MAPUTO: Thousands of people gathered Wednesday outside Mozambique’s capital to bury the murdered lawyer of an opposition candidate, as tensions grew ahead of the imminent release of election results.
Venancio Mondlane has called for 25 days of protests over the killing of his attorney as results from the October 9 ballot likely on Thursday were expected to show the ruling Frelimo party winning.
Mondlane warned the results would be “false” and said his lawyer Elvino Dias was killed by the security forces alongside another ally, Paulo Guambe, as they were preparing a case to contest the vote.
Before Dias’ burial at Michafutene cemetery outside Maputo, large crowds were seen assembling at a church, according to an AFP reporter present.
In a message on Facebook, Mondlane, who accused security forces of ambushing the duo in the early hours of Saturday and shooting at them 25 times, said he would unleash “25 days of terror” in reprisal.
Police said it had launched an investigation into the killings, while Frelimo party which has been in power for 49 years “vehemently” condemned the “macabre act.”
The government of Mozambique has called for calm as the country awaits official results.
Mondlane was among a group of protesters tear gassed by police on Monday after he had called for a general strike to protest against Dias’ murder as well as perceived electoral fraud.
Election observers from the EU have also raised concern about the legitimacy of the polls, noting “irregularities during counting and unjustified alteration of election results at polling station and district level.”
Initial indications of a low turnout in the coastal country of some 33 million people could further erode the vote’s credibility.
President Filipe Nyusi, 65, is stepping down after his two terms allowed by the constitution but his party’s candidate, 47-year-old Daniel Chapo, was widely expected to win.
Other presidential candidates included Ossufo Momade, 63, of the Renamo party, and Lutero Simango, 64, of the Mozambique Democratic Movement.
While Renamo has traditionally been the main opposition group, the emergence of Mondlane and the Podemos party was a new development in this election.
“Mondlane and Podemos have leveraged social media to connect with Mozambique’s large youth population who are seeking a change to the status quo,” said Emilia Columbo of the DC based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Thousands rally in Mozambique ahead of election results
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Thousands rally in Mozambique ahead of election results
- Opposition candidate Venancio Mondlane has called for 25 days of protests over the killing of his attorney
- The government of Mozambique has called for calm as the country awaits official election results
UK’s Starmer condemns ‘attack on our democracy’ after fires at homes linked to him
Police said they have been granted a further 36 hours to question the man
LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told lawmakers Wednesday that recent arson attacks on properties linked to him represent “an attack on all of us, on democracy and the values that we stand for.”
The remarks by Starmer during weekly prime minister’s questions were his first since the fires came to light earlier this week.
The attacks were condemned by leaders across the House of Commons, including the Conservative Party’s Kemi Badenoch, who described them as “completely unacceptable.”
On Tuesday, London’s Metropolitan Police arrested a 21-year-old man in southeast London on suspicion of starting fires at Starmer’s private house, another property and a car connected to the politician. No injuries were reported from any of the fires.
In a statement Wednesday, police said they have been granted a further 36 hours to question the man, who is being held at a London police station. That means he can be questioned until Friday morning.
Police said the suspect was detained on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life after an early morning fire Monday damaged the door of the house in Kentish Town, north London, where Starmer and his family lived before he was elected to lead the country last July.
Starmer moved with his family to the prime minister’s official Downing Street residence after taking office.
Counterterrorism detectives, who are leading the investigation because it involves the prime minister, are also looking into connections between a car fire Thursday near Starmer’s house and another fire Sunday outside a house nearby that has been converted into apartments and which he has a connection to.
Authorities are investigating whether there was state involvement as well as looking at other potential motivations.
“A key line of enquiry is whether the fires are linked due to the two premises and the vehicle all having previous links to the same high-profile public figure,” said Cmdr. Dominic Murphy, head of counterterrorism at the Metropolitan Police.
Starmer’s former house has attracted protesters in the past. Last year, three pro-Palestinian activists were arrested and charged with public order offenses after unfurling a banner covered in red handprints outside the building.
How escaped French drug kingpin evaded capture for months
- His escape left two prison officers dead and triggered a massive manhunt for the escaped convict dubbed “la Mouche“
- A network of accomplices suspected of organizing the escape, including a childhood friend of Amra and rapper Koba LaD, allegedly helped the fugitive stay off the authorities’ radar
PARIS: Managing to stay “one step ahead” of investigators, drug trafficker Mohamed Amra evaded capture for nine months following a deadly jail break one year ago that shocked France.
