JAKARTA: Indonesian police are investigating an accusation by a journalists’ group that arson was behind a fire that killed a reporter and three of his family, an official said on Tuesday, a rare incident that has prompted concern over media freedom.
The Southeast Asian nation ranks 111th among 180 countries on the 2024 press freedom index of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which has said journalists investigating corruption there are often subjected to intimidation and violence by authorities.
Indonesia’s association of independent journalists (AJI) blamed arson for a June 27 blaze in the North Sumatra home of a reporter, Rico Sempurna Pasaribu, after he reported on illegal gambling involving local officials.
The Kompas newspaper said the journalist died along with his wife, one of his children and a grandchild, citing his daughter.
District police official Oloan Siahaan told Reuters that police were investigating the cause, adding that it was still unclear whether the fire had been set intentionally.
The case drew condemnation from journalists’ groups. In a statement on Tuesday, AJI called it “a severe violation of press freedom in Indonesia” that set a dangerous precedent.
Indonesia’s presidential palace did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the statement.
In the statement, Anthony Bellanger, general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, urged authorities to take immediate and decisive action to ensure justice for the reporter and his family.
Indonesian police probe arson accusation in death of reporter
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Indonesian police probe arson accusation in death of reporter
- Southeast Asian nation ranks 111th among 180 countries on the 2024 press freedom index
- Journalist Rico Sempurna Pasaribu reported on illegal gambling involving local officials
Germany summons Turkish ambassador over right-wing ‘wolf’ goal celebration
- Turkish football player’s “wolf salute” goal celebration considered by Germany as racist due to its far-right associations
BERLIN: Turkiye’s ambassador to Germany has been summoned over a Turkish football player’s “wolf salute” goal celebration, the German foreign ministry said on Thursday, ramping up a diplomatic spat amid reports that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will come to Berlin this weekend.
European soccer’s governing body UEFA opened an investigation into the Turkish center back Merih Demiral’s celebration after scoring in a Tuesday evening European Championship match. Germany condemned the gesture as racist due to its far-right associations.
Turkiye’s foreign ministry said UEFA’s probe was unacceptable and that German authorities’ approach to Demiral “involved xenophobia.”
The ministry had summoned Germany’s ambassador to Ankara over the dispute, a Turkish diplomatic source said on Wednesday.
German and Turkish media reported on Thursday that Erdogan now planned to come to Berlin on Saturday for Turkiye’s game against the Netherlands.
Erdogan changed his schedule to attend the game, NTV and other Turkish media reported on Thursday.
He was scheduled to attend a summit of Organization of Turkic States (OTS) in Azerbaijan on Saturday.
The gesture made by the player is linked to the “Grey Wolves,” an ultra-nationalist youth branch of Turkiye’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), an ally of Erdogan’s ruling AK Party.
The wolf salute is not banned in Germany.
However, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on X that “using the European Football Championship as a platform for racism is completely unacceptable.”
France to deploy more police to prevent trouble after Sunday election
- Sunday’s second round will determine whether Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) secures a parliamentary majority
PARIS: Some 30,000 police will be deployed across France late on Sunday following the high-stakes runoff of a parliamentary election to ensure there is no trouble, a minister said, as two candidates said they had been victims of attacks on the campaign trail.
Sunday’s second round will determine whether Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) secures a parliamentary majority for the first time and forms the next government in France, the euro zone’s second-largest economy.
The campaign has been marred by political tensions but also some violence, and government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot said she and her team had been attacked by a small group of youths on Wednesday evening while out putting up campaign posters.
While Thevenot herself was not harmed, her deputy and a party activist were injured by the unidentified group of about 10 youths who were defacing campaign posters, Thevenot told Le Parisien newspaper.
An RN candidate in Savoie, Marie Dauchy, also said she had been attacked by a shopkeeper at a market on Wednesday.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said four people had been arrested in relation to the attack on Thevenot’s team.
Darmanin said he would be “very careful” about security on Sunday evening, when the election’s results will be announced.
Some 5,000 of the 30,000 police deployed that evening will be located in Paris and its surroundings, and they will “ensure that the radical right and radical left do not take advantage of the situation to cause mayhem,” he told France 2 TV.
A poll on Wednesday suggested efforts by mainstream parties to block the far right from reaching an absolute majority might work.
