The freak accident in Indore on Saturday evening is the latest building disaster in a country infamous for poor construction and safety standards.

The driver lost control of his vehicle and struck a pillar holding up the near 100-year-old structure, said police deputy inspector general Harinarayanchari Mishra.

 A woman’s hand seen under in the rubble at the site of a four-storey hotel building that collapsed late night in Indore, India, 01 April 2018. At least 10 people were killed, and at least a dozen injured in the collapse. According to local police sources, the cause of the collapse is being investigated.// EPA-EFE PHOTO

“The impact was such that the entire building collapsed,” he told AFP.

“Rescue workers pulled out 12 people from the rubble, 10 of them were already dead. The other two are being treated in hospital.”

Images from the scene showed battered and bloodied corpses being pulled from twisted piles of brick and concrete. The rubble was being cleared with cranes and industrial equipment.

This photograph taken on March 31, 2018 shows Indian onlookers gathering near the rubble of a building after the structure collapsed in Indore, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. // AFP PHOTO

Building disasters are common in Indian cities where millions are forced to live in cramped, run-down properties due to spiralling real estate prices and a lack of proper housing.

Activists say owners often cut corners on construction to save costs with little regard to safety.

Some 30 people perished in September last year when a 117-year-old apartment building collapsed in India’s financial hub of Mumbai.

And in 2013, 60 people were killed when a residential block came crashing down in one of the country’s worst housing disasters.

Workers clear the rubble after the collapse of a four-storey hotel building late night in Indore, India, 01 April 2018 morning. At least 10 people were killed and many others injured in the collapse of which the reason is now being investigated, police said. // EPA-EFE PHOTO

Their May 19 wedding at Windsor Castle, west of London, will be filled with flowers that are naturally in bloom at that time of the year, Harry’s official residence said.

An image of Britain’s Prince Harry an his US fiancee are seen in the window of a building in Windsor, west of London on March 28, 2018. Britain’s Prince Harry and US actress Meghan Markle will marry on May 19 at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. // AFP PHOTO

Floral designer Philippa Craddock said the happy couple worked closely with her on the planning.

“The process has been highly collaborative, free-flowing, creative and fun,” she said. “Working with them has been an absolute pleasure.”

The displays in St George’s Chapel will be created using locally sourced foliage, much of which will be taken from the gardens and parkland of Windsor Great Park and the Crown Estate lands held by the monarch — Harry’s grandmother Queen Elizabeth II.

Memorabilia celebrating the engagement of Britain’s Prince Harry to fiancee US actress Meghan Markle are pictured for sale in a gift shop in Windsor, west of London on March 28, 2018. Britain’s Prince Harry and US actress Meghan Markle will marry on May 19 at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. //AFP PHOTO

The sprays will include branches of beech, birch and hornbeam and reflect the wild and natural landscapes from which many of the plants will be drawn.

“The final designs will represent them as a couple, which I always aim to achieve in my work, with local sourcing, seasonality and sustainability being at the forefront,” Craddock said.

Memorabilia celebrating the engagement of Britain’s Prince Harry to fiancee US actress Meghan Markle are pictured for sale in a gift shop in Windsor, west of London on March 28, 2018. Britain’s Prince Harry and US actress Meghan Markle will marry on May 19 at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. //AFP PHOTO

Former army officer Harry, 33, is fifth in line to the throne. He announced his engagement to 36-year-old Markle in November.

They have since made several public appearances together.

Some 600 people have been invited to the wedding, with 200 going on to a private evening party thrown by Harry’s father Prince Charles, the heir to the throne.

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have sought shelter in southern Bangladesh since Myanmar launched a brutal crackdown on insurgents in August that the US and UN have called ethnic cleansing.

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But the refugees have arrived to find cramped settlements and often squalid conditions in Cox’s Bazar, where hundreds of thousands who fled previous waves of persecution are already living.

An agreement to repatriate Rohingya from Bangladesh to Myanmar’s Rakhine state has yet to see a single refugee returned.

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Rohingya migrants attempting the boat routes south have been a rare sighting since Thai authorities clamped down on regional trafficking networks in 2015, leaving thousands of migrants abandoned in open waters or jungle camps.

The Rohingya boat arrived off Thailand’s western coast in Krabi province early Sunday due to bad weather.

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Images showed the passengers being interviewed on shore and then getting back into the boat before departing.

Krabi governor Kitibodee Pravitra confirmed that the people travelling on the boat were Rohingya but did not know where they had come from.

“The initial report said they were docking near Koh Lanta this morning to avoid the storm,” he said, referring to an island popular with tourists. “They want to go to Malaysia.”

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The Rohingya on board would continue toward their destination, he said.

He said there were about 56 women, men and children on board.

Many of the Rohingya ensnared in the 2015 boat crisis wound up in Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia as Thailand stuck to a policy of not accepting the vessels.

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Bangladeshi economic migrants have also taken the boat routes.

There are nearly 70,000 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers living in Malaysia, according to the most recent statistics from the UN refugee agency.

“I left Swat with my eyes closed and now I am back with my eyes open,” she told AFP, referring to how she was airlifted out in a coma after the attack in 2012.

