Tag: InternationalNews

{Masses of South Koreans descend on downtown Seoul for fourth time, urging President Park quit over political scandal.}

Tens of thousands of protesters have gathered in South Korea’s Seoul for the fourth in a weekly series of demonstrations aimed at forcing President Park Geun-Hye to resign over a corruption scandal.

Saturday’s protest came as Park’s approval ratings plunged with prosecutors planning to interview her, making her the first sitting South Korean president to be questioned in a criminal case.

The scandal centres on Park’s shadowy confidante Choi Soon-sil, who is accused of using her ties with the president to coerce local firms to donate millions of dollars to non-profit foundations that Choi then used for personal gain.

After claiming a turnout of about one million for last week’s protest, organisers said they expected some 500,000 people on Saturday, while police predicted one-tenth that number.

S Korean MPs approve probe into president’s alleged corruption
So far the protests have been largely peaceful, with many families participating, but there was still a heavy police presence, with buses and trucks blocking access roads to the presidential Blue House.

“There have been protesters on the streets in smaller numbers throughout Saturday. But the numbers have built up significantly as we approached the official start of the demonstration [in the evening],” Al Jazeera’s Wayne Haye said, reporting from Seoul.

“It seems that hundreds of thousands of people are going to be here by the time this protest comes to an end later.”

The president has defied calls to step down, but her lawyer said that she would cooperate with public prosecutors who sought to question her next week.

Prosecutors said that they planned to formally charge Choi by Sunday. They are also seeking to indict two of Park’s former aides who allegedly conspired with Choi.

Separately, opposition parties used their parliamentary majority to pass a law that would allow for a special prosecutor to investigate the scandal.

Opposition parties have yet to seriously push for Park’s impeachment because they fear triggering a backlash from conservative voters, which could hurt them in next year’s presidential election.

However, there is a growing voice within the opposition that says an impeachment attempt is inevitable because it is unlikely Park will resign and give up her immunity from prosecution.

Park’s term lasts until February 24, 2018. If she steps down before the presidential vote on December 20, 2017, an election must be held within 60 days.

Al Jazeera crew captures dramatic footage of attack as babies are rescued from incubators by panicked staff.

An air raid has hit a children’s hospital in Syria’s rebel-held east Aleppo, forcing medical staff to evacuate patients, including several newborn babies still in incubators.

The moment of the attack on Friday was captured by an Al Jazeera crew, including journalist Amro Halabi, who was reporting on survivors of previous Syrian and Russian bombing raids on rebel-held parts of the city.

Halabi was filming a man and his two children, who were suffered breathing problems from an earlier attack, when the room suddenly turned dark immediately after a loud explosion.

Nurses and other medical staff were seen scrambling through the dark and trying to rush the patients out of the badly damaged hospital as children cried out for help.

In another room, nurses grabbed babies from damaged incubators, with one staff member using a cloth to protect a visibly undernourished child before trying to console a weeping woman, who was also carrying a newborn.

The nurses later moved the babies to another room, putting them on the floor next to each other and covering them with blankets. At least one of the infants still had medical tubes attached.

Staff told Al Jazeera that all of the babies survived the attack.

The city of Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial centre, has been divided since 2012, with the eastern half in rebel hands and the western half controlled by government forces.

More than 250,000 civilians are still trapped in the east, which is under near constant bombardment, with dwindling food supplies and extremely limited medical care.

Hospitals hide underground

Earlier, it was reported that at least 49 people were killed in Aleppo in a bombardment that started late on Thursday, according to witnesses and activists.

Friday was the fourth day of renewed bombing raids by Syrian government jets on the city’s east.

The onslaught began as Syria’s ally Russia announced its own offensive on the rebel-controlled Idlib province in the country’s north and Homs province in the centre.

A hospital in another Aleppo neighbourhood was also bombed on Thursday night, media reports said.

Only four of seven hospitals are still operating in the district, according to Adham Sahloul, of the Syrian American Medical Society, which supports health facilities in Aleppo.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens of air raids, artillery attacks and barrel bombs hit 18 different neighbourhoods of eastern Aleppo.

Government bombs have targeted neighbourhoods with medical facilities, including the children’s hospital and a nearby clinic that has one of the few remaining intensive care units in eastern Aleppo, the Observatory said.

Many hospitals and clinics in the besieged area have moved their operations underground after months of relentless bombardment.

The World Health Organization said it recorded 126 attacks on health facilities in 2016, a common tactic over the five years of Syria’s war.

The Russian and Syrian governments deny targeting hospitals.

{Protests against Najib Razak continue in Kuala Lumpur, where thousands of ‘yellow shirt’ anti-PM demonstrators gather.}

Thousands of anti-government protesters marched in Malaysia’s capital demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Najib Razak over his alleged involvement in a multi-billion dollar corruption scandal.