The Harris Interactive poll for Challenges magazine showed the anti-immigration, euroskeptic RN and its allies would get just 190 to 220 seats in the 577-strong assembly, while the center-right Republicans (LR) would win 30 to 50 seats. This could rule out the possibility of a far-right minority government supported by part of the LR parliamentary group.
The poll was published after more than 200 candidates across the political spectrum withdrew their candidacies to clear the path for whoever was best placed to defeat the RN candidate in their district, in a process known as the “republican front.”
However, much uncertainty remains, including whether voters will go along with these efforts to block the RN.
Russian court keeps Frenchman accused of gathering military data in custody
- Vinatier was shown last month on state TV being arrested in a central Moscow restaurant by masked FSB officers
MOSCOW: A Russian court on Thursday ruled to keep Laurent Vinatier, a French researcher accused of illegally gathering military information, in pre-trial detention until Aug. 5, the press service of Moscow’s courts said.
Vinatier, an expert on the former Soviet Union with long experience of working in Russia, faces charges of illegally acquiring sensitive Russian military information that could benefit foreign intelligence services. The offense carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
On Wednesday, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said that Vinatier, 47, had pleaded guilty during questioning.
Vinatier was quoted by the state RIA news agency on Thursday as telling his appeal hearing that he had never acted against Russia, a country he was cited as saying he loved.
“I love Russia. My wife is Russian, my friends are all in Moscow. My life is connected with Russia,” RIA cited him as telling the court via video link.
Vinatier was shown last month on state TV being arrested in a central Moscow restaurant by masked FSB officers.
The arrest of Vinatier, who joins a growing number of Western citizens detained in Russia, was seen by Western diplomats as a signal to French President Emmanuel Macron who has repeatedly urged European leaders to step up their support for Ukraine as Russian forces advance.
Macron has denied that Vinatier, an employee of the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD), a Swiss-based conflict mediation group, worked for the French state.
He has described the arrest as part of a disinformation campaign by Moscow and called on Russia to free Vinatier.
White House says zero chance Biden will withdraw
- Biden, 81, had acknowledge that his reelection bid was on the line if he failed to quickly reassure the public that he was still up to the job
WASHINGTON: Joe Biden is “absolutely not” pulling out of the US presidential race, his spokeswoman said Wednesday, as pressure mounted following his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.
Panic has gripped his Democratic Party in the wake of last week’s TV debate, and internal rumblings about finding a replacement candidate before November’s election have been amplified by polls showing Trump extending his lead.
The New York Times and CNN reported that Biden, 81, had acknowledged to a key ally that his reelection bid was on the line if he failed to quickly reassure the public that he was still up to the job.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre rejected those reports outright, insisting Biden has no intention of withdrawing.
“The president is clear-eyed and he is staying in the race,” she told reporters.
Biden told a call with campaign and party staffers that he is going nowhere.
“I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win because when Democrats unite, we will always win. Just as we beat Donald Trump in 2020, we’re going to beat him again in 2024,” he said, according to a source close to the campaign.
He repeated that message in an emergency meeting with Democratic governors, who pledged their continued support, attendees said afterward.
“As the president continued to tell us, and show us, that he was all in... we said that we would stand with him,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore, seen as a rising star and potential future presidential candidate, told reporters alongside Minnesota’s Tim Walz and Kathy Hochul of New York.
Walz said Biden was “fit to serve.”
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who also attended the meeting at the White House and is seen as one of the top picks to replace Biden if he should drop out, said on social media platform X that “he is in it to win it and I support him.”
Biden has admitted he performed poorly in the debate, and was blunt in a radio interview recorded Wednesday with Wisconsin’s Civic Media.
“I screwed up. I made a mistake. That’s 90 minutes on stage. Look at what I’ve done in 3.5 years,” he said.
Disastrous debate
The Biden campaign has been desperate to reassure Democratic donors and voters that the president’s performance against Trump was a one-off.
But party figures have voiced bafflement over what they see as deflection and excuses from the president and his aides.
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, told the New York Times that Biden should withdraw.
“Biden needs to step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous,” he said in an email to the paper.
The concern was compounded by a New York Times poll conducted after the debate that showed Trump with his biggest lead ever over Biden — 49 percent to 43 percent of likely voters.
It wasn’t until Wednesday — six days after the debate — that Biden completed a round of calls with Democratic congressional leaders, and staffers have also voiced consternation over the glacial pace of the outreach.
“We are getting to the point where it may not have been the debate that did him in, but the aftermath of how they’ve handled it,” a senior Democratic operative told Washington political outlet Axios.
