An Indonesian court ordered two local companies to pay up to 60 million rupiah ($3,850) to each family whose children died of an acute kidney injury or were seriously injured after consuming toxic cough syrup.

More than 200 children in Indonesia died of the injury and about 120 more survived, some of whom lived with disabilities which led to financial hardships for their parents.

Indonesian courts have cited lax oversight by pharmaceutical companies, including local drugmakers and some suppliers, as well as the country’s food and drugs agency (BPOM), in hearings into the poisonings.

In late 2022, more than 20 families launched a civil suit against the agency, the health ministry, and several companies.

Judges at the Central Jakarta court found a drugmaker and a supplier, Afi Farma and CV Samudera Chemical, at fault in the poisonings, according to a ruling released late on Thursday.

The health ministry and the BPOM were cleared of wrongdoing.

The court ordered the companies to pay the parents who brought the suit compensation of 50 million rupiah for children who died and 60 million rupiah for children who were injured.

Parents had asked for 3.4 billion rupiah for each child that died, and 2.2 billion rupiah for survivors. Indonesia’s 2023 gross domestic product per capita was nearly $5,000, data from the country’s Statistics Bureau shows.

Siti Habiba, the lawyer for the parents, said the families were disappointed by the ruling, as the money was given “as though we were beggars.”

“This breaks a lot of the victims’ hearts,” she said, adding the court ignored the parents’ government oversight concerns by not finding the health ministry and the BPOM at fault.

The court document, posted on its website, did not include reasons for the decision.

Afi Farma’s lawyer Reza Wendra Prayogo told Reuters on Friday the firm was “disappointed” with the civil case ruling and the company was still considering its next legal step.

Last year, a criminal court found East Java-based drugmaker Afi Farma guilty of negligence and jailed officials for not testing the ingredients sent by its supplier.

The syrups contained ethylene glycol (EG), a commonly used chemical in products such as brake fluid and antifreeze. A court document from that criminal case said the EG concentration in the syrups reached as high as 99%, where international standards say only 0.1% of EG is safe for consumption.

The company has repeatedly denied negligence.

Reuters could not immediately contact CV Samudera Chemical, an Indonesian soapmaker, whose toxic ingredient made its way to Afi Farma, according to the court document of the Afi Farma criminal case in 2023.

The World Health Organization said the contaminated medicines had also killed children in Gambia and Uzbekistan in 2022.

Four officers at a maximum security prison in Russia were killed after inmates who identified themselves as affiliated to ISIS took several staff hostage, Russian state media reported.

Russian special forces said the alleged hostage takers were all “eliminated” in an operation that saw some hostages freed, at the penal colony in the town of Surovikino.

The National Guard of Russia, also known as the Rosgvardia, wrote on Telegram: “Snipers from the special forces of the Russian National Guard in the Volgograd Region neutralized four prisoners who had taken prisoner employees hostage with four precise shots; the hostages were freed.”

Graphic footage circulating on social media showed three uniformed prison staff members lying motionless in pools of blood, one with his throat slashed. A fourth staff member is seen on his knees in a doorway.

In another video the apparent hostage takers can be seen waving ISIS flags.

Inmates captured the correctional facility staff at a disciplinary commission meeting, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia earlier told state media outlet TASS.

“At a meeting of the disciplinary commission (where cases of malicious violators are considered, among other things) of the colony, several prisoners seized employees,” the penitentiary service said, according to TASS.

Eight prison officers and four inmates were taken hostage, according to RIA Novosti.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that the head of the Federal Penitentiary Service reported to him about the situation in the Volgograd colony.

The incident follows another hostage situation in Russia in June, when two employees of a pre-trial detention center in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don were rescued after being held hostage for several hours by six detainees.

The detainees had links to ISIS and were killed in the operation.

This story has been updated with additional information.

The attacker is on the run and police are treating the incident as a terror attack, said a German police spokesperson.

