Thai Education Minister Dr Teerakiat Jareonsettasin is attending the 49th SEAMEO Council Conference in Jakarta, Indonesia on Monday and Tuesday.

In an address to regional education ministers, he highlighted the good relations and cooperation between the member countries with the aim of improving education in the region as a whole.

Teerakiat also met with Brunei Education Minister Pehin Dato Suyoi Haji Osman after the council conference on Monday evening.

He revealed that Thailand and Brunei have developed a programme of bilateral cooperation, with both sides interested in learning from each other to improve education in their countries.

He said this was a vivid example of the strong partnership among SEAMEO member countries.

“The Prime Minister, General Prayut Chan-o-cha, admires Brunei’s education policy so much, and the Brunei government is also keen to work with Thailand. Therefore, Thai delegates to the SAEMEO meeting had a special bilateral meeting with their Brunei counterparts to discuss future cooperation,” he said.

“We can learn a lot from Brunei, as this small country has one of the best education systems in the region.”

He explained that strong point of education in Brunei was that the system allows several pathways for students to develop after they graduate from primary school. These are based on their study outcomes, personal interests and skills.

For instance, an academically talented student can choose to study further at university, while students with other skills can pursue vocational education.

“Another interesting thing that we can learn from Brunei is that they have only a few key performance indicators to measure educational success – such as the employment rate of graduates and the satisfaction of employers,” Teerakiat said.

“They are also interested to learn about the sufficiency economy philosophy of education, as we are the leader in this field.

“This cooperation will see mutual experience sharing, which will benefit both countries in improving our education systems.”

Seventeen of those taken to hospitals after the discovery in the early morning hours in San Antonio — about a two hour drive from the Mexican border — were in critical condition, suffering from heat stroke and dehydration, authorities said.

At least 39 people were in the trailer, including one person who was later found in a nearby wooded area, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

At least two were school-age children, Fire Chief Charles Hood said.

It was not immediately clear how many suspected migrants might have fled and were unaccounted for.

City police chief William McManus told CNN that the dead were all adult men. Authorities were not releasing the victims’ names or nationalities until their families were notified.

“We got a call from a Walmart employee about a welfare check in a tractor-trailer that was parked on the lot here,” McManus told a news conference.

“He was approached by someone from that truck, who was asking for water.”

The employee returned with the water and then called the police who “found eight people dead in the back of that trailer,” the police chief said, calling it a “horrific tragedy.”

“We’re looking at a human trafficking crime,” McManus said.

The truck driver had been arrested, he said.

Federal prosecutors said James Mathew Bradley Jr, 60, of Florida, was in custody and would be charged Monday morning in San Antonio.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott confirmed Sunday evening that the death toll had climbed to nine and called the case “a heartbreaking tragedy.”

“Texas will continue to provide protection for the victims who have been robbed of their most basic rights, and bring down the full weight of the law for the perpetrators of this despicable crime,” he said in a statement.

 – ‘Hot to the touch’ –

People in the truck were “hot to the touch,” Hood said, adding the air conditioner in the trailer was not working.

“For those people who survived, they took a beating,” he told CNN.

“With heat stroke, you sometimes have neurological deficits that you’re never going to be able to recover from.”

Hood estimated the temperature in the truck could have reached 150 degrees Fahrenheit (65 degrees Celsius), likening it to an oven.

“If that truck would have been there overnight, there’s no doubt that we would have lost all 38 of those people,” Hood said.

– Happens ‘all the time’ –

The US Department of Homeland Security and immigration officials are assisting local law enforcement with the investigation.

“This is not an isolated incident… this happens all the time,” McManus said.

“It happens late at night, under darkness because they don’t want to be discovered.”

The police chief said store security footage showed that some vehicles came to pick up some travelers who were on the truck and who had made it out alive.

It was not immediately clear how long the truck had been in the parking lot, and police were working to determine who owns it.

Tens of thousands of illegal migrants from Mexico and Central America attempt to make the treacherous trip into the United States each year.

