutor's office said he was arrested on Saturday after he tried to run away from police who were checking people assembled in the city center despite pandemic restrictions on social gatherings.
He was taken to a police station where he fainted, and then transferred to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the office said.
Agency vows swift arrest of Putin critic
Russia's prison service said Thursday that top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny faces immediate arrest once he arrives from Germany.
Navalny, who has been convalescing in Germany from an August poisoning with a nerve agent that he has blamed on the Kremlin, said he will fly back home Sunday. He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of now trying to deter him from returning home with the threat of arrest. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied a role in the opposition leader's poisoning.
At the end of December, the Federal Penitentiary Service warned Navalny that he faced time in prison if he fails to immediately report to its office in line with the terms of a suspended sentence and probation he received for a 2014 conviction on charges of embezzlement and money laundering that he rejected as politically motivated. The European Court for Human Rights had ruled that his conviction was unlawful.
The Federal Penitentiary Service said in a statement Thursday that it issued an arrest warrant for Navalny in late December after his failure to report to its office. The prison service, which has asked a Moscow court to turn Navalny's 3½-year suspended sentence into a real one, noted that it's "obliged to take all the necessary action to detain Navalny pending the court's ruling."
In a parallel move just before New Year's, Russia's main investigative agency also opened a new criminal case against Navalny on charges of large-scale fraud related to the alleged mishandling of $5 million in private donations to his Anti-Corruption Foundation and other organizations. Navalny also has dismissed those accusations as crudely fabricated.
