World

BOGOR, Indonesia — Malaysia’s new prime minister met with Indonesia’s president on Monday on his first foreign trip after winning a confidence vote and cementing his mandate last month following an inconclusive election.

Anwar Ibrahim, a long-time opposition leader, was sworn in as the country’s 10th prime minister on November 24 to head a unity government in a shaky alliance with the graft-tainted party of his former political rivals.

He met Indonesian President Joko Widodo for talks at a presidential palace in Bogor, south of capital Jakarta where he thanked his counterpart for his support after the election.

“This is a bit personal, Mr President. When I was in a difficult situation, living in uncertainty and suffering, Indonesia welcomed me as a true friend,” he said after the meeting.

Widodo said the world’s two biggest exporters of palm oil would boost cooperation on the commodity and work together to battle “discrimination” against the sector, which environmentalists say is stoking deforestation in both countries.

The European Union last month agreed on a new law preventing companies from selling products linked to deforestation.

“We have agreed to strengthen the cooperation through the Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries to increase the palm oil market,” he said.

The Indonesian leader also lauded the interest of Malaysian companies in investing in the country’s new capital Nusantara, which is scheduled to open on the island of Borneo next year.

Ahead of the talks the Indonesian leader greeted Anwar before driving him around the palace’s gardens in an electric buggy.

The pair then discussed issues including trade, border disputes and the situation in coup-hit Myanmar.

It is customary that the first foreign visit of a new Malaysian premier takes place in neighbouring Indonesia, which counts Kuala Lumpur as its fifth biggest export market.

Indonesia, the world’s third-largest democracy, this year takes the chairmanship of the ASEAN group of Southeast Asian nations — in which junta-led Myanmar remains a member — and will host a leaders’ summit in November.

They also spoke about migrant worker rights after Indonesia last year imposed a temporary ban on recruitment to Malaysia where the majority of Indonesian migrant workers reside.

Eight Malaysian companies had also signed memorandums of understanding with Indonesian firms worth up to 1.66 billion Malaysian ringgit ($379 million), the Malaysian foreign ministry said in a statement.

GENEVA — The international community must help Pakistan recover from last year's devastating floods and boost climate resilience, or the country will be locked in misery, the head of the UN development agency told AFP.

Pakistan is still reeling from the unprecedented monsoon floods unleashed last August which killed more than 1,700 people and affected some 33 million others.

To meet the acute needs, the country and the United Nations will on Monday co-host an international conference in Geneva seeking billions of dollars in donor pledges and other support towards a long-term recovery and resilience plan.

"The sheer destruction of these floods, the human suffering, the economic cost... turns these floods truly into a cataclysmic event," said United Nations Development Programme administrator Achim Steiner, whose agency is helping organise the conference.

In an interview ahead of the event, he said the situation remained dire months after the monsoon rains ended.

"The waters may have receded, but the impacts are still there," Steiner said.

"There is a massive reconstruction and rehabilitation effort that needs to be undertaken."

Millions of people remain displaced, and those who have be able to go back home are often returning to damaged or destroyed homes and mud-covered fields that cannot be planted.

Food prices have soared, and the number of people facing food insecurity had doubled to 14.6 million, according to UN figures.

The World Bank has estimated that up to nine million more people could be dragged into poverty as a result of the flooding.

Monday's one-day conference, which will open with speeches by Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, aims to secure commitments of support towards the country's $16 billion recovery and reconstruction plan.

Pakistan's government aims  to cover half that amount with "domestic resources", including through public-private partnerships, but is looking to the international community to cover the rest.

Steiner insisted the international community had a moral duty to help Pakistan recover from a catastrophe clearly amplified by climate change.

The country is responsible for less than 1 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions but is one of the most vulnerable nations to extreme weather caused by global warming.

Pakistan "is essentially a victim of a world that is not acting fast enough on the challenge of climate change", Steiner said.

The enormous shocks Pakistan is facing, he said, "require the international community to step up in partnership".

Otherwise, the country will face "an extraordinary amount of misery and suffering" in the long term, he warned.

