“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.

The Russian foreign ministry said it had summoned the heads of missions from 23 countries to tell them that some of their diplomats had to leave.

France, Germany, Canada and Poland each said that Russia was expelling four of their diplomats. Other countries including Ukraine, the Netherlands, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Finland, Lithuania and Norway were also told to pull their envoys.

The moves came in retaliation for the coordinated expulsion of Russian diplomats by Britain and its allies over a nerve agent attack against former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury on March 4.

“This is certainly not a surprise,” Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said through a spokeswoman, referring to Moscow’s expulsion of two of the country’s diplomats.

Britain has said it is “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for the Skripal attack using the Novichok nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union, but Russia has angrily denied any involvement.

After the poisoning, Britain kicked off the global response by announcing it would expel 23 Russian diplomats, suspend high-level diplomatic contact with Moscow and not send any members of its royal family to the 2018 football World Cup hosted by Russia.

Russia then responded by closing a British consulate in Saint Petersburg and the British Council educational and cultural organisation.

In further measures against the UK, the Russian foreign ministry gave Britain a month to cut the number of diplomatic staff in Russia to the same number Russia has in Britain, a move London called “regrettable”.

“This doesn’t change the facts of the matter: the attempted assassination of two people on British soil, for which there is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian State was culpable,” a spokeswoman for Britain’s Foreign Office said.

Two Australian diplomats were expelled, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull saying it was “a disappointing, although not unexpected, reaction by the Russian Government to the decision of the Australian Government to expel two Russian diplomats working as undeclared intelligence officers.”

‘Diplomatic war’

In the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin presided over a meeting of the country’s Security Council which discussed the most recent retaliatory steps against Britain and its allies.

“Russia did not unleash any diplomatic war,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “Russia never initiated any exchange of sanctions.”

Moscow announced Thursday that it would expel 60 US diplomats and close the US consulate in Saint Petersburg after the expulsion of its own diplomats and the closure of one of its US consulates.

In all, more than 150 Russian diplomats have been ordered out of the US, EU members, NATO countries and other nations which are accusing Russia of being involved in the Skripal poisoning.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned Moscow’s response might “not only” be symmetrical.

On the streets in Saint Petersburg, passersby said they welcomed the decision to shut down the US consulate general.

“This is great news,” said Viktor Glushko, 60. “It is about time.”

Another man shouted: “Get out of here!” as he passed by the US consulate where staff were seen loading plastic sacks into vehicles Friday.

In Washington, the State Department said there was no justification for the most recent Russian move and that the United States “reserves the right to respond”.

US media showed footage of a Russian government plane on the tarmac at Washington’s Dulles airport, apparently to begin ferrying the expelled Russians home.

But a State Department official told AFP that Russia has not been asked to cut the headcount at its mission, and so it could apply to accredit new diplomats to its US embassy to replace those leaving.

‘Blatant provocation’

In London, the Russian Embassy on Friday accused British authorities of “another blatant provocation”, claiming they had searched an Aeroflot plane without proper permissions.

“We have no other explanation but that the incident at Heathrow is in one way or another connected with the hostile policy that the UK government is conducting with regard to Russia,” they said in a statement.

London’s Metropolitan Police said on Twitter that it was aware of the issue.

“Please be advised that Metropolitan Police are not conducting a search of an Airbus inbound from Moscow at Heathrow,” they tweeted, without giving further details.

The UK hospital where Skripal and his daughter are being treated said Thursday that Yulia, 33, was “improving rapidly and is no longer in a critical condition”, while 66-year-old Sergei remained in a critical but stable condition.

The telecoms regulator blamed excessive use of Facebook and other popular social media platforms for distracting tens of millions of students from their studies.

“They spend hours on their smartphones,” said Shahjahan Mahmood, chairman of the Bangladesh Telecommunications and Regulatory Commission.

“It’s hampering their lives socially and academically,” he told AFP, likening social media use to a “digital opium addiction”.

Like in other parts of the world, social media use is hugely popular among teenagers in Bangladesh, despite only half the population having access to the internet.

Facebook provides access to a limited version of its platform for free, allowing even the poorest of Bangladesh’s 160 million people to log onto the social media platform.

There has been no suggestion of authorities cracking down on Facebook, but Mahmood said the regulator was planning to raise prices to access social media applications in a bid to drive down usage.

He said a distinction would be made to ensure access to academic, business and research websites was not affected.

“We’ve started planning at the macro level about how to implement that,” he said.

“It sounds restrictive now, but in the long run it would be practically very useful for the country, especially for the young people.”

