International

Maldives strongman President Abdulla Yameen's party Wednesday filed a legal petition challenging his landslide election defeat last month despite major international pressure for him to step down. Lawyers for Yameen's Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) told reporters that they are alleging that the September 23 vote was rigged by the independent election commission. It was however unclear whether the Supreme Court would agree to consider the challenge. The election in the Indian Ocean archipelago, which has seen a tussle for influence between India and China, was won by Ibrahim Mohamed Solih with 58.4 percent of the vote. Solih was little known before the election but was backed, in a remarkable turn of events given the island nation's turbulent recent political history, by all opposition parties, All of Yameen's other main rivals were either behind bars on charges that critics said were trumped up, or in exile. Yameen had reluctantly conceded defeat amid international pressure from regional superpower and immediate neighbour India and others, but has been publicly urging his supporters to challenge the results. Constitutionally, he can remain in office till November 17 when he has to hand over to Solih, barring any last minute court intervention. 

A policeman working at Tajikistan's main international airport shot his colleague twice with his service pistol in a "drunken quarrel", the interior ministry said Monday. A spokesman for the ministry told AFP a 34-year-old officer at the Dushanbe International Airport shot his 30-year-old subordinate with a Makarov pistol, widely used by security forces in the ex-Soviet Union.  The incident took place Saturday evening in a room used by police after both men had been drinking alcohol and did not affect the airport's running, the spokesman added.  The younger policeman's life is "not in danger" he said, after he was treated in hospital for gunshot wounds to the chest and leg.  "Both officers have been suspended pending an internal investigation," the spokesman said, while the alleged shooter, who was in charge of the airport's criminal investigation department, was being held in police custody. Law enforcement in Tajikistan is hampered by low salaries and high levels of corruption.  The Central Asian nation was placed at 161 out of 180 countries in Transparency International's 2017 Corruption Perceptions Index. Tajikistan is the poorest country to emerge from the Soviet Union and suffered a five-year civil war that left tens of thousands dead shortly after independence. 

The number of people believed missing from the quake and tsunami that struck Indonesia’s Palu city has soared to 5,000, an official said yesterday, an indication that far more may have perished in the twin disaster than the current toll. Indonesia’s disaster agency say they have recovered 1,763 bodies so far from the 7.5-magnitude and subsequent tsunami that struck Sulawesi on September 28.  But there are fears that two of the hardest-hit neighbourhoods in Palu – Petobo and Balaroa – could contain thousands more victims, swallowed up by ground that engulfed whole communities in a process known as liquefaction.  “Based on reports from the (village) heads of Balaroa and Petobo, there are about 5,000 people who have not been found,” agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told reporters yesterday.  “Nevertheless, officials there are still trying to confirm this and are gathering data. It is not easy to obtain the exact number of those trapped by landslides, or liquefaction, or mud.”  Nugroho said the search for the unaccounted would continue until October 11, at which point they would be listed as missing, presumed dead.  The figure drastically increases the estimates for those who disappeared when the disaster struck 10 days ago. Officials had initially predicted some 1,000 people were buried beneath the ruins of Palu.  But the latest tally speaks to the considerable destruction in the worst-hit areas of Petobo and Balaroa as the picture on the ground has become clearer. Petobo, a cluster of villages in Palu, was virtually wiped out by the powerful quake and wall of water that devastated Palu.  Much of it was sucked whole into the ground as the vibrations from the quake turned soil to quicksand.  It was feared that beneath the crumbled rooftops and twisted rebar, a vast number of bodies remain entombed. In Balaroa, a massive government housing complex was also subsumed by the quake and rescuers have struggled to extract bodies from the tangled mess in the aftermath of the disaster.  Hopes of finding anyone alive have faded, as the search for survivors morphs into a grim gathering and accounting of the dead. “This is day 10. It would be a miracle to actually find someone still alive,” Muhammad Syaugi, the head of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency told AFP yesterday.  The government has been considering declaring those communities flattened in Palu as mass graves, and leaving them untouched.  Muhlis, whose uncle was still missing in Balaroa, said the missing and dead should be honoured respectfully.  “There should be a monument here to make people aware, so that our grandchildren will know this disaster happened in 2018,” said Muhlis, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.  The grim news comes as relief efforts were ramped up to reach 200,000 people in desperate of help after days of delays. Looters ransacked shops in the aftermath of the disaster more than a week ago, as food and water ran dry and convoys bringing life-saving relief were slow to arrive.  But the trickle of international aid to Palu and local efforts to help the survivors have accelerated in recent days. Planeloads of supplies were landing with increasing frequency in Palu, where daisy chains of troops unloaded supplies directly onto trucks or helicopters.  More than 82,000 military and civilian personnel, as well as volunteers, are on the ground while Indonesian army choppers are undertaking supply runs to remote areas blocked off by the disaster.  “They are in great need because the road is cut off and it’s accessible only by air”, Second Lieutenant Reinaldo Apri told AFP after piloting a helicopter to rugged Lindu district, some 40km south of Palu.  Hercules planes carrying tonnes of donations from Australia and the United States reached Palu yesterday morning, as did a plane chartered by Save the Children and another carrying a South African medical team.  Teams of Indonesian Red Cross workers set up warehouses and fanned out to distribute supplies across the region. But relief workers face a monumental task ahead.  The tens of thousands left homeless by the disaster are scattered across Palu and beyond, many squatting outside their ruined homes or bunkered down in makeshift camps and entirely dependent on handouts to survive. “There is nowhere else to get food, nowhere is open,” said 18-year-old Sela Fauziah in Palu’s central market, where she queued with hundreds for essential food items being distributed by soldiers.  Things are even more desperate in remoter areas. “I am coming to Palu to report that we need tents, because 95% of our village has been destroyed,” said Simsom Mudju from Lindu, who clambered aboard the chopper to tell the outside world about his marooned community’s plight.