Pakistan "will essentially remain locked into a situation where it cannot recover, and for years, maybe for decades will lag behind... its potential".

As the world reels from multiple overlapping crises, from the COVID pandemic to the war in Ukraine and resulting food and energy price hikes, the $8 billion Pakistan is seeking might sound like a big ask.

But Steiner said the figure likely "underestimates not only the cost of what is needed, but also the potential of international support".

He pointed out that the short-lived but dramatic and deadly floods around Ahr in Germany in 2021 ultimately cost around 33 billion euros ($35 billion).

By comparison, Pakistan saw large swaths of its territory flooded for months, with the water yet to recede in some areas in the south, leaving an unfathomable trail of destruction.

“No country in the world could really recover from this without the solidarity and support of others," Steiner said.

Helping a climate-vulnerable country like Pakistan to rebuild in a more resilient fashion is the only way to limit the damage as global warming worsens, he said.

"I think the world has begun to realise that climate change has arrived," he said.

"We will have to not only rethink the way our economies are run, but also how we deal with the catastrophic and almost unprecedented scale of these impacts in the years to come."

BEIJING — China lifted quarantine requirements for inbound travellers on Sunday, ending almost three years of self-imposed isolation even as the country battles a surge in COVID cases.

The first people to arrive expressed relief at not having to undergo the gruelling quarantines that were a fixture of life in zero-COVID China.

And in Hong Kong, where the border with mainland China was re-opened after years of closure, more than 400,000 people were set to travel north in the coming eight weeks.

Beijing last month began a dramatic dismantling of a hardline zero-COVID strategy that had enforced mandatory quarantines and punishing lockdowns.

The policy had a huge impact on the world's second-biggest economy and generated resentment throughout society that led to nationwide protests just before it was eased.

At Shanghai's Pudong International Airport, a woman surnamed Pang told AFP Sunday she was thrilled with the ease of travel.

"I think it's really good that the policy has changed now, it's really humane," she told AFP.

"It's a necessary step I think. COVID has become normalised now and after this hurdle everything will be smooth," she said.

Chinese people rushed to plan trips abroad after officials last month announced that quarantine would be dropped, sending inquiries on popular travel websites soaring.

But the expected surge in visitors has led more than a dozen countries to impose mandatory COVID tests on travellers from the world's most populous nation as it battles its worst-ever outbreak.

China has called travel curbs imposed by other countries "unacceptable", despite it continuing to largely block foreign tourists and international students from travelling to the country.

China's COVID outbreak is forecast to worsen as it enters the Lunar New Year holiday this month, during which millions are expected to travel from hard-hit megacities to the countryside to visit vulnerable older relatives.

And Beijing has moved to curb criticism of its chaotic path out of zero-COVID, with its Twitter-like Weibo service saying it had recently banned 1,120 accounts for “offences against experts and scholars”.

‘We just walked out’ 

At Beijing airport Sunday, barriers that once kept international and domestic arrivals apart were gone, as were the “big whites” — staff in hazmat suits long a fixture of life in zero-COVID China.

One woman, there to greet a friend arriving from Hong Kong, said the first thing they’d do was grab a meal.

“It’s so great, we haven’t seen each other in so long,” Wu, 20, told AFP.

“They are studying over there, and we can meet each other directly in Beijing... It’s been a year,” she added.

At Shanghai airport, one man surnamed Yang who was arriving from the United States said he had not been aware that the rules had changed.

“I had no idea,” he told AFP.

“I’d consider myself extremely lucky if I only need to do quarantine for two days, turned out I don’t have to do quarantine at all, and no paperwork, we just walked out like that, exactly like in the past,” he added.

“I’m quite happy not needing to be in quarantine,” another woman being picked up by her boyfriend who declined to give her name told AFP.

“Who wants to be in quarantine? Nobody.”

Hong Kong opens 

In China’s southern semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong, visitors streamed across the border as travel restrictions with the Chinese mainland were eased.

