The government said seven soldiers were wounded in the alleged attack Saturday, blamed on Colombia by Maduro and later claimed by a mysterious rebel group.

Screengrab taken from a handout video released by Venezuelan Television (VTV) showing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (C), his wife Cilia Flores (L) and military authorities reacting to a loud band during a ceremony to celebrate the 81st anniversary of the National Guard in Caracas on August 4, 2018.  // AFP PHOTO

“I am fine, I am alive, and after this attack I’m more determined than ever to follow the path of the revolution,” Maduro said defiantly of the incident, from which he escaped unharmed.

“Justice! Maximum punishment! And there will be no forgiveness,” he warned in an address to the nation, sparking fears of an anti-opposition offensive in a country already reportedly holding some 248 political prisoners.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Tarek William Saab, also present at the parade, said those arrested in connection with the incident would be identified on Monday.

“There will be a ruthless punishment,” he said.

Venezuelan state television images showed Maduro looking up disconcertedly in the middle of a speech having heard a bang, before members of the country’s National Guard lined up in the parade suddenly scattered.

“It was an attack to kill me, they tried to assassinate me today,” he said in a state broadcast, speaking of a “flying object (that) exploded in front of me.”

Communication Minister Jorge Rodriguez said there was “an explosive charge… detonated close to the presidential podium” and in several other spots along the parade held in central Caracas. Saab told CNN he saw a drone filming the event explode.

No drones could be seen in the television broadcast, which showed bodyguards jumping in front of Maduro to protect him with flexible ballistic shields. The broadcast was quickly cut.

Meanwhile, a policeman who requested anonymity told AFP that drones may have been released from a nearby apartment that suffered a fire after one exploded. However, other versions of events attributed the fire to the accidental explosion of a gas cylinder.

– Rebel claims –

The government pointed the blame at “the ultra-right wing” — its term for the opposition.

Screengrab taken from a handout video released by Venezuelan Television (VTV) showing uniformed military members breaking ranks and scattering after a loud bang was heard during a ceremony to celebrate the 81st anniversary of the National Guard in Caracas on August 4, 2018. // AFP PHOTO

But Maduro himself said: “I have no doubt that the name (outgoing Colombian President) Juan Manuel Santos is behind this attack.”

He added investigations pointed to financial backers who “live in the United States, in the state of Florida. I hope that President Donald Trump is ready to fight these terrorist groups.”

The Colombian foreign ministry denied involvement, saying the allegations were “absurd” and “lacked any foundations.”

A senior US State Department official said the White House was monitoring the situation closely, without commenting further. Elsewhere, Maduro’s allies Cuba and Bolivia condemned the incident.

Meanwhile, late Saturday, a civilian and military rebel group calling itself the “National Movement of Soldiers in T-shirts” claimed responsibility for the explosion.

“It is contrary to military honor to keep in government those who not only have forgotten the Constitution, but who have also made public office an obscene way to get rich,” the group said in a statement passed to US-based opposition journalist Patricia Poleo, who read it on her YouTube channel.

“If the purpose of a government is to achieve the greatest amount of happiness possible, we cannot tolerate that the population is suffering from hunger, that the sick do not have medicine, that the currency has no value, or that the education system neither educates or teaches, only indoctrinating communism,” the statement added.

– ‘Maximum alert’ –

The parade Maduro attended marked the one-year anniversary of the Constitutional Assembly, a legislative body packed with loyalists that arrogated powers from the opposition-ruled National Assembly.

Members of different security forces stand guard and take evidence after an explosion targeted President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela, 04 August 2018. // EPA-EFE PHOTO

Maduro has remained in power in oil-rich Venezuela despite a collapsing economy and a long-running political crisis that has seen the country isolated internationally.

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have fled due to food and medicine shortages and hyperinflation that could reach one million percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Maduro, a 55-year-old Socialist leader who took over from his late mentor Hugo Chavez in 2013, has effectively sidelined the fractured opposition through control of the courts and the electoral body — and undinting support from the military, which holds key posts in his government.

After the explosion, he ordered the military to be on “maximum alert.”

He also warned the opposition that investigations will get to the bottom of the alleged attack, “whoever falls” in the process.

Maduro often accuses the opposition and the United States of working together to foment a “coup” to topple him.

This year he brought forward to May presidential elections — boycotted by the opposition — which handed him a new six-year term.

“The author misunderstood and wrote the article to attack Thai leader [Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha] without considering the reality,” Don told reporters in Singapore, where he attended the annual Asean ministerial meeting.