An earthquake hit northern Haiti late on Saturday, killing at least 14 people, injuring more than 100 and sparking a scramble by rescue agencies to help towns in the impoverished Caribbean country battered by the shockwave. A local official said at least eight people died in Port-de-Paix on the northern coast near the epicenter of the magnitude 5.9 quake, which struck at a depth of 11.7 kilometres (7.3 miles), according to the US Geological Survey. Four people were killed in and around the town of Gros-Morne farther south, local authorities said, including a woman who died from a heart attack suffered after the quake. Another person was killed in the town of Chansolme when a house collapsed and one other person in Saint-Louis-du-Nord. Rescue teams fanned out to help residents, many of whom were still dealing with the trauma of a devastating earthquake in 2010. Port-de-Paix, Gros-Morne, the town of Chansolme and the northern island of Tortuga were among the areas worst hit, Haiti's civil protection agency said in a statement. ‘The shock was felt across all departments of the country, giving rise to panic in several towns,’ the agency said. President Jovenel Moise urged people to remain calm and said on Twitter he had ordered ‘all of the republic's resources’ to be directed toward assisting recovery efforts. On Sunday morning he said that he was en route to Port-de-Paix and Gros-Morne. Some houses in the worst-affected areas were destroyed by the earthquake, the agency said. The civil protection agency said early on Sunday that at least 135 people were being treated for injuries. Among the damaged buildings was a church in the northern town of Plaisance, the agency said. The tremor was one of the strongest to batter Haiti since the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck near the capital, Port-au-Prince, in 2010. It killed tens of thousands of people. Saturday's quake was felt in Port-au-Prince but initial reports suggested it had not caused major damage there. Local newspaper Le Nouvelliste said one person was killed when an auditorium collapsed in Gros-Morne and that detainees were released from a damaged police holding cell.

Electricity was restored and some shops reopened in Indonesia’s quake and tsunami stricken city of Palu yesterday, but the fate of many thousands of people in outlying districts was unknown nearly a week after the disaster struck. The small city of 370,000 people has been the focus of the aid effort launched after last Friday’s 7.5 magnitude earthquake and tsunami on the west coast of Sulawesi island. International help in searching for survivors has gathered pace, but communities in more remote areas have been cut off by broken roads, landslides and crippled communications, leaving people increasingly desperate for basic needs as aid has only just begun to trickle through. By yesterday, the official death toll stood at 1,424, but it will certainly rise as bodies were still being recovered in Palu, where most of the dead have been counted. Figures for more remote areas were only trickling in, if at all. “There are so many challenges with this disaster, it’s never been so bad,” said Frida Sinta, an aid volunteer trying to get basic food and other supplies out to fellow residents of Palu. The city, 1,500km northeast of Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, has teetered close to chaos this week, with outbreaks of looting, but a recovery was evident as some shops and banks reopened and a major mobile phone network was back up. Orderly queues formed at petrol stations after the arrival of fuel shipments and late in the day, traffic lights and televisions flickered back to life as the power came back on. The improvements are helping with the aid effort. “We carry whatever we can by car or motorbike within the city wherever we can. But not yet to the most inaccessible places,” Sinta said. Altogether, the badly affected areas in the disaster zone include some 1.4mn people. Rescue workers are pushing into outlying districts, where residents say they have been scavenging for coconuts, bananas and cassava. Villagers rushed a Red Cross helicopter that landed near the town of Donggala, northwest of Palu, to distribute bread and other food, a Reuters photographer said. National disaster mitigation agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told a briefing the main roads to the south, west and east of Palu had been opened. But there has been scant information about conditions on the road to the north, along the coast towards the epicentre of the quake, 78km from Palu. “There’s no data,” said Abdul Haris of the national search and rescue agency, when asked about the string of small settlements that line the road, which passes some sandy beaches that attract a trickle of tourists. While the power is back in Palu, it will take much longer for people to pick up the pieces of their lives. “We will start again here ourselves because God does not strike twice,” said Eko Joko who was building a new house, a wooden A-frame home, in the midst of a wasteland of concrete, mangled sheets of iron and uprooted trees near Palu’s beach.. In Palu’s Balaroa district, badly hit by deadly soil liquefaction, Asril Abdul Hamid, 35, was poking through the wreckage of his home. He salvaged a few mementoes including a family portrait. “My immediate family is safe, thank God, but my cousin was killed,” he told Reuters, adding that his family had got food and water in the past few days. Not far away, rescuers were using small flags to mark the location of bodies found in the debris. “We discovered eight bodies with the rescue team but we haven’t been able to bring them out because we don’t have the right equipment,” said district police chief Andi Samsudin Effendy. The body of a South Korean man, who had been in Palu for a sports event, was also found in the ruins of a hotel where dozens of people were killed. Just to the east of Palu, the 500-tonne KM Sabuk Nusantara 39, lies, high and dry in a dock-side settlement, where the tsunami picked it up and dumped it. No one on board was hurt. Engineer Charles Marlan, waiting with fellow crewmen on board the marooned ship for its owners to decide what to do, said he was thankful his ship had not killed anyone on land, as far as they knew. “What is important is we are alive and for that we should be grateful,” he said. Straddling the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire, Indonesia has long been vulnerable to quakes and tsunamis. In 2004, a quake off Sumatra island triggered a tsunami across the Indian Ocean that killed 226,000 people in 13 countries, including more than 120,000 in Indonesia.