Hong Kong’s recession-hit economy is desperate to reconnect with its biggest source of growth, and families are looking forward to reunions over the Lunar New Year.

Official data showed some 410,000 people in Hong Kong planned to travel north in the next two month, while some 7,000 people in the mainland planned to travel south on Sunday.

At the Lok Ma Chau checkpoint near Shenzhen, a postgraduate student from mainland China surnamed Zeng told AFP they were happy to cross with no more restrictions.

“I am happy as long as I don’t have to be quarantined — it was so unbearable,” Zeng told AFP.

TANGSHAN, China — Understaffed and underfunded clinics stand half-empty in parts of the Chinese countryside even as hospitals in major cities heave under an unprecedented COVID wave, an illustration of the stark disparities in the country's healthcare system.

Visits by AFP journalists in the past two weeks have revealed sharp differences in demand for urban and rural hospitals in parts of northern China as many in the countryside head to big cities for a quality of care they simply can't get closer to home.

In one of the world's most unequal economies, China's centralised healthcare system drives money and resources towards urban hospitals at the expense of rural ones, a disparity that has become all the more intense as cases surge.

In the capital Beijing and the northern megacity of Tianjin, emergency wards have been so overwhelmed that dozens of mostly elderly patients have been accommodated on gurneys in public areas.

Crammed shoulder to shoulder and gasping for breath, many were hooked up to intravenous drips or oxygen tanks while machines monitored their vital signs. A few appeared unconscious or unresponsive.

Yet, in the neglected rural town of Xin'an, the sparsely equipped local hospital was operating at well below full capacity.

In a poorly heated room near reception, around half a dozen elderly people huddled in thick overcoats, drips protruding from their arms.

But most of the seats were unoccupied, and the pressure on staff appeared far lower than their municipal counterparts.

'Lack of progress' 

"What we are seeing in rural China epitomises the lack of progress in China's healthcare reform," said Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council of Foreign Relations, a non-partisan US think tank.

“People dissatisfied with the poor quality of rural healthcare will bypass [local providers] to seek care in urban hospitals.”

As the initial wave starts to ebb, the pressure on some facilities may be receding, even as the seriously sick continue to flock to municipal institutions.

Many rural residents, meanwhile, struggle for nearby access to doctors and medicines, and public health literacy is often patchy.

A local shopkeeper in Xin’an said a COVID outbreak had swept through the settlement of around 30,000 people in December, but “the worst of it has passed”.

And hospital staff and local residents there said those requiring treatment for severe illness usually made the 90-minute journey up the highway to Tianjin or pushed on to Baoding, a city some 200 kilometres away where a recent outbreak overwhelmed hospitals.

Medical services in mid-size municipalities also appear to be less stretched than in China’s megacities.

In Tangshan, a smaller industrial city of 7.7 million people, the scene was calmer than that in Tianjin about two hours away.

Around two dozen patients of advanced age filled the resuscitation ward of a central hospital, with one nurse saying they had “all tested positive” for COVID.

Only three or four patients occupied makeshift beds in the corridors outside.

Chinese authorities have said in recent days that the first wave of infections has hit a peak in cities including Beijing and Tianjin.

But the end is far from near, with officials warning of a multipronged outbreak in the coming weeks as city workers return to their rural hometowns during the winter travel season.

“To some extent, rural patients may have put extra strains on urban healthcare institutes,” said Xi Chen, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health.

“However, unlike in urban areas, this wave of the Omicron outbreak has not reached its peak in rural China,” he added

“Things may get significantly worse as migrants start to return to rural communities.”

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis led the funeral of his predecessor Benedict XVI on Thursday in front of tens of thousands of mourners in St Peter's Square, an event unprecedented in modern times.

Scarlet-clad cardinals, dignitaries and thousands of priests and nuns from around the world gathered to say goodbye to the German theologian, who stunned the Catholic Church in 2013 by becoming the first Pontiff in six centuries to resign.

For the first time in modern history, the papal funeral was led by a sitting Pope, Francis, who delivered the homily to an estimated crowd of 50,000 people.

