KUALA LUMPUR, September 25 (Reuters): Malaysia's King Sultan Abdullah will not be granting an audience to anyone for a week as he is under observation at a hospital, a palace official said on Friday, as opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim seeks a meeting with him to form a new government. Anwar said this week he has secured a "strong, formidable" majority from lawmakers in parliament to oust Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. But he has to convince the king that he has

BRUSSELS, September 25 (Reuters): United under Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, young people rallied across the world on Friday to demand urgent action to halt catastrophic climate change, in their first global action during the coronavirus pandemic. With wild weather wreaking havoc across the world – from fires ravaging the U.S. West, to abnormal heatwaves in the Siberian Arctic and record floods in China – organisers said the protests would remind politicians that

BANGKOK, September 25 (Reuters): Wearing white ribbons, publicly hacking off their hair and making "Hunger Games" salutes - Thailand's high school students are doing their best to shake up the country's rigid education system. As university students stage weeks of high-profile campus protests for democracy, their younger brethren are advancing their own rebellion to Thailand's establishment. "There's a viral saying that 'our first dictators

BEIJING, September 25 (Reuters): The World Health Organization gave China its support and understanding to start administering experimental coronavirus vaccines to people while clinical trials were still underway, a Chinese health official said on Friday. China launched its emergency programme in July, having communicated with the WHO in late June, according to Zheng Zhongwei, a National Health Commission official. Hundreds of thousands essential workers and other limited gr

WINDHOEK, September 25 (Reuters): Namibia is struggling to contain the second outbreak this year of the African migratory red locust, which has destroyed 500 hectares of grazing land in the north-east of the country, the country's agriculture minister said on Friday. At least 19 areas in the fertile Zambezi region, which borders Zambia, Zimbabwe Angola and Botswana, have been hit by a red locust outbreak since Aug. 12, agriculture minister Calle Schlettwein said in a statem

Reuters As Republican President Donald Trump assails the use of mail-in voting, a Pennsylvania court decision over the use of envelopes for hiding the identity of mail-in voters could have major ramifications for the Nov. 3 election between Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden. One official in the state has warned the ruling could lead to confusion and the disenfranchisement of more than 100,000 voters in the crucial battleground state. In an interview on Fox News Rad

London, September 25 (IANS): A police officer was shot dead by a man who was being detained at the Croydon Custody Centre in London, authorities said on Friday, adding that the perpetrator has been detained. The incident took place at around 2.15 a.m. on Friday when the 23-year-old suspect was taken to the centre, where he was being searched, before producing a weapon and firing it at the officer and himself, the BBC reported. The officer was treated at the scene by paramedics, b

BRASILIA, September 25 (Reuters): Brazil, which has the world's second-highest coronavirus death toll, has decided to join the global COVID-19 vaccine partnership known as COVAX and will earmark 2.5 billion reais ($454 million) for securing vaccines through it, President Jair Bolsonaro's office said. Brazil plans to use the COVAX facility, which gives access to several vaccine candidates in development globally, to buy enough supplies to immunize 10% of its population by the

Seoul, September 25 (IANS): North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has offered an apology for the "unsavoury" killing of a South Korean official, the presidential palace in Seoul said on Friday. In a formal notice sent to the South, the North conveyed Kim's message that he feels "very sorry" for greatly "disappointing" President Moon Jae-in and other South Koreans with the occurrence of the "unsavoury" case in its waters, instead of helping

New York, September 24 (Reuters): Mary Trump, the niece of Donald Trump, sued the U.S. president on Thursday, accusing him and other family members of cheating her out of tens of millions of dollars from an inheritance. The complaint filed in a New York state court in Manhattan against Donald Trump, his sister Maryanne Trump Barry, and the estate of his brother Robert Trump, who died in August, accused the defendants of "rampant fraud" and conspiracy.  

WASHINGTON, September 24 (Reuters): U.S. President Donald Trump was greeted with jeers and boos on Thursday as he visited the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's flag-draped coffin outside the U.S. Supreme Court, by a crowd who had gathered to honor the liberal justice. Trump, wearing a black face mask and accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, stood near the casket at the marble court building amid boos and chants of "vote him out." The moment high

MADRE DE DIOS, Peru, September 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation): Speeding over to a muddy bank of Peru's Madre de Dios river in a motorboat, Karina Garay pointed to a small wooden structure. "Bingo!" exclaimed Garay from behind her designer, diamante sunglasses, an environmental prosecutor for the Amazon rainforest region at the centre of Peru's gold rush. On a floating raft was a rudimentary dredger used by illegal miners to suck up river silt to mix with m

NEW YORK, September 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation): A convergence of women, color and class can steer the course of U.S. politics, say the leaders of a new campaign aimed at galvanizing women of all backgrounds to get out the vote. More women than men are eligible to vote in November's presidential election, and the leaders of 'Supermajority'- drawn from popular movements steeped in activism - want to tap into this potent force to unseat President Donald Trump.

New York, September 24 (Reuters): Sir Harold Evans, a British-American editor whose 70-year career as a hard-driving investigative journalist, magazine founder, book publisher and author made him one of the most influential media figures of his generation, died on Wednesday at the age of 92. Evans died of congestive heart failure in New York, according to his wife Tina Brown. A former editor of Britain's Sunday Times and, at his death, Reuters editor-at-large, Evans put a uni

BANGKOK, September 24 (Reuters): Thailand's parliament voted on Thursday to delay making a decision on whether it will amend the constitution, as demanded by anti-government protesters who have demonstrated nearly every day for more than two months. The parliament, dominated by supporters of the government, opted instead to set up a committee to study the process of the constitutional amendment first. "The vote to accept a motion for constitutional changes is e

WASHINGTON, September 24 (Reuters): The United States will slap new sanctions on a number of Iranian officials and entities including a judge who sentenced Iranian wrestler Navid Afkari to death, U.S. Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela Elliott Abrams told a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday. Navid Afkari was executed earlier this month after being convicted of stabbing a security guard to death during anti-government protests in 2018, Iran

MOSCOW, September 24 (Reuters): President Vladimir Putin urged Russians to stick to social distancing rules and said he wanted to avoid another strict lockdown on Thursday, when the daily tally of new COVID-19 cases was the highest in more than two months. Russia's COVID-19 response centre recorded 6,595 new infections on Thursday, the highest daily count since mid-July. Moscow had 1,050 new cases, more than any other city or region in Russia. Russia exited lockdown in e

TOKYO/SEOUL, September 24 (Reuters): Japan's new prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, spoke to South Korea's president for the first time on Thursday, calling for both countries to repair their frayed ties and cooperate to counter any threat from North Korea. Relations between the two U.S. allies have deteriorated sharply over the past year over war-time history and trade, in particular the issue of Korean labourers forced to work at Japanese firms during Japan's 1910-19

HONG KONG, September 24 (Reuters): Wong Wai-yin's wife feared the worst after reading his short farewell letter. "I am sorry and thanks for accompanying me throughout the years," the hand-written note found on a desk at their home read. "I'm sorry that I can't walk with you anymore... Please take care of yourselves." Wong, 30, an unemployed dock mechanic facing criminal charges relating to his participation in the protests that roiled Hong Kon

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, September 24 (Reuters): In Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar, rights activist Maryam Durani has found a fresh outlet for her decades of advocacy - a new fitness centre for women. Durani, 36, is a fierce campaigner for women's rights in the conservative stronghold where the Islamist Taliban militant group have major sway and take a conservative stance on the position of women, who mostly wear the burqa in public. She runs a radio stati