Biden may be tested on his ability to think on his feet when he sits with ABC News on Friday for his first television interview since the debate, and he will also hit the swing states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the coming days.
Biden blames fatigue
The president has cited fatigue as a new explanation for his poor debate showing, saying that he was unwise to travel “around the world a couple times” before the debate.
But he had been back in the United States for nearly two weeks and spent two days relaxing and six days preparing before the debate.
Democratic lawmakers have begun to go public with their doubts. Arizona congressman Raul Grijalva became the second sitting Democrat to call on Biden to drop out.
“If he’s the candidate, I’m going to support him, but I think that this is an opportunity to look elsewhere,” Grijalva said, according to the Times.
In the street where the president grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, there was sympathy for Biden — but no campaign signs for either candidate.
“I was embarrassed for him. I felt he didn’t feel well and he probably shouldn’t have gone on the stage,” said 73-year-old Jamie Hayes.
Labour is hopeful and Conservatives morose as voters deliver their verdict on UK’s election day
- The center-left Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, has had a steady and significant lead in opinion polls for months
- Sunak, for his part, has tried to rally his supporters
LONDON: British voters are picking a new government on Thursday after polls opened at 7 a.m. for a parliamentary election that is widely expected to bring the opposition Labour Party to power.
Against a backdrop of economic malaise, mounting distrust of government institutions and a fraying social fabric, a fractious electorate is delivering its verdict on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party, which has been in power since 2010.
The center-left Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, has had a steady and significant lead in opinion polls for months, but Labour leaders have warned against taking the election result for granted, worried their supporters will stay home.
Sunak, for his part, has tried to rally his supporters, saying on Sunday that he still thought the Conservatives could win and defending his record on the economy.
A jaded electorate is delivering its verdict on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party, which has been in power since 2010.
The center-left Labour Party led by Keir Starmer has had a steady and significant lead in opinion polls for months, but its leaders have warned against taking the election result for granted, worried their supporters will stay home.
“We cannot afford five more years under the Conservatives. But change will only happen if you vote Labour,” Starmer said on Wednesday night.
The Conservatives have conceded that Labour appears headed for victory and urged voters not to hand the party a “supermajority.”
In the final days of campaigning Sunak insisted “the outcome of this election is not a foregone conclusion.”
But in a message to voters on Wednesday, Sunak said that “if the polls are to be believed, the country could wake up tomorrow to a Labour supermajority ready to wield their unchecked power.” He urged voters to back the Conservatives to limit Labour’s power.
Labour has not set pulses racing with its pledges to get the sluggish economy growing, invest in infrastructure and make Britain a “clean energy superpower.”
But nothing has really gone wrong in its campaign, either. The party has won the support of large chunks of the business community and endorsements from traditionally conservative newspapers, including the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun tabloid.
The Sun said in an editorial that “by dragging his party back to the center ground of British politics for the first time since Tony Blair was in No. 10 (Downing St.), Sir Keir has won the right to take charge,” using the formal title for Starmer, who was knighted.
Former Labour candidate Douglas Beattie, author of the book “How Labour Wins (and Why it Loses),” said Starmer’s “quiet stability probably chimes with the mood of the country right now.”
The Conservatives, meanwhile, have been plagued by gaffes. The campaign got off to an inauspicious start when rain drenched Sunak as he made the announcement outside 10 Downing St. Then, Sunak went home early from commemorations in France marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.
Several Conservatives close to Sunak are being investigated over suspicions they used inside information to place bets on the date of the election before it was announced.
It has all made it harder for Sunak to shake off the taint of political chaos and mismanagement that’s gathered around the Conservatives since then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his staff held lockdown-breaching parties during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, rocked the economy with a package of drastic tax cuts and lasted just 49 days in office. There is widespread dissatisfaction over a host of issues, from a creaking public health care system to crumbling infrastructure.
But for many voters, the lack of trust applies not just to Conservatives, but to politicians in general. Veteran rouser of the right, Nigel Farage, has leaped into that breach and grabbed attention with his anti-immigration rhetoric.
The centrist Liberal Democrats and environmentalist Green Party also want to sweep up disaffected voters.
“I don’t know who’s for me as a working person,” said Michelle Bird, a port worker in Southampton on England’s south coast who was undecided about whether to vote Labour or Conservative. “I don’t know whether it’s the devil you know or the devil you don’t.”
