In the villager, a Thai teacher from the ‘Foundation for The Better Life of Children’ teaches the Thai language classes and basic communication skills as well as other lessons to the children of the migrant workers from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.

Most of the workers’ children are not going to school in Thailand because of the expenses and missing identification documents. The school provides chances for the children to practice basic Thai language during classes.

The 37-year-old, who was sworn in last October, made global headlines when she slapped down pre-election questions over whether she intended to start a family, insisting pregnancy had no bearing on a woman’s career opportunities.

Ardern was all smiles Friday as she appeared with partner Clarke Gayford at their home to announce the “unexpected but exciting” news of their first baby.

“Clark and I are really exited to share…that in June we are looking forward to welcoming our first child,” she told reporters.

“We still have to get used to saying that out loud because we’ve been keeping that to ourselves for quite a long time.”

The charismatic leader enjoyed a rapid rise to the top ranks of politics, winning office last year just months after taking the helm of the centre-left Labour Party.

“We thought 2017 was a big year!” she tweeted.

“This year we’ll join the many parents who wear two hats. I’ll be PM and a mum while Clarke will be ‘first man of fishing’ and stay at home dad.”

Ardern said she would take six weeks off after the birth of her child, with maverick Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters taking the reins of office.

She said she aimed to be “contactable and available” during the period and would resume all leadership duties when it was over.

Ardern, who did not reveal whether she was expecting a boy or a girl, said she and Gayford previously had doubts they could conceive.

“Clarke and I have always been clear we wanted to be parents but had been told we would need help for that to happen,” she said.

“That’s made this news a fantastic surprise.”

She tweeted a picture of two large fishing hooks, one with a smaller hook inside it, in reference to Gayford’s career as a television fishing show presenter.

 – Sexism row –

Ardern’s plans for a family sparked a sexism row during the election when a television host quizzed her on the issue, saying voters had a right to know before they cast their ballots.

She rejected the line of questioning as “unacceptable”, saying pregnancy and child rearing should not hinder women’s opportunities in the workplace.

“It is a woman’s decision about when they choose to have children and it should not predetermine whether or not they are given a job or have job opportunities,” she said.

While several male prime ministers have become parents in office — including Britain’s Tony Blair — late Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is believed to have been the first head of government to have given birth during her term, when she had a baby in 1990.

Ardern said “there’s no doubt times have changed” making it possible for her to juggle motherhood and a high-profile political career.

But she played down suggestions she was a trailblazer.

“I am not the first woman to multitask. I am not the first woman to work and have a baby,” she said.

“I know these are special circumstances, but there are many women who would have done this well before I have.

“There are plenty of women who carved a path incrementally to make it possible for people to look upon my time in leadership and think ‘yes I can do the job and be a mother’.”

– ‘More excited than election’ –

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull offered his congratulations on the “wonderful news.” When we spoke this morning you sounded more excited than you did when you won the election!” he tweeted.

Ex-New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, Ardern’s mentor early in her career, said her former charge was in for “a super busy year”.

“Every woman should have the choice of combining family & career,” she tweeted.

Green Party co-leader James Shaw said Ardern’s announcement was significant for many women.

“That a woman can be the prime minister of New Zealand and choose to have a family while in office says a lot about the kind of country we are and that we can be — modern, progressive, inclusive, and equal,” he said.

Gayford was non-committal when asked if the pregnancy meant he would now marry Ardern.

“Wow, I like the idea that we are doing everything in reverse,” he told reporters.

“We bought a house together, then we are having a baby and will see…”//AFP

Germany halted all long-distance rail traffic for at least a day, while numerous domestic flights were scrapped as hurricane-force winds lashed the country.

The storm claimed six lives in Germany, including two firefighters deployed in emergency operations and two truck drivers whose vehicles were blown over by the gales.

Another driver died when he lost control of his vehicle and crashed in to a truck.