The death toll in Indonesia’s twin quake-tsunami disaster passed 1,400 yesterday, with time running out to rescue survivors and the UN warning of “vast” unmet needs that have fuelled looting. Indonesian soldiers have been ordered to fire on those raiding stores on the quake and tsunami-struck island of Sulawesi, a colonel said, after desperate survivors emptied shops of food and water. Meanwhile the authorities have set a tentative deadline of Friday to find anyone still trapped under rubble, at which point – a week after this devastating double disaster – the chances of finding survivors will dwindle to almost zero. Military spokesman M Thohir said the number of confirmed dead has risen to 1,411, while the disaster agency said 519 bodies have already been buried. Government rescue workers seeking survivors are focusing on half a dozen key sites around the seaside city of Palu – the Hotel Roa-Roa where up to 60 people are still believed buried, a shopping mall, a restaurant and the Balaroa area where the sheer force of the quake turned the earth temporarily to mush. At a minimum, 150 people are unaccounted for beneath the rubble, officials said. According to the UN’s humanitarian office almost 200,000 people need urgent help, among them tens of thousands of children, with an estimated 66,000 homes destroyed or damaged by the 7.5-magnitude quake and the tsunami it spawned. Despite the Indonesian government having earlier urged foreign rescue teams to “stand down” because the crisis was in hand, residents in hard-hit, remote villages like Wani in Donggala province say little help has arrived and hope is fading. “Twelve people in this area haven’t yet been found,” Mohammad Thahir Talib said. “In the area to the south, because there hasn’t been an evacuation we don’t know if there are bodies. It’s possible there are more,” the 39-year-old said. The Red Cross expressed frustration at the slow pace of the response. “There are still large areas of what might be the worst-affected areas that haven’t been properly reached, but the teams are pushing, they are doing what they can,” said Matthew Cochrane, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). The World Health Organisation has estimated that across Donggala, some 310,000 people have been affected by the disaster. Survivors are battling thirst and hunger, with food and clean water in short supply, and local hospitals are overwhelmed by the number of injured. Officials on the ground said that while the government had now invited offers of help, there is still no “mechanism for this to be implemented”. Landing slots at Palu airport are snapped up by the Indonesian military, although it was slated to be open to commercial flights from 7:59am today. Signs of desperation are growing, with police officers forced to fire warning shots and teargas to ward off people ransacking shops. “If there is looting again, we will quickly fire a warning shot and then shoot to immobilise,” said military colonel Ida Dewa Agung Hadisaputra. Six of the Indonesian social affairs ministry’s trucks laden with supplies were reportedly looted en route to Palu and on one route out of the city, an AFP journalist saw youths blocking the road and asking for “donations”. On the outskirts of the city, hundreds of people sifted through the ruins of a collapsed factory, salvaging food, drinks and construction materials. Indonesia President Joko Widodo, who faces re-election next year, insisted the military and the police were in full control. “There is no such thing as looting,” he said on a visit to Palu. As survivors pick through the shattered remains of their neighbourhoods, the death toll continues to rise. The Indonesia-based Asean Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance said that more body bags were “urgently” needed as fears grow that decomposing corpses could provide a breeding ground for deadly diseases. Rescue efforts have been hampered by a lack of heavy machinery, severed transport links and the scale of the damage. In yet another reminder of Indonesia’s vulnerability to natural disasters, the Soputan Volcano in Sulawesi erupted yesterday, spewing volcanic ash up to 4,000m above the crater. With power returning to parts of Palu late Tuesday, phone networks back up and running and even some markets opening for business, there were the faintest signs of things getting back to normal. But for most, daily life has changed beyond all recognition. Palu residents crowded around daisy-chained power strips at the few buildings with electricity, or queued for water, cash or petrol being brought in via armed police convoy. Queues to get a few litres of petrol lasted more than 24 hours in some places. Sanitation is also a growing problem. “People everywhere want to go to the toilet but there’s no toilet. So we do it along the road at night,” said 50-year-old Armawati Yarmin. Indonesia sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, the world’s most tectonically active region, and its 260 million people remain hugely vulnerable to earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.