In 2003, 19 would-be migrants died in an overheated truck while being taken from south Texas near the Mexican border to Houston.

President Donald Trump has pledged to build a security wall along America’s border with Mexico in order to crack down on illegal immigration.

So far, the project has been stalled by reluctance in Congress to dedicate funding for the barrier, which could cost as much as $20 billion according to some estimates.

US Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has been to Mexico twice to discuss immigration, human trafficking and the spiraling cross-border drugs trade.

Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Thomas Homan said the incident “ranks as a stark reminder of why human smuggling networks must be pursued, caught and punished.”

“The car bomb hit a bus carrying employees of the ministry of mines during rush hour,” interior ministry spokesman Najib Danish told AFP.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast that hit a busy neighbourhood of the Afghan capital just before 7am (0230 GMT).

The bombing comes as the resurgent militant group has stepped up attacks across the country in recent days, with several new districts falling to the Taliban over the weekend.

The blast hit an area of the capital that is home to many Shiite Hazaras, a persecuted ethnic minority who have been targeted many times in the past.

It is also near the home of prominent politician and former warlord Mohammad Mohaqeq.

Omid Maisom Mohaqiq, a spokesman for the politician, said the bomb had detonated near the first checkpoint approaching the house, “killing and wounding some civilians”.

An AFP photographer at the scene saw multiple bodies and wounded people in the street, surrounded by shattered glass as security forces cordoned off the area.

The charred remains of the bus stood in the middle of the road and a black column of smoke from the explosion hung in the air.

An army truck and forklifts were attempting to remove the carcass of the bus as ambulances as well as taxis and private cars ferried the injured to nearby hospitals, an AFP photographer said.

– One-year anniversary –

Kabul’s Hazara community were due Monday to mark the one-year anniversary of an attack in the heart of the capital that killed 84 and wounded more than 300 people, mostly members of the ethnic minority.

That attack was the first in Afghanistan claimed by the Islamic State group, which has since carried out multiple attacks targeting the country’s Shiite minority.

The Hazara community were due to hold a demonstration to mark the July 23, 2016 tragedy, but had agreed to postpone the march after meeting with President Ashraf Ghani on Sunday.

Kabul is regularly rocked by suicide bombs and attacks. A recent UN report showed that attacks on the capital accounted for nearly one-fifth of all civilian Afghan casualties in the first half of 2017.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which has been documenting civilian casualties since 2009, said in its recent report that 1,662 civilians were killed and more than 3,500 injured in the first six months of the year.

Many died in a single devastating attack in Kabul in late May when a truck bomb exploded, also during the morning rush hour, killing more than 150 people and injuring hundreds.

UNAMA put the civilian death toll at 92, saying it was the deadliest incident to hit the country since 2001.

The bloody toll for the first six months of 2017 has unsettled the government and put increasing pressure on President Ghani.

Protests and deadly street clashes hit the Afghan capital in the wake of the May attack as people incensed by security failures called for his government’s resignation.

The UNAMA report also said that nearly half of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces have seen an increase in civilian deaths in the first six months of the year, mainly due to the rise in attacks by anti-government forces across the country.

Nato’s combat mission in Afghanistan ended three years ago, handing sole responsibility to the country’s security forces, which have also suffered spiralling casualties as they try to beat back the resurgent Taliban and contain the growing threat from the Islamic State group.

The workers had reportedly been illegally taken to Thailand by traffickers and kept in a compound in Mahachai in Samut Sakhon. The AAC rescued them on July 18 with the help of the Thai authorities, said Ye Min from the committee.

“They are from Thanatpin and Nyaunglebin townships in Bago Region. The brokers arranged work passes and sent them to Thailand. They took them via Htikhi with a seven-day border pass. And then they kept them in a compound in Mahachai. We knew their location after some of them ran away from the traffickers,” he said.

One freed worker said: “The brokers said we will have a job in Thailand. We gave them Ks650,000 each. They told us we could go to Thailand and sent us through Htikhi. We have been locked up in a compound in Mahachai for over one month. We have no job and some of them asked for help from the AAC.”

