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Malaysia PM Anwar deflects questions on house arrest for Najib

Malaysia PM Anwar deflects questions on house arrest for Najib
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Updated 10 December 2024
Reuters
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Malaysia PM Anwar deflects questions on house arrest for Najib

Malaysia PM Anwar deflects questions on house arrest for Najib
  • Najib was prime minister between 2009 and 2018 and was sentenced to 12 years in prison in August 2022
  • The sentence however was halved this year by a pardons’ board chaired by former King Al-Sultan Abdullah
Updated 10 December 2024
Reuters
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KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim refused to answer questions on Tuesday on the existence of a royal decree that would allegedly allow jailed former premier Najib Razak to serve his prison sentence at home.
Najib, who was prime minister between 2009 and 2018, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in August 2022, when Malaysia’s top court upheld his conviction in a corruption case linked to the multibillion-dollar scandal at state fund 1MDB.
The sentence however was halved this year by a pardons’ board chaired by former King Al-Sultan Abdullah, shortly before his reign ended in January. Malaysia has a unique system of monarchy where the country’s nine sultans take turns to become king every five years.
Since April, Najib has been pursuing a legal bid to compel the government to confirm the existence of and execute an “addendum order” that he said was issued by the former king alongside the pardons’ board decision, entitling him to serve the remainder of his jail term at home. The former monarch has not commented on the case.
Anwar said in parliament on Tuesday he was unable to answer questions from lawmakers on the document, citing parliamentary rules on matters being decided by courts.
He admitted presenting Najib’s request for a pardon to the king, saying the ex-premier had a right to be heard, but stressed he had not been present when the federal pardons board made its decision to halve Najib’s sentence.
The king and the prime minister sit on the board, although the premier can be represented instead by a federal territories minister.
“Until this case is concluded in court or the king allows for it, we cannot discuss (it),” Anwar said, adding he had referred the matter to the current king, Sultan Ibrahim, for further deliberation.
Malaysia’s Court of Appeal is set to hear Najib’s request on Jan. 6 next year, after an earlier bid was struck down by a lower tribunal in July.
Najib’s son last week filed an affidavit in court, affirming he had received a copy of the addendum from Al-Sultan Abdullah’s royal household, though his lawyers declined to disclose the document’s contents.

Topics: Malaysia Malaysian PM Anwar Ibrahim Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak

Japan’s atomic bomb survivors to accept Nobel Prize in Oslo

Japan’s atomic bomb survivors to accept Nobel Prize in Oslo
Updated 16 sec ago
AFP
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Japan’s atomic bomb survivors to accept Nobel Prize in Oslo

Japan’s atomic bomb survivors to accept Nobel Prize in Oslo
  • 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima when the United States detonated an atomic bomb in 1945
  • Another 74,000 were killed by a US nuclear bomb in the Japanese city of Nagasaki three days later
Updated 16 sec ago
AFP

Oslo: This year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be presented Tuesday to Japan’s atomic bomb survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo, which lobbies against the weapons now resurging as a threat 80 years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
The three co-chairs of Nihon Hidankyo will accept the prestigious award during a ceremony starting at 1:00 p.m. (1200 GMT) in Oslo’s City Hall, at a time when states like Russia increasingly threaten to break the international taboo on the use of nuclear arms.
“Nuclear weapons and humanity cannot co-exist,” one of the three co-chairs, Terumi Tanaka, told a press conference on Monday in the Norwegian capital.
“Humanity may come to its end even before climate change brings its devastating impacts,” the 92-year-old said.
Nihon Hidankyo works tirelessly to rid the planet of the weapons of mass destruction, with testimonies from survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as “hibakusha.”
Around 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima when the United States detonated an atomic bomb over the Japanese city on August 6, 1945.
A further 74,000 were killed by a US nuclear bomb in Nagasaki three days later.
Survivors suffered from radiation sickness and longer-term effects, including elevated risks of cancer.
The bombings, the only times nuclear weapons have been used in history, were the final blow to imperial Japan and its brutal rampage across Asia. It surrendered on August 15, 1945.
Tanaka was 13 when the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing five members of his family.
On Monday, he expressed alarm at the resurgence of nuclear threats and urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop brandishing the threat to prevail in the war in Ukraine.
“President Putin, I don’t think he truly understands what nuclear weapons are for human beings,” he said.
“I don’t think he has even thought about this.”
Putin began making nuclear threats shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He signed a decree in late November lowering the threshold for using atomic weapons.
Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
On November 21, Moscow fired its new Oreshnik hypersonic missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in an escalation of the almost three-year war.
The missile is designed to be equipped with a nuclear warhead, but was not in this case.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday that Moscow was ready to use “any means” to defend itself.
“It is crucial for humanity to uphold the nuclear taboo, to stigmatize these weapons as morally unacceptable,” the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, said on Monday.
“To threaten with them is one way of reducing the significance of the taboo, and it should not be done,” he added.
“And of course, to use them should never be done ever again by any nation on Earth.”
North Korea, which has increased its ballistic missile tests, and Iran, which is suspected of developing nuclear weapons though it denies this, are also seen as posing a threat to the West.
Nine countries now have nuclear weapons: Britain, China, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United States, and, unofficially, Israel.
In 2017, 122 governments negotiated and adopted the historic UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), but the text is considered largely symbolic as no nuclear power has signed it.
This year’s Nobel prizes in the other disciplines — medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics — will be awarded at a separate ceremony in Stockholm.