Thailand is scheduled to take up the chairmanship of the regional grouping next year. The Jakarta Post columnist, Kornelius Purpa, wrote an article last week calling on Asean to deny Thai junta chief Prayut the chance to chair the grouping.

“The Thai junta does not deserve the position amid strong waves of democratisation in this region,” the article says.

“We just witnessed how Malaysians responded to a corrupt leader. Myanmar is also undergoing a major transformation of democracy, although de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has not been able to fully control the country. The Philippines and Indonesia belong to a club of democratic nations despite domestic problems,” according to the columnist.

Don said being the chairman of Asean is not a personal matter, but one involving the country. Thailand as a country has to take the position in national and regional interest.

Thailand under the leadership of Prime Minister Prayut over the past four years has contributed and pushed forward many Asean projects and tasks, he said.

Prayut took power after staging a coup to topple the elected civilian government of Yingluck Shinawatra in May 2014.

While the international community strongly criticised the Thai junta for suppression of democracy and human rights, Don said the government provided good cooperation to the international community to solve many problems such as human trafficking and illegal fishery.

Thailand plans to have an election next year and Don said he expected the elected government would carry on the tasks initiated by his government.

While the idea to force Thailand to skip the Asean chairmanship was not discussed in the Asean meeting here over the past week, the article was widely talked about at home, notably among dissident groups.

Prayut on Saturday called on Thais to not use the issue of Asean chairmanship to cause further rifts in the country, Government Spokesman Lt-General Sansern Kaewkamnerd said.

Sansern quoted Prayut as saying that the Asean chairmanship is a matter for the entire country and all Thais, and does not belong to a specific person.

Asean forced Myanmar to forgo its 2006 chairmanship in order to push reforms for democratisation in the then-military-ruled country. Myanmar was given the chairmanship in 2014 when the country was run by Thein Sein after the 2010 election.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday announced US$300 million in funding for security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, on the back of $113 million economic initiatives unveiled earlier in the week by Washington.

“The US is the sole super power with total GDP of $16 trillion so when I first heard of $113 million I thought I heard it wrong. I thought it should be at least 10 times that amount for a super power with such a GDP,” Wang Yi said in Singapore after a meeting with Asean ministers.

Pompeo was also in Singapore this week for the Asean meeting and to implement the Indo-Pacific strategy to maintain US influence and power in the region.

“This new security assistance will advance our shared priorities, especially to strengthen maritime security, develop humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping gateways and programmes to counter transnational threats,” he said.

Wang Yi said separately that China welcomed such a move and would support enhancement of peace and stability in the region.

“China, as a developing country, is doing what it can. If the US wishes, we would be ready to work with the US for the same end to enhance regional peace, stability and development,” he said.

While security is a concern for the Indo-Pacific strategy, Pompeo said the new strategy, which was announced last year, also emphasised economic issues.

“The Indo-Pacific has been and will be a major engine of economic growth,” he said. The US “seeks partnership, not dominance”, he added, as he made the case for US business engagement in the region being crucial to its mission of peace, stability and prosperity.

“I outline the Trump administration’s economic strategy to advance a free and open Indo-Pacific,” he said.

Since May, the monthly demonstration in Seoul has shattered records to become the biggest-ever women’s protest in South Korea where the global #MeToo movement has unleashed an unprecedented wave of female-led activism.

The primary cause of the protests are so-called spycam videos in a tech-savvy country where news of men caught secretly filming women in schools, offices, trains, or even toilets have made headlines on a daily basis.

Organisers said Saturday’s event drew 70,000 participants, ten thousand more than the previous month’s rally, despite an unprecedented summer heatwave that has pushed the mercury above 37 degrees.

“Women’s toilets in this country are infested with spycams! Please please crack down on the crimes,” the women chanted in unison at the city’s Gwanghwamun Plaza which routinely hosts mass rallies.

Some waved banners with slogans such as: “We can’t live like this anymore” and “South Korea: the nation of spycams.”

Asia’s fourth-largest economy takes pride in its tech prowess, from ultra-fast Internet to cutting-edge smartphones.

But these advances have also given rise to an army of tech-savvy perverts, with videos widely shared in internet chatrooms and on file-sharing sites, or used as adverts for websites promoting prostitution or gambling.

The number of such spycam crimes reported to police has surged from around 1,100 in 2010 to more than 6,500 last year, with the offenders ranging from school teachers and college professors to church pastors and even a court judge.

