YANGON, Myanmar

Boat carrying 70 Muslims capsizes in Bay of Bengal

A boat carrying at least 70 Muslim Rohingya capsized and sank Sunday off the western coast of Myanmar, an aid worker said. Only eight survivors have been found.

The boat was in the Bay of Bengal and headed for Bangladesh when it went down early Sunday, said Abdul Melik, who works for a humanitarian organization in the region.

The incident comes after the United Nations warned that an annual and often deadly exodus of desperate people from Myanmar’s Rakhine state appears to have begun. The exodus usually kicks off in November, when seas begin to calm following the annual monsoon.

As many as 1,500 people have fled in the last week, Dan McNorton, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, said at a press briefing Saturday in Geneva.

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CAIRO

Former President Morsi will miss trial Monday

Mohammed Morsi, the former Egyptian president who hasn’t been seen in public since the country’s military overthrew him July 3, will not appear at the opening session of his trial Monday, the government said Sunday, raising fears among his supporters about his health and how he has been treated during his detention.

Whether the trial would be televised remained unclear Sunday. The trial had already been moved, appeals court judge Medhat Idris said Sunday, from the Torah prison to the city’s Police Academy, the same site where former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s trial was held.

 

– From news service reports


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