World

Mahathir Mohamad, the nearly 100-year-old elder statesman of Malaysian politics, filed his candidacy Saturday in what could be his final race, as campaigning for upcoming general elections began.

Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob called for elections 10 months ahead of schedule, with the graft-tainted ruling party of jailed ex-leader Najib Razak seeking to cement its political comeback four years after it was dramatically voted out.

A Guinness World Record holder for being the “world’s oldest current prime minister” when he became premier for the second time in 2018, the 97-year-old Mahathir will stand again to defend his parliamentary seat in the holiday island of Langkawi in the November 19 vote.

Visibly slowed by age but still looking healthy, Mahathir was greeted by dozens of supporters waving flags of his Homeland Fighters’ Party as he arrived at a local government office in Kuah, the island’s main town, to register his candidacy.

Ismail, of the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), and opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, of the Pakatan Harapan coalition, have also filed their candidacies elsewhere in the country.

Anwar urged voters to come out in big numbers, as fears circulated that torrential rain during the monsoon season could dampen turnout.

“I am optimistic we will win,” he told AFP from his constituency in the northern Perak state.  

In Langkawi, Mahathir told reporters that he stood a “good chance” of winning and laughed off suggestions he should retire.

“I’m still standing around and talking to you, I think making reasonable answers,” he said.

He added his party will not form any alliances with parties that are led by “crooks or jailbirds”, an apparent reference to UMNO.

– Corruption a key issue – 

The nonagenarian, who once ruled the Southeast Asian nation with an iron fist from 1981 to 2003, came out of retirement to lead the opposition Pact of Hope alliance in the 2018 general elections.

The reformist alliance won a stunning victory over then-incumbent Najib, who was later convicted of corruption linked to the 1MDB state fund financial scandal and is now serving a 12-year jail sentence.

Mahathir became premier again just two months shy of his 93rd birthday, but his government collapsed in less than two years due to infighting.

He has warned that Najib would be freed if the jailed politician’s allies in UMNO win, signalling that corruption will be a key issue at the polls.

He also offered to become prime minister a third time.

“You should see the circumstances of my country … so much of corruption and so many wrongdoings. It’s time to fight, fight, fight!” said Hamidah Ayub, 66, a Mahathir supporter.

While Mahathir is expected to win easily in Langkawi, aiming for the premiership a third time would be tough, an analyst said.

At least four blocs — including the one he leads — are vying for a majority in the 222-seat lower house of Parliament, making it a tight contest.

The 21 million voters also include more than six million new registrants, many of them young, who came on board following electoral reforms.

“Mahathir’s time has passed,” Bridget Welsh of the University of Nottingham Malaysia told AFP.

“He was given a second chance and bungled it. His chances this time to run as prime minister are extremely slim.”

A US B-1B strategic bomber will participate in the ongoing joint air drills with South Korea on Saturday, a defence ministry official in Seoul told AFP, a show of force after a blitz of missile launches by North Korea.

Pyongyang’s flurry of launches on Wednesday and Thursday included an intercontinental ballistic missile and one that landed near South Korea’s territorial waters for the first time since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

The United States and South Korea have warned that the series of launches could culminate in a nuclear test by North Korea, and extended their largest-ever air force drills to Saturday in response.

A South Korean defence ministry official told AFP that a US Air Force B-1B strategic bomber would participate on the last day of the exercises, dubbed Vigilant Storm, which were originally scheduled from Monday to Friday this week.

“B-1B is scheduled to participate in the afternoon training,” the official said, without providing further details.

The show of force came a day after South Korea scrambled fighter jets in response to what it said was the mobilisation of 180 North Korean warplanes.

Pyongyang has ramped up its missile launches in protest over the US-South Korea air drills. Such exercises have long infuriated North Korea, which sees them as rehearsals for an invasion.

Pyongyang had called Vigilant Storm “an aggressive and provocative military drill targeting” North Korea, and said the United States and South Korea would “pay the most horrible price in history” if they continued.

North Korea is particularly sensitive about these drills, experts say, as its air force is one of the weakest links in its military, lacking high-tech jets and properly trained pilots.