“I am extremely delighted. My dream has come true. Peace has returned to Swat because of the invaluable sacrifices rendered by my brothers and sisters,” she said at a school outside Mingora, the district’s main town, where she was escorted by the Pakistani military.

The brief trip by the 20-year-old Nobel laureate is a highly symbolic moment for Pakistan, which regularly touts Swat as a success story in its long battle with extremism as it defends itself against accusations by the US and others that its northwest remains a safe haven for militancy.

The visit — on which she was accompanied by her father, mother, and two brothers — was kept tightly under wraps.

After flying by army helicopter from Islamabad, she met with friends and family before visiting the all-boys Swat Cadet College Guli Bagh, some 15 kilometres (nine miles) outside Mingora.

Officials had earlier said she would address students there, but she stayed only a few minutes to take photographs before leaving again to return to Islamabad.

Mingora is where Malala’s family was living and where she was attending school on October 9, 2012, when a gunman boarded her school bus, asked “Who is Malala?”, and shot her.

She was treated first at an army hospital then airlifted to the British city of Birmingham.

Her near-miraculous recovery, and tireless career as an education advocate, have since turned her into a global symbol for human rights, and in 2014 she became the youngest person ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize when she was just 17.

– Tearful homecoming –

The trip comes two days after Malala, currently a student at Oxford University in the UK, made her emotional return to Pakistan, where her surprise visit has been met with widespread joy and pride.

She broke down in tears as she made a televised speech on Thursday, saying it was her “dream” to be back, and has vowed to Pakistani media that she will return permanently after she has completed her education.

However she has also been met with pockets of intense criticism. Malala is widely respected internationally, but opinion is divided in Pakistan, where some conservatives view her as a Western agent on a mission to shame her country.

There had been much speculation within the country over whether Malala would go to Swat during her visit.

The mountainous region, once a prized tourist destination famed for its pristine scenery, was overrun by the Pakistani Taliban in 2007.

The militants imposed a brutal, bloody rule, but the army drove them out in 2009. Recently restrictions on tourists visiting the area were lifted.

However security has remained fragile, as the assault on Malala three years after the military operation demonstrated. In February this year 11 military personnel were killed in an attack, and analysts have warned the militants still have a presence there.

Residents of the area have praised Malala to AFP in recent days, crediting her with helping to generate improvements in education — especially for girls — in the deeply conservative region, part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Earlier this month an all-girls school built with money from the Malala Fund opened in Shangla district northeast of Mingora, where her family lived before moving to the city.

“This is the kind of task which was impossible to achieve even over two decades,” Shangla district councillor Altaf Hussain Gulab told AFP on Friday. “Malala made it possible in a period of just a couple of years.”

“We have just one Malala today but after a decade or so, we will have Malalas everywhere,” agreed Farman Ullah, a shopkeeper in Shangla.

The blaze was sparked as workers tried to clear the spill in waters near Balikpapan City by burning it.

Two people — believed to be fishermen — were caught in the fire and died, a spokesman of the local search and rescue agency said.

“The fire was quite big, about two kilometres high. It can be seen from Balikpapan city and the smell was all over the place,” said Octavianto, a senior official of East Borneo search and rescue agency, who like many Indonesians go by one name.

Authorities have managed to put out the fire but there was still an oil spill in the waters.

It was not known how much oil was spilled or where it came from.

A boat carrying coal was temporarily stuck near the fire, Octavianto told AFP, but the search and rescue teams successfully evacuated all 20 crew on board.

Indonesia relies heavily on boats to ferry people and goods around its vast archipelago of about 17,000 islands.

Boat accidents are common, but oil spill cleanup accidents are rare.

The Deputy Home Minister said that authorities would need to beef up their operation to cripple drug smuggling activities using the land links between Malaysia and Thailand.

Nur Jazlan was asked to comment on the arrest of two Malaysians in Haatyai, Thailand three days ago for trying to smuggle 700kg of crystal methamphetamine worth millions of ringgit.

According to news reports, the duo had planned to smuggle the drugs into Malaysia via the Bukit Kayu Hitam Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) complex using a lorry transporting pineapples and watermelons.

According to a State Department plan published Friday, visa seekers — whether visitors or would-be immigrants — will be presented with a list of social media platforms.

Applicants will be required to identify which they use and provide “any identifiers used by applicants for those platforms during the five years preceding the date of application.”

“Other questions seek five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, and international travel,” the notice, published in the Federal Register, revealed.

When these new rules were first suggested last year as part of what US President Donald Trump has called “extreme vetting” of would-be visitors, civil liberties groups sounded the alarm about privacy.

But officials say they could identify potential extremists, such as one of the attackers in the December 2015 San Bernadino shooting — who got a visa despite allegedly advocating “jihad” on social media.

The measures apply both to the DS-260 “Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration Form” and the DS-160 “Application for Nonimmigrant Visa.”

In the last fiscal year, 559,536 people applied for US immigrant visas and 9,681,913 for various forms of visitor visa. Friday’s announced measures will not touch diplomatic or official travelers.

The announcement begins a 60-day period in which interested bodies and members of the public will be allowed to submit comments on the rule changes, which are expected to be approved on May 29.