As the drones flew silently over western Myanmar’s Chin hills, the junta did not know what was about to hit them. Their operators were hidden a few hundred metres away in the dense forest. As the images on their screens indicated the drone fleet was hovering exactly above the target – a key military base in the town of Lailenpi – they hit the button on their controllers and bombs began to fall.

“We had precise hits,” said Noah, 20, one of the specialist drone fighters in the Chin National Army (CNA), one of the ethnic rebel groups who have been fighting Myanmar’s military for almost three years. “It took them by surprise. We killed many, including the second-in-command of the base.”

After three days of fighting, the rebels hoisted their tricolour flag over the base and shouted slogans of victory.

Germany: Citizenship law could prompt 50,000 Turks to apply

The Turkish community in Germany said some 50,000 people with Turkish roots were expected to make naturalization applications in the coming years following the country’s citizenship law reform.

“And I assume that, in the long term, all 1.5 million citizens of Turkish origin in Germany who do not yet have German citizenship will acquire dual citizenship,” the head of the Turkish Community in Germany organization, Gökay Sofuoglu, told the media group Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland.

On Friday, Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, approved a law that shortens the path to citizenship and makes it easier to hold multiple nationalities.

Officers get suspended jail terms for assault on black man that shocked France

A French court on Friday gave suspended jail sentences to three officers in a rare case of police brutality coming to court, after a black man suffered irreversible rectal injuries.

Some activists said the police officers had got away lightly however.

Theo Luhaka was left disabled after suffering severe anal injuries from a police baton, as well as wounds to his head, during a stop-and-search in the Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois in 2017.

Marc-Antoine Castelain, 34, who was found guilty of the truncheon blow that injured Luhaka, received a 12-month suspended prison sentence.

His colleagues Jeremie Dulin, 42, and Tony Hochart, 31, received three-month suspended terms at the end of the 10-day trial. Prosecutors had asked for a three-year jail term for Castelain and six and three months for Dulin and Hochart respectively.

Record 87% of Japanese ‘do not feel friendly’ toward China: survey

A record 86.7 percent of Japanese “do not feel friendly” toward China, a Japanese government poll showed Friday, as bilateral relations remain tense over a number of issues.

The annual poll, conducted from Sept. 7 to Oct. 15, followed China’s total ban on marine products shipped from Japan that was imposed last August in response to the discharge into the sea of treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The record figure, up from 81.8 percent in the previous survey, was the highest since the question was added in 1978 to the annual diplomatic surveys conducted by the Cabinet Office.

Popcorn and curfews: India gets ready for Ram temple with frenzy and fear

The stock market will be shut, movie halls will show the launch live. But as the country comes to a standstill for a temple launch, anxiety and pain linger for those who remember the blood spilled in its wake.

For a month now, mini-trucks have been snaking their way on labyrinth roads cutting across villages in Yavatmal district in central India.

Yavatmal has been in the grip of agrarian distress so deep that more than 5,800 farmers have taken their own lives here in the last two decades, according to data provided by the local divisional collectorate.

But these trucks haven’t been carrying any relief for distressed farmers. Instead, with a photo of the Hindu god Ram on posters stuck on their sides, the trucks have been foraying deep inside the district, exhorting farmers to donate grains.