Topics: Japan Oslo Nobel Prize

Gunmen kidnap at least 50 in nigeria’s zamfara state, residents and police say

Gunmen kidnap at least 50 in nigeria’s zamfara state, residents and police say
Updated 29 min 52 sec ago
Reuters
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Gunmen kidnap at least 50 in nigeria’s zamfara state, residents and police say

Gunmen kidnap at least 50 in nigeria’s zamfara state, residents and police say
Updated 29 min 52 sec ago
Reuters

MAIDUGURI: A gang of gunmen kidnapped more than 50 women and children in a raid on Kakin Dawa village in Nigeria’s northwest Zamfara state, police and residents said.
Kidnapping for ransom by gunmen, known by locals as bandits, is rife in northwest Nigeria due to high levels of poverty, unemployment and the proliferation of illegal firearms.
Zamfara police said the incident took place on Sunday and that additional security forces were being deployed to the area.

Topics: Nigeria Gunmen kidnap

France’s Macron to host party leaders in quest for new govt

France’s Macron to host party leaders in quest for new govt
Updated 10 December 2024
AFP
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France’s Macron to host party leaders in quest for new govt

France’s Macron to host party leaders in quest for new govt
Updated 10 December 2024
AFP

PARIS: French party leaders will gather at President Emmanuel Macron’s Elysee Palace office Tuesday afternoon in a bid to chart a route toward a new government, days after Prime Minister Michel Barnier was toppled in a confidence vote.
Shutting out the far-right National Rally (RN) and hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), the effort to find a way forward comes as caretaker ministers scramble to clarify France’s 2025 finances, after the previous administration fell over its cost-cutting budget plans.
“The aim is to move forward with a deal about a method” to build a new government on the unstable foundations of a hung parliament, people close to Macron said late Monday.
Barnier had been supported by conservative Republicans and Macron’s centrist camp, but the shaky alliance was far short of an overall majority in a National Assembly split three ways with the NFP left alliance and the RN.
It is unclear how leaders could build a broader base of support for any new government.
Most are unwilling to compromise on pet issues such as last year’s unpopular pension reform, or to tarnish their image with voters by compromising ahead of potential new elections next year.
“We will not participate in a government of ‘national interest’ with the Republicans or Macronists or whoever,” Greens party leader Marine Tondelier said Monday — a position mirrored by Republicans chief Laurent Wauqiez.
In a letter late Sunday, Socialist leaders told Macron they were open to “dialogue and pitting points of view against one another” to “find an exit from this deadlock situation that’s harmful to the French public.”
But they added that they would not join a technocratic government or one run by a prime minister from the right, and called for “a true change of political course” on “pensions, purchasing power and tax justice.”


Bringing so many parties together around one table marked progress from Macron’s first attempt to reach consensus after July’s snap election, commentator Guillaume Tabard wrote in conservative daily Le Figaro.
“But if even a minimal deal is to be found ranging from the Republicans to the Communists, it will require an enormous labor of negotiation that will take days or weeks,” he added.
“The promise to quickly replace Barnier, yet again issued with confidence, will once again be betrayed.”
In an apparent acknowledgement that progress will be slow, Macron’s office said that a special budget law to allow the French state to keep functioning would be presented to caretaker ministers Wednesday on its way to parliament.
Its three measures include authorizing the government to continue raising existing taxes until a new budget is passed by MPs, a ministerial source told AFP.
The state and the social security system will also be allowed to continue borrowing on financial markets to avoid any interruption of payments, the source added.