A 59-year-old camper was killed instantly when a tree fell on him in North Rhine-Westphalia state, German police said, as wind speeds reached a high of 203 kilometres an hour (126 mph) at the Brocken — the highest peak of northern Germany.

The storm, named Friederike, also ripped the roof off a school in the eastern state of Thueringia while children were still in the building. Authorities said no one was hurt there.

In the Bavarian alps, the strong gales forced the cancellation of a ski world championship qualifier at Oberstdorf.

It is the worst storm to strike Germany since 2007, according to the German weather service.

Passengers stuck at rail stations were given a voucher for a hotel room, German rail service Deutsche Bahn spokesman Achim Strauss said.

“We must have protect our passengers and our staff,” he added, without saying when the rail service would return to normal.

In the Netherlands, which had borne the brunt of the severe winter storms earlier Thursday, two people were crushed by falling trees as bitter winds barrelled off the North Sea to hit the low-lying country with full force.

As the national weather service raised its warning to the highest code red level, a 62-year-old man was killed in the central Dutch town of Olst by a falling branch when he got out of his truck to remove debris blocking the road.

A second Dutchman, also 62, was killed in eastern Enschede when a tree toppled onto his car, the Dutch news agency ANP said.

In neighbouring Belgium, a woman driver reportedly died when her car was crushed by a tree as she was travelling through a wood in the Grez-Doiceau area, about 35 kilometres south of Brussels.

Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, one of the continent’s busiest travel hubs, was forced to briefly cancel all flights as winds gusted up to 140 kilometres an hour in some areas.

Flights later resumed but all passengers were being advised to check their flight status, the airport said in a tweet, adding “up until now, 320 flights have been cancelled”.

The airport also had to close the entrances to two of its three departure halls when some roof tiles were whipped off the terminal building.

Storm carpool

The traffic chaos also plagued the roads, with the Dutch national traffic office reporting 66 trucks had been toppled over by the high winds causing huge traffic jams on the motorways, the highest recorded number since 1990.

The Dutch NS national train service said meanwhile that only a few trains would be put into service late Thursday, and warned of further disruption on Friday as many overhead lines had been brought down by the high winds.

The hashtag #StormPoolen (or storm carpool) began trending with people searching rides between cities, and some drivers offering spare seats in their cars.

“My lovely boyfriend is trying to get from Leiden Central to Delft. He’s very nice and there’s a bottle of wine in it for whoever can return him unharmed. #StormPoolen,” wrote one Twitter user Molly Quell.

Puk van de Lagemaat promised “mad Dj-ing and Karaoke skills to accompany you in the traficjam (sic)” if anyone could give her a ride from Amsterdam central station to The Hague.

Thalys, the high-speed train operator, suspended services to the Netherlands and Germany.

Avalanche risk

Germany’s rail service said stranded passengers will receive a hotel voucher or will have the option of spending a night in a train at the station.

Traffic is expected to resume only very gradually, said a German rail spokesman.

Dutch insurers warned that the bill for Thursday’s storm damage could top 10 million euros ($12.25 million).

Four people were injured in Antwerp, including one woman who was seriously hurt after being hit in the head by flying metal debris, the Belgian news agency Belga said.

Elsewhere in Europe, Tyrol state in western Austria said part of the Westbahn train line linking Vienna, Linz and Salzburg was closed on Thursday morning because of avalanche risk, national railways company OeBB said.

“We don’t want to take any risks,” OeBB spokesman Christoph Gasser-Mair said.

    “On January 18 at 10:30 am (0430 GMT), a bus caught fire … 55 passengers and two drivers were on board. Five people who managed to escape are receiving medical assistance. The rest died on the spot,” the ministry said, without elaborating on the cause of the blaze.

The bus driver said the passengers were Uzbek nationals while the vehicle was registered in Kazakhstan, emergency services ministry official Ruslan Imankulov told AFP.

He said the fire spread through the bus extremely quickly.