Police services are utilizing all available resources, including personnel and vehicles, and a large-scale manhunt is underway, the spokesperson added.

The attack occurred at a “Festival of Diversity” being held in the city, which is a three-day event marking the 650th anniversary of the city’s founding.

Images and footage from the scene showed several ambulances and police officers at the scene, as well as a helicopter flying overhead.

“This evening, all of us in Solingen are experiencing shock, horror, and great sadness,” The city’s mayor, Tim Kurzbach, wrote on Solingen’s Facebook page.

“We all wanted to celebrate our city’s anniversary together and now we have to mourn the dead and injured.”

The mayor sent his prayers to the victims fighting for their lives and thanked the rescue and security personnel for their help. “I ask you, if you believe, pray with me and, if not, then hope with me,” he said.

According to the festival’s website, Friday was the start of the three-day “Festival of Diversity,” which would include music, food, performances, and family-friendly entertainment.

Bergisch Symphony Orchestra, the shared orchestra for the cities of Solingen and Remscheid, was scheduled to play on the main stage on Friday.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Khin Mar Cho worries for her 4-year-old son as she struggles to scrape together enough food to feed him in a makeshift displacement camp at a crowded monastery in western Myanmar.

Soldiers had stormed their village of Byine Phyu, Rakhine state, and forced her and other family members out of their homes. They detained all the men and shot her brother and other neighbors, she said.

Survivors like Khin Mar Cho fled to the monastery just outside the regional capital Sittwe. There, a lone monk is struggling to feed about 300 people who have sought refuge inside the camp as a three-year civil war intensifies around them, waged by Myanmar’s military junta against an armed resistance.

“There are days that we have no food, even though we are hungry,” Khin Mar Cho said. “I cannot feed my kid anything more than meals donated by people because I don’t have a job or income, and all the male family members have been taken away.”

Disturbing accounts from multiple aid workers suggest hunger is being used as a weapon of war in Rakhine state.

Rakhine has become a focal point of the conflict, where a powerful ethnic minority armed rebel group, the Arakan Army (AA) — which is accused of human rights abuses — has seized control of at least 10 of the state’s townships since a year-long ceasefire with the military collapsed in November.

The aid officials said the junta is trying to “starve” civilians in AA-held territory, using tactics that have repeatedly been described as war crimes and crimes against humanity by UN officials and rights groups.

“The Myanmar government is committed to the equality of all citizens,” the statement said. “Every citizen has the right to travel freely without any restrictions.”

Risk of starvation

Aid workers say they don’t know the full extent of the suffering due to telecoms and internet blocks coupled with restrictions on access to affected areas.

But they say the crisis is acute.

The situation unfolding across the country is desperate, but in Rakhine — which is almost entirely dependent on food aid — the UN says that fewer than a quarter of the 873,000 people who need food assistance have received it.

“There is a very real possibility that the most vulnerable… may die if they do not receive support,” a UN report warned in June. It is now August, and the situation has deteriorated.

Prices for basic staples, like rice, fuel and cooking oil, have skyrocketed partly due to shortages created by the junta’s control of supply routes north from Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, aid officials said. Requests to transport goods, including food, into the region are being refused, they added.

Meanwhile, food production in the state has plummeted, with farmers predicting a 50% drop in this year’s rice harvest, independent Myanmar news outlet The Irrawaddy reported.

Mohammed, a 43-year-old father of three, has lived in a displacement camp with his family in Sittwe since 2012, when anti-Muslim violence forced tens of thousands of people from their homes.

The latest fighting has not yet reached Sittwe, which the junta still controls. But since the collapse of the ceasefire deal between the AA and the military in November opened a major new front in Myanmar’s civil war, the camp has been all but cut off and conditions have drastically deteriorated, he said.

Mohammed’s children attend a small, makeshift school within the camp, but he says it’s difficult to nurture their dreams when he can only feed them half a bowl of rice.