The Department of Special Investigation (DSI), Thai army, anti-human trafficking police and labour affairs protection group cooperated to rescue the stranded workers, said Ye Min.

A total of 108 Burmese workers were being kept in the compound.

Li Meng, vice-minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said China welcomes leading multinational AI companies such as Google and Amazon to set up research and development centers in China and cooperate with Chinese enterprises, especially in nurturing high-end professionals and laboratories.

The State Council unveiled a national AI development guideline on Thursday, calling for developing technology, research and educational resources in AI to achieve major breakthroughs by 2025 and make China an AI innovation center by 2030. It is China’s first comprehensive guideline on AI development, Li said.

Nurturing and attracting high-end professionals in developing artificial intelligence will be of high priority, the vice-minister said.

“For now the biggest gap between China and global leaders in AI is our severe lack of AI professionals, and we are ready to work with education departments to nurture young professionals in the field,” Li said. He said China’s current reserve of AI expertise, especially at the high end, falls short of meeting the pressing demand for AI as the country undergoes rapid social and economic progress.

The value of China’s core AI industries is expected to exceed 150 billion yuan ($22.15 billion) by 2020 and 400 billion yuan by 2025, the guideline said.

Li said China is falling behind in areas of basic AI theory, and existing research institutions and companies in China have not formed an AI industrial chain.

The growth of AI will inevitably bring challenges to employment and social ethics, Li said, but such challenges can be addressed through a clear vision and adjustment in the design and implementation of workforce training.

Li said that while technological upgrades to assembly lines have put “large numbers of workers out of work, in the long term, the development of technology has created far larger employment opportunities than expected”.

According to Li, prioritization of AI will benefit emerging areas such as the internet of things－involving the networking of devices－and facial recognition. It also will help in upgrading traditional industries such as through smart manufacturing and connected farming.

Any funding lapse, they said, will be counted in human lives.

“As we gather today, the largest and most important donor in HIV response has threatened devastating cuts to funding for research and treatment programmes,” International AIDS Society president Linda-Gail Bekker told a global HIV science conference in Paris.

“Draconian cuts to research and… HIV funding is a catastrophe we cannot afford to see happen,” she said.

More than 6,000 scientists are gathered in the French capital until Wednesday to assess advances in AIDS science amid concerns over money drying up.

Globally, government donor funding for HIV dropped last year to the lowest level since 2010 — from $7.5 billion (6.4 billion euros) in 2015 to $7 billion, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a California-based health policy NGO.

The United States has for years been the biggest contributor by far to the global fight against HIV infection, accounting for about two-thirds of funding by governments.

However Trump’s proposed budget, submitted in May, reduces funding for “several global health programmes, including HIV/AIDS, with the expectation that other donors can and should increase their commitments.”

Bekker urged the United States to “stay engaged” .

“These onslaughts on funding, principles and programmes have already begun to erode the gains we have so painstakingly made,” she told conference delegates.

“If we do not actively move forward on the HIV response, then we are sliding back. Sliding back means sick patients, lost lives, ongoing transmission and infected children — a world that we do not want to go back to.”

‘Return on investment

UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe pointed to gains in life expectancy for people infected with HIV as a “return on investment”.

From only four percent of infected people on life-saving anti-retroviral treatment in 2003, the number grew to more than 50 percent in 2016 — covering 19.5 million of the 36.7 million people living with HIV around the world.

“I know that donors… want to see impact. And today we can say… that we have been able to reduce by more than 50 percent the death rate, mortality rate, among people living with HIV,” said Sidibe.

But much work remains — some 17 million people are still not getting the treatment they need, including 1.2 million children.

And in east Europe and central Asia, there has been a 60-percent rise in new infections in the last six years, mainly in Russia.

“The worst conspiracy would be complacency,” said Sidibe, pointing to a $7 billion gap in annual funding for AIDS research and prevention and treatment programmes.

“Any cuts to funding will jeopardise our results.”