More than 1,200 people are now known to have died in the quake-tsunami that smashed into Sulawesi, Indonesia said yesterday, as police pledged to clamp down on looting by survivors taking advantage of the chaos.  There were reports of officers firing warning shots and tear gas to ward off people ransacking shops in Palu, a coastal city ravaged by a 7.5-magnitude quake and the tsunami it spawned.  Almost 200,000 people are in need of urgent help, the United Nations says, among them tens of thousands of children. Survivors are battling thirst and hunger, with food and clean water in short supply, and local hospitals are overwhelmed by the number of injured.  Police said that they had previously tolerated desperate survivors taking food and water from closed shops, but had now arrested dozens of people for stealing computers and cash. “On the first and second day clearly no shops were open. People were hungry. There were people in dire need. That’s not a problem,” said deputy national police chief Ari Dono Sukmanto. “But after day two, the food supply started to come in, it only needed to be distributed. We are now re-enforcing the law.”  “There are ATMs. They are open,” he added. “If people steal, we catch and investigate,” he said. Despite official assurances, desperation was evident on the streets of Palu, where survivors clambered through wreckage hunting for anything salvageable. Others crowded around daisy-chained power strips at the few buildings that still have electricity, or queued for water, cash or petrol being brought in via armed police convoy.  “The government, the president have come here, but what we really need is food and water,” Burhanuddin Aid Masse, 48, told AFP.  Queues to get a few litres of petrol lasted more than 24 hours in some places. Sanitation is also a growing problem. “People everywhere want to go to the toilet but there’s no toilet. So we do it along the road at night,” said 50-year-old Armawati Yarmin.  Rescue efforts have been hampered by a lack of heavy machinery, severed transport links, the scale of the damage, and the Indonesian government’s initial reluctance to accept foreign help. Along the road to Donggala – a large town close to the epicentre of the quake – there were more scenes of destruction. The town itself appeared relatively unscathed, but in the worst affected areas it was difficult to find a single vertical surface.  Donggala resident Farid, aged 48, pleaded for help: “Don’t centre all the aid on Palu,” he said. “We in Donggala have nothing.”  As if to remind the world of the tectonic fragility of Indonesia, a series of quakes hit the island of Sumba on Tuesday, albeit hundreds of kilometres from Palu.  The official death toll from the tragedy in central Sulawesi stood at 1,234, according to the government. The Indonesian military is leading the rescue effort, but following a reluctant acceptance of help by President Joko Widodo, international NGOs also have teams on the ground in Palu.  Among the dead are dozens of students whose lifeless bodies were pulled from their landslide-swamped church in Sulawesi.  “A total of 34 bodies were found by the team,” Indonesia Red Cross spokeswoman Aulia Arriani told AFP after the grim discovery, adding that 86 students had initially been reported missing from a Bible camp at the Jonooge Church Training Centre.  Arriani said rescuers faced an arduous trek to reach the mudslide and retrieve the victims. “The most challenging problem is travelling in the mud as much as 1.5 hours by foot while carrying the bodies to an ambulance,” she said.  The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned yesterday that there were 191,000 people in urgent need of help after the quake-tsunami, among them 46,000 children and 14,000 elderly – many in areas that aren’t the focus of government recovery efforts. The dead – many yet uncounted, their bodies still trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings – are also a source of concern for authorities. In Indonesia’s hot, equatorial climate, bodies quickly begin to rot and provide a breeding ground for deadly diseases. At Poboya – in the hills above the devastated seaside city of Palu – volunteers have begun to fill a vast grave with the dead, with instructions to prepare for 1,300 victims to be laid to rest. Trucks stacked with corpses wrapped in orange, yellow and black bags are bringing their load to the site, where the bodies are dragged into the grave as excavators pour soil on top. There were glimmers of hope among the countless tragedies. Two people have been plucked from the 80-room Hotel Roa-Roa, Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said, and there could still be more alive. And for Azwan, who – like many Indonesians – goes by one single name, there was joy when he was reunited with his wife, Dewi, after 48 hours of fearing the worst as he searched hospitals and morgues.  The 38-year-old civil servant struggled to keep his emotions in check as he told how the couple had been reunited two days after Dewi had been swept away by the tsunami. “I was so happy, so emotional —  thank god I could see her again,” Azwan told AFP.  But for some, the search yields only sorrow as they trudge around open-air morgues, where the dead lay in the baking sun — waiting to be claimed, waiting to be named.