The protestors are demanding that the government toughen punishments for offenders — most of whom are fined or receive suspended jail terms — and shutter websites hosting the footage.

Most participants at Saturday’s rally hid their faces with hats, sunglasses or surgical facial masks. Some South Koreans who have previously joined protests in support of women’s rights have faced online bullying and harassment.

The South remains deeply conservative and patriarchal despite economic and technological advances.

The crimes have become so prevalent that the South’s female police officers inspect women’s toilets in public venues including subway stations on a regular basis with special detectors for spycam videos that may be hidden inside stalls.

Although all manufacturers of smartphones sold in the South are required to ensure their devices make a loud shutter noise when taking photos — a move designed to curb covert filming — many offenders use special apps that mute the sound, or turn to high-tech spy cameras hidden inside eye glasses, lighters, watches, car keys and even neckties.

Fear that a simmering trade spat between the world’s top two economies could spiral into a full-blown trade war — with painful consequences for China’s neighbours — was among topics dominating discussion at a regional summit in Singapore on Saturday.

Tit-for-tat tariffs have fuelled months of tensions that were notched up Friday as Beijing threatened to impose levies on $60 billion of American goods, from beef to condoms.

The measures, which the White House ridiculed as “weak” but China said were “fully justified”, came after Washington said it would increase the rate of additional tariffs on Chinese goods worth $200 billion.

The prospect of a trade war is a “real threat” to Asian countries, Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah told reporters Saturday on the sidelines of the summit.

“The threat is making many countries very concerned and… is becoming more complex,” he said.

Other top Asian diplomats at Saturday’s forum, hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), spoke out against protectionism, warning that it places the region’s development in jeopardy.

“Rising anti-globalisation and trade protectionism among major countries is fuelling tensions and threatening our aspirations for sustained economic growth,” said South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha.

Countries in the region must “explore creative ways to further deepen and broaden our cooperation”, in the face of such challenges, she said.

Some ministers have called for the early conclusion of talks for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a 16-nation pact poised to become the world’s largest free-trade agreement, covering about half the global population.

The planned RCEP deal would group the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

‘Protectionism on the rise’

But it would not include the United States, which had been leading another regional trade pact — the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — until US President Donald Trump abruptly abandoned it last year.

Even with the lure to access to the world’s largest economy withdrawn, the eleven remaining TPP countries, who make up 13.5 percent of the global economy, signed a slimmed-down version of the pact in March.

It cuts tariffs and requires members to comply with a high level of regulatory standards in areas like labour law and environmental protection.

RCEP also aims to cut tariffs but has far less regulatory standards attached than TPP.

Nonetheless, Washington’s abandonment of TPP has given the RCEP negotiations a fresh shot in the arm.

“Given the current global situation where protectionism is on the rise, Japan would like to achieve a swift conclusion of our RCEP negotiations,” Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has said he hoped the RCEP pact would be complete by the end of the year, while Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan urged countries facing “headwinds against free trade” to rally together.

The US imposed 25 percent tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese goods in early July, sparking retaliatory measures from China.

Days later, Washington unveiled a list of another $200 billion in Chinese goods from electrical machinery to seafood that would be hit with 10 percent import duties.

Trump upped the ante this week by threatening to lift the tariff rate to 25 percent.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended the US position and hit back at China.

“President Trump inherited an unfair trade regime where American workers and American companies were not treated reciprocally by the Chinese,” he said Saturday.

“Efforts of the Trump administration are to right that, to correct it, to adjust that.”

The Russian Transport Ministry said the Mi-8 helicopter carrying three crew members and 15 passengers crashed when it collided with machinery carried by another helicopter soon after take-off.

It added that the second helicopter landed safely and that the accident took place in “normal” weather conditions.

“The first take-off was carried out by a Mi-8 with an external cargo suspension without passengers on board, the second take-off was performed with passengers who were workers on shifts at the oil station,” the ministry said in a statement.

“According to preliminary information, the Mi-8 carrying passengers for reasons unknown collided with the external suspension of the second helicopter after take-off. As a result it fell, was destroyed and burned,” it added.

“Three crew members and 15 passengers died.”

The helicopter was operated by Russian national airline Utair, which has its head office in Khanty Mansiysk airport in western Siberia.

In a statement issued on its website, Utair said the crash took place at 05:43 Moscow time (0243 GMT) after taking off from a helipad at the Vankor oil and gas field, in the Turuhansk district of the Krasnoyarsk region.