Pyongyang has been particularly angered in the past by the deployment of US strategic weapons such as B-1Bs and aircraft carrier strike groups, which have been deployed to and near the Korean peninsula in times of high tension.

While the B-1B no longer carries nuclear weapons, it is described by the US Air Force as “the backbone of America’s long-range bomber force” that can strike anywhere in the world.

The United States on Friday assailed China and Russia at the UN Security Council for having “enabled” North Korea.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield dismissed criticism of the drills with South Korea as North Korean “propaganda” and said they posed no threat to other countries.

President Joe Biden insisted on Friday that Democrats will win next week’s US midterm elections, but warned of a difficult two years if polls showing Republican victories prove correct.

The 79-year-old, on a multi-state push in the final days before Tuesday’s ballot, said he was optimistic his Democratic Party could prevail.

“Folks, I’m not buying the notion that we’re in trouble,” he told an audience in Chicago. “I think we’re going to win. I really do.”

Polls show Republicans poised for potentially big victories in Tuesday’s congressional election, hoping to win control not only in the House of Representatives but the Senate.

That would turn the last two years of Biden’s first term into a dogfight and set the stage for a tense 2024 presidential election, with questions over whether Biden, who turns 80 this month, will want to run again.

“If we lose the House and Senate it’s going to be a horrible two years,” he said.

“The good news is that I’ll have the veto pen,” he added, referring to his power to block bills from becoming law.

Biden has hit the road as his vanquished 2020 rival has also got back on the campaign trail.

Donald Trump, who has spent much of the last two years fulminating over his loss, and pushing the discredited theory that there was election fraud, used a rally appearance to send the strongest signal so far that he’s planning a comeback bid.

At a rally Thursday in Iowa, the first state to hold its Republican nominating contest in presidential elections, Trump said: “In order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again, OK? Very, very, very probably.”

“Get ready. That’s all I’m telling you. Very soon. Get ready. Get ready,” he said.

According to a report in Axios on Friday, aides are firming up plans for a November 14 announcement.

That, however, is likely to depend on how well the right-wing candidates promoted by Trump do on Tuesday. Another factor in play is the threat hanging over Trump from an investigation into his hoarding of top secret documents at his Florida golf resort — and potential indictment on serious criminal charges.

For now, Republicans are confident they can at minimum get the one state they need to move the Senate from 50-50 to their own narrow majority, while expecting solid gains in the House of 12 to 25 seats, overcoming the Democrats’ current eight-member advantage.

– ‘I’ve got a plan’ –

The final weeks of campaigning have seen Republicans even looking beyond the country’s swing states to Democratic bastions that once seemed out of reach. 

Strategists from both parties are seeing districts across New York, Oregon and Connecticut that went for Biden by double digits in 2020 coming back into play. 

Hillary Clinton campaigned on Thursday in New York to boost the faltering fortunes of Governor Kathy Hochul while former president Barack Obama speaks in Pennsylvania Saturday. Biden himself was set to campaign in Democratic stronghold New York on Sunday.

Democrats have concentrated their message on the assault on democracy they say Republican election-deniers are mounting, and the violence they say this has provoked.

Paul Pelosi was released from hospital on Friday, a week after he was attacked by a hammer-wielding man who had broken into his home searching for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

David DePape, who denies charges against him, allegedly told police he intended to break Nancy Pelosi’s kneecaps if she did not confess to Democratic Party “lies.”

“The Pelosi family is thankful for the beautiful outpouring of love, support and prayers from around the world,” Nancy Pelosi said in a video after her husband’s release from hospital.

The White House got some good economic news with official figures for October showing 261,000 new jobs and unemployment at low levels.

“I’ve got a plan to bring costs down, especially for health care, energy and other everyday expenses… The Republican plan is very different,” Biden said in a statement. 

“They want to increase prescription drug costs, health insurance costs and energy costs, while giving more tax breaks to big corporations and the very wealthy.”

In another glimmer of hope for the Democrats, Oprah Winfrey endorsed Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman during a virtual get-out-the-vote event Thursday.

