LONDON: CIA Director William Burns, the chief US negotiator trying to help secure a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages by Hamas, said a more detailed proposal on the ceasefire would be made in the coming days.
“We will make this more detailed proposal, I hope in the next several days, and then we’ll see,” Burns said at an FT event in London on Saturday.
CIA director says more detailed Gaza ceasefire proposal due in days
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CIA director says more detailed Gaza ceasefire proposal due in days
- ‘We will make this more detailed proposal, I hope in the next several days, and then we’ll see’
WHO approves first mpox diagnostic test
- More than 800 people have died across Africa from mpox, where the disease has been officially detected in 16 countries, according to the African Union’s disease control center
More than 800 people have died across Africa from mpox, where the disease has been officially detected in 16 countries, according to the African Union’s disease control center.
“The approval for emergency use” of the test “will be pivotal in expanding diagnostic capacity in countries facing mpox outbreaks, where the need for quick and accurate testing has risen sharply,” the World Health Organization said in a statement.
The test, called the Alinity m MPXV assay and manufactured by Abbott Molecular Inc., enables the detection of the mpox virus from swabs taken from human lesions.
“By detecting DNA from pustular or vesicular rash samples, laboratory and health workers can confirm suspected mpox cases efficiently and effectively,” the WHO said.
“Limited testing capacity and delays in confirming mpox cases persist in Africa, contributing to the continued spread of the virus,” it said.
The approval of the test “represents a significant milestone in expanding testing availability in affected countries,” the statement quoted Yukiko Nakatani, an assistant director-general of WHO, as saying.
“Increasing access to quality-assured medical products is central to our efforts in assisting countries to contain the spread of the virus and protect their people, especially in underserved regions,” Nakatani said.
Mpox, previously known as monkeypox, is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals but can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.
It causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions, and can be deadly.
Philippines detains more than 250 in scam hub raid
- International concern has been growing over similar scam farms in Asia, often staffed by victims of trafficking who were tricked or coerced into promoting bogus crypto investments and other cons
MANILA: Philippine authorities have detained more than 250 people, most of them Chinese, in a raid on a suspected online scam farm in Manila, law enforcement officials said Friday.
Police and other authorities raided the office building late Thursday to find staff with hundreds of phones, computers, and pre-registered international and local SIM cards, the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission said.
“These are red flags of love scamming that victimizes foreign nationals,” the commission said in a statement, referring to schemes in which scammers pretend to have romantic feelings for their victims in order to earn their trust and eventually steal their money.
International concern has been growing over similar scam farms in Asia, often staffed by victims of trafficking who were tricked or coerced into promoting bogus crypto investments and other cons.
In July, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos outlawed all forms of offshore gaming operators, including Internet gaming license holders, after the gambling industry was found to be linked to financial scams, kidnapping, prostitution, human trafficking, torture and murder.
Thousands of foreign workers at the outlawed firms were given two months to leave the Philippines.
In the Manila raid on Thursday, 190 Chinese, two Taiwanese and 62 Filipinos were detained at the offices of a company called 3D Analyzer Information Technologies Inc.
The company used to have an Internet gaming license but subsequently told regulators it had “ceased operations,” Gilberto Cruz, the executive director of the anti-crime commission, told AFP.
“We’re looking for their passports or working visas, but they couldn’t show us anything,” Cruz added.
The commission will liaise with the Beijing and Taipei missions to help identify and arrange the deportation of the foreigners, the official said.
Meanwhile, Filipinos found to be involved in scamming activities will be charged in court, he added.
Cruz said the commission would also apply to the courts for warrants to search computers found inside the office.
Malaysia’s Anwar to visit Bangladesh to discuss trade, migrant workers with interim leader Yunus
- It is the first visit by a foreign leader to Bangladesh since Yunus took over on Aug. 8 after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India
DHAKA: Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim will visit Bangladesh on Friday to meet with interim leader Muhammad Yunus, who took over in August after the former prime minister fled during a mass uprising.
Anwar’s hourslong visit will focus on trade and investment, migrant workers and the Rohingya refugee crisis, officials and media reports said.
It is the first visit by a foreign leader to Bangladesh since Yunus took over on Aug. 8 after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India . It is also the first state visit by a Malaysian leader to Bangladesh in 11 years.
Anwar, who is arriving from Pakistan, is leading a 58-member delegation.
Next year, Malaysia will chair the Association for Southeast Asian Nations, and Bangladesh is eager to increase its trade with that region.
Bangladesh is also pursuing a policy of increasingly involving ASEAN in resolving the Rohingya refugee crisis. More than 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar live in camps in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh was Malaysia’s second-largest trading partner in South Asia in 2023, with total trade reaching $2.78 billion, according to official figures.
Malaysia is also one of the leading destinations for Bangladeshi migrant workers. Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi workers are employed as low-skilled workers in Malaysia’s construction, manufacturing, plantation and services sectors. But the recruiting process is often corrupt, and allegations of rights violations by Malaysian employers and Bangladeshi recruiting agencies are rampant.
More than 6,000 Bangladeshi students study at Malaysian higher education institutions, according to 2023 figures.
India asks top court not to toughen marital rape penalties
- Penal code introduced during British colonial rule of India explicitly states that ‘sexual acts by a man with his own wife... is not rape’
- India’s current penal code mandates a minimum 10-year sentence for those convicted of rape
MUMBAI: India’s government has asked the country’s top court not to toughen criminal penalties against marital rape during an ongoing case brought by campaigners seeking to outlaw it.
