LILLE, France: More than 160 migrants who tried to reach England on flimsy boats were rescued from freezing waters in the Channel overnight Friday, just days after a fatal shipwreck, French officials said Saturday.
Around 50 people on board a boat “in difficulty” off the northern French coast were rescued by a Navy vessel and taken to the port of Calais, regional maritime officials said.
Another Navy vessel rescued 31 other shipwrecked migrants in the same area and took them to the port of Boulogne.
Coast Guards brought 45 more people onshore in Calais after they issued a distress call, while a lifeboat went to the aid of a further 40 people nearby.
All were attended to by rescue services.
More than 40,000 migrants — a record — have reached England by boat from northern France this year, risking their lives to cross one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, often under dangerous weather conditions.
On Wednesday, at least four people died in a shipwreck off the southern English port of Dover.
That tragedy came just over a year after at least 27 people died in the Channel in another incident.
The UK government is trying to pass new laws to prevent the record numbers of migrants from attempting the Channel crossing, including making any such arrivals inadmissible for asylum claims.
French services rescue 166 migrants from freezing Channel
https://arab.news/wq8cy
French services rescue 166 migrants from freezing Channel
- Around 50 people on board a boat "in difficulty" off the northern French coast were rescued by a Navy vessel
- Another Navy vessel rescued 31 other shipwrecked migrants in the same area and took them to the port of Boulogne
Sequestered Suu Kyi overshadows military-run Myanmar election
- Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis
YANGON: Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been siloed in military detention since a 2021 coup, but her absence looms large over junta-run polls the generals are touting as a return to democracy.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was once the darling of foreign diplomats, with legions of supporters at home and a reputation for redeeming Myanmar from a history of iron-fisted martial rule.
Her followers swept a landslide victory in Myanmar’s last elections in 2020 but the military voided the vote, dissolved her National League for Democracy party and has jailed her in total seclusion.
As she disappeared and a decade-long democratic experiment was halted, activists rose up — first as street protesters and then as guerrilla rebels battling the military in an all-consuming civil war.
Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis.
But for her many followers in Myanmar, her name is still a byword for democracy, and her absence on the ballot, an indictment it will be neither free nor fair.
The octogenarian — known in Myanmar as “The Lady” and famed for wearing flowers in her hair — remains under lock and key as her junta jailers hold polls overwriting her 2020 victory. The second of the three-phase election began Sunday, with Suu Kyi’s constituency of Kawhmu outside Yangon being contested by parties cleared to run in the heavily restricted poll.
Suu Kyi has spent around two decades of her life in military detention — but in a striking contradiction, she is the daughter of the founder of Myanmar’s armed forces.
She was born on June 19, 1945, in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of WWII.
Her father, Aung San, fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonizers as he sought to secure independence for his country.