"Benedict... may your joy be complete as you hear his [God's] voice, now and forever!" the Pontiff said, five days after his predecessor died aged 95.

At the end of the service, Francis blessed Benedict's simple cypress wood coffin, before pallbearers carried it into St Peter's Basilica.

In the papal tombs below, the coffin — also containing coins and medals minted during Benedict's papacy — was tied with a red ribbon and placed in a zinc coffin, before being put inside an oak casket.

Benedict was then interred in the tomb where John Paul II's body lay before it was moved for his beatification in 2011.

The Polish Pontiff was made a saint in 2014 — something that some Catholics are hoping will happen to Benedict, with a group holding up a banner on Thursday saying "Santo Subito", or "Saint Now".

Paying homage 

Born Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict was a brilliant theologian but a divisive figure who alienated many Catholics with his staunch defence of conservative doctrine on issues such as abortion.

Several world leaders and European royals attended the funeral, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen, 90, was also there after being granted permission by a court to travel following his arrest last year under the city's national security law.

Many members of the public queued up from dawn in thick fog to bid farewell.

"Benedict is a bit like my father, so I had to pay homage to him," said Cristina Grisanti, a 59-year-old from Milan, who hailed the former Pope's "purity, his candour, his mildness".

An estimated 195,000 people had already paid their respects during three days of lying-in-state at the basilica.

Many Germans were in the crowd on Thursday as church bells rang out across Benedict's native Germany at the funeral's culmination.

"We owe him so much. We want to show that we stand behind him," said Benedikt Rothweiler, 34, who came from Aachen with his family.

"He always accepted everything the way God wants it. This is a good example for us humans."

Two Popes 

Benedict's eight years as head of the worldwide Catholic Church was marked by crises, from in-fighting within the Vatican to the global scandal of clerical sex abuse and its cover-up.

When he quit, Benedict said he no longer had the "strength of mind and body" necessary for the task, retiring to a quiet life in a monastery in the Vatican gardens.

His death brought an end to an unprecedented situation of having two "men in white" — Benedict and Francis — living in the tiny city state.

The pair were said to get on well, but Benedict's later interventions on some sensitive subjects meant he stayed a standard-bearer for conservative Catholics who did not like his successor's more liberal stance.

The last time a Pope presided over the funeral of his predecessor was in 1802, when Pius VII led the ceremony for Pius VI.

Pius VI died in 1799 in exile, a prisoner of France, and was buried in Valence. His successor had his remains exhumed and brought back for a papal funeral at St Peter's.

European royals 

Beyond St Peter's, many of the world's 1.3 billion Catholics followed the funeral proceedings.

In the majority Catholic Philippines, churches held requiem masses for the former Pontiff, including at Malolos Cathedral near the capital Manila.

"This is an unexplainable feeling to witness this," said Cherry Castro, 67.

Portugal declared a national day of mourning on Thursday, while in Italy, flags were flown at half-mast on public buildings.

The only official delegations to the funeral were from Germany and Italy but other dignitaries attended in a personal capacity.

They included the Belgian and Spanish royals, the presidents of Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Hungary, Slovenia and Togo, and the premiers of the Czech Republic, Gabon and Slovakia.

MOSCOW — The toll from an Ukrainian New Year strike in Makiivka has risen to 89, Moscow said Wednesday, after Russians gathered to mourn the troops in a rare public display of anger and grief.

Russia said in the early hours of Wednesday that more bodies had been found under the rubble in the town of Makiivka in the Russian-controlled region of Donetsk and the toll had risen to 89.

The defence ministry declared that the tragedy had taken place because Russian troops had used cell phones, giving away their location to Ukrainian forces.

Russia said on Monday that 63 troops had been killed, the biggest loss of life from a single strike reported by Moscow since the start of the offensive in February.

"The number of our dead comrades has gone up to 89," Lieutenant General Sergei Sevryukov said in a video statement released by the defence ministry early Wednesday. More bodies had been found under the rubble, he added.