AIDS expert Jean-Francois Delfraissy, co-chairman of the conference, said there are likely to be similar funding trends “in Europe, and probably also in France in the next years”.

“We have a lot of great success and I think that politicians can understand that, but I think it’s not sufficient,” he said.

Trump was not the only world leader to come under fire.

Activists questioned why French President Emmanuel Macron did not attend the first day of the conference, though it was unclear whether he had been invited.

Protesters waved placards reading: “Shame on Macron” at Sunday’s opening session. The presidency has since announced Macron will receive conference organisers, including Bekker, on Monday.

Seventeen of those taken to area hospitals after the discovery in San Antonio — about a two hour drive from the Mexican border — were in critical condition, suffering from heat stroke and dehydration, authorities said.

City police chief William McManus said the truck driver had been arrested.

At least 38 people were in the trailer including at least two school-age children, Fire Chief Charles Hood said. McManus later told CNN that the dead were all adult men.

It was not immediately clear how many might have escaped and were unaccounted for.

“We got a call from a Walmart employee about a welfare check in a tractor-trailer that was parked on the lot here,” McManus told a news conference.

“He was approached by someone from that truck, who was asking for water.”

The employee returned with the water and then called the police who “found eight people dead in the back of that trailer,” the police chief said, calling it a “horrific tragedy.”

“We’re looking at a human trafficking crime,” McManus said.

‘Hot to the touch’

Authorities used helicopters to rush some of the injured to seven area hospitals, Hood said.

He added that the people in the truck were “hot to the touch,” adding the air conditioner in the trailer was not working.

“For those people who survived, they took a beating,” Hood told CNN.

“With heat stroke, you sometimes have neurological deficits that you’re never going to be able to recover from.”

Weather in the area has been hot and dry. Hood estimated the temperature in the truck could have reached 150 degrees Fahrenheit (65 degrees Celsius), likening it to an “oven.”

“If that truck would have been there overnight, there’s no doubt that we would have lost all 38 of those people,” Hood said.

Happens ‘all the time’

The US Department of Homeland Security and immigration officials are assisting local law enforcement with the investigation.

“This is not an isolated incident… this happens all the time,” McManus said.

“It happens late at night, under darkness because they don’t want to be discovered.”

The police chief said store security footage showed that some vehicles came to pick up some travelers who were on the truck and who had made it out alive.

It was not immediately clear how long the truck had been in the parking lot, and police were working to determine who owns it.

Tens of thousands of illegal migrants from Mexico and Central America attempt to make the treacherous trip into the United States each year.

In 2003, 19 would-be migrants died in an overheated truck while being taken from south Texas near the Mexican border to Houston.

President Donald Trump has pledged to build a security wall along America’s border with its neighbor — and make Mexico pay for it — in order to crack down on illegal immigration, leading to raised tensions with Mexico City.

So far, the project has been stalled by reluctance in Congress to dedicate funding for the barrier, which could cost as much as $20 billion according to some estimates.

US Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has been to Mexico twice to discuss immigration, human trafficking and the spiraling cross-border drugs trade.

US Senator John Cornyn of Texas said Sunday on Twitter: “Border security will help prevent this Texas tragedy.”

Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Thomas Homan said the incident “ranks as a stark reminder of why human smuggling networks must be pursued, caught and punished.”

“These networks have repeatedly shown a reckless disregard for those they smuggle, as last night’s case demonstrates,” Homan said in a statement.

“Even if I try to have a deal with him, it’s not going to work because people are very angry with Najib,” Mahathir said in an interview from Malaysia with Suthichai Yoon, co-founder of The Nation newspaper in Bangkok, during a Facebook Live session on Friday morning.

Mahathir said the Pakatan Harapan coalition had enough support to topple the present prime minister but he believed that Najib would use all kinds of illegal means to retain his position and power.

“We can win the majority. The only problem we have is that Najib will cheat, he will bribe and do all kinds of things to maintain his leadership because he knows if he’s not the prime minister, he will be charged in court and land in jail,” Mahathir said.