He also floated the idea of introducing content filtering on young people’s smartphones but admitted it would be “challenging” to police such activity.

Most Bangladeshis access the internet via smartphones. Last month, the country’s internet bandwidth was raised from 3G to 4G.

Bangladesh imposed a three-week blackout on social media, including Facebook, in early 2015 amid demonstrations by opposition supporters against the government.

British political consultancy SCL Group claims to have arrived in Indonesia after president Suharto was brought down in 1998, according to company documents issued around 2013 that were accessed by Quartz.

SCL eventually became CA, which is now alleged to have used the data of 50 million Facebook users to influence voters during Mr Donald Trump’s 2016 United States presidential campaign.

SCL said it began operating in Indonesia at the request of “pro-democratic groups” to “assist with a national campaign of political reform and democratisation” in a country reeling from the Asian economic crisis, as well as the loss of a leader who had been in power for over 30 years, the Quartz report said. Quartz is owned by Atlantic Media, publisher of The Atlantic, National Journal and Government Executive.

In total, SCL claims to have worked on more than 100 election campaigns across 32 countries, Quartz reported. Previous media reports say these included claims that it had helped political parties in Malaysia, India, Kenya and Brazil.

INDONESIA CIVIL UNREST

In Indonesia, according to the SCL documents, the firm went on to survey thousands of Indonesians, manage communications for politicians and even organise large rallies at universities to help students “let off steam”.

SCL said it was tasked with managing growing frustration with the new administration of president B.J. Habibie and surveyed 72,000 of the country’s 220 million people.

In Indonesia in 1998, SCL said it decided to sponsor “organised avenues of protests” to draw in students and keep them away from violent demonstrations. But Indonesia expert Ian Wilson of Australia’s Murdoch University said claims that SCL helped to curb violence were an “exaggeration”.

The documents seen by Quartz show that the younger “university” age group mainly instigated the unrest, while the older generation was wary of insubordination, having been suppressed for so long.

SCL decided to focus on 18-to 25-year-old Indonesians and direct their frustration away from civil unrest. Research in schools and universities found many of them were unhappy about the increased police and military presence on the streets.

SCL made the decision to sponsor “organised avenues of protests” to draw in students and keep them away from violent demonstrations – apparently with the cooperation of the Indonesian government.

“This was achieved by establishing a rally committee and financing activities and coverage across the country,” the SCL documents said.

“The events were so large that there was a general feeling among students that their voice really had been heard.”

SCL claims its methods dramatically reduced civil unrest and convinced then President Habibie to step down, leading to the 1999 polls that brought Mr Abdurrahman Wahid to power. The documents, Quartz said, indicate SCL ran the election campaign of Mr Abdurrahman’s National Awakening Party.

Indonesia expert Ian Wilson, a lecturer at Australia’s Murdoch University, said claims that SCL helped to curb violence were an “exaggeration”.

“It would have been, at most, one small element among all that were taking place at the time,” he told Quartz. “The forces and interests at play and jostling for influence were simply on too big a scale to have been influenced significantly in such a way.”

THAI ELECTION DATA

The SCL documents say the company entered Thailand some time before the 2001 elections that saw telecoms billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra taking power.

SCL was tasked with gauging the scale of vote-buying behaviour that had inflated the cost of an election campaign to an estimated US$1 billion (S$1.3 billion).

“Vote buying had become so endemic that an entire industry of dealers had emerged to broker the voter groups and funders,” the documents said, as quoted by Quartz.

“It was quite commonplace for voters to sell their votes twice – and then not vote at all!”

SCL claimed to have employed more than 1,200 staff who collected data from over nine months and found that in half of the constituencies, vote buying did not impact the electoral result, a discovery that the company claimed was worth US$250 million alone.

However, in the other constituencies “a more direct behavioural intervention was required”, which the SCL papers suggested could involve “social pressure, economic penalties, legal framework and enhanced monitoring”.

SCL said it intervened for six months, apparently with “the cooperation of most of the major political parties”, and Thaksin went on to win the 2001 election.

Thailand expert and University of Leeds professor Duncan McCargo told Quartz: “There’s no doubt that some Thai political parties have commissioned international consultants to work on improving their electability, and this was certainly the case for Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai party in 2001.”

He was sceptical, however, that different parties could have supported a project to stop vote buying. “The 1997 Constitution included various provisions designed to combat and reduce vote buying,” he explained. “There was broad popular support for these changes, though I can’t say that translates to ‘cross-party’ support.”

Quartz said it had contacted CA and SCL for comment.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha joined the summit with colleagues from China, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam to endorse the Hanoi Action Plan 2018-22, which will shape the focus of the sub-regional scheme.

