BEIJING, Nov 28,2022:China posted another record high COVID-19 infections on Monday, after an extraordinary weekend of protests across the country over restrictive coronavirus curbs, in scenes unprecedented since President Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago.
In Shanghai, demonstrators and police clashed on Sunday, with police taking away a busload of protesters, with the BBC saying that police assaulted and detained one of its journalists covering the events before releasing him after several hours.
During the weekend, protesters in cities including Wuhan and Lanzhou overturned COVID testing facilities, while students gathered on campuses across China in actions that were sparked by anger over an apartment fire late last week in the far western city of Urumqi that killed 10 people.
The deadly fire fuelled speculation that COVID curbs in the city, parts of which had been under lockdown for 100 days, had hindered rescue and escape, which city officials denied. Crowds in Urumqi took to the street on Friday evening, chanting “End the lockdown!”, according to unverified videos on social media.
In Beijing, large crowds were gathered past midnight on Sunday along the capital’s 3rd Ring Road during peaceful but often impassioned scenes.
ANKARA,Nov24,2022:Turkey will attack militants with tanks and soldiers soon, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday, signalling a possible ground offensive against a Kurdish militia in Syria after retaliatory strikes escalated along the Syrian border.
His comments came as Turkish artillery kept up bombardment of Kurdish bases and other targets near the Syrian towns of Tal Rifaat and Kobani, two Syrian military sources told Reuters.
He said previously operations will not be limited to an air campaign and may involve ground forces. Turkey has mounted several major military operations against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and Islamic State militants in northern Syria in recent years.
On Monday, Turkey said the YPG killed two people in mortar attacks from northern Syria, following Turkish air operations against the militia at the weekend and a deadly bomb attack in Istanbul a week earlier.
The YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said 15 civilians and fighters were killed in Turkish strikes in recent days.
KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 23,2022: Malaysia’s king on Wednesday called a special meeting of his fellow hereditary sultans to discuss who should be prime minister as an unprecedented post-election crisis entered its fourth day.
The king is due to pick a new prime minister after the leading contenders – opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and former premier Muhyiddin Yassin – failed to secure enough support for a majority following a Saturday election that produced an unprecedented hung parliament.
The uncertainty over the election prolongs political instability in the Southeast Asian country, which has had three prime ministers in as many years, and risks delaying policy decisions needed to foster economic recovery.
The Council of Rulers, which groups the heads of all nine royal houses, will meet on Thursday to discuss the formation of a new government, the palace said in a statement.
Mangaluru,Nov 21,2022: The Karnataka police have exposed global terror plot in the Mangaluru autorikshaw blast case.
Karnataka ADG (Law and Order) Alok Kumar said Shariq, the injured passenger who was traveling in the ill-fated autorikshaw, was being handled by a handful of people belonging o terrorist groups including Mussavir Hussain and Arafat Ali.
Shariq was planning more blasts in coastal cities of Karnataka, Kumar said.
The accused was given to ISIS ideology and made bomb at his home. On September 19, he, along with two others, carried out a trial blast at Tunga River bank in Shivamogga.
The police have also filed a case against Shariq for impersonation.
Kumar said Shariq was in possession of Aadhar cards belonging to three persons.
During the raid, the police found explosive material from Shariq’s room in Mysuru.
He also said that Shariq had conducted a recce of the city to conduct blasts and had arrived in Mangaluru a week ago.
All the digital evidence is also being extracted by the FSL team, Kumar said.
WELLINGTON, Nov 21,2022: New Zealand’s highest court ruled on Monday that the country’s current voting age of 18 was discriminatory, forcing parliament to discuss whether it should be lowered.
Prime minister Jacinda Ardern has said the New Zealand government will draft legislation to change the voting age to 16, after a landmark supreme court ruling that the existing age of 18 was discriminatory and breached the human rights of young people.
Ardern said she personally supported changing the age to 16, but would take the question to parliament. “It is our view that this is an issue best placed to parliament for everyone to have their say,” she said on Monday.
Her statement followed a supreme court ruling on Monday that marked the conclusion of a two-year case brought by a group of young campaigners, Make It 16, who argued that younger people should be able to vote on issues such as the climate crisis, which will disproportionately affect them and their futures.
The ruling does not automatically guarantee the right to vote will be extended – that can be done only by parliament – but it does mean that parliament is now breaching the fundamental human rights of younger voters, and forces legislators to consider a change.
However, the legislation will have a tough road ahead: changes to electoral law in New Zealand require 75% support in parliament, so a change would require the support of both Labour and the opposition National party to become law. The centre-right National party said on Monday: “Many other countries have a voting age of 18, and National has seen no compelling case to lower the age.”
The governing Labour party has not yet announced a position on lowering the voting age. The Green party and Māori party have indicated they would support it, and the Act party will oppose.
It is also yet to be decided whether the legislation will be a party vote or conscience vote.
The Make It 16 campaign launched shortly after school strikes for climate began mobilising tens of thousands of teenagers across the country, and the climate crisis has loomed large in the background. “Three years ago, we saw school strikes for climate … and there was a sort of global shift towards: how do we give young people more of a say and more of a way to make change on a large scale? Voting was one of those ideas,” said Sanat Singh, Make it 16’s co-founder.
While climate action had been a motivating force, Singh said the same logic – that young people should have a say in issues affecting them – applied to all politics, from public transport funding to mental health. “I was 16 in 2020, which was probably one of the most consequential elections in our lifetime – and issues that mattered to me about mental health, climate change and the state of our democracy were things that I was not able to have a say in,” Singh said.
Only a handful of countries allow those under 18 to vote: Brazil, Cuba, Austria and Malta have voting ages of 16 and up. In Scotland, 16-year-olds can vote in Scottish parliamentary elections, but not the UK general elections. In recent years, however, international campaigns to lower voting ages have grown, with many arguing that young people should have a say on long-term democratic decisions, given they will have to live with the consequences. Prominent UK academic Prof David Runciman has argued that the voting age should be lowered to six, saying ageing populations meant young people were now “massively outnumbered”, creating a democratic crisis and an inbuilt bias against governments that plan for the future.
New Zealand’s Human Rights Act sets the age of 16 as the point from which actions may be discriminatory, so the court noted its decision would apply only to those 16 and up – it could not be construed to mean people of all ages, including infants, should have the right to vote.