Journal Bullet

It's been two years since the 14th general election where 60 year ruling party, Barisan Nasional(BN), had come to an end, having the opposition to rise above for the first time in history. Not only did Malaysia face a single event in history, but it received another record when former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, took an oath once again being the oldest and first ever prime minister to rule twice. Since then, so much has happened. many questioned the capability in whether this new ruling party, Pakatan Harapan (PH), in ruling the country. Mahathir, being the longest serving prime minister, had stepped up to help lead the opposition party.  Just a few days after their win, rumours started going around on an agreement of a transfer of power between Mahathir to former deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim. Yet there were many delays in setting a time or date with Mahathir claiming he needed more time 'to clean up the mess', resulting to serious tension ...

Kanye West has reportedly dropped out of the 2020 presidential race less than two weeks after announcing he planned to run, according to multiple reports. “He’s out,” adviser Steve Kramer told New York Magazine’s The Intelligencer. Kramer said West hired him to get on ballots in key states across the country. It did not work out as planned and showed the difficult of running for office so late in the process.  West announced he planned to run for president on July 4 in a tweet. “We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States!” he wrote. Shortly after the tweet, West told Forbes about his campaign ideas, though. He spoke about President Donald Trump, his experience with the COVID-19 disease and how he wanted to make the White House like Wakanda — the fictional location from the Marvel Comics. By Safwan Kasim

Malaysian netizens on Twitter, Facebook and other social media are taking more interest in the parliamentary sittings since it was scheduled on July 13th. After the second sitting since PN took over Putrajaya in March, the word 'circus' and 'zoo' has been thrown around alot by netizens, referring to our parliament. Even the newly appointed speaker of the Dewan Rakyat, Azhar Azizan Harun, mentioned to the press that it is not a zoo but a place of discussion with discipline and respect. Before the new speaker took his podium however,  it seemed like everyone wanted a piece of the action today, with the government featuring Baling MP Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim, Arau MP Shahidan Kassim, Pasir Salak MP Tajuddin Abdul Rahman, Padang Rengas MP Nazri Aziz, and Tanjong Karang MP Noh Omar all jumping in to rebut former prime minister and Langkawi MP, Dr Mahathir on his point about the unprecedented motion to remove a speaker by the whims and fancies of the Executive. Even...

The economic outlook for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) was already grim as the region struggles to cope with the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, that horizon darkened further as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected an even deeper recession for the region, and warned of the spectre of rekindling social unrest as inequality and poverty deepens. The IMF now sees economic growth in the Middle East and Central Asia shrinking 4.7 percent this year - a full 2 percentage points lower than its April forecast. "The unusually high level of uncertainty regarding the length of the pandemic and its impact on firm closures, the resulting downside risks (including social unrest and political instability), and potential renewed volatility in global oil markets dominate the outlook," the IMF said in its latest update. The IMF said 2020 oil income for the region would be $270bn less than last year.  MENA economies that are heavily dependent on energy exports...

Renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) has said it would maintain a blockade on oil production and exports that the National Oil Corp (NOC) says has cost the country $6.5bn in lost revenue. Friday's loading of a first tanker since January with oil from storage had force majeure on all exports, though it warned that damage to fields meant it would take a long time to fully restore production. However, LNA spokesman Ahmed Mismari on Saturday said in an online statement the country's oilfields and ports are "closed until the orders of the Libyan people are implemented", laying out conditions to lift the blockade. Mismari demanded that oil revenue should flow into a new bank account outside Libya to be distributed between regions; that it should not fund what he called "terrorists and mercenaries"; and an audit of central bank accounts to investigate past spending. Libya has been split since 2014 between the Turke...

The United Nations Security Council has approved aid deliveries to Syria from Turkey, but only after caving in to Russian pressure to close one of the two access points into the war-torn country. Following a week of division and seven ballots, the UNSC on Saturday passed a proposal submitted by Germany and Belgium allowing the use of the Bab al-Hawa crossing point for one year. Western nations say the closure of the second access point will cut a lifeline for 1.3 million Syrians in the country's northwest. Authorisation for the continued transport of aid to Syria, a system in place since 2014, expired on Friday night. The 15-member UNSC had been deadlocked, with most members pitted against Syrian allies Russia and China over the issue. Russia and China, which hold veto power at the council, wanted to halve the approved Turkey border crossings to one, arguing that northwest Syria could be reached from within the country. In the session, the measure was approved by 12 of 15 memb...

Pope Francis has said he was hurt by Turkey's decision to make Istanbul's  Hagia  Sophia  museum a mosque, but Ankara said the decision will  maintain a relationship of equality and mutual respect in the country. It was the Vatican's first reaction to Turkey's decision to transform the Byzantine-era monument back into a mosque, a move that has drawn criticism from around the world. "I think of Hagia Sophia and I am very saddened," Pope Francis said towards the end of his midday sermon in Saint Peter's Square.  The World Council of Churches has called on  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan  to reverse his decision and Patriarch Bartholomew, the Istanbul-based spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, called it disappointing. On Saturday, Erdogan rejected international condemnation over the decision to change the status of Istanbul's landmark Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque. "Those who do not take a step against Islamophob...

