Bangladesh started moving a second group of Rohingya refugees to a low-lying island in the bay of Bengal on Tuesday (December 29).

Despite opposition from rights groups worried about the new site's vulnerability to storms.

Some clutching ducks, pigeons and chickens in bamboo baskets.

Others wearing orange life vests and masks against the coronavirus.

The nearly 2000 refugees were taken on five boats from a refugee camp on the border to Bhasan Char,

an island which only emerged from the sea 20 years ago and is prone to flooding.

The measure has sparked criticism from rights groups which allege that people are being moved against their will.

Foreign Minister Abdul Momen has dismissed concerns about the island's safety,

and accused groups of spreading negative propaganda about people being forced.

The government has built a 7.5 mile-long embankment to protect the island from regular storms, as well as housing for 100,000 people.

Reuters is withholding the names of refugees going to the island because of the controversy surrounding the relocation with many refugees keen to stay on the mainland and opposed to the move.

The Rohingya are a Muslim minority ethnic group which fled Myanmar for Bangladesh in 2017 following a military-led crackdown.

Since then, they've been living in overcrowded and squalid camps in Cox's Bazar.

The United Nations says it hasn't been involved in the relocation and urged the government not to force people to move./Reuters

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police found a warehouse full of Nazi memorabilia as they arrested three suspected leaders of an international arms ring that sold guns to drug traffickers along the Costa del Sol, the Civil Guard force said on Tuesday.

Following a year-long investigation into a wave of gun crimes in the region, police raided three locations, recovering 160 firearms, nearly 10,000 bullets and 1.5 kg of explosives.

The warehouse where the weapons were found was stuffed with Nazi artefacts, including portraits of Adolf Hitler, German military uniforms and medals displayed as if in a museum, police footage showed.

Officers arrested two German men, one of whom had links to far-right groups, and a British man. They have been charged with arms trafficking, drugs trafficking and falsifying official documents.

According to police, the gang acquired weapons from Eastern Europe before modifying them in their workshop in Malaga and selling them on to drug runners.

LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) - Lawmakers in a central Indian state controlled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party approved legislation on Tuesday that would make pressuring a woman to convert to their husband's religion a crime punishable with imprisonment.

Although no religion is specified in the legislation, critics say it is aimed against the country's Muslim minority. Hardline Hindu groups have accused Muslim men of waging a campaign, dubbed a "Love Jihad", to lure Hindu women to Islam with promises of marriage.

The Freedom of Religion Bill, 2020 will be enacted in Madhya Pradesh once it receives approval from the state's governor, a leader in Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

"This law will prevent innocent girls being forcefully converted on pretext of marriage," said Narottam Mishra, home minister in the state's BJP-led government.

Virtually identical legislation was passed last month in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, a northern state also controlled by the BJP. Thirty Muslim men were arrested there earlier this month under the new law for allegedly compelling women to change their religion after getting married.

Other Indian states - Haryana, Karnataka and Assam - have said that they are planning to bring in similar anti-conversion laws.

Under the new law, a man and woman belonging to different religions will have to give at least two months notice to the district magistrate before they get married and they will be given permission if there are no objections.

Politicians in Madhya Pradesh have also campaigned for years against Christian missionaries, accusing them of offering financial aid and free education to persuade people to convert to Christianity.

Authorities detained the suspects on Sunday after carrying out searches in Kumanovo and Skopje. They also seized a large number of weapons.

The suspects are all aged between 21 and 32 years old, while one had a previous conviction of participation in the Islamic State group outside of North Macedonia.

The men have been charged with creating a terrorist organisation and face a prison sentence of up to 10 years if convicted.

The eight were arrested on suspicion of "creating a terrorist organisation, based on the ideological matrix of the terrorist organisation ISIS, for committing murders and destroying public buildings" and with the aim of creating fear or insecurity among the public, police said.

No specific targets in North Macedonia were mentioned.

Police said all the weapons and "mine explosives" were seized during raids on Sunday at eight locations in the country's north.

The arrested men are accused of procuring weapons, ammunition, and military equipment that they hid by a village road near the town of Kumanovo.

They are also suspected of performing test launches and activating improvised explosive devices in preparation for an attack.

The group allegedly communicated plans for transporting weapons and the making of suicide vests on WhatsApp, authorities added.

The arrests were made after a joint investigation by public prosecutors and North Macedonia's Department for the Suppression of Organised and Serious Crime.

Authorities said the suspects belong to the same group as three others who were arrested in September on suspicion of storing a large quantity of ammunition, mines, and explosives near Kumanovo.

"We have found evidence which indicated that they were in direct communication (with those newly arrested)," said Toni Angelovski, North Macedonian Police spokesman.

"And they had a joint agreement on planned activities as members of a terrorist organisation."

China will overtake the US to become the world's biggest economy by 2028, five years earlier than previously forecast, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a report has found.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), a UK-based think tank, said in its annual World Economic League Table released on Saturday that one of the impacts of the global health crisis as been "to redistribute economic momentum with Asia doing best and Europe worst".

China's "skilful management of the pandemic" and the long-term impact the pandemic will have on Western growth means China's "relative performance has improved."

"We now think that the Chinese economy in dollar terms will overtake the US economy in 2028, a full 5 years earlier than we thought last year," the report states.

It notes for instance that authorities reacted "vigorously" to the COVID-19 crisis, thus inflicting less damage on the economy. As a result, while most Western economies are expected to register negative growth for the year, China is forecast to record a 2 per cent growth rate.

It is then expected to grow by an annual 5.7 per cent between 2021-205 and 4.5 per cent annually from 2026 to 2030 and then 3.9 per cent the following five years.

In contrast, the US is projected to grow by an annual 1.9 per cent from 2022 to 2024 and then by 1.6 per cent following a "strong post-pandemic rebound" next year.

"For some time, an overarching theme of global economics has been the economic and soft power struggle between the United States and China. The Covid-19 pandemic and corresponding economic fallout have certainly tipped this rivalry in China’s favour," the report says.

The US is the world's most impacted country having lost more than 330,000 lives to the pandemic and recorded nearly 19 million infections since the beginning of the outbreak, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.