INDONESIA
PDIP backs Subianto
The nation’s largest political party on Wednesday said it would support president-elect Prabowo Subianto, but it was unclear whether it would formally join his coalition. If Prabowo, who is take over the presidency on Sunday, can reach a deal with the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), there would be no opposition parties in parliament, an unprecedented situation since the nation began holding direct presidential elections in 2004. “We’re solid in supporting the incoming government as a way to build Indonesia’s future,” Puan Maharani, house speaker and a senior PDIP official, said on Wednesday, according to state media. It was unclear whether she meant the PDIP was joining the coalition.
Photo: AFP
BANGLADESH
Warrant issued for Hasina
A court yesterday ordered an arrest warrant for exiled former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India in August after she was toppled from power by a student-led revolution. “The court has ... ordered the arrest of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina and to produce her in court on November 18,” International Crimes Tribunal chief prosecutor Mohammad Tajul Islam told reporters.
NETHERLANDS
Ugandan plan mooted
The government is weighing a plan to send rejected African asylum seekers to Uganda, Minister of Trade and Development Reinette Klever said on Wednesday. Klever unveiled the idea during a visit to the east African country, but it was not immediately clear whether such a plan would be legal or feasible, or whether Uganda would be amenable to it. “We are open to any discussions,” Ugandan Minister of Foreign Affairs Jeje Odongo said in an interview with broadcaster NOS.
UNITED STATES
Constitution to be sold
A rare copy of the constitution printed 237 years ago was to be auctioned in North Carolina yesterday. Brunk Auctions was selling the copy — the only of its type thought to be in private hands. The copy was printed after the Constitutional Convention finished drafting the proposed framework of the nation’s government in 1787 and sent it to the Congress of the ineffective first government under the Articles of Confederation, requesting they send it to the states to be ratified. It is one of about 100 copies printed by the secretary of that congress. Just eight are known to still exist.
ARGENTINA
Singer Liam Payne dies
British singer Liam Payne, a former member of boy band One Direction, died on Wednesday after plunging from the third floor of a Buenos Aires hotel, police and emergency responders said. He was 31. It was not immediately clear if the fall was accidental. Payne had spoken publicly about struggles with alcohol and police said they responded to a report of “an aggressive man who may be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.” Payne appeared to have a fracture at the base of his skull from the fall of about 13m. British-Irish pop sensations One Direction emerged in 2010 when then-teenagers Payne, Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik appeared on British television contest The X Factor. The band went on to release an album each year in time for the holiday shopping season and became one of the highest-grossing live acts in the world. In 2017, Payne had a son with his then-partner Cheryl Cole, a British singer and television personality.
Millions of dollars have poured into bets on who will win the US presidential election after a last-minute court ruling opened up gambling on the vote, upping the stakes on a too-close-to-call race between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump that has already put voters on edge. Contracts for a Harris victory were trading between 48 and 50 percent in favor of the Democrat on Friday on Interactive Brokers, a firm that has taken advantage of a legal opening created earlier this month in the country’s long running regulatory battle over election markets. With just a month
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
North Korea blew up sections of roads in its own territory that are part of links once used to connect the southern part of the peninsula with the north, in a show of defiance after it accused Seoul of flying drones over Pyongyang. North Korea detonated bombs north of its eastern and western borders at around noon yesterday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said. South Korea’s military later fired off warning shots within its border, said the JCS, which also confirmed there were no reports of damage in South Korea from the detonations. A video released by the South Korean
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who