Yemen's Houthi rebels have agreed to allow the United Nations access to a stranded oil tanker that risks causing an environmental disaster off the coast of the war-divided country, Reuters news agency has reported, citing UN sources familiar with the matter. The decaying oil tanker has been abandoned off the coast with 1.1 million barrels of crude on board which experts say could rupture at any time. A breach of the vessel would have disastrous results for Red Sea marine life and tens of thousands of impoverished people who depend on fishing for their livelihood. The 45-year-old FSO Safer is anchored off the port of Hodeidah under the control of Houthi rebels, who have previously blocked efforts to send inspectors to assess its condition. The UN Security Council (UNSC) will hold a special meeting on July 15 to discuss the crisis, after water entered the vessel's engine room "which could have led to disaster", UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Friday. Dujarric sai...

Sudan approved wide-ranging amendments to its criminal law including repealing the death penalty for apostasy as well as no longer requiring w omen  to need a permit from male family members to travel with their children. According to the 1991 Criminal Law introduced by the overthrown Omar al-Bashir government, the punishment for apostasy - or the abandonment of Islam through actions or words - was stoning to death. Public flogging will also be ended and the consumption of alcohol by non-Muslims will now be permitted.  In a televised interview on Saturday, Sudanese Justice Minister Nasredeen Abdulbari said the government is currently working to reform other legal provisions to incorporate them in a constitutional declaration. "We cancelled the Article 126 of the Sudanese Criminal Law and have ensured religious freedom and the equality in citizenship and rule of law," he said. The minister said his ministry is working to make new personal law that will drop all discriminat...

Libya's National Oil Corp (NOC) has accused the United Arab Emirates of instructing eastern forces in Libya's civil war to reimpose a blockade of oil exports after the departure of the first tanker in six months. The UAE, along with Russia and Egypt, supports the eastern-based self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) of renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar, which on Saturday said the blockade would continue despite it having let a tanker loaded with oil from storage. Libya, which sits atop Africa's largest proven crude oil reserves, is torn between the rival powers of the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli and eastern-based Haftar. "NOC has been informed that the instructions to shut down production were given to (the LNA) by the United Arab Emirates," it said in a statement on Sunday, resuming force majeure on all oil exports. There was no immediate comment on NOC's accusation from either the LNA or the UAE. Haftar has been on th...

At an open-air, riverbank factory where the Blue Nile and White Nile meet in Sudan, Mohamed Ahmed al-Ameen and his colleagues mould thousands of bricks every day from mud deposited by summer floods. "I consider the Nile something I have not parted with since I was born," al-Ameen said, as workers around him shaped bricks with blistered hands and laid them out to dry in the sun. "I eat from it, I farm with it. And I extract these bricks from it." But the labourers on Tuti Island in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, fear a giant dam Ethiopia is building close to the border between the two countries could endanger their livelihood. They worry the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam upstream could weaken the Blue Nile's force, putting at risk an industry that locals say provided bricks for some of Khartoum's first modern public buildings about a century ago. Pottery makers, farmers and fishermen around the Nile's convergence share similar concerns, though other res...

Yemen's Houthi rebels say they have attacked a large oil facility in an industrial complex south of the Saudi Arabian city of Jizan as part of an overnight operation. The Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Houthis said on Monday it  intercepted and destroyed four missiles and six bomb-laden drones launched by Houthi rebels towards the kingdom. The missiles and drones were launched from Yemen's capital Sanaa and directed at civilian targets, coalition spokesman Turki al-Malki said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency. The Houthi rebels claim they also killed and injured dozens of ranking military officers in Saudi Arabia. The Houthis' military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, confirmed in a statement that the rebel group had launched attacks on Saudi military sites. He said the group's ballistic missiles and drones had destroyed a number of military bases and installations of the Saudi coalition in Jizan, Najran and Assir near the border with Yemen, in...

Bahrain's top court has upheld death sentences against two men convicted of bombing a convoy and killing a police officer, as human rights groups said their  conviction  was based on confessions extracted through torture. Mohammed Ramadhan and Husain Moosa lost their final appeal on Monday against death sentences that were initially handed down by a criminal court in December 2014, a statement from the kingdom's public prosecutor said. The kingdom's highest court in 2015 confirmed the death sentences but then overturned them after the emergence of a previously undisclosed medical report by the Minister of Interior,  which Human Rights Watch (HRW) said  appeared to corroborate claims the detainees had been tortured to force them to confess to fabricated charges. But an appeals court in January 2020 reinstated the sentences, which were upheld on Monday. Security forces arrested Moosa, a hotel employee, and Ramadhan, a security guard in Bahrain's international airp...