It was a notable snub of Fetterman’s Republican rival, celebrity surgeon Mehmet Oz, who rose to fame largely through appearances on Winfrey’s show. 

But with the Republicans confident of flipping Georgia and Nevada, the Keystone State might not even be needed for a takeover of the Senate. 

Soup on Vincent van Gogh paintings, mashed potatoes on a Monet masterpiece: climate activists are taking increasingly daring action to grab headlines — and it’s working. 

In the latest such stunt, activists from the Last Generation group splashed pea soup on Van Gogh’s 1888 painting “The Sower” in Rome on Friday. 

While the Extinction Rebellion (XR) was not behind the recent art attacks, it is known for disruptive street protests and flamboyant costumes. 

The group’s co-founder Gail Bradbrook said such bold action is needed to draw attention to the “polycrisis” that threatens to tip the world into climate catastrophe and devastating biodiversity loss.

Bradbrook said when people act together they can make a real difference. 

The scientist spoke to AFP ahead of the 27th round of United Nations climate negotiations opening Sunday — branded by Greta Thunberg as “greenwashing” amid concerns that campaigners will be blocked from attending.

The interview has been edited for length and flow. 

– Climate protesters have recently thrown soup over a Van Gogh painting and mashed potato over a Monet. Do shock tactics work? 

In a media-saturated environment that doesn’t want to tell important stories, it’s hard to get attention. So people go and do something frankly quite dangerous and daft like getting on the motorway. That’s agitation, and it does get a story in the mainstream consciousness. Evidence, from, for example, research by Colin Davis at the University of Bristol, suggests people may dismiss the activists involved, but their focus on the issues increases. In other words, it works from an awareness-raising perspective.

The next bit is to really inspire people that change is possible. And the third bit is acting together to make sure that the change happens. We need to rewire our economy and upgrade our democracy.

– How much can individuals do?

There’s an honour in doing what you can. We can understand that for so many miles driven in a car, there’s so much carbon emitted, and therefore, so much ice will melt. 

But at the same time, this is systemic and what the system wants you to do is tie yourself up in a knot. It is a very stressful system that we live in. It’s not by accident that BP introduced the idea of carbon footprinting.

The whole system was founded on extraction, exploitation, especially of our family in the Global South. It needs to go.

– Why did you set up Extinction Rebellion?

It was from a sense of determination to see change happen. It was more, “well, what else do you want to do with your life?” 

We chose the name because we are in the sixth mass extinction event. The polycrisis that we’re in, it’s a climate and ecological emergency, a health crisis and inequality crisis and so on. It has many root causes. There’s an elite class of people who we need to rebel against, who are not taking sufficient action, and in some cases, taking us in the wrong direction.

Climate change weather extremes are already happening. Look at Bangladesh and Pakistan. Essentially, what the world is saying is “tough”. It’s disgusting. 

– What do you think motivates action?  

One of the first things that we did with Extinction Rebellion was to move into emergency mode messaging. You tell people the bitter and brutal truth. And then you talk about why it is like that, and therefore what can be done. And then you talk about what that person can do themselves and as part of their group, so there’s a sense of agency. 

It’s a bit like if you had a lump somewhere on your body and you go to the doctor. At the end of the day, the grown-up in you needs to know what the risks are, what the treatment is. 

The good news is, it starts with being a human being, the best side of being a human being, where we feel part of life.

People have done really incredible things in times of war, for example. Human beings are really amazing, they’re really up for acting selflessly, and on behalf of the collective. It is hardwired into us.

  

– And what stops people?

If there is no leadership telling you there’s an issue, and if you get mixed messages, then you don’t act. 

There have been active forces at play to stop us from wanting to do anything. We know that there were large sums of money spent on climate denial. 

After climate denial — not that it is fully done with — what is the next phase to stop us doing anything? It is these delay stories: Technology is going to save us. It’s all for consumers to sort out. Or, what about China? 

They’re all psychological tools to give people a story to say to themselves: “I can let this go because it’s too stressful to face”. 

Candlelight vigils and rallies were expected in South Korea on Saturday to commemorate the 156 people killed in a Halloween crowd crush, with public anger growing over one of the country’s deadliest peacetime disasters.