Vietnam’s former Communist Party leader Do Muoi, a revolutionary who broke out of a French prison and later led the controversial push to dismantle private businesses after the Vietnam War, died late Monday at age 101, officials said. Muoi, a party member for nearly 80 years, passed away in a military hospital in Hanoi following a long illness, the government and state media said. “Comrade Do Muoi... made many great contributions to the revolutionary cause of the party and the nation,” the official state-run Vietnam News Agency said yesterday. Born in Hanoi in 1917, Muoi joined Ho Chi Minh’s communist revolution at age 19, eager to expel Vietnam’s French colonial rulers who were eventually overthrown in 1954. His revolutionary activities landed him in Hanoi’s infamous Hoa Lo prison in 1941 - later dubbed the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ by American POWs, including John McCain, imprisoned there during the Vietnam War. Muoi escaped four years later by slipping out of his prison uniform and fleeing via a sewer drain. Muoi spent much of his political career climbing party ranks, eventually joining the politburo in 1982 and gaining a reputation as a conservative ideologue. After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, he led a campaign dubbed “X2” to dismantle tens of thousands of private enterprises in the south - then the economic engine of the newly-unified country. He made no secret of his anti-capitalist views and became known for an infamous motto. “Capitalists are like sewer rats, whenever one sees them popping up one must smash them to death!” he said, according to Nhan Tri Vo’s book “Vietnam’s Economic Policy Since 1975”. He later admitted the X2 crusade was “a little too dogmatic”, though he never took personal responsibility for the brutal campaign. But he retained his hardline reputation throughout the 1990s, decrying peasant protests against taxation as attempts to “sabotage” the state, and pushing for a compulsory labour scheme to rebuild the country’s tattered infrastructure. Muoi eventually fell in step with the party’s embrace of “Doi Moi” economic reforms starting in the 1980s, which saw Vietnam slowly open its doors to privatisation and foreign investment. And as party leader - he held the powerful title from 1991 to 1997 - he oversaw the government’s push to normalise relations with Washington in 1995. But repairing ties with the former wartime foe came with conditions. In 1997 he told then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that Washington should help Vietnam recover from “consequences left by the war, including rehabilitation for handicapped people and consequences caused by the Agent Orange”, according to the party’s official newspaper. Muoi’s death comes after Vietnam’s president Tran Dai Quang died in Hanoi on September 21 at age 61. He is expected to be given a state funeral, though details have not yet been released.

The outgoing strongman president of the Maldives, Abdulla Yameen, faced allegations yesterday that he received nearly $1.5mn in illicit payments just before his surprise election defeat last month. The allegations that two cash deposits were made into a private account in Yameen’s name came to light after local media reported that the Maldivian Monetary Authority (MMA) had lodged a police complaint. Yameen’s spokesman Ibrahim Muaz Ali denied any wrongdoing, saying that Yameen maintained a separate account to receive election campaign funding. He did not confirm or deny the amount of any deposits received. Muaz said the governor of the MMA had assured the president that there was no wrongdoing and that the bank’s Financial Intelligence Unit had withdrawn their complaint to the police. “President Yameen assures the people that his campaign had been conducted in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations,” Muaz said, adding that no campaign funds had been received from abroad. Yameen relied heavily on China for political and financial support in the nation of 340,000 Sunni Muslims, triggering concern in India, which has long been influential in the Maldivian politics and the economy. Beijing has been competing with New Delhi for influence in the region. In neighbouring Sri Lanka, police are investigating allegations that former president Mahinda Rajapakse received millions of dollars in campaign funds from a Chinese state owned company in 2015. Just before the Maldives’ September 23 election, a corruption watchdog alleged that Yameen accepted lavish gifts from a billionaire developer who was later leased two islands in the paradise archipelago without bidding for them. Yameen, whose five-year tenure was marked by the jailing of all his key rivals, has denied any involvement in the alleged island-leasing scam, which first came to light in a 2016 investigation by the Al Jazeera television channel. The main opposition candidate, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, who defeated Yameen in last month’s election, has asked him to ensure a smooth transition when he is due to take over on November 17. Transition chief named: The Maldives Civil Service Commission yesterday appointed a new director general of transition to co-ordinate the transfer of power after Ibrahim Mohamed Solih won the recently concluded presidential elections, Xinhua reported. The commission appointed Ahmed Latheef as the new director general at an event attended by commission members and senior staff. Latheef previously served as the Maldives ambassador to China. According to Maldivian law, a transitional director general should be appointed immediately after the Maldives electoral watchdog announces the final polls results of a presidential election.