The penal code introduced in the 19th century during British colonial rule of India explicitly states that “sexual acts by a man with his own wife... is not rape.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government enacted an overhauled code in July which retains that clause, despite the decade-long court challenge by activists seeking to make marital rape illegal.
India’s interior ministry filed an affidavit to the Supreme Court on Thursday stating that while marital rape should result in “penal consequences,” the legal system should treat it more leniently than rape committed outside of marriage.
“A husband certainly does not have any fundamental right to violate the consent of his wife,” the affidavit said, according to The Indian Express newspaper.
“However, attracting the crime in the nature of ‘rape’ as recognized in India to the institution of marriage can be arguably considered to be excessively harsh.”
India’s current penal code mandates a minimum 10-year sentence for those convicted of rape.
The government’s statement said that marital rape was adequately addressed in existing laws, including a 2005 law protecting women from domestic violence.
That law recognizes sexual abuse as a form of domestic violence but does not prescribe any criminal penalties to perpetrators.
Another section of the penal code punishes broadly defined acts of “cruelty” by a husband against their wife with prison terms of up to three years.
Six percent of Indian married women aged 18-49 have reported spousal sexual violence, according to the government’s latest National Family Health Survey conducted from 2019 to 2021.
In the world’s most populous country, that implies more than 10 million women have been victims of sexual violence at the hands of their husbands.
Nearly 18 percent of married women also feel they cannot say no if their husbands want sex, according to the survey.
Divorce remains taboo across much of India with only one in every 100 marriages ending in dissolution, often owing to family and social pressure to sustain unhappy marriages.
Chronic backlogs in India’s criminal justice system mean some cases take decades to reach a resolution, and the case pushing for the criminalization of marital rape has made painfully slow progress.
It was referred to the Supreme Court after a two-judge bench in the Delhi High Court issued a split verdict in May 2022.
One judge in that case ruled that while “one may disapprove” of a husband forcibly having sex with his wife, that “cannot be equated with the act of ravishing by a stranger.”
Brazilians choose mayors, councilors in bellwether election
- The municipal outcome will serve as a bellwether of political sentiment in a deeply divided country
- The election campaign has taken place in the absence of Brazil’s most popular political platform
RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazilians go to the polls Sunday to elect mayors and councilors in more than 5,500 cities after a vitriolic, sometimes violent, campaign two years after presidential elections that polarized Latin America’s biggest country.
As the prelude to the next presidential vote in 2026, the municipal outcome will serve as a bellwether of political sentiment in a country deeply divided between followers of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his predecessor, far-right Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro backers stormed the presidential palace, Congress and Supreme Court after he lost the vote in 2022, calling for the military to oust Lula and claiming, without evidence, that the election was stolen.
Bolsonaro, now under investigation over those events, remains hugely influential.
In Sao Paulo, Latin America’s biggest city, he has backed incumbent mayor Ricardo Nunes to retain the mayorship.
Lula, for his part, has come out in support of MP Guilherme Boulos.
But adding a new dimension to a traditional political rift, outsider career coach and influencer Pablo Marcal has become a surprise hit with voters — with polls showing a near three-way tie between the men.
Rightwing Marcal, a provocative 37-year-old, has brought chaos to the campaign.
Regularly accused of spreading fake news, he has been thrown out of several debates — one of which saw an exasperated rival beat him with a chair.
With his aggressive style of politics, Marcal has attracted votes even from the Bolsonarista bloc, as well as Evangelical sectors and staunch opponents of “communism” — a tag Bolsonaro has regularly tried to put on Lula.
Alarmed by the rise of Marcal, Brazilian artists, intellectuals, businessmen and legal scholars have urged residents of Sao Paulo not to split their vote and unite behind Boulos to avoid a “tragic” outcome for the city.
In Rio de Janeiro, centrist mayor Eduardo Paes is by far the favorite for a fourth term.
His closest rival, rightwing MP Alexandre Ramagem, has proven a controversial choice — he is under investigation for allegedly spying on politicians and other public figures when he served as head of intelligence under then-president Bolsonaro.
There have been concerns raised over alleged organized crime infiltration of municipal politics, with the head of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal warning of attempts to influence the election outcome in some municipalities.
In September, there were at least a dozen attacks on and threats against candidates for mayor and other municipal posts, and three deaths, according to press reports.
The election campaign has taken place in the absence of Brazil’s most popular political platform.
Social network X has been suspended in the country since August 31 in a disinformation tug-of-war between the Supreme Court and owner Elon Musk.
It also occurred as the country battled record fires and a critical drought fueled by climate change, according to experts.
Yet the environmental emergency confronting Brazil, from the Amazon rainforest to the Pantanal wetlands and beyond, hardly feature in the campaign.
Overall, polling does not bode well for Lula’s Workers’ Party which may, once again, find itself without a single state capital.
“Not even the political strength of the (president) or the good numbers of the economy seem able to reverse” the party’s years-long decline, said political analyst Andre Cesar.
Polls show that 11 of the 26 state capitals, including Rio de Janeiro, could elect their mayor in the first voting round.
If no candidate obtains more than 50 percent of votes cast, the contest will be settled in a second election round on October 27.