Clad in yellow shirts and unfazed by arrests of activists and opposition leaders, protesters marched on Saturday from various spots towards downtown Lumpur amid tight security.

Najib, who is attending an Asia-Pacific summit in Lima, Peru, has kept an iron grip since graft allegations emerged two years ago involving the indebted 1MDB state fund that he founded. 1MDB is at the center of investigations in the US and several other countries.

The US Justice Department said that at least $3.5 billion had been stolen from 1MDB by people close to Najib and initiated action in July to seize $1.3 billion it said was taken from the fund to buy assets in the US.

The US government complaints also said that more than $700 million had landed in the accounts of “Malaysian Official 1.” They did not name the official, but appear to be referring to Najib.

Some were chanting “Save Democracy” and “Bersih, Bersih” – the name of the electoral reform group that organised the rally. The name means “clean” in the Malay language.

Bersih said on Twitter that police raided its office on Friday and detained its chairwoman Maria Chin and another official Mandeep Singh.

It said at least seven others including several politicians were also held. It said police also confiscated laptops, mobile phones and bank statements.

“Despite the authorities’ desperate measures to stop us, (the rally) will go on,” the group tweeted.

Another Bersih official, Mandeep Singh, and 12 others including several politicians were also detained, mostly in connection with the rally and to prevent rioting, the police said.

“The reason why people are on the streets is not just about asking him [Najib] to resign, but it is also about changing the system,” Azmi Sharom, a law professor at the University of Malaysia, told Al Jazeera.

“The ruling party can win less popular votes and yet win the large majority in the house, so it’s a serious systematic problem that needs to be changed and this is why most of the people are out on streets today.”

{{‘Heavy-handed’}}

The protesters gathered around the Independent Square, the main venue that was locked down by police. A smaller group of red-shirt pro-government supporters held a counter-rally.

Najib, who has denied any wrongdoing, said he won’t be cowed by the rallies.

In a statement on his blog, Najib called Bersih “deceitful” and said the group has become a tool for opposition parties to unseat a democratically elected government.

“We want to see Malaysia more developed and not robbed of billions of ringgit,” said Wan Aisyah Wan Ariffin, an opposition supporter.

A rally that Bersih organized in August 2015 also demanding Najib’s resignation brought together 50,000 people, according to police estimates. Bersih said the number was much higher.

Britain-based rights group Amnesty International slammed the crackdown and called for the immediate release of the Bersih activists, describing them as prisoners of conscience.

“Can protests change anything? We don’t know because that would require a huge move on the part of the election commission, it would need a parliament to agree on something, so it’s a bit of a long shot,” Sharom told Al Jazeera.

“But I think people are angry, they feel the desire, the need to express themselves and hopefully this would push and gather momentum and perhaps in the next elections something positive can come out of it.”

{Sources say more than 14,000 Iraqis have crossed Syrian border since October, including 8,000 who have reached Hasakah.}

More than 14,000 Iraqis fleeing the offensive against ISIL in Mosul have crossed the border into Syria since the start of the operation a month ago, sources from a UN affiliated agency told Al Jazeera.

According to the sources, as many as 8,000 of the Iraqis crossed into Syria’s Hasakah province, and some are now in the al-Hol refugee camp.

Close to 5,000 have also reached Raqqa, ISIL’s stronghold in Syria, while hundreds of others are spread out in Deir Az Zor, Aleppo and Idlib, but are not staying in refugee camps.

Medical sources also confirmed to Al Jazeera that they have treated or met Iraqi civilians in Syria’s Idlib province who were coming from Mosul.

Al Jazeera has also learned that at least one family tried to cross the border from Bab Al Hawwa into Turkey, but were not allowed in.

Sources also said that the Iraqi men were afraid of going into the Iraqi Kurdish territory, for fear of being taken into custody and accused of links to ISIL, also known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS.

Most of the Iraqi families and individuals have come from Mosul and surrounding areas, while a small number have fled from Anbar.

{{Stranded at the border}}

Earlier reports had said that the UN was unable to deliver aid parcels to the al-Hol camp camp in Hasakah, because of security concerns.

But Matthew Saltmarsh, spokesman at UN’s refugee agency, told Al Jazeera that UN workers have now been able to deliver “daily” aid, including food and water, to the camp.

Saltmarsh also confirmed that in the last five days, almost 2,000 people – mostly Iraqis – have been moved to al-Hol camp. A smaller number of refugees at the camp are Syrians.

He clarified that the majority of the Iraqi refugees at the al-Hol camp “predates” the anti-ISIL operation in Mosul.

Currently, the al-Hol camp can accommodate up to 15,000 people, but it is being expanded to hold as many as 50,000, Saltmarsh said.