The victims, mostly young people, were among the estimated 100,000 that had flocked to the capital Seoul’s popular Itaewon nightlife district to celebrate the first post-pandemic Halloween.

South Korean law enforcement officials have conceded that there was insufficient safety planning for a crowd that large, and opposition politicians have accused President Yoon Suk-yeol’s government of not taking responsibility for the disaster.

Reflecting that anger, a woman identified by local media as the mother of one of the victims was seen ripping apart the floral wreaths left by the president and Seoul’s mayor at a memorial on Friday.

“What’s the point of (these flowers) when they couldn’t protect (our children)? Think about it,” she was seen saying in footage broadcast by local TV stations.

“What’s the point of standing next to these (wreaths) when you let our babies die?”

Uniformed police officers were then seen escorting the woman away from the memorial, located outside Seoul City Hall.

President Yoon on Friday joined other top officials — including the national police chief and the interior minister — who had apologised over the disaster.

“As a president who is responsible for the lives and safety of the people, I am deeply saddened and sorry,” he said.

“I know that our government and I… have a huge responsibility to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again.”

– Scrutiny of crowd management –

Yoon — who is with the conservative People Power Party — has been battling record-low approval ratings since taking office in May, and his political opponents are now taking aim at his government over the Halloween crush.

A civic group linked to the main opposition party was set to hold candlelight vigils across the country on Saturday evening, including in Seoul, Busan, Gwangju and Jeju.

A group of young Koreans was expected to hold a separate commemoration in central Seoul.

“I can’t believe people of my age died just because they wanted to have some fun on Halloween,” said Park Tae-hoon, 29, one of the organisers of that rally and a member of the progressive Jinbo political party.

“It was only yesterday that the president apologised,” he told AFP, adding that the purpose of the march was to demand punishment for those responsible and measures to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy.

South Korea is in a period of national mourning that ends Saturday, with flags flying at half-mast and entertainment events cancelled.

Public scrutiny of how the Halloween crowd was managed is mounting, and a wide-ranging probe is under way into the exact cause of the crush.

With no single organiser for the Halloween celebrations, the government did not require any of the bars, clubs and restaurants — some located on Itaewon’s narrow alleys and side streets — to submit a safety management plan.

And even though police had estimated beforehand that a crowd of 100,000 would participate, they only deployed 137 officers — compared with the 6,500 sent to another part of Seoul that night for an anti-government protest a fraction of the size.

Brazilian police said Friday they had nearly finished clearing hundreds of roadblocks by supporters of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who have been protesting since his election loss to veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

After Lula’s narrow victory Sunday, Bolsonaro supporters blocked highways and camped out at army bases to demand a military intervention to keep the defeated incumbent in power.

“All federal highways are now free of roadblocks,” though five partial closures that don’t impede traffic remain in two of Brazil’s 27 states, federal highway police said.

The blockades threatened to cause havoc in Latin America’s largest economy, but diminished since Bolsonaro urged supporters Wednesday to “unblock the roads.”

Police have broken up more than 960 roadblocks, they said.

Pro-Bolsonaro protests outside military bases had dwindled in Brasilia Friday morning to just 100 — while in Sao Paulo there remained about 300 and all had cleared out in Rio de Janeiro, AFP correspondents said.

Ex-army captain Bolsonaro was silent for nearly two days after the election, raising fears he would try to cling to power with the backing of hardline supporters.

But after a series of key allies acknowledged the result, he said Tuesday he would respect the constitution, and authorized the start of the transition process for Lula’s inauguration on January 1.

But Bolsonaro has still not explicitly conceded defeat nor congratulated Lula.

The outgoing president met briefly Thursday with vice president-elect Geraldo Alckmin, who is heading Lula’s transition team.

Alckmin said the meeting had been “positive,” and that Bolsonaro had promised “all information and assistance needed for a smooth transition.”

Although Bolsonaro urged supporters to lift their roadblocks, he also encouraged “legitimate demonstrations,” raising fears Brazil may still face turbulence.