Established in 1992, the Asian Development Bank-sponsored scheme has focused on building infrastructure for economic development in the Mekong basin. At the time it was founded, most members were emerging from wars.

Infrastructure projects have been improved and rebuilt over the past quarter of a century, including many new airports, 80 bridges, 10,000 kilometres of roads, 500 kilometres of railways, 3,000 kilometres of power transmission lines along with the generation of 1,570MW of electricity, according to a draft of the joint summit declaration to be issued after the meeting today.

The Hanoi summit yesterday and today also adopted the Regional Investment Framework 2022 to identify a pipeline of 227 projects with an indicated cost of $66 billion (Bt2.58 trillion), said the declaration draft seen by The Nation.

The leaders also praised the progress in expanding economic corridors and the ratification by all six members of the GMS Cross Border Transport Facilitation Agreement, its annexes and protocols.

However, there are many overlapping cooperation and development schemes in the Mekong basin.

The GMS leaders, who sat together in different forums many times this past year, said they recognised the roles played by all regional cooperation schemes, including the newly initiated China-dominated Lancang Mekong Cooperation forum, which held its summit in Phnom Penh in January. Other bodies include the six-decade old Mekong River Commission which will next month hold is latest summit in Siem Reap, and the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy whose June summit would be hosted by Thailand.

“These provide additional impetus for our own efforts for GMS development to build a sustainable, integrated and prosperous sub-region,” the leaders said in the statement.

Prior to the GMS summit yesterday, Prayut met separately with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Laos premier Thongloun Sisoulith to discuss bilateral ties with Thailand’s respective neighbours.

Prayut discussed the registration process for migrant workers with Thongloun as there are millions of Lao workers in Thailand and the current large-scale documentation process is to end today.

With Prime Minister Phuc of Vietnam, Prayut witnessed the ceremony handing over an investment licence granted by the Vietnamese authority to a Thai investor for AMATA City Halong.

Myanmar reporters Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, were arrested last December and have been charged under the Official Secrets Act, which could see them jailed up to 14 years.

They had been investigating the killing by security forces and ethnic Rakhine locals of 10 unarmed Rohingya Muslim men in the country’s crisis-hit northern Rakhine State.

“Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are being prosecuted simply because they reported the news. I have reviewed the case file and it is clear beyond doubt that the two journalists are innocent and should be released immediately,” Clooney said.

“Yet they have been denied bail and face 14 years in prison. The outcome of this case will tell us a lot about Myanmar’s commitment to the rule of law and freedom of speech.”

Clooney’s involvement will increase the global attention that has surrounded proceedings against the pair, who are being detained in a Yangon prison.

“We will pursue all avenues to secure our reporters’ release. Retaining Ms Clooney greatly strengthens our international legal expertise and allows us to broaden those efforts,” said Gail Gove, chief counsel of Reuters.

Former US president Bill Clinton and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres are among those who have called for the journalists’ release as fears grow about Myanmar’s shrinking press freedoms.

Clooney, an internationally respected lawyer, has also attracted huge celebrity following since her 2014 marriage to American film star George Clooney.

“Sexual assault crimes remain tragically common in our society, and offenders too often evade accountability,” said a proclamation from Trump released by the White House. “These heinous crimes are committed indiscriminately: in intimate relationships, in public spaces, and in the workplace.”

“Too often, however, the victims of assault remain silent. They may fear retribution from their offender, lack faith in the justice system, or have difficulty confronting the pain associated with the traumatic experience,” it continued.

“My administration is committed to raising awareness about sexual assault and to empowering victims to identify perpetrators so that they can be held accountable.”

At least 20 women have publicly accused Trump of engaging in sexual assault or harassment prior to becoming president. The White House has maintained that the women are lying.

Last month, Trump described allegations that he kissed a receptionist without her consent as “Another False Accusation” in a post on Twitter, calling instead for coverage of “the story of the women taking money to make up stories about me. One had her home mortgage paid off.”

Since former film mogul Harvey Weinstein’s dramatic downfall over allegations ranging from harassment to rape, the #MeToo campaign has seen a deluge of accusations topple men from powerful positions in a number of industries including Hollywood, the media and politics.

In February, allegations of domestic abuse led two Trump staffers to resign. The Republican leader came under fire for lamenting the “shattered” lives of those accused, saying the allegations could be false.

The 2016 presidential campaign that launched Trump to the White House saw the unearthing of an infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which the real estate tycoon bragged about groping women.

“I don’t even wait,” Trump says in the clip. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything. Grab them by the pussy.”

Trump dismissed his lewd comments as “locker room banter.”