“My children would cry and ask, ‘Are we not eating tonight?’ In those moments, feeling desperate, I would go to a neighbor and ask for some food to feed our children,” Mohammed told Partners Relief and Development, an aid NGO.

Yet his neighbors are hungry too, and they have little to spare.

Access denied

“As the conflict has spread around Rakhine, we’ve also seen the destruction of roadways and bridges,” she said. “The result is, basically, no one has access to these places.”

Aid groups, including UN agencies, must get “travel authorizations” from the state government, which reports to the ruling military council, before they can access territory that the junta considers “travel-restricted areas,” according to aid officials.

In February, the junta stopped issuing nearly all travel authorizations to contested or rebel-controlled territory in the state, most of which are in northern Rakhine, according to seven aid officials with direct knowledge of the matter, all of whom requested anonymity.

Without the travel authorizations, it’s impossible to pass through the junta’s road and waterway blockades, they said.

One senior aid official said, “it is difficult to negotiate because the SAC does not want assistance to go to non-SAC controlled areas,” referring to the State Administration Council, the official name of the junta government.

In May, some aid agencies received travel authorizations for Sittwe when the junta allowed them to begin transporting supplies from Yangon. Two cargo vessels carrying rice and basic medicine arrived in Sittwe two months later, but some items such as solar lights, hygiene and newborn kits remained held up, OCHA reported in August.

Teams still can’t access the surrounding townships or areas further afield.

The UN aid officials made clear in their meetings, which have not been previously reported, that the status quo is unacceptable, the sources said. Separately, the two officials said the agency has raised the issue with the UN Security Council, the European Union and China, among others.

But “that’s a lame excuse,” said a senior aid official. “We don’t need the junta to cover for our security.”

Aid workers and officials say the junta’s blockade is part of a wider war strategy long used by the military, designed to chip away at the rebel group’s popular support by cutting off food, water and medical care to the civilian population.

Bauchner, the Human Rights Watch researcher, said the blockades are “deliberate, and they are intended to harm the population in what is an apparent war crime.”

Myint Kyaw of the junta’s information ministry, said humanitarian groups are “being allowed to go to safe areas” after completing a verification process and alleged — without evidence — that rebel groups are blocking aid deliveries.

In the statement, the junta linked instability in the region to armed groups allegedly engaging in online gambling, planting and selling illegal drugs, human trafficking, online scams and illegal weapons deliveries to “terrorist groups” in rebel-controlled areas.

Ejaz — a local aid official who works in northern Rakhine — said the junta is “punishing civilians collectively” by blocking most food and medicine imports. Even the limited food that is available in the state is prohibitively expensive to most, largely thanks to blockade-induced inflation, he said.

“People are surviving on the bare minimum … like rice and salt,” said Ejaz, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym for his safety.

“I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

War and hunger

Many of the displaced in Rakhine are members of the stateless Rohingya minority, who have been persecuted for decades in a country that denies them citizenship.

Jamila, 26, a former resident of the predominantly Rohingya town of Buthidaung, close to the Bangladesh border, said the community recently suffered food shortages for at least six months due to the fighting.

Many shops were looted by fighters and soldiers, she said, and those still open could only get supplies by smuggling them at high prices across the border from Bangladesh.

Food supplies were also strained as droves of displaced people from surrounding villages fled to Buthidaung to escape fighting and landmines.

“Everyone was helping everyone,” she said. “I lived life with risk and hunger.”

With little food and no medicine, Jamila said her children suffered from diarrhea and vomiting. “I am suffering from allergies. My whole body is full of itching. But there is no medicine, no treatment,” she said.

In late May, the Arakan Army said it seized Buthidaung. Activists and relatives of residents accused AA soldiers of extrajudicial killings, torching and looting Rohingya neighborhoods, and forcing thousands of people to flee.

Jamila said fighters stormed her village, drenching her home in petrol and setting it on fire while she and her family were still inside.