{Marcos, deposed in 1986 by a People Power revolution, entombed among soldiers and artists in Manila with 21-gun salute.}

Despite public opposition, Ferdinand Marcos, the late president of the Philippines, has been buried in a heroes’ cemetery in the capital in a ceremony shrouded in secrecy.

The ceremony began at noon on Friday with a 21-gun salute as soldiers in parade dress and ceremonial rifles stood to attention at the Cemetery of Heroes in Manila, after Marcos’s body was secretly flown to the venue in an apparent effort to avoid protests.

“There is a sense of doom here, coming from protesters who oppose the burial. They say Marcos was a thief until the very end,” Al Jazeera’s Jamela Alindogan, reporting from the military-run cemetery, said.

“He cheated his way to power and killed many people.”

The Supreme Court ruled last week that Marcos could be entombed in the cemetery, where former presidents, soldiers and national artists have been interred.

President Rodrigo Duterte had promised a hero’s burial for Marcos during his election campaign.

Still, funeral shocked many pro-democracy advocates and human-rights victims who planned several protests nationwide on Friday to oppose the burial.

Police said that the remains of Marcos were flown by helicopter from his hometown in Ilocos Norte for the burial in the Cemetery of Heroes in metropolitan Manila.

They also said that the ceremony was not an official state funeral.

Marcos was president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986, when he was overthrown by a revolt – dubbed the People Power revolution – and forced to flee into exile to Hawaii, where he died in 1989.

His body was returned to the Philippines in 1993 and has since been kept in a refrigerated crypt in a mausoleum in his hometown of Batac, 470km north of Manila.

In 2004, Transparency International, the anti-corruption watchdog, named Marcos the second most corrupt leader of all time, behind Indonesian authoritarian ruler Suharto.

The Philippines’ foreign debt went from $2.67bn in 1972, when Marcos declared martial law, to $28.2bn in 1986, according to the World Bank.

{A suspected ISIL suicide bomber detonated explosives at a wedding in Amiriyat al-Fallujah, killing at least 40 people.}

At least 40 people have been killed and more than 60 wounded after a suicide car bomb attack targeted a police officer’s wedding in Amiriyat al-Fallujah in Iraq, police sources have told Al Jazeera.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the explosion on Thursday, but police said they believed that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group was responsible for the attack.

Amiriyat al-Fallujah, 35km south of Fallujah, is home to pro-government Sunni tribal fighters, who fought ISIL for more than two years and repelled many attacks on their town before the armed group was pushed out of Fallujah in June.

ISIL, also known as ISIS, has been losing territory in Iraq over the past year.

It is now facing a big battle to hold the northern city of Mosul, its last stronghold in the country.

{In a news conference with Germany’s Merkel, US president urges successor to defend democratic values and rule of law.}

President Barack Obama has urged his successor Donald Trump to stand up to Russia if it deviates from US “values and international norms”, and not simply “cut some deals” with Russian leader Vladimir Putin when convenient.

In a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama said on Thursday that while he does not expect Trump to “follow exactly our blueprint or our approach”, he is hopeful the president-elect will pursue constructive policies that defend democratic values and the rule of law.

He said Trump should not “simply take a realpolitik approach and suggest that if we just cut some deals with Russia, even if it hurts people or even if it violates international norms or even if it leaves smaller countries vulnerable or creates long-term problems in regions like Syria, that we just do whatever’s convenient at the time”.

Obama began his presidency with a goal to “reset” ties with Russia, but they eventually plunged to the lowest point since the Cold War over conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.

Trump has spoken favourably of Putin, but has outlined few specifics as to how he would go about recalibrating ties with the country.

Meanwhile, Merkel said she was approaching the incoming Trump administration with “an open mind”, and was encouraged that the presidential process in the US was “working smoothly” so far.

It was the final meeting of Obama and Merkel as peers on the world stage, and both leaders spoke glowingly of each other’s leadership.

“We all know that democracy lives off change,” Merkel said.

{{‘Cautiously optimistic’}}

As for the limit on US presidents serving two terms, Merkel said simply, “It’s a tough rule: Eight years and that’s it”.

Obama, speaking about the Trump presidency, said he was “cautiously optimistic” because “there is something about the solemn responsibilities of that office, the extraordinary demands that are placed on the United States,” that demand seriousness from a president.

“If you’re not serious about the job, then you probably won’t be there very long because it will expose problems,” Obama said.

He added that he had cautioned Trump that the skills that got him elected may be different from those needed to unify the country and to gain the trust of those who did not support him.

People will be watching “what he says” and “how he fills out his administration”, Obama added.

Obama had some advice for the American people, as well, urging them not to be complacent about democracy, noting that only 43 percent of eligible voters went to the polls.

“Do not take for granted our systems of government and our way of life,” he said. “Democracy is hard work.”

He said he would not advise those protesting Trump’s election to keep silent.