Ukraine struck a temporary base in Makiivka at 12:01 am local time on January 1, using US-supplied HIMARS rocket systems, Sevryukov said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had just delivered his traditional New Year’s address. The Kremlin chief hailed “our heroes” fighting in Ukraine and declared that “historical rightness is on our side.”

Ukraine has taken responsibility for the strike and said the toll could be much higher. Russian war correspondents said many of the victims were reservists recently mobilised into the army.

The admission of the heavy losses came after the war correspondents, who have gained influence in recent months, accused Russia’s top commanders of fatal incompetence.

Sevryukov said Wednesday that it was the use of cellphones by soldiers that had led to the deadly strike.

“Currently, a commission is working to investigate the circumstances of what has happened,” he said.

“But it is already obvious that the main reason for what has happened was the turning on and massive use by personnel of mobile phones within reach of enemy weapons contrary to the ban.”

He said measures were being taken to ensure such incidents would not happen in the future, and all those responsible will be punished.

The new announcement came after mourners gathered in several cities of the Volga region of Samara, where some of the servicemen came from, to mourn the dead.

‘Grief unites’ 

Some 200 people laid roses and wreaths in a central square in the city of Samara as an Orthodox priest recited a prayer.

Soldiers also fired a gun salute at the commemoration, where some of the mourners could be seen holding flags for the ruling United Russia party.

“It’s very tough, it’s scary. But we cannot be broken. Grief unites,” Ekaterina Kolotovkina, head of a group of army spouses, said at the ceremony.

Similar gatherings were reported in other cities including Tolyatti, home to Russia’s largest carmaker AvtoVAZ

Sevryukov also said that Russia had destroyed Ukraine’s multiple launch rocket system used in the attack on Makiivka.

Russian strikes had also destroyed four more HIMARS launchers and killed 200 Ukrainian and foreign mercenaries in the town of Druzhkivka in the eastern region of Donetsk, he said.

Earlier in the day Ukrainian authorities said that Russian strikes on Druzhkivka killed one person and destroyed an ice rink.

The deaths sparked heavy criticism in Russia of the army’s senior command, including from nationalist commentators favourable to the military intervention in Ukraine.

There have been reports that the servicemen were quartered in an unprotected building which was destroyed because munitions were stored on the premises and detonated in the strike.

Russian war correspondents have accused Russia’s top commanders of not learning from past mistakes and seeking to shift the blame on the troops.

The Telegram account Rybar, which has around a million followers, said it was “criminally naive” for the army to store ammunition next to sleeping quarters.

But much of the criticism was focused on the incompetence of Russia’s top brass and not President Vladimir Putin who sent troops to Ukraine on February 24 last year.

Putin has not yet reacted publicly to the Makiivka strike, which comes during a holiday season before Orthodox Christmas that many Russians spend with their families.

Call for revenge 

At the gathering in Samara, Kolotovkina said she had asked her husband to “avenge” the victims.

“We will crush the enemy together. We are left with no choice,” she told mourners.

A little-known group, dubbed Soldiers’ Widows of Russia, urged Putin to announce general mobilisation.

Ukraine said it had faced waves of Russian drone and missile attacks since New Year’s Eve, mainly targeting energy and other critical infrastructure.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had spoken by phone with the leaders of Britain, Norway and the Netherlands and pointed to “the risks of escalation on the front”.

The hardest fighting is raging around the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, a location with little strategic importance that Russian forces led by the mercenary group Wagner have been trying to capture for months.

SYDNEY — A British couple were among four killed in a mid-air collision that left two mangled helicopters on a sandbank near an Australian tourist hotspot, investigators said on Tuesday.

One helicopter was taking off for a "tourist joy flight" along Queensland's scenic Gold Coast when its rotor blades smashed into the cockpit of another helicopter coming in to land, air safety commissioner Angus Mitchell said.

"In the process of that collision the main rotor blades and gearbox of the helicopter taking off have separated from the aircraft, causing it to tragically crash down on to a sandbar," he told reporters.

Both helicopters were operating out of Sea World, Mitchell said, a popular theme park and aquarium.

There were seven people on board the helicopter that was taking off — the pilot and six other passengers.

