General Min Aung Hlaing, the head of Myanmar’s junta, appealed for international assistance to deal with the aftermath of a 7.7-magnitude earthquake that struck on Friday. The regime said that blood was in short supply and that the death toll had breached 1,000. America, ASEAN, China and the EU are among those pledging assistance. In neighbouring Thailand authorities declared a state of emergency in Bangkok, where at least ten people died and scores are trapped under rubble.
Tens of thousands rallied in Istanbul as protests intensified over the arrest of Ekram Imamoglu, the city’s mayor and main opposition rival to Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkish authorities have cracked down harshly on such demonstrations, arresting almost 2,000 people since Mr Imamoglu’s detention for alleged corruption on March 19th. Experts consider the charges baseless.
One of Elon Musk’s companies, xAI, bought another, X, for $33bn. Mr Musk said the deal to join together the artificial-intelligence lab and social-media platform would lead to the combining of “data, models, compute, distribution and talent”. xAI is among the most valuable parts of Mr Musk’s harried empire.
Denmark snapped back against America’s vice-president, who had criticised its protection of Greenland. During a visit to the autonomous Danish territory on Friday, J.D. Vance claimed Denmark had failed to keep the vast island “safe” from Russia and China. Denmark’s foreign minister said the country did “not appreciate the tone” of the comments. Mr Vance’s boss, Donald Trump, has repeatedly called for America to take over the island.
American stocks tumbled amid mounting concerns that Donald Trump’s tariffs could stoke inflation. The Dow dropped by over 700 points, or 1.7%, when markets closed on Friday; the S&P fell by 2%. Earlier the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the core personal consumption expenditures price index, rose by 0.4% month on month in February, the biggest jump in a year.
Police in India said the country’s security services killed at least 16 people during an operation targeting Maoist insurgents in Chhattisgarh, a central state. The clash in the town of Sukma also injured two security officers, officials said. The government of Narendra Modi has promised to stamp out the hard-left insurgency, leading to an increase in such clashes in recent years.
The former boss of Frank was convicted in a New York federal court for defrauding JPMorgan, a bank. In 2021 Charlie Javice sold the platform, which helped Americans apply for student financial aid, to JPMorgan for $175m. She was charged with faking a customer list that dramatically inflated the start-up’s client base. She could face decades in prison.
Word of the week: Hatarakanai ojisan, a Japanese term meaning “older men who don’t work”, used by younger employees to describe senior colleagues who contribute little. Read the full story.
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Correction: A previous edition of the World in Brief incorrectly stated that J.D. Vance would arrive in Greenland’s capital during a visit to the island. Sorry.