Video broadcast by Russian and Kazakh media showed black smoke and flames billowing from the vehicle on a flat stretch of road carving through a snowy steppe. A photograph taken later showed the vehicle completely charred.

The ministry named the vehicle as a Hungarian-made Ikarus. These buses are still widely used in ex-Soviet nations, even though they are often decades old.

The bus was headed from the Russian city of Samara on the Volga river to the town of Shymkent in southern Kazakhstan, the ministry said.

The tragedy, which struck in the area around the city of Aktobe, came less than three years after 16 people, including three children, died in the country when a minibus collided with a van on April 20, 2015.//AFP

The baby was born Sunday to Liang Liang, who has been on loan to Malaysia since 2014 along with a male panda, said Mat Naim Ramli, director of the national zoo’s panda centre outside Kuala Lumpur.

He said officials were not yet sure of the cub’s gender as the mother was keeping the youngster so tightly in her grasp zookeepers could not get near.

“The mother is very attentive and protective. She doesn’t allow us to (take the cub),” he told AFP.

The first cub, a female called Nuan Nuan, was born in August 2015 and sent to China in November last year as part of Beijing’s agreement with Malaysia that cubs born in captivity must go back at the age of two.

Mat Naim said the new cub appeared to be healthy and slightly larger than its elder sister when she was born.

He added that officials were trying to get a closer look at the cub, and that the government would likely hold a competition to name the animal soon.

Liang Liang and the male, Xing Xing, came to Malaysia in 2014 on a 10-year loan.

Their arrival was held up by a month after the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 — carrying mostly Chinese passengers — caused tensions between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.

There are an estimated 1,864 giant pandas left in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and they can only be found in certain parts of south central China.

The IUCN classifies them as “vulnerable”.//AFP

Despite relentless Taliban attacks, Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission is conducting the parliamentary polls in the war-torn country on July 7, almost three years late. Holding free, fair and peaceful elections is a priority as the war-torn country’s last presidential elections saw the top two candidates bickering over who the real winner was. A US led deal finally led to the formulation of the National Unity Government, with Ashraf Ghani as president and Abdullah Abdullah as chief executive officer.

In Pakistan, political parties are making efforts to prepare themselves for next parliamentary elections scheduled to be held on 15 July.  Pakistan’s politics have been in turmoil since Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was dismissed from power last year on corruption charges. In the current National Assembly, his party, the Pakistan Muslim League holds 189 seats out of total 342, while the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party holds 47 seats. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, led by famed cricketer turned politician Imran Khan, holds 33.

The next Asian country with elections on the cards is Cambodia, where the national election are scheduled on July 29. Thirty-five political parties are officially registered, according to Cambodia’s interior ministry. However, the country’s top court dissolved the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party last year.  The party’s leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested in September on charges of treason. He remains in detention. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen recently marked 33 years in power. Cambodia’s volatile political situation has contributed to the absence of more than one million eligible voters in the registration. According to the official data, only 536,023 new voters have registered out of 1.6 million estimated new voters. Overall a total 8.3 million people have signed up to vote.

Meanwhile, Malaysia, where Najib Razak has been Prime Minister since 2009, is also preparing for elections this year

to be held on or before 24 August. Najib is seeking to recapture the ruling coalition’s long-held two-thirds majority. Najib has faced strong opposition particularly because of corruption allegations. One of his biggest critics is his onetime mentor and former prime minister, 92-year-old Mahathir Mohamad. Mahathir, who has been outspoken in his criticism of Najib, said last week that he would run as the opposition’s candidate in the upcoming election.

Malaysia’s neighbour Thailand, where the military has been in power since 2014, is going to hold elections on November 18 this year after repeated delays. The junta has repeatedly delayed elections, citing concerns such as changes to the constitution and security issues. The Thai military has seized power 12 times since 1932 in the country, but last year it pledged to help conduct free and fair elections and not to stage another coup after the next election.  Around 50 million people are eligible to vote in the Thai elections.