In the latest violent incident linked to the divisive election campaign, a 12-year-old girl shot at a Lula victory party in the city of Belo Horizonte died Thursday of her wounds.

Ex-metalworker Lula, 77, who led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, won an unprecedented third term with 50.9 percent of the vote, to 49.1 percent for Bolsonaro — the closest presidential election in the country’s modern history.

While Latino voters lean Democratic in the run-up to US midterm elections, soaring inflation makes their support less predictable and may compel a shift toward Republican candidates, analysts say.

Inflation now at eight percent troubles Latinos, as it does all Americans, according to polls released before the November 8 vote, in which President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party faces heavy possible losses.

Other issues — the right to abortion, gun control and a crisis over undocumented migrants — are secondary, polls show.

More than half of Latinos intend to vote Democratic in the vote for legislative seats, while 30 percent support Republicans, higher than four years ago, the surveys indicate.

“What matters most to Latino voters is inflation, and many… are ready to give Republicans a chance,” Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas, director of research at the Latino Policy & Politics Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, told AFP.

– Sounding an alarm –

 

But “a stampede of Latino voters toward Republicans hasn’t been perceived” in the election, in which the 435-seat House of Representatives, a third of the 100-seat Senate and some 30 state governorships are up for grabs, he said.

“The alarm for the Democratic Party is that if it doesn’t retain its margin of support among Latino voters, it runs the risk of losing key, tightly-contested elections,” Dominguez-Villegas added.

While Latinos have historically supported Democrats, “there is a large group who are swing voters” who change preferences with each election, and the Republican Party is targeting them, he said.

“Latinos are not a monolithic group. We have different origins, with different aspirations and different problems,” said Jaime Florez, Hispanic communications director for the Republican National Committee.

Florez cited three key areas: the economy, education and public safety, but above all else at the moment is inflation.

“Economic issues affect us all independently of our country of origin, the language that we speak, many times even our economic condition because even rich people have lost enormous sums with the fall of the stock market,” he said.

– ‘A wrong assumption’ –

 

The Republican Party enjoys a perception that it handles economic issues better — while some Democratic leaders are accused of believing Latinos will simply fall into line behind them.

“They only run these get-out-the-vote operations in the weeks before the election, and expect that Latinos will show up and support them and I think that’s a wrong assumption,” Geraldo Cadava, a history professor at Northwestern University, told AFP.

While Republics still trail Democrats among Latinos, “Latinos have both voted for Republicans in increasing numbers over the past few years, and they have left the Democratic Party over the last few years,” Cadava said. 

The dynamic is complex, he said, but in part Latinos “are drawn to particular Republican policies at the same time that they’re abandoning Democratic policies.” 

On a number of issues Latinos are in sync with the Democratic Party, said Stephen Nuno-Perez, analyst and pollster with BSP Research.

“In terms of data points, we continue to see strong support for policies that the Democrats are pushing, whether it’s immigration reform, abortion rights — upwards of 70 percent — taking action against climate change, student debt relief, gun safety, all of these,” he said.

“None of these are issues that we would call Republican issues.”

Latinos are increasingly favor restrictive immigration reforms, including building border walls, Cadava added.

“Historically, say over the past 20 or 25 years, about 15 percent of Latinos would say that they support restrictive immigration reform,” Cadava said, but now support has climbed to 36 percent.

“That’s a pretty big jump.”

Twitter sacked half of its 7,500-strong staff on Friday as new owner Elon Musk launched his major overhaul of the troubled company just a week after his blockbuster takeover.

An internal document seen by AFP said “roughly 50 percent” of employees were impacted and would be denied access to company computers and email on an immediate basis.

Workers around the world were shown the door and took to Twitter to vent their frustration or disbelief and say goodbye to one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic companies.

“Woke up to the news that my time working at Twitter has come to an end. I am heartbroken. I am in denial,” said Michele Austin, Twitter’s director of public policy for the United States and Canada.

“Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” Musk tweeted Friday evening in his first comment on the subject, 24 hours after the company’s initial email notifying employees of forthcoming layoffs. 