Three adult passengers were killed, police said on Tuesday, alongside pilot Ashley Jenkinson.

The other three passengers were in critical condition.

Queensland Police Inspector Mike Campbell said two British nationals, believed to be a husband and wife, were among the dead.

Jenkinson was a skilled pilot who had flown rescue missions during Australia's recent flooding disaster, friend Andrew Taylor told national broadcaster ABC.

All six people on the second helicopter survived — which "remarkably" landed upright nearby despite having its cockpit obliterated, investigators said.

"Whilst it has been very tragic that four people have lost their lives and many people are in mourning, we could've had a far worse situation here," said Mitchell, from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

"What we do need to know now is what was occurring inside those two cockpits at the time."

Police said local boat owners rushed to the "confronting" scene to help crash survivors.

"They did their very best with CPR until the emergency services got there," Campbell said.

VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France — Thousands of Kurds from across Europe travelled to the Paris suburbs Tuesday for the politically charged funeral of three of their own killed in a December attack in the French capital.

Buses were chartered to bring people from across France and some neighbouring countries to the ceremony in Villiers-le-Bel, north of Paris, local sources said.

Tears and cries of "Martyrs live forever!" greeted the coffins, wrapped in the flags of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Kurdish-controlled Rojava territory in northern Syria.

The huge crowd followed the funeral on giant screens erected in the car park, showing the coffins surrounded by wreaths beneath a portrait of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Police and security volunteers were on duty outside the hall hired for Tuesday's proceedings.

A xenophobic gunman, William Malet, killed two men and one woman in a December 23 attack on the Ahmet Kaya community centre in Paris's 10th district.

His victims were Abdurrahman Kizil, singer and political refugee Mir Perwer and Emine Kara, a leader of the Movement of Kurdish Women in France.

Arrested after the shootings and formally charged on December 26, 69-year-old Malet told investigators he had a "pathological" hatred for foreigners and wanted to "murder migrants", prosecutors said.

Distrust of Turkey 

Malet, a retired train driver, had a violent criminal history and had just left detention over a previous incident.

But many Kurds in France's 150,000-strong community refuse to believe he acted alone, calling his actions a "terrorist" attack and pointing the finger at Turkey.

Tuesday's funeral recalled another held at the same spot almost exactly 10 years ago after three Kurdish activists linked to the PKK were shot dead, also in Paris' 10th district.

The Turkish suspect in the killings, believed to have had ties to Ankara’s secret services, died of cancer in pre-trial detention.

More recently, an April attack in which men were beaten with iron bars at a Kurdish cultural centre in eastern French city Lyon was blamed on members of the Turkish ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves group, which has since been banned.

The PKK, which has waged an almost four decade armed struggle for greater rights for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, is categorised as a terror group by Ankara, Europe and the United States.

Its leader Ocalan is serving a life sentence on a prison island off Istanbul after being captured by Turkish agents in Kenya in 1999.

‘Battle must continue’ 

Often described as the world’s largest people without a state, Kurds originate in regions spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, with Ankara especially hostile to their striving for a country of their own.

“We feel like they’re doing everything they can to crush us, whether it’s here or in Turkey,” said Celik, a local who attended the funeral and asked that her family name not be published for security raisons.

“We’re here because it’s our duty, it’s a battle our parents fought for many years and that we must continue,” she told AFP.

Clashes between police and Kurdish demonstrators in the immediate aftermath of the December killings ratcheted up tensions between nominal NATO allies Turkey and France.

Ankara’s foreign ministry summoned the French ambassador to complain of “black propaganda launched by [the] PKK”.

The Democratic Council of Kurds in France (CDKF) called Tuesday’s ceremony an “opportunity for those who wish to pay their final respects... before the bodies are repatriated to their native soil” for burial.

CDKF activists plan a march Wednesday in tribute to the December victims, on the street where the shootings took place.

On Saturday, a “grand march” of the Kurdish community — originally planned to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2013 shootings — will set off from Paris’ Gare du Nord rail hub.