Nimo bounds out of a car in a rush to get to work at a Bangkok advertising agency, but Nimo is no ordinary employee. He’s a dog. The brown-haired husky accompanies his owner, Thimpaporn Phopipat, to work everyday at digital advertising agency YDM in the Thai capital. “Since I already love dogs, it really made me want to work here,” said Thimaporn, 29, a digital public relations manager who also takes along her chihuahua, Muu Pan. The bring-your-dog-to-work trend is gaining momentum in Thailand, particularly at companies like advertisement firms that are known to require irregular work hours. The policy can help to alleviate stress, as well as attract, and retain, employees, say some. Other advertisement agencies in the Thai capital have dog-friendly policies but YDM, with nearly 200 employees and 20 pet dogs, is by far the largest to adopt the scheme. Several studies point to the benefits of dogs in the workplace, but a May 2017 study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health warned against hazards such as allergies and animal-borne diseases. The same report said pets could help to buffer stress at work, however. Even those who don’t bring their pets to work say other people’s pets help colleagues to bond better. “Sometimes things can get chaotic, but it’s a good kind of chaos, because it makes me happy and relaxed,” said Jitramas Watana-ug, 31, a YDM account manager. Agency owner Anuckanard Kongpanichakul, 42, introduced the dog-friendly policy when she founded YDM eight years ago. “For me it is very joyful, it feels like this is a home,” Anuckanard said.

The outgoing strongman president of the Maldives, Abdulla Yameen, faced allegations Tuesday that he received nearly $1.5 million in illicit payments just before his surprise election defeat last month. The allegations that two cash deposits were made into a private account in Yameen's name came to light after local media reported that the Maldivian Monetary Authority (MMA) had lodged a police complaint. Yameen's spokesman Ibrahim Muaz Ali denied any wrongdoing, saying that Yameen maintained a separate account to receive election campaign funding. He did not confirm or deny the amount of any deposits received. Muaz said the governor of the MMA had assured the president that there was no wrongdoing and that the bank's Financial Intelligence Unit had withdrawn their complaint to the police. "President Yameen assures the people that his campaign had been conducted in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations," Muaz said, adding that no campaign funds had been received from abroad. Yameen relied heavily on China for political and financial support in the nation of 340,000 Sunni Muslims, triggering concern in India, which has long been influential in the Maldivian politics and the economy. Beijing has been competing with New Delhi for influence in the region.  In neighbouring Sri Lanka, police are investigating allegations that former president Mahinda Rajapakse received millions of dollars in campaign funds from a Chinese state owned company in 2015. Just before the Maldives' September 23 election, a corruption watchdog alleged that Yameen accepted lavish gifts from a billionaire developer who was later leased two islands in the paradise archipelago without bidding for them. Yameen, whose five-year tenure was marked by the jailing of all his key rivals, has denied any involvement in the alleged island-leasing scam, which first came to light in a 2016 investigation by the Al Jazeera television channel. The main opposition candidate, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, who defeated Yameen in last month's election, has asked him to ensure a smooth transition when he is due to take over on November 17.

Inadequate warning systems, a lack of education about what to do when the quake hit and a narrow bay that channelled the tsunami’s destructive force — a perfect storm of factors spawned the deadly disaster in Indonesia.  The massive 7.5-magnitude tremor struck Friday and sent monster waves barrelling into the island of Sulawesi, leaving at least 844 dead in the seaside city of Palu and surrounding areas.  As victims were buried in a mass grave and rescue teams struggled to reach remote areas, questions mounted about what exactly happened and if more could have been done to save lives. The tragedy has highlighted what critics say is a patchy early-warning system to detect tsunamis in the seismically-active Southeast Asian archipelago.  “There was no information about a tsunami recorded by the tide-monitoring station in Palu because it was not working,” Widjo Kongko, a tsunami expert with the Indonesian government’s technology agency, told AFP.  The station keeps a check on changes in tides and should have detected if destructive waves were headed for the city. After the initial quake, Indonesia’s geophysics agency — which monitors seismic activity — did issue a tsunami warning but lifted it soon afterwards. It was only later that images emerged of a surging wall of water charging into the coast, flattening buildings and overturning cars.  Tide-monitoring stations and data-modelling are the main tools in Indonesia for predicting if a quake has generated a tsunami. But even if all the country’s stations are working, experts say the network is limited and in any case gives people little time to flee as they only detect waves once they are close to shore. Efforts to improve systems have been beset by problems, from a failure to properly maintain new equipment to bureaucratic bickering. After a quake-tsunami in 2004 off Sumatra island killed 220,000 across the region, with most victims in Indonesia, 22 early-warning buoys were deployed around the country to detect tsunamis.  But officials have admitted that they are no longer working after being vandalised and due to a lack of funds for maintenance. In another case, a major project with funding from the US National Science Foundation to deploy high-tech tsunami sensors in a quake-prone part of western Indonesia has been delayed. Louise Comfort, a natural disaster expert from the University of Pittsburgh who has led the American side of the initiative, said that it had been put on hold after disagreement between government agencies and a delay in getting financing. “It’s so disheartening and it’s so sad because we’ve got the technology, we’ve got the knowledge, we know we can do it,” she told AFP. However, others called for a stronger focus on simply teaching people to head to higher ground when a quake hits, rather than on expensive technology which many communities in a developing country like Indonesia cannot afford.  “For a place like Indonesia to try and defend its coastline, education is almost certainly going to outpace technology for the foreseeable future,” said Adam Switzer, a tsunami expert from Nanyang Technological University’s Earth Observatory of Singapore.  “Every kid in Indonesia needs to be taught what to do if they are on the coast and there is an earthquake.” Observers stressed the Indonesian quake was highly complex, and it would not have been easy to predict it would send a tsunami barrelling towards the small community of Palu.  The initial tremor was a sideways movement of tectonic plates, rather than the sort of violent upward thrust that would typically generate destructive waves, and was followed by scores of aftershocks. Experts believe that the tsunami could have been triggered by an underwater landslide that followed the tremor. Palu’s unique geography will not have helped, they said — the tsunami likely intensified as it raced down the narrow bay on which the city sits.  “Geographical factors (the narrow bay, shallow water) seemed to have played major roles,” said Taro Arikawa, a professor at Chuo University in Tokyo. “The tsunami must have come very fast and suddenly.”