Topics: France

Scholz, Macron prepared to work with Syrian rebels after Assad ouster

Scholz, Macron prepared to work with Syrian rebels after Assad ouster
Updated 10 December 2024
Reuters
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Scholz, Macron prepared to work with Syrian rebels after Assad ouster

Scholz, Macron prepared to work with Syrian rebels after Assad ouster
  • The statement came as governments worldwide are scrambling to forge new links with Syria’s leading rebel faction Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham
Updated 10 December 2024
Reuters

BERLIN: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emannuel Macron are prepared to work with the Syrian rebel groups who ousted President Bashar Assad on certain conditions, a German government statement after a phone call between the two leaders.
The leaders of the European Union’s two largest powers welcomed the departure of Assad who had caused “terrible suffering to the Syrian people and great damage to his country.” The Syrian leader fled Damascus for Moscow on Sunday, ending more than 50 years of brutal rule by his family.
“(Scholz and Macron) agreed that they were prepared to work together with the new rulers on the basis of fundamental human rights and the protection of ethnic and religious minorities,” according to the German government statement published late on Monday.
The statement came as governments worldwide are scrambling to forge new links with Syria’s leading rebel faction Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), a group formerly allied with Al Qaeda and which is designated a terrorist organization by the US, European Union, Turkiye and the UN
Scholz and Macron agreed to work together to strengthen EU engagement in Syria, including support for an inclusive political process in Syria, and would discuss the way forward in close coordination with partners in the Middle East, the statement read.

Topics: Fall of Assad France Germany Syria

Mass evacuation of Philippine villages underway after a brief but major volcanic eruption

Mass evacuation of Philippine villages underway after a brief but major volcanic eruption
Updated 10 December 2024
AP
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Mass evacuation of Philippine villages underway after a brief but major volcanic eruption

Mass evacuation of Philippine villages underway after a brief but major volcanic eruption
  • Volcanic ash fell over a wide area, nine flights were canceled or diverted, schools were closed and a nighttime curfew was imposed in the most vulnerable area
Updated 10 December 2024
AP

MANILA: About 87,000 people were being evacuated in a central Philippine region Tuesday a day after a volcano briefly erupted with a towering ash plume and superhot streams of gas and debris hurtling down its western slopes.
The latest eruption of Mount Kanlaon on central Negros island did not cause any immediate casualties, but the alert level was raised one level, indicating further and more explosive eruptions may occur.
Volcanic ash fell on a wide area, including Antique province, more than 200 kilometers (124 miles) across seawaters west of the volcano, obscuring visibility and posing health risks, Philippine chief volcanologist Teresito Bacolcol and other officials said by telephone.
At least six domestic flights and a flight bound for Singapore were canceled and two local flights were diverted in the region Monday and Tuesday due to Kanlaon’s eruption, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines.
The mass evacuations were being carried out urgently in towns and villages nearest the western and southern slopes of Kanlaon which were blanketed by its ash, including in La Castellana town in Negros Occidental where nearly 47,000 people have to be evacuated out of a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) danger zone, the Office of Civil Defense said.
More than 6,000 have moved to evacuation centers aside from those who have temporarily transferred to the homes of relatives in La Castellana by Tuesday morning, the town’s mayor, Rhumyla Mangilimutan, told The Associated Press by telephone.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said authorities were ready to provide support to large numbers of displaced villagers and that his social welfare secretary flew early Tuesday to the affected region.
“We are ready to support the families who have been evacuated outside the 6-kilometer danger zone,” Marcos told reporters.
Government scientists were monitoring the air quality due to the risk of contamination from toxic volcanic gases that may require more people to be evacuated from areas affected by Monday’s eruption.
Disaster-response contingents were rapidly establishing evacuation centers and seeking supplies of face masks, food and hygiene packs ahead of the Christmas season, traditionally a peak time for holiday travel and family celebrations in the largely Roman Catholic nation.
Authorities also shut schools and imposed a nighttime curfew in the most vulnerable areas.
The Philippines’ Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the nearly four-minute eruption of Kanlaon volcano on Monday afternoon had caused a pyroclastic density current — a superhot stream of gas, ash, debris and rocks that can incinerate anything in its path.
“It’s a one-time but major eruption,” Bacolcol told the AP, adding that volcanologists were assessing if Monday’s eruption spewed old volcanic debris and rocks clogged in and near the summit crater or was caused by rising magma from underneath.
Few volcanic earthquakes were detected ahead of Monday’s explosion, Bacolcol said.
The alert level around Kanlaon was placed on Monday to the third-highest of a five-step warning system, indicating “magmatic eruption” may have begun and may progress to further explosive eruptions.
The 2,435-meter (7,988-foot) volcano, one of the country’s 24 most-active volcanoes, last erupted in June sending hundreds of villagers to emergency shelters.
In 1996, three hikers were killed near the peak and several others were later rescued when Kanlaon erupted without warning, officials said.
Located in the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the Philippines is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms a year and is among the countries most prone to natural disasters.

Topics: Philipines

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