As the flames consumed their home, they scrambled to grab what belongings they could salvage — but only those on the ground floor had time to flee. Her parents-in-law, asleep in their beds upstairs, did not make it out.

They had no time to mourn. As they ran to escape their village, the howl of gunfire rang out, and a bullet pierced her younger brother. He did not survive.

“We didn’t try to save him,” Jamila said. “We were hearing the screams of people, the cries of children.”

She walked for six days to reach Bangladesh, saying “we lived by eating banana leaves and drinking pond water.”

In a statement, the AA denied it torched Buthidaung, saying it “adheres to its principle of fighting under the military code of conduct and never targets non-military objects.”

Earlier this month, the AA was accused of killing Rohingya people in drone strikes and artillery fire as villagers fled the nearby town of Maungdaw. It denied involvement and blamed the deaths on the Myanmar military and allied Rohingya armed groups.

“Emergency responses are extremely slow. The ULA government, including HDCO, is making every effort to provide food, shelter, water, and healthcare with the limited resources available,” it said.

“The primary challenge remains the acute shortage of essential supplies, including food, non-food items, medicines, medical equipment, women’s dignity kits, agricultural products, seeds, and fuel.”

The HDCO, which said its primary focus is on data collection, emergency response, monitoring aid requirements and tracking aid distribution, said junta blockades and risk of aerial bombardments means “there are instances where we are unable to reach those in need.”

‘We are invisible’

When the junta blocks official aid deliveries, regional and local humanitarian groups use covert tactics to operate without approval from the military, risking their lives to deliver aid to those in need, according to officials at four local aid groups, all of whom declined to publicize their tactics because it could jeopardize their operations.

But it’s far from enough.

At least 18.6 million people — about one third of Myanmar’s population — need humanitarian assistance this year, but aid workers have only been able to reach 2.1 million, according to an OCHA report published last week. Even in territories that the junta does not blockade, intensifying war, record-low funding and international apathy are also limiting aid workers’ access.

Aid workers have also become targets in the junta’s war.

A World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse in Maungdaw was looted and burned in June, depriving that community of urgently needed food aid. But WFP’s local partners were already struggling to reach their warehouses in Rakhine because “artillery shells are falling everywhere,” according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

Meanwhile, the UN’s humanitarian response program in Myanmar is among the most underfunded in the world. UN agencies and their local partners estimate that about $1 billion is needed to fund aid efforts in the country through 2024, but they have only raised about 20% of that amount.

Without an immediate injection of cash and a lifting of the blockade, aid officials say they will be forced to choose who does — and does not — receive humanitarian aid, leaving millions of desperate civilians without urgently needed assistance.

“Underfunding will result in livelihoods falling beyond the point of repair,” the OCHA report warned.

A senior UN aid official in Myanmar blamed the funding shortfall in part on international apathy. There are relatively few global advocacy groups and international news outlets consistently reporting on the country, and unlike Gaza and Ukraine, human rights abuses in Myanmar have gained little international attention, he said.

“We have become invisible,” the official said. “Donors will find it difficult to fund missions that are invisible.”

The monastery in Sittwe, where Khin Mar Cho and her family now reside, relies on food donated from the local community.

“The soldiers took all the money we had,” she said. “All we need at the moment is aid and support to survive this.”

Though his small monastery is overwhelmed with displaced people, the monk said he tries to collect more donations from the community, hoping to feed those in the compound more than small helpings of rice.

But they receive meager food donations. Adding to the dire situation, his makeshift camp is overfilled, many families are forced to sleep outside without a covering in the height of the rainy season, so sickness and diarrhea is rife, the monk said.

“There are no NGOs or medics helping them,” he said.

“The only help we get is from the fire service for their funerals.”

Ukraine’s audacious foray into the Russian region of Kursk has been a triumph for its military intelligence and tactical agility – and equally a signal that, despite its advantage in terms of men and armor, the Russian military has plenty of vulnerabilities.