President Rodrigo Duterte cannot be impeached on the basis of his supposed admission of the “sin” of ordering extrajudicial killings (EJKs), Malacanang insisted yesterday. Palace spokesman Harry Roque Jr said there was no solid evidence to implicate Duterte, as he reiterated that the president never admitted guilt for any crime. “I’m sure it will also be dismissed by Congress not because it’s a political process, but because it’s utterly bereft of merit,” Roque told reporters. Antonio “Tony” La Vina, former dean of the Ateneo School of Government and opposition figures such as former congressman Neri Colmenares have claimed that Duterte could be held liable for culpable violation of the Constitution for admitting to authorising extrajudicial killings. The president on Thursday said the summary executions that had taken place under his war on drugs were his only “sin.” “What are your sins? Me? I told the military ‘what are my sins?’ Did I steal money? Even just one peso? Did I prosecute somebody I sent to jail? My only sin is extrajudicial killings,” Duterte said in remarks to career civil service executives. La Vina, in an interview with dzBB radio, said: “It’s clear he wasn’t joking when he said that. The demeanour was very clear.” “It came from the mouth of the President. You don’t need to prove that. That’s called admission against interest. That’s the highest and strongest evidence. Because nobody confesses unless they mean it,” he added. La Vina said there was no more need to prove Duterte’s guilt before the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is hearing complaints of human rights violations under the Duterte drug war, because there was already admission. Roque, however, reminded La Vina about the proper context of the President’s statement on extrajudicial killings, saying there was no admission on the part of Duterte. “He (La Vina) is simply wrong. He is not specialist in the field. He’s wrong. It presupposes that our judicial system is not working in the first place. It presupposed that the President actually admitted to murder. Did he? Not by virtue of the context of what he said. As I said, there is even no crime as EJK. It’s a misnomer because you know there can be judicial killings in this country because we have done away with the death penalty,” he said. Roque also said the president merely emphasised that he was never accused of corruption nor was he engaged in political vendetta. “I’d like to reiterate that the context of what the president said is that EJKs are the only criticisms labelled against him and that no one has ever accused him of corruption. I don’t think this amounts to admission because for it to be an admission or declaration against interest, he must have explicitly admitted to the crime of murder, which he has not,” Roque said. “I’d like to emphasise that there’s actually no crime under both domestic laws or international laws as EJK. In fact, this is misleading term because killing in our Constitution and in our laws is never legal so there’s no such thing as extrajudicial killings. So it’s either a lawful killing or an unlawful killing,” he added.

The jailed former Maldives president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was released on bail Sunday, a week after the country's longest serving leader's estranged half-brother was trounced at a presidential election. Gayoom, 80, and his legislator son Faris Maumoon, were released by the High Court in Male in response to fresh appeals against their controversial convictions. "Finally, they are all home," Gayoom's daughter Yumna Maumoon said on Twitter. "Hope and pray that all political prisoners will be released soon. The nightmare is finally over Insha Allah. Thank you all who struggled hard for this day," Maumoon said. The release followed appeals from President-elect Ibrahim Mohamed Solih who urged incumbent Abdulla Yameen to free all political prisoners in the tourist paradise atoll nation after his stunning victory at the September 23 election. Gayoom had ruled the nation of 340,000 Sunni Muslims for 30 straight years till he was defeated at the country's first multi-party elections in 2008.  He supported Yameen to win a controversial run-off election in 2013, but they later fell out and became bitter foes. Gayoom was arrested in February along with the country's Chief Justice and another Supreme Court judge on a charge of attempting to topple Yameen. He declared a 45-day state of emergency to block impeachment. The country's elder leader was serving a 19-month jail term for obstruction of justice and was also under trial on a "terrorism" charge when the High Court ordered his release on bail. Gayoom's other daughter, former foreign minister Dunya Maumoon, also took to Twitter saying: "So happy you are finally home." The High Court released Gayoom on a bail of 60,000 rufiyaa ($3,900) and he was also ordered not to travel abroad without its permission. Another high profile Maldivian dissident, Qasim Ibrahim, was also granted bail. He, however, is not in the Maldives. He had obtained prison leave for medical treatment and has remained in Europe. Almost all key opposition leaders and a number of ruling party dissidents have either been jailed or gone into exile in the Maldives in recent years under Yameen. Soon after his defeat, Yameen freed five other political prisoners but was delaying the release of his half-brother who could have made a claim to the leadership of his PPM party. Yameen secured the leadership of his party on Friday. His five-year term as president will come to an end on November 17 when Solih is due to be sworn in.