His escape left two prison officers dead and triggered a massive manhunt for the escaped convict dubbed “la Mouche” (The Fly).
On the run for nine months, he was re-arrested only in February, near a shopping center in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, then extradited to France.
On the one-year anniversary of the attack, French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday paid tribute to the first prison officers killed in France in the line of duty since 1992, visiting the site of the attack and highlighting new measures in France’s push to combat organized crime.
On May 14, 2024, a car crashed head-on into a prison van at a toll booth in France’s northern Normandy region.
Moments later, a second car pulled up and four armed men jumped out, killing prison officers Arnaud Garcia and Fabrice Moello and leaving three others wounded.
At the time of the deadly ambush, Amra already had a long history of convictions for violent crimes that started when he was only 15.
After the assailants whisked the 30-year-old Normandy native into a waiting vehicle, French authorities launched a massive operation to track down the man described as “public enemy number one.”
But a source close to the case said Amra was “always one step ahead.”
Public prosecutor Laure Beccuau confirmed that the Frenchman had been holed up in the city of Compiegne, then headed further north to Rouen before eventually making his way to eastern Europe.
A network of accomplices suspected of organizing the escape, including a childhood friend of Amra and rapper Koba LaD, allegedly helped the fugitive stay off the authorities’ radar.
Even so, “the net gradually closed in,” said Beccuau, with the escapee arrested by Romanian authorities nine months after his getaway.
Authorities then intensified the search for those who aided him in his escape from France to the eastern European country, arresting more than three dozen alleged accomplices.
Among those arrested are the six suspected attackers in the May 2024 assault found as far afield as Thailand, Morocco and Spain — one of whom died in an accident in November.
But a lawyer for one of the accused said there are “real doubts” about their involvement, with some “categorically denying the charges.”
As for Amra, his lawyer said, “no one can claim to know his role.”
“The fact that he benefited from the escape doesn’t necessarily mean he planned it or knew what methods would be used,” said Lucas Montagnier.
Macron, accompanied by Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau and Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, visited several sites on Wednesday underlining the country’s push to clamp down on drug trafficking, including the headquarters of a new anti-organized crime taskforce, EMCO and the site of the May 2024 attack.
In late April, lawmakers approved a major new bill to combat drug-related crime, with some of France’s most dangerous drug traffickers facing being locked up in high-security units in prison in the coming months.
Amra was suspected of ordering hits from prison, including in the months leading up to his breakout, when a close associate issued a warning that “the Fly” was giving someone called “A” a week to pay up, or else.
A high-security prison in the northern Pas-de-Calais region is expected to house the 100 most dangerous drug traffickers beginning in late July.
With these measures, “the Republic is now putting all its resources” into ensuring that an escape like that of Mohamed Amra “never happens again,” Darmanin said on Tuesday on broadcaster France 2.
A plaque was also unveiled, honoring the two prison officers.
Sri Lanka to monitor bus drivers with AI after worst crash in decades
- Buses are to be equipped with driver monitoring systems from next year, Transport Minister Bimal Rathnayake said
- “We are going to make AI-backed driver observation systems mandatory on all buses”
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka will use artificial intelligence to monitor bus drivers and make seat belts mandatory on public transport, a government minister said on Wednesday, after the country’s worst bus crash in two decades killed 23 people.
The South Asian nation, which records an average of 3,000 road fatalities annually, has some of the most dangerous roads in the world.
Buses are to be equipped with driver monitoring systems from next year, while seat belts will become compulsory on public transport from June, Transport Minister Bimal Rathnayake told reporters in Colombo.
It came after an overcrowded bus carrying dozens of Buddhist pilgrims plummeted into a precipice on Sunday.
The changes are aimed at “educating motorists to develop a better driving culture and improving safety standards,” Rathnayake said.
“We are going to make AI-backed driver observation systems mandatory on all buses from next year, and we will expand them to all long-distance trucks as well.”
The minister said the cause of Sunday’s crash in the tea-growing mountainous region of Kotmale was still being investigated, but that two more passengers had died, raising the toll to 23.
Fifty-four passengers were admitted to hospital, Rathnayake said, adding that preliminary inquiries had found no immediate indication of driver error.
Another driver had reported a problem with the bus’s steering wheel the day before, but managers said it was attended to.
Sunday’s crash off a cliffside road was the deadliest recorded in Sri Lanka since April 2005.
The state-owned bus was carrying around 77 passengers — about 20 more than its capacity.
In March 2021, 13 passengers and the driver of a privately owned bus died when the vehicle crashed into a precipice in Passara, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of the site of Sunday’s crash.