Mona Fawaz remembers when traffic lights were first installed in Beirut several years after the civil war ended. It was the late 1990s. The gutted downtown area of Lebanon's capital, a front line throughout the brutal 15-year conflict, was being rebuilt in grand fashion. Prosperity - or at least a sense of normality - felt within reach. Everyone wanted to move forward. But the chaos of the war remained ingrained in the way people drove. Traffic was horrendous, a fast-paced free-for-all on the freeways that turned to gridlock in narrow city streets and a mess of clamouring metal at intersections.  It was overwhelming for 26-year-old Fawaz, back in Beirut on a break from studying in the United States where she had become accustomed to the simple guidance of green, red and amber. When the lights first came up, many Lebanese were slow to adjust. Fawaz "felt like an activist" when she stopped at red, and would intentionally block the path of impatient motorists who tried to ma...

Designers  Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh, who both have Caribbean roots,  made an impassioned plea for the Black Lives Matter movement through the Dutch brand, Botter, at Paris men's fashion week. The designers  who were also runners up in the prestigious LVMH Prize in 2018,  delivered a heartfelt plea for people to "unite against violence on the black community, against violence on any community" as they unveiled their online show.  With being forced online due to the coronavirus, brands showing short films about their collections on Paris Fashion Week. Rushemy Botter was born on the island of Curacao, part of the Dutch Caribbean, while his partner Herrebrugh's mother hails from the Dominican Republic. Political stances as such are extremely rare in the fashion world, where labels tends to fear of attracting controversy. The couple showcased a o ne-and-a-half-minute call to action before showing two black models in gently poetic creations in...

The Polish military has admitted it accidentally invaded the Czech Republic last month, but it insists its brief occupation of a small part of the country was simply a "misunderstanding." Polish soldiers mistakenly crossed the country's border with Czech Republic in late May before setting up there, the Czech foreign ministry told. The soldiers, who had been guarding parts of the closed Polish-Czech border during the coronavirus pandemic, then started turning away Czech citizens who were attempting to visit a church in their own country. The snafu led the Czech embassy in Warsaw to take "immediate action" and notify its Polish counterpart, the Czech government told, adding that Poland has still not formally explained why it mistakenly annexed its neighbor. "Our Polish counterparts unofficially assured us that this incident was merely a misunderstanding caused by the Polish military with no hostile intention, however, we are still expecting a formal statemen...

More than 100 people were arrested in London on Saturday after violence broke out as far-right groups targeted anti-racism Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations. The offenses as of 9 p.m. included violent disorder, assault on officers, possession of an offensive weapon, possession of class A drugs, and drunken disorder, London's Metropolitan Police said in a tweet. Far-right groups bombarded police with bottles and occasionally scuffled violently with officers as they staged a counter-protest in central London. Police also arrested a 28-year-old man after an individual was photographed on Saturday apparently urinating on a memorial to a police officer killed while defending Parliament from a terrorist attack in 2017. The man was arrested north of London "on suspicion of outraging public decency," police said. Hundreds of mostly middle-aged white men, many shirtless or clutching beers, gathered in Parliament Square, where video showed a small number of right-wing protest...

The children of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi have publicly forgiven their father's killers, sparing five government agents the death penalty. Salah Khashoggi, the late Saudi critic's eldest son, posted the pardon in a tweet on Friday. "On this virtuous night of (Ramadan), we recall the words of God Almighty ... whoever pardons and makes reconciliations, his reward is from Allah," read the statement, referring to Laylit el Qader, or the Night of Power, considered by Islam to be the holiest night of the year. "So we, the sons of the martyr Jamal Khashoggi, announce that we have pardoned (those) who killed our father," the family added in the statement. Muslim governments typically issue pardons on the month of Ramadan. According to Saudi law, a pardon from a son of a murder victim serves as a legal reprieve. Last December, five government agents convicted of Khashoggi's murder at the kingdom's Istanbul consulate in October 2018 to death. Thre...

"It is looking bad, very bad," says security analyst Vipin Narang, of the deadly clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers in Ladakh on Monday night. The most serious face-off on the world's longest unsettled land border in nearly half a century left 20 Indian soldiers dead. India says both sides suffered casualties. "Once fatalities are sustained, keeping everything quiet becomes hard on both sides. Now public pressure becomes a variable," Dr Narang, a security studies professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology told me. "The scale, scope and swathe of the pressure across the border is seemingly unprecedented." The two nuclear armed neighbours have a chequered history of face-offs and overlapping territorial claims along the more than 3,440km (2,100 mile), poorly drawn Line of Actual Control (LAC) separating the two sides. Border patrols have often bumped into each other, resulting in occasional scuffles. But no bullets have been fired in four ...

The government department responsible for overseas aid is to be merged with the Foreign Office (FCO), the PM has announced. Boris Johnson told MPs abolishing the separate Department for International Development (DfID) would mean aid spending better reflected UK aims. He said the "long overdue reform" would ensure "maximum value" for taxpayers. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the move would weaken UK influence, and he would re-establish DfID if elected PM. Three former prime ministers - Conservative David Cameron, and Labour's Gordon Brown and Tony Blair - have also criticised the move. Mr Cameron said it would mean "less expertise, less voice for development at the top table and ultimately less respect for the UK overseas". Ministers are aiming to set up the new joint department - called the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office - by September. The move to combine the two, which have a previous history of being merged and split up again, ha...