The oil field is operated by Russian national oil company Rosneft through its subsidiary Vankorneft.

Utair said the helicopter was made in Russia in 2010.

It added that the pilot was born in 1985 and was trained at the Omsk Aviation School in southwestern Siberia.

“He flew 5,990 hours, 2,300 of which he was the helicopter commander,” Utair’s statement said.

The airline said it sent its specialists to the site of the crash.

Russia’s transport ministry said it created a commission to investigate the crash and that the vice director of the Federal Air Transport Agency was on his way to the site.

The country’s Investigative Committee said it opened a criminal investigation into the crash.

Accidents involving helicopters and small planes are frequent in Siberia and far eastern Russia, where air transport is commonly used to cover vast distances.

In April, a Mi-8 helicopter crashed in far eastern Russia, killing six people.

In November 2017, six people died when a small plane crash-landed in the Khabarovsk region.

In 2016, 19 people died when a Mi-8 helicopter carrying oil and gas field workers crashed in a remote area of Siberia.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho attacked the US for “raising its voice louder to maintain sanctions against the DPRK and not showing an attitude to even declare an end to the war, a very basic and primary step for peace on the Korean Peninsula,” a five-page statement of Ri’s remarks to the forum said.

“[The US presses countries] not to send high-level delegations to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK in September this year,” it quoted Ri as saying.

North Korea warned that “there will be no case whereby [it] will move forward first unilaterally” if the US does not show in practice its strong will to remove its concerns.

Ri also reiterated that the only practical way to move forward was to take a new approach of giving priority to confidence-building measures and implementing all items in the joint statement issued after the summit of Donald Trump and Kim Jung-un in Singapore in a “balanced, simultaneous and phased way”.

“The DPRK-US Joint Statement should not be permitted to fall prey to American internal politics, inviting an adverse wind at odds with the intentions of the leaders,” the statement said.

Ri’s remarks came as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continued to call on regional countries to press sanctions against the totalitarian regime despite calmer waters in the peninsula following the Trump-Kim Summit in June.

Pompeo also targeted Russia, citing a report on a Russian joint venture with a North Korean firm and the granting of new work permits to North Korean gas workers.

“If this report proves accurate, and we have every reason to believe that it is, that would be in violation of UNSC [UN Security Council] resolution 2375. I remind every nation of its importance because this is a serious issue,” Pompeo told the press on Saturday.

“We expect Russia and all countries to abide by the UNSC resolutions and enforce sanctions on North Korea. Any violations that distract from the world’s goal of final denuclearisation of North Korea would be something that America would take very seriously,” he added

China, one of North Korea’s friendliest nations, was positive about setting up a peace mechanism over the peninsula, without affecting the sanctions.

“The Korean nuclear issue has been brought back on track to seek a peaceful settlement through dialogue and consultation. This has been a long-standing proposition of the Chinese side and also the direction China has been committed to,” China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday.

Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) politician Mio Sugita, an ally of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, sparked protests over an article she wrote in July questioning spending taxpayers’ money on LGBT couples.

“Can we obtain approval of spending taxpayers’ money for LGBT couples? They don’t make children. In other words, they lack productivity,” she wrote.

Some 5,000 people protested outside the LDP headquarters in Tokyo last week over her remarks and similar demonstrations are planned in Osaka and other cities over the weekend, organisers said.

Abe attempted to calm the furore, saying Sugita’s remarks contradicted the party’s policy towards sexual minorities.

“It is natural to aim at a society where human rights and diversity should be respected,” he said Thursday.

The LDP also separately warned her to pay more attention to her remarks, saying in a statement: “Lawmaker Sugita’s article … includes phrases reflecting her lack of understanding of (LGBT) issues and consideration for the feelings of people involved.”

But the party stopped short of reprimanding her despite growing calls for her resignation.

Sugita — a mother of one — reportedly said she would take the party’s instruction “seriously” but neither apologised nor withdrew her remarks.

Analysts say Abe is nervous about potential damage to his popularity ahead of the party’s leadership election in September when he aims to secure his premiership.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a decisive issue in the election campaign but at least Abe appears concerned about a possible backfire,” Tetsuro Kato, emeritus professor at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, told AFP.

Opposition parties lashed out at the LDP for its “lenient” stance towards Sugita, demanding her immediate resignation.

“If she does not apologise or withdraw the remarks, she should resign as a lawmaker,” Akira Koike of the Japan Communist Party told reporters.

A group of local legislators also urged her to apologise to the LGBT community and retract the article.