Germany’s Merz calls for western unity on Ukraine on eve of peace talks
- Merz said the West could not accept a dictated peace for Ukraine or a submission to the status quo achieved by Russian military forces
- “Such a ceasefire can open a window in which peace negotiations become possible“
BERLIN: Germany’s new Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Wednesday urged the West not to be divided on Ukraine and said he was working to ensure unity between allies in Europe and the United States on how to end the war.
In his first major speech to parliament since taking office last week, Merz said the West could not accept a dictated peace for Ukraine or a submission to the status quo achieved by Russian military forces.
He was speaking a day before Ukrainian and Russian delegates could meet for peace talks in Istanbul, more than three years after the start of the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two.
After winning elections in February, Merz has promised to give Germany a bigger role on the global stage and beef up its military through more defense spending. Though he has publicly castigated US President Donald Trump’s administration as an unreliable ally, in Wednesday’s speech he thanked Trump for his support in pushing for a ceasefire in Ukraine.
“Such a ceasefire can open a window in which peace negotiations become possible,” he told parliament.
“It is of paramount importance that the political West does not allow itself to be divided, and therefore I will make every effort to continue to achieve the greatest possible unity between our European and American partners.”
“This terrible war and its outcome will not only determine the fate of Ukraine,” he added. “The outcome of this war will determine whether law and order will continue to prevail in Europe and the world, or whether tyranny, military force, and the sheer right of the strongest will prevail.”
Still, strengthening the German military is a top priority, Merz said.
“The government will provide all the financial resources that the Bundeswehr needs in order to become the strongest conventional army in Europe,” he said.
In his speech, Merz took blunt aim at Russia, accusing it of involvement in state-sponsored killings and poisoning in European cities, cyberattacks and the destruction of infrastructure, including undersea cables.
Merz was speaking as German prosecutors announced the arrest of three Ukrainians for their suspected involvement in the shipment of exploding parcels, after a series of fires at European courier depots pointed to suspected Russian sabotage.
Security officials told Reuters the exploding parcels were part of a test run for a Russian plot to trigger explosions on cargo flights to the United States. Russia has denied this and other accusations by Western countries of sabotage plots.
The growing closeness between Russia and China was also concerning, Merz added.
In a wide-ranging speech, Merz also rattled through his government’s policy priorities, from boosting growth in Europe’s largest economy to hardening its stance on migration. He stressed the latter would be done within the parameters of EU agreements, seeking to dispel fears that Germany would act unilaterally.
Indonesia develops AI system to help diagnose malaria
- Indonesia’s malaria cases may be as high as 1.1m in 2024, WHO estimates show
- AI-powered system could help reach patients in remote areas, Indonesian researchers say
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency is developing an artificial intelligence-powered system to help diagnose malaria under the country’s efforts to eliminate the disease by 2030.
Indonesia recorded over half a million malaria cases in 2024, but due to the lack of testing, the World Health Organization estimates that the actual number was at least twice higher.
“Our main goal is to create a computer-aided diagnosis system that can automatically recognize malaria status from blood smear images,” Anto Satriyo Nugroho, head of AI and cyber security at Indonesia’s national research agency, or BRIN, said in a statement.
Such a system would speed up confirmation of malaria, which to date is mostly done through microscopic examination.
“We are optimistic that sustainable AI research and development will create an important tool for diagnosis that will contribute significantly to eliminating malaria in Indonesia,” Nugroho added.
AI applications are rapidly gaining in popularity, including in medical care to improve disease diagnosis, treatment selection and clinical laboratory testing.
In 2020, a study published in Nature showed researchers from Google Health, and universities in the US and UK, reporting on an AI model that reads mammograms with fewer false positives and false negatives than human experts.
That algorithm has since been released for commercial use globally.
In Indonesia, BRIN researchers have been working with various local and foreign universities, the WHO as well as other UN agencies to speed up the country’s efforts in eliminating malaria.
An AI-powered system also opens up possibilities for remote diagnostics, which would enable healthcare workers to reach and assess patients in outlying areas.
Malaria is endemic in eastern parts of Indonesia, with around 90 percent of cases reported from the easternmost province of Papua, where healthcare access remains low due to challenging terrain and limited resources.
“With the massive potential to increase accuracy in diagnosis and improve efficiency in healthcare services in endemic areas, BRIN is optimistic that AI technology will become a strategic partner in managing malaria cases nationally,” BRIN stated.
“AI cannot work on its own. Collaboration between tech experts and biomedical researchers is an absolute requirement for this technology to be reliable.”