Suthichai asked if Mahathir was afraid Najib would sue him for the former prime minister’s public allegations about current leader. “So far he has not sued me, although I accused him of being a thief and robber. What he is trying to do is dig up some records [from] 30 years ago when the Central Bank lost |some money, implying I directed it.”

Najib had set up a royal commission of inquiry to look into a three-decades-old event, which had been cleared by Malaysia’s parliament, Mahathir said.

Suthichai also asked if Mahathir had any regrets about his treatment of his former political opponent Anwar Ibrahim in 1998.

Mahathir defended his conduct, saying he was just responding to the situation at that moment.

“But now, it is different. If |we keep on raking up the past, |you can never work with anybody. You will always be fighting |against your enemies, and that |is bad.

“I’m not angry over the past, and he is not angry over the past also,” he added.

Under Mahathir’s leadership in 1998, Anwar, the then-deputy premier, was fired from the cabinet.

The former prime minister also told Suthichai that Anwar, who is now serving a jail term, was quite capable of becoming prime minister.

Anwar has been tried and convicted for corruption and sodomy.

Mahathir added that if the coalition he chairs wins the election, the next premier would find a way to release Anwar and arrange a royal pardon.

He and Anwar shared the same objective to remove Najib, Mahathir said, adding that |Anwar realised that with Najib still on the scene, nothing could be done to free him or get him |a royal pardon. “There is a time that we forget the past when the future becomes dangerous,” he said.

He and his supporters had tried many ways to overthrow Najib’s government but failed, Mahathir said, adding that they would now try to win the election in a democratic way and would not ignore the laws and constitution.

Asked who could be the prime minister if the coalition succeeded in overthrowing the government, Mahathir said the coalition had not yet decided.

He said he would not be the premier again but he could give advice to a future prime minister on solving the country’s financial problems and other things, as he has had experience as leader of the country.

To a question from a viewer on how he stays healthy although he is now 92 years old, Mahathir said he had a moderate lifestyle. “I eat everything except fish but no drinking or smoking.”

One in every 45 Yemenis will have contracted the disease by December as “a direct consequence of a conflict that has devastated civilian infrastructure and brought the whole health system to its knees,” the ICRC said in a statement.

More than 370,000 people have fallen ill and 1,800 have died since late April in Yemen’s second cholera outbreak in less than a year, according to the ICRC and the World Health Organization.

A war between the Saudi-backed government and Iran-backed Huthi rebels has killed thousands of people and displaced millions.

A string of vital ports along the country’s Red Sea coastline are blockaded, leaving millions of people with limited access to food and medicine.

Less than half of the country’s medical facilities are currently functional.

The war in Yemen, one of the world’s most impoverished countries, has killed more than 8,000 people and wounded a further 44,500 since Saudi Arabia and its allies joined the conflict in 2015.

In addition to the dead, there were 28 injured — 20 of them severely — who were being treated at seven local hospitals, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus and Fire Chief Charles Hood told reporters.

The group included children and adults, the police chief said.

He said the truck driver had been arrested.

“We got a call from a Walmart employee about a welfare check in a tractor-trailer that was parked on the lot here,” McManus told a news conference.

“He was approached by someone from that truck, who was asking for water. Came back with a water, called the police and we arrived on scene and found eight people dead in the back of that trailer,” the police chief said, calling it a “horrific tragedy.”

He said store security footage showed that some vehicles came to pick up some travellers who were on the truck and who had made it out alive.

“We’re looking at a human trafficking crime this evening,” he added.

It was not immediately clear how many people made it off the truck alive, McManus said.

Hood said the air conditioner in the trailer was not working.

“We started extricating patients out of the back of a semi-truck … we had another 20 patients that were either in extremely critical condition or very serious condition and they have been transported to a number of hospitals.”

San Antonio lies a few hours drive from the border with Mexico’s Nuevo Leon state. Weather in the area has been hot and dry.

Federal immigration officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement have also been notified, the police chief said.