Taiga Ishikawa, the first openly gay politician to win a local election in Japan, tweeted: “There is no self-cleaning function in the LDP. The LDP is not qualified to speak about promoting understanding of LGBT.”

While Japan is largely tolerant of homosexuality there is no specific legal protection for gay people.

In a 62-page report sent to the Security Council, the UN panel of experts also listed violations of a ban on North Korean exports of coal, iron, seafood and other products that generate millions of dollars in revenue for Kim Jong Un’s regime.

Pyongyang “has not stopped its nuclear and missile programs and continued to defy Security Council resolutions through a massive increase in illicit ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products, as well as through transfers of coal at sea during 2018,” said the report, seen by AFP.

The transfer of petroleum products to North Korean tankers at sea remains “a primary method of sanctions evasion” involving 40 vessels and 130 associated companies, it added.

The violations have rendered the latest batch of sanctions “ineffective” by flouting the cap on oil, fuel and coal imposed in a raft of UN resolutions adopted last year, it added.

At a historic June summit with US President Donald Trump, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed up to a vague commitment of “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” in the hope of getting UN and US sanctions relief.

Trump however has repeatedly warned Pyongyang that the sanctions must remain in place and could even be tightened as long as there is no progress on ending its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Arms sales via Syria

North Korea also “attempted to supply small arms and light weapons (SALW) and other military equipment via foreign intermediaries” to Libya, Yemen and Sudan, said the report.

It named Syrian arms trafficker Hussein Al-Ali who offered “a range of conventional arms, and in some cases ballistic missiles to armed groups in Yemen and Libya” that were produced in North Korea.

With Ali acting as a go-between, a “protocol of cooperation” between Yemen’s Huthi rebels and North Korea was negotiated in 2016 in Damascus that provided for a “vast array of military equipment.”

The panel continues to investigate such military cooperation that would be in violation of an arms embargo on North Korea.

North Korea continued to receive revenue from exports of banned commodities, for instance deliveries of iron and steel to China, India and other countries that generated nearly $14 million from October to March.

“Financial sanctions remain some of the most poorly implemented and actively evaded measures of the sanctions regime,” said the panel.

North Korean diplomats play a key role in sanctions evasion by setting up multiple bank accounts, it added.

Despite a ban on joint ventures with North Korea, the panel has uncovered more than 200 such jointly-run firms, many of which are involved in construction and other businesses in Russia.

The panel is tasked by the council with monitoring the implementation of the raft of sanctions imposed in response to North Korea’s sixth nuclear test and ballistic missile tests.

The United States last month asked a UN sanctions committee to order a halt to all deliveries of oil products to North Korea after reporting that Pyongyang had exceeded the cap through the illegal ship supplies.

Russia and China however put a six-month hold on that request.

The report cited US figures estimating that North Korea had procured over 500,000 barrels of petroleum products in the first five months of 2018

Ninety-seven Myanmar migrant workers were found holding fake visas in Thailand while Thai immigration service personnel were making checks on them during June and July. Thai authorities have continued making checks.

“Thai authorities made checks on Myanmar migrant workers. It is called one year non-immigration visa.  They have visas. It gives 90 days to stay. If 90 days are up, go to present a report. When they go to present reports, their visas are faked. A number of Myanmar migrant works holding the fake visas are 97 in total. Therefore, our two countries are planning to reveal those making fake visas,” said Labour Attaché San Maung Oo.

The Thai government has started launching an inspection of illegal foreign migrant workers since July 1. A large number of Myanmar migrant workers were arrested.

The Thai immigration law already stated how to take actions against those who are undocumented or those with wrong documents and those with incomplete documents. No employer has been arrested. It is like as usual. There is no employer who wants to be arrested. They clear their cases giving money to officials. Only the employees who can’t afford have been arrested, said Moe Gyo.

Fake visas are taking place the most at Thailand-Myanmar border gates. The fake visas came from the brokers of the visa.

Except visa on arrival, the remaining kinds of visas can be applied at Thai Embassy to Myanmar by holding passports. But at the border gate, no need to go to Yangon. Visa is available at the border gate. It takes only one day if a passport is given. Brokers act it. Fake visas appear because of the brokers, said San Maung Oo.

Myanmar migrant workers holding the fake visas have been kept in the detention camps for further inspection.

In-charge U Soe of JACBA confirmed that the Thai authorities arrested 60 Myanmar migrant workers early this morning. According to the existing law of Thailand, those holding fake visas might receive a six-month imprisonment.