Just as importantly, it’s also sent a political message to Kyiv’s allies that has changed the prevailing narrative of the war – that Ukrainian forces are doomed to fight an endless rearguard action against superior Russian firepower.

Suddenly, Moscow’s oft-repeated insistence that all the goals of what President Vladimir Putin still calls the “special military operation” will be achieved ring hollow. Ukrainian forces claim to have taken almost as much territory in Russia this month (some 1,200 square kilometers by their own estimates) as the Russians have won inside Ukraine all year.

Moscow has seen setbacks ever since it launched its 2022 invasion, which was designed to capture Kyiv in less than a week. But the goals – and the methods to pursue them – have not changed. Massive bombardment accompanied by costly use of infantry have gradually eaten into Ukrainian territory.

Analysis by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think-tank, said “Putin likely assesses that as long as Russia can retain the initiative and prevent Ukraine from conducting operationally significant counteroffensive operations, Russia can inflict decisive losses on Ukraine over the long term, while outlasting Western security assistance to Ukraine and Ukrainian efforts to mobilize more of Ukraine’s economy and population for the war effort.”

Mathieu Boulegue, Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, agreed that “if you look at the grand strategy for each country, perhaps not much has changed.”

Turning the tide of the war

The Ukrainian military has confounded a growing consensus among Ukraine’s supporters that it had little chance of recovering much – if any – of its own territory. In Kyiv’s view, Kursk demonstrates its military deserves continuing, faster and better support from allies because it can change the direction of the war.

President Volodymyr Zelensky made this point in an address last week: “We’ve already expanded and will continue to expand the circle of those who support a just end to this war. It’s essential that Ukraine enters this fall even stronger than before.”

Mick Ryan, a former general in Australia and author of the Futura Doctrina blog, said Kursk “has demonstrated Ukrainian learning and adaptation after the failure of its 2023 counteroffensive,” referring to the much-hyped assault that delivered few gains for Kyiv. 

“The Ukrainian aim here is to demonstrate that Russian victory is not inevitable, and that Ukraine can fight and win,” added Ryan – persuading the doubters to sustain support and perhaps more importantly further relax restrictions on how and where their weapons can be used.

The Ukrainians have persistently sought to overcome hesitation among allies about supplying systems that might escalate the conflict – first with artillery and battle-tanks, later with F16 combat jets and longer-range missiles such as HIMARS and ATACMs.

Until May, the use of US weapons to strike Russian soil was a red line for a Biden administration apprehensive of escalation. Then came Russia’s incursion into Kharkiv region, aided by long-range strikes from well within Russian territory. The Ukrainians were in effect fighting with one hand behind their back; the city of Kharkiv was vulnerable.

The ban was relaxed, allowing some US systems to target Russian territory. In Kursk the Ukrainians have further eroded it by using armor inside Russia. US, German and UK-provided armored vehicles and tanks have been seen barreling through the Russian countryside; western missiles have brought down bridges that might otherwise abet Russian defenders.

Zelensky has said that Russia’s bluff has been called. “The whole naive, illusory concept of the so-called red lines in relation to Russia, which prevailed in the assessments of the war of some of our partners, crumbled in these days somewhere near Sudzha,” he said.

“Ukraine has demonstrated, again, that the various red lines projected by the Russian president are nothing but a chimera designed to reinforce Western political timidity about decision-making on the war,” Ryan said.

Boulegue argued the Kursk operation is a valuable way for both Ukraine’s allies “to test Putin’s pain threshold, a really good way to test Russia’s other forms of deterrence using a proxy.”

“Russian red lines are fluid, and this is another incidence of raising the temperature gradually.”

The Ukrainians have won an important political argument here: there have been no public objections from Western capitals to the opening of this new front, and indeed plaudits from many members of NATO, including Germany, the UK and the United States.

“As they see attacks coming across the border, they have to be able to have the capabilities to respond,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters earlier this month.

