News in Brief

Date: 15 December 2021 - 21:41

News ID: ۹۷۷۹۱

JAKARTA (Reuters) - At least 11 Indonesian migrants died and 27 are believed to be missing after a boat sank Wednesday in stormy weather off southern Malaysia, authorities said. There were 21 people reported safe among the estimated 60 aboard the boat, which capsized off southern Johor state around 4.30am (3.30am in Thailand). Indonesians looking for work sometimes try to enter neighboring Malaysia illegally by making sea crossings in rickety boats, and accidents happen regularly. The vessel, believed to be carrying 60 migrants, went down in the morning off Malaysia’s southern state of Johor, the coastguard said. Soldiers on patrol discovered the bodies of seven men and four women on the shore, coastguard chief Admiral Mohamad Zubil Mat Som told AFP.

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LONDON (Dispatches) - More than 100 people trapped on the roof of Hong Kong’s World Trade Centre awaited rescue after a fire broke out on Wednesday. Hong Kong police confirmed that at least eight people were injured and had been sent to hospital. Police said the fire broke out in the machine room and moved to the scaffolding around the building, which is currently under renovation. No fatalities have been reported and rescue operations are still under way. The eight who are injured are aged between 31 and 72. A total of 150 people have been evacuated so far, according to authorities.

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CAPE TOWN (Al-Jazeera) - South Africa’s High Court ordered former president Jacob Zuma to return to jail after setting aside the decision to release him on medical parole, a court judgement showed on Wednesday. The 79-year-old Zuma began medical parole in September, and is serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court, after he ignored instructions to participate in a corruption inquiry. In the same month, South Africa’s top court dismissed a bid by him to overturn the sentence. The legal processes against Zuma for alleged corruption during his nine-year reign are widely viewed as a test of post-apartheid South Africa’s ability to enforce rule of law, particularly against powerful, well-connected people.

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BEIJING/VILNIUS (Reuters) - Lithuania’s diplomatic delegation to China left the country on Wednesday in a hastily arranged exit, diplomatic sources said, as relations soured further over Taiwan, which opened a de facto embassy in Vilnius last month. Beijing, which has stepped up pressure on countries to sever relations with the island, downgraded diplomatic ties with Lithuania in November after Taiwan opened a representative office in the Baltic state’s capital. Lithuanian authorities said on Wednesday they had summoned their top diplomat back from China for “consultations” and that the embassy would operate remotely for the time being.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - German police said on Wednesday they had uncovered a plot by anti-vaccination activists in Saxony to murder the eastern German state’s premier, adding to concerns about increasingly violent protests over plans for mandatory vaccinations. The plot to kill Michael Kretschmer, leader of a state in which COVID-19 infection rates are among the highest in Germany and vaccination rates are the lowest, had been discussed in a group chat on messaging platform Telegram, police said.

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BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian former leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has a comfortable lead in the polls heading into next year’s October presidential election, with right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro nearly 30 percentage points down, according to a poll released on Tuesday. If the vote were held today, 48% percent of respondents said they would vote for Lula, as the former president is widely known, while 21% would vote for Bolsonaro, according to the survey by pollster Inteligencia em Pesquisa e Consultoria (IPEC), which was published on news website G1.