NEW DELHI (AFP) – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida arrived in India yesterday with officials in Tokyo predicting “candid discussions” about New Delhi’s unwillingness to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Unlike fellow members of the Quad alliance Japan, Australia and the United States, India has abstained in three United Nations (UN) votes deploring Moscow’s actions, calling only for a halt to the violence.
Earlier this month in a four-way call, Kishida, United States (US) President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison failed to convince India’s Narendra Modi to take a tougher line.
A joint Quad statement had said they “discussed the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and assessed its broader implications” – without any condemnation of Moscow.
A separate Indian readout pointedly “underlined that the Quad must remain focussed on its core objective of promoting peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region”.
Ahead of Kishida’s visit, the first by a Japanese prime minister since 2017, a Foreign Ministry official said Tokyo was “aware” of Delhi’s historical ties to Russia and its geographical location.
“But at the same time we share fundamental values and strategic interests so naturally there will be candid discussions about how we view the Ukraine situation, and also expect to hear similar explanation from Prime Minister Modi,” the official told reporters without wishing to be named.
SAO PAULO (AP) – A justice of Brazil’s Supreme Court on Friday ordered the shutdown of messaging app Telegram nationwide, arguing it has not cooperated with authorities.
The move is a blow to President Jair Bolsonaro, who has more than one million followers on the platform and defends it as a key tool for his re-election bid in October.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes said in his ruling that Telegram repeatedly ignored requests from Brazilian authorities, including a police request to block profiles and provide information linked to blogger Allan dos Santos, an ally of Bolsonaro’s accused of spreading falsehoods.
The justice added that Telegram has also failed to name a legal representative in Brazil, unlike its competitors.
Many of Bolsonaro’s supporters have turned to Telegram since the messaging app’s competitor WhatsApp changed its policies on message sharing. The president has often accused de Moraes and Brazil’s top court of rulings that go against freedom of speech.
De Moraes, who chairs a probe on misinformation in Brazilian social media, issued a warrant for dos Santos’ arrest last October. The activist, a fugitive now based in the United States (US), has remained active on Telegram, though.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro looks at his cell phone as he arrives for a flag hoisting ceremony outside Alvorada palace, in Brasilia. PHOTO: AP
“The Telegram platform, at every possible opportunity, failed to heed judicial orders in a total disregard for the Brazilian judiciary,” de Moraes said in his ruling. He added the suggestion to shut down the app came from federal police.
Dos Santos said de Moraes’ decisions “are based solely on his will”.
“At some point he will have to stop or be stopped,” the blogger told Jovem Pan, a radio and TV channel which broadcasts Bolsonaro’s live transmissions every week. “I don’t believe the Brazilian people will accept these atrocities.”
The justice said in his ruling that “the complete and full suspension of the works of Telegram in Brazil will remain until the judicial decisions previously issued are carried out”.
De Moraes gave Apple, Google and Brazilian phone carriers five days to block Telegram from their platforms.
Bolsonaro and his allies have encouraged followers to join Telegram since January of 2021 – the same month former US President Donald Trump, an inspiration for the Brazilian leader, was permanently suspended from Twitter in the wake of the riot at Capitol Hill.
In January, Bolsonaro was asked by supporters what he thought about investigations into Telegram.
“It is cowardice what they are trying to do to Brazil,” he responded.
PARIS (XINHUA) – French multinational electric utility company EDF announced on Friday an increase of the share capital of over EUR3.1 billion to finance their operations between 2022 and 2024.
EDF announced in a press release that current Rights holders will be entitled to buy new shares in the group.
“The capital increase we are launching today will allow the group to strengthen its balance sheet structure in the context of the events of early 2022, and the strategy to tackle climate change,” said CEO of the group Jean-Bernard Levy.
The French State owns 83.88 per cent of the share capital and 89.2 per cent of the voting rights, EDF stated, adding the State will commit to EUR2.7 billion for the company and the subscription of over 400 million new shares.
For 2022, due to their production of nuclear power while respecting the government measures to limit the increase of electricity bills, EDF anticipates a decrease of profits.
EDF logo is reflected on a window in Paris. PHOTO: AFP
The Brunei Council on Social Welfare (MKM) received a donation of 750 antigen rapid test (ART) kits from the Young Executive Programme Cohort-5 (YEP-5) and Cohort-6 (YEP-6) at the MKM Office in Kampong Anggerek Desa.