The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, went further, saying on X Wednesday that “Lifting restrictions on the use of capabilities vs the Russian military involved in aggression against Ukraine, in accordance with international law, would have several important effects: -Strengthen Ukrainian self-defense by ending Russia’s sanctuary for its attacks and bombardments of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Save lives and reduce destruction in Ukraine. Help advance peace efforts.”

But there is a limit to the West’s level of comfort. Ukraine would like to target airfields deep inside Russia with longer-range ATACM missiles; Washington does not seem inclined to agree.

Zelensky has countered that “If our partners lifted all existing restrictions on using such weapons on Russian territory, then we wouldn’t need physically to enter the Kursk region with the aim of protecting our Ukrainian citizens in border regions and destroying the Russian aggression potential.”

But taking Russian land improves Ukraine’s bargaining position at any negotiations, and also works as a hedge should former President Donald Trump win the US election and seek to force a peace settlement on Ukraine.

Western way of fighting

The success of the Kursk incursion was not just down to Western hardware: Ukrainian intelligence gathering, planning and special forces executed the operation, along with plenty of Ukrainian-made drones, artillery, electronic warfare and even thermobaric weapons.

That “highlights Ukraine’s agency, thereby undermining Russia’s portrayal of the conflict as a proxy war with the West,” noted Olga Tatariuk at Chatham House. It also offers allies reassurance that the Ukrainians are not doomed always to be on the defensive; that they are learning the Western way of fighting after the high hopes for 2023’s counter-offensive were shattered.

As one Ukrainian soldier in Kursk described it: “This operation was very well planned. I don’t know who worked on the plan but they did a good job. We were moving in the center, we had support left and right from us. Great operation.”

The Kursk operation remains a high-stakes gamble for Ukraine at a time when Russian forces are closing in on two important hubs in eastern Donetsk: the cities of Pokrovsk and Toretsk. But Ukrainian forces have shown that the conflict is not a one-way street.

“We don’t know yet whether this will be a footnote or a game changer,” said the analyst Boulegue. For the Ukrainians, sustaining the operation as Russia brings more artillery and aviation to bear will become increasingly difficult.

But for every passing day that Ukrainian forces control an area of Russian territory the size of Hong Kong, the Kursk incursion becomes less of a footnote.

Three fires blazed on a Greek-flagged oil tanker in the Red Sea, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations said on Friday, one day after rescuers evacuated its crew in the wake of an assault by Yemeni Houthi militants.

The Iran-aligned Houthis, who control Yemen’s most populous regions, said on Thursday that they had attacked the Sounion oil tanker as part of their 10-month campaign against commercial shipping to support Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

The Houthis first damaged the tanker on Wednesday with repeated attacks that caused a fire and a loss of engine power. A European warship later rescued her crew of 25. The uncrewed vessel was anchored between Yemen and Eritrea, a maritime security source told Reuters on Thursday.

On Friday, UKMTO said in an advisory that it had received reports of three fires on the vessel, which “appears to be drifting.” Later in the day, the Houthis posted a video on social media that purportedly showed them setting the tanker on fire.

The damaged tanker, carrying 150,000 metric tons of crude oil, poses an environmental hazard, the EU’s Red Sea naval mission Aspides said.

“A potential spill could lead to disastrous consequences for the region’s marine environment,” the Djibouti Ports & Free Zones Authority said in a post on the social media site X on Friday.

The largest recorded ship-source spill was in 1979, when about 287,000 tonnes of oil escaped from the Atlantic Empress after it collided with another crude carrier in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Tobago during a storm, according to International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation.

The Sounion was the third vessel operated by Athens-based Delta Tankers to come under Houthi attack this month.

The Houthis said it attacked the tanker in part because Delta Tankers violated its ban on “entry to the ports of occupied Palestine,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said in a televised speech.

“Delta Tankers is doing everything it can to move the vessel (and cargo). For security reasons, we are not in a position to comment further,” the company said in a statement on Friday.