Fiji will go to the polls on November 14, Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama announced Sunday, for what will be only the second general election since his bloodless coup in 2006. He made the announcement after meeting President Jioji Konrote, within hours of his return from the United Nations General Assembly in New York. ‘His excellency the president of the Republic of Fiji, on the advice of the Honourable Prime Minister, has dissolved parliament on 30 September 2018,’ the South Pacific island's government said in a statement. Bainimarama formed the first post-coup democratically elected government after taking 60 percent of the vote in the 2014 general election, and has continued to lead public opinion polls since then. His closest challenger, Social Democratic Liberal Party leader and 1987 coup instigator Sitiveni Rabuka, was charged in June with making a false declaration of assets, income and liabilities under the Political Parties Registration Act. He is due to go on trial in mid-October. Bainimarama seized power in 2006 vowing to stamp out corruption and end racial divisions between indigenous Fijians and ethnic Indians, who are descended from sugar plantation labourers shipped in by the British during the colonial era. His authoritarian regime did bring stability and in the process rewrote the constitution, giving Indian Fijians who make up 40 percent of the 900,000 population equal status with indigenous Fijians. Fiji experienced four coups between 1987 and 2006, three of them influenced by the military. However, chief of staff Colonel Jone Kalouniwai told local news media earlier this year the military had learned from its mistakes and would accept the outcome of the elections. According to the electoral office, a record 634,120 Fijians have enrolled to vote on November 14 and seven political parties have been registered to contest the elections.

Nearly 400 people were killed when a powerful quake sent a tsunami barrelling into the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, officials said yesterday, as hospitals struggled to cope with hundreds of injured and rescuers scrambled to reach the stricken region. The national disaster agency put the official death toll so far at 384, all of them in the tsunami-struck city of Palu, but warned the toll was likely to rise. Some 540 people were badly injured, it added. In the city – home to around 350,000 people – partially covered bodies lay on the ground near the shore, the day after tsunami waves 1.5m (5ft) high hit the coast. There were also concerns over the whereabouts of hundreds of people preparing for a beach festival that had been due to start Friday evening, the disaster agency said. Hospitals were overwhelmed by the influx of injured, with many people being treated in the open air, while other survivors helped to retrieve the remains of those who died. One man was seen carrying the muddy corpse of a small child. The tsunami was triggered by a strong quake that brought down buildings and sent locals fleeing for higher ground as a churning wall of water crashed into Palu, where there were widespread power blackouts. Dramatic video footage captured from the top floor of a parking ramp in Palu, nearly 80km (50 miles) from the quake’s epicentre, showed waves bring down several buildings and inundate a large mosque. “I just ran when I saw the waves hitting homes on the coastline,” said Palu resident Rusidanto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name. About 17,000 people had been evacuated, the disaster agency said, and that figure is expected to rise. The shallow 7.5 magnitude tremor was more powerful than a series of quakes that killed hundreds on the Indonesian island of Lombok in July and August. Indonesian president Joko Widodo said the military was being called in to the disaster-struck region to help search-and-rescue teams get to victims and find bodies. “This was a terrifying double disaster,” said Jan Gelfand, a Jakarta-based official at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. “The Indonesian Red Cross is racing to help survivors but we don’t know what they’ll find there.” The massive tremors were felt hundreds of kilometres away and there has been little word about casualties in Donggala, a region north of Palu where at least one person was reported dead in Friday’s quakes. “We have heard nothing from Donggala and this is extremely worrying,” Gelfand said. “There are more than 300,000 people living there. This is already a tragedy, but it could get much worse.” The quake hit just off central Sulawesi at a depth of 10km just before 1100 GMT – early evening in Indonesia – the US Geological Survey said. Such shallow quakes tend to be more destructive. Pictures supplied by the disaster agency showed a badly damaged shopping mall in Palu where at least one floor had collapsed onto the storey below, while other photographs showed major damage to buildings and large cracks across pavements. Homes and a local hotel were flattened while a landmark city bridge was destroyed. Video from the scene showed the double-arched, yellow bridge had collapsed with its two metal arches twisted as cars bobbed in the water below. An AFP reporter on the scene saw widespread damage some 50m inland. A key access road had been badly damaged and was partially blocked by landslides, the disaster agency said. The main airport in Palu, capital of South Sulawesi province, was shut after the tsunami struck and was expected to stay closed for at least 24 hours, complicating any disaster relief efforts. Friday’s tremor was also felt in the far south of the island in its largest city Makassar and on neighbouring Kalimantan, Indonesia’s portion of Borneo island.

The Elections Commission of Maldives yesterday officially declared opposition leader Ibrahim Mohamed Solih winner of the country’