The donation, presented to MKM Brunei Vice-President 1 Hajah Juhana binti Haji Mohd Jaya, aimed to support the council’s efforts in aiding vulnerable and underprivileged families in the Sultanate, especially those affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.
The YEP is a flagship programme of the Civil Service Leadership Pipeline developed to produce competent and capable leaders towards achieving civil service excellence.
“The ART kits will be distributed to our clients at the beginning of Ramadhan, together with the iftar food programme for 15 days of Ramadhan,” said Hajah Juhana.
MKM will hold its annual iftar food distribution for the needy in Brunei and Bangladesh, with the hope of distributing iftar food to 750 recipients in Brunei for 15 days of Ramadhan and to 1,000 recipients in Bangladesh throughout the month.
“We are currently fundraising for the iftar project. An iftar food pack in Brunei costs BND3 while in Bangladesh it costs BND1.50,” said Hajah Juhana.
Young Executive Programme Cohorts representatives handing over the antigen rapid test kits to Brunei Council on Social Welfare Vice-President 1 Hajah Juhana binti Haji Mohd Jaya. PHOTO: MKM
LONDON (AFP) – Nick Candy has vowed to involve Chelsea fans if the British property tycoon succeeds in buying the troubled Premier League club.
Candy is believed to have submitted a bid of over GBP2 billion (USD2.6 billion) for his boyhood team and promised to give fans a ‘golden share’ ownership stake.
Candy issued a statement in confirming his bid, vowing to write off the loan to Chelsea Pitch Owners to safeguard the Blues’ future at Stamford Bridge. The 49-year-old has promised a total renovation of the stadium. Candy has teamed up with firms Hana Financial Group and C&P Sports Group in his Blue Football Consortium.
”Chelsea is one of the most iconic and successful clubs in the world, with a rich heritage, global following, and a highly valuable brand,” Candy said.
”Football clubs are important community and cultural assets, and this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give football back to the fans and put them at the heart of the operations and strategy of a leading global football club.”
KABUL (AP) – Afghanistan is the unhappiest country in the world – even before the Taleban swept to power last August. That’s according to a so-called World Happiness report released ahead of the United Nations (UN)-designated International Day of Happiness today.
The annual report ranked Afghanistan as last among 149 countries surveyed, with a happiness rate of just 2.5. Lebanon was the world’s second saddest country, with Botswana, Rwanda and Zimbabwe rounding out the bottom five. Finland ranked first for the fourth year running with a 7.8 score, followed by Denmark and Switzerland, with Iceland and the Netherlands also in the top five.
FILE- Internally displaced Afghans from northern provinces, who fled their home due to fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security personnel, take refuge in a public park in Kabul, Afghanistan. AP
Researchers ranked the countries after analysing data over three years. They looked at several categories including gross domestic product per capita, social safety nets, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity of the population, and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels.
DILI, EAST TIMOR (AFP) – East Timor’s citizens were at the polls yesterday to elect a new president, hoping the most competitive election in the history of Southeast Asia’s youngest country will end a protracted political impasse.
Voters lined up outside polling stations at the crack of dawn to choose between a record 16 candidates led by two revolutionary heroes in incumbent Francisco “Lu-Olo” Guterres and former president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta.
Following temperature checks and hand sanitisation, they were ushered to the polling booths where they dabbed their fingers in ink to show they had voted.
Several mothers carrying babies were among those eager to elect a new president.
“I hope the leader that I have voted for can pay more attention to the education, infrastructure and farming sectors. I am very happy that I’ve voted for a candidate based on my consciousness,” 35-year-old Filomena Tavares Maria told AFP outside the polls.
An official result will be announced sometime next week.
First hammered by the pandemic, East Timor’s economy took another hit last year when Cyclone Seroja struck, killing at least 40 people on its half of the island and transforming communities into wastelands of mud and uprooted trees.
People show their inked fingers after casting their ballots during a presidential election in Dili. PHOTO: AFP
Political tensions between the two largest parties – Guterres’ Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) and the National Congress of the Reconstruction of Timor-Leste (CNRT) – have also risen in the past four years, leading to a political deadlock that has seen the government fail to pass a budget.
Sidalia dos Santos said she hoped the new president could lead an economic recovery.
“I hope the candidate that I voted for can improve our lives, especially in the health and education sector,” the 22-year-old student said.
Outside the polling station, Ramos-Horta said the financial situation would be his main priority: “The most important thing for me is to strengthen the stability and build a better economy”.
Earlier in the week, he said he felt compelled to return to politics because Guterres had “breached the constitution” and overstepped his presidential role.
But Guterres, a 67-year-old former guerilla fighter, said he was confident the elections would bring him a second term.
“I believe I will win this election and people will reconfirm their rights through the election. If I am re-elected, I will keep defending the democratic rights of our country and create sustainable development”.
Around 860,000 were registered to vote at the country’s 1,500 polling stations.
If no one wins an absolute majority, a second round of voting will be held on April 19 and the winner will take office on May 20, East Timor’s 20th anniversary of independence from Indonesia, which occupied the former Portuguese colony for 24 years.
Major political events in East Timor have often been marred by violence and conflicts.
In 2018, more than a dozen people were injured and several cars torched after clashes between main parties Fretilin and CNRT.
AP – For better and worse, Turning Red is like no Pixar film before it.
The film, directed by Domee Shi, who made the lovely Oscar-winning short Bao, is the first Pixar movie directly solely by a woman. Its leadership team, including producers and art departments, is entirely female. And its protagonist, 13-year-old Meilin Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang), is a Chinese-Canadian eighth-grader in the throes of puberty.
For Pixar, a factory of childhood whimsy designed to make adults cry, Turning Red fills in more than a few blind spots. Not only is the movie deeply rooted in a female and Asian-North American perspective, it wades into a chapter of life unfrequented by Pixar. This is the first film by the studio in which, for example, a sanitary pad is offered. And it’s the first – history take note – to feature twerking.
The best thing about Turning Red is how it broadens the horizons of the 36-year-old animation powerhouse with a refreshing vantage point and some new moves. If some of Pixar’s greatest movies have used high concepts to illustrate existential quandaries, Turning Red is one of the studio’s most specifically drawn films.
Set in Toronto in 2002, Mei is a high-achieving, straight-A student – in an introductory montage, a teacher describes her as “a very enterprising, mildly annoying young lady” – with a solid, supportive group of friends: Miriam (Ava Morse), Abby (Hyein Park) and Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). But possibly the most dominant relationship in Mei’s life is with her mother (Sandra Oh). She’s a domineering but loving parent whose high standards for her daughter have somewhat stifled the anxious Mei. She keeps certain feelings – like the onset of hard-to-control urges, particularly when it comes to a popular boy band named 4-Town – hidden from her mother.
“I do make my own moves,” Mei said. “It’s just that some of my moves are also hers.”
This image released by Disney+ shows characters Abby, voiced by Hyein Park; Miriam, voiced by Ava Morse; Priya, voiced by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan; and Mei Lee, voiced by Rosalie Chiang in a scene from ‘Turning Red’. PHOTO: AP
But it’s getting harder to keep some of those feelings inside for Mei. Her mother finds a notebook under her bed with swooning drawings of 4-Town, and immediately irrationally blames an older teen boy for being a bad influence. Then one morning, Mei awakens to find the transformation that’s been occurring within her has manifested itself: She turns into a big, fluffy red panda – and a walking metaphor for menstruation and other developments of young womanhood.
That Turning Red pivots this way – with Mei, as panda, cowering in the bathroom with her mother knocking outside – is a fairly radical move in the typically sanitised world of studio animation. But Shi, a longtime animator at Pixar, has never been one to shy away from a dramatic plot device. Her Bao conceived a mother-son tale in a dumpling-comes-alive allegory that culminated, surprisingly, with the mom eating her dumpling son in a fit of denial over him growing up and leaving home.
Turning Red shifts its point of view to the child in such a relationship, but it’s likewise about the push-and-pull for the maturing offspring of an overprotective parent. The red panda transformation, which Mei learns she can suppress by moderating her emotions, connects to her heritage, as well.
The Lees live in one of the oldest Chinese temples in Toronto, and that setting is just one way Turning Red plays with balancing cultural assimilation with preservation. Mei soon discovers that panda alter-egos run in the family. Her mother, and their other female relatives, have known the same struggles with expression and repression. (Some similar themes about not holding in your feelings were brought more vividly to life another recent Disney hit, Encanto.)
Where I think Turning Red mainly misses is with the mom. The movie is structured for her to be the primary foil and friend of Mei, but her character isn’t much more than an assortment of Asian tiger mom tropes. That leaves little to propel Turning Red other than the inevitable empowerment of Mei. There are delights along the way: a rooftop skip through Toronto, with a dose of wuxia magic; the rich, lovable design of Mei’s Totoro-sized panda; the close-knit companionship of her friends.
But Turning Red is surprisingly free of humor or the kind of visual wit that has long been a Pixar hallmark. It could be that, if we’re talking about representing hard-to-tame adolescent urges in monster form, Turning Red – bold as it may be – can’t come close to matching the messy comic farce of Big Mouth, the far less family-friendly but much more true-to-life animated series that paired seventh graders with lascivious “hormone monsters”. It isn’t easy – or maybe even possible – to do puberty justice with a PG rating.
But Turning Red does nail one rite of female adolescence with remarkable accuracy: the boy band. With radio-ready pop tunes by Billie Eilish and Finneas (who voices one of the singers), 4-Town is about as pitch perfect as an NSYNC knockoff can be. But just as good is Mei’s mother’s cutting critique of them as “glittery delinquents with their … gyrations”. I seriously doubt I will ever listen to my daughters blast BTS without muttering her line to myself.
KUALA LUMPUR (CNA) – United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) President Ahmad Zahid Hamidi (Bernama; pic below) said the party has the power to determine its direction as he called for Parliament to be dissolved.
“When the mood from the grassroots in the by-elections and state elections is in our favour, what are we waiting for?” he said delivering his policy speech at the party’s 2021 annual general meeting on Friday.
The Bagan Datuk MP acknowledged that the decision to dissolve Parliament is one to be made by the Cabinet, before it is presented to the king.
“We will not disturb this matter, but UMNO as a responsible party, we have the power to determine our party’s direction,” he told the delegates.
The UMNO president said the “beat of war drums” for Malaysia’s 15th general election (GE15) has become stronger, and that this general assembly should listen to grassroots voices calling for a new mandate to be obtained through the GE15.
“Do not let there be a lot of thunder and flash, but not one drop of rain falls to the ground.”
“As such, I hope we can return (the mandate) to the people, leave it up to them. Give a new mandate to UMNO,” he said.
UMNO, a main component in the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, has ruled the country since its independence until its shock defeat in the 2018 general election.
The coalition then allied with its rival Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) to regain control of the government following the defection of 11 MPs from Pakatan Harapan in February 2020.
Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, who took office on August 30 last year, is the first prime minister from UMNO who is not a party president. He is one of the vice presidents.
There has been talk of an earlier GE15 to capitalise on BN’s victories in the by-elections and state elections in Sabah, Melaka and most recently Johor.
In the Johor polls, BN clinched 40 out of the 56 state seats.
Onn Hafiz Ghazi, a descendant of Malaysia’s third prime minister Hussein Onn, was appointed to the position of chief minister, instead of incumbent Hasni Mohammad as promised by Ahmad Zahid earlier.
This has prompted Johor delegates to announce that they would refrain from participating in the debate during the convention.
JOHANNESBURG (XINHUA) – With 27 per cent of South Africa’s children under five years of age stunted or affected by stunting, the National Department of Health warned it was not on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target to reduce stunting by 2025.
“In my view, we are not on target, if you look at the past 20 years, the stunting has not improved, so if we don’t do something drastically, then I don’t think we will meet the target,” Deputy Director at the Department of Health Ann Behr, focussing on child, youth and school health, told Xinhua in an interview via Zoom.
According to the SDGs, by 2025, the internationally agreed reduction targets on stunting and wasting in children under five years of age should be achieved.
A United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report released in 2019 said South African children under five years of age face the triple burden of malnutrition – undernutrition, hidden hunger, and being overweight.
According to the report, 27.4 per cent of South Africa’s children under five years of age are stunted, which means they are too short for their height.
Stunting can be attributed to several causes, and a collaborative approach was required to reduce it. Even though an update hasn’t been released, given the impact of the pandemic on poverty, Behr believes stunting has increased in recent years. “I think the stunting rate has increased due to the impact of COVID-19,” she said.
To address stunting and nutrition issues in the country, she said a multi-pronged approach was necessary. She cited high diarrhoea rates, HIV infections, and inadequate maternal care as factors contributing to stunting. “When children start eating complementary foods, only 23 per cent of children meet criteria for a minimum acceptable diet,” she said. “To address stunting, we have to address all these factors.”
UNICEF representative in South Africa Christine Muhigana emphasised the importance of addressing the root causes of stunting to tackle the problem.
“Malnutrition and stunting have many more causes than revenue of a given family or the food children get in school. The mothers’ nutritional status has a very important effect on the survival, growth, and development of a child,” she said.
“The causes of stunting include poor access to essential health services. When a child is ill, he or she needs to be quickly cared for at a healthcare centre.”