Ahead of the layoffs, Twitter closed access to its offices worldwide, asking employees to stay at home to await news of their fate through an email.

“It’s a pretty inhumane way to treat people. It seems like a mercenary effort, they’re trying to save money at all cost,” said one dismissed employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The cull is part of Musk’s push to find ways to pay for the mammoth $44 billion deal for which he took on billions of dollars in debt and sold $15.5 billion worth of shares in Tesla, his electric car company.

Company sources said that Musk’s teams were imposing a furious pace on the remaining employees, bringing in Tesla developers to oversee the work of “Tweeps,” the inhouse name for Twitter workers. 

Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief, is said to owe $1 billion in annual interest alone to pay for a deal he tried to wiggle out from almost as soon as he made it in April. 

Musk has been scrambling to find new ways for Twitter to make money after his mammoth buyout, including an idea to charge users $8 a month for verified accounts.

The moves would help overcome the potential loss of advertisers, Twitter’s main source of revenue, with many of the world’s top brands putting their ad buys on hold, spooked by Musk’s well-known disdain for content controls.

– ‘Messed up!-

The mercurial tycoon on Friday complained on Twitter of a “massive drop in revenue” that he blamed on “activist groups” that were pressuring advertisers.

“We did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” he added.

This appeared to refer to Musk’s recent meeting with civil rights groups in which he heard concerns that Twitter would open the floodgates to hate speech a week before midterm election in the United States.

In an effort to soothe nerves, Musk had vowed that Twitter will not become a “free-for-all hellscape,” but since taking over the company he also has shared a tweet relaying a conspiracy theory about an assault on the husband of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“We are witnessing the real time destruction of one of the world’s most powerful communication systems. Elon Musk is an erratic billionaire who is dangerously unqualified to run this platform,” said Nicole Gill, Executive Director of Accountable Tech.

She was part of a coalition of 60 rights groups calling on Friday for a boycott by advertisers of the Musk-owned platform.

Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, a leading civil rights organization, said it would be “immoral, dangerous, and highly destructive to our democracy for any advertiser to fund a platform that fuels hate speech, election denialism and conspiracy theories.”

“Until actions are taken to make this a safe space, we call on companies to pause all advertising on Twitter,” he added.

Twitter head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth tried to soothe concerns, saying that about 15 percent of his department had been let go in comparison to the 50-percent cuts company-wide. 

The site’s “core moderation capabilities remain in place,” he tweeted.

Though extremely influential with opinion-makers and celebrities, the California company has long struggled to generate profit and has failed to keep pace with Facebook, Instagram and TikTok in gaining new users.

In the sign that matters were not improving, data showed Twitter may have lost more than a million users since Musk took over. 

Estimates from Bot Sentinel, a firm that tracks Twitter accounts, suggested that more than 875,000 users deactivated their accounts between October 27 and November 1, while half a million more were suspended.

Italy will allow an NGO ship carrying 179 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean to dock so medics can carry out health checks, the country’s foreign minister said Friday.

Antonio Tajani said that German NGO SOS Humanity’s vessel Humanity 1 would head for Catania, Sicily, and “be able to stay in our territorial waters for the time necessary for us to examine all the emergencies on board”.

“We will accept all those people, for example because they are minors, or because, according to what we know from the media, they are pregnant women or with young children, or people with fever”, he told a press conference in Rome.

But he warned that “all those who do not meet these criteria will have to be removed from our territorial waters by the ship”.

More than 1,000 migrants are currently aboard rescue boats trying to reach Europe, and Italy has faced mounting pressure to let humanitarian ships dock.

Germany sent a diplomatic note to Italy on Thursday asking its government to provide rapid help.

On Thursday the group SOS Mediterranee said it had called on the governments of France, Greece and Spain to help find a port for 234 people it rescued while trying to reach Europe, after Italy and Malta failed to answer. 

So far, the NGO said it had made 20 requests to dock without success. 

France said on Friday however that it was ready to take in some women and children aboard the NGO’s Ocean Viking vessel.

SOS Mediterranee’s director Sophie Beau welcomed the announcement but warned “any further day of waiting could have serious consequences”.