NEWS OF THE DAY
1 Refugee tragedy: Turkey’s state-run news agency says the coast guard has rescued four people and recovered four bodies after an inflatable raft carrying 31 foreign nationals sank off the southwestern resort town of Bodrum. The incident occurred Thursday, with Anadolu Agency reporting several boats, a helicopter and a jet conducting search and rescue operations for the 23 missing passengers. None of the bodies which were recovered wore life vests. More than a million people reached Europe in 2015, with nearly 3,800 refugees losing their lives in the Mediterranean after their overcrowded boats sunk.
2 Garment workers: The Cambodian government has agreed to raise the minimum wage for clothing and footwear workers, a move that could help placate workers in the country’s biggest export industry. The Ministry of Labor said Thursday that the minimum wage would be raised by 9.2 percent to $153 a month, effective at the beginning of 2017. The clothing and footwear industry is Cambodia’s biggest export earner, employing about 700,000 people in more than 700 garment and shoe factories. In 2015, the Southeast Asian country shipped nearly $7 billion worth of products to the United States and Europe.
3 Belgium protest: Tens of thousands of workers rallied in Brussels to protest against government reforms and labor laws, disrupting public transport and traffic. Police said around 45,000 people took part in Thursday’s protest, the fourth since Prime Minister Charles Michel took office in 2014. The march ended peacefully. Tensions have been high since U.S. heavy equipment maker Caterpillar announced the closure of its Belgian production plant, meaning the loss of more than 2,000 jobs. Marc Goblet, head of the FGTB trade union, said “more and more people are living under the poverty line,” with wages dropping below those in Germany, France and the Netherlands.
4 Massacre anniversary: Ukrainians marked the 75th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre, one of the most infamous mass slaughters of World War II. Babi Yar, a ravine in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, is where nearly 34,000 Jews were killed within 48 hours in 1941, when the city was under Nazi occupation. The killing was carried out by SS troops along with local collaborators. President Petro Poroshenko visited the Babi Yar monument on Thursday in a commemoration that included people laying flowers. A larger ceremony occurred in the evening. “We Ukrainians very well understand the grief of the Jews and take it as our own,” Poroshenko tweeted.
5 Hydrogen plane: Aircraft engineers in Germany have successfully tested the world’s first four-seater plane that uses emission-free hybrid fuel cells to fly. The 10-minute test flight Thursday at Stuttgart Airport in southwestern Germany involved two pilots and two dummy passengers. The twin-cabin plane was developed by aircraft maker Pipistrel, fuel cell specialist Hydrogenics, the University of Ulm and the German Aerospace Center DLR. It uses hydrogen to generate electricity in-flight, giving it a cruising speed of 102.5 mph and a range of up to 932 miles.
6 Seahorse trade: Thailand, the world’s biggest exporter of seahorses, is suspending trade in the animal because of concern about threats to its wild population. Seahorses are mainly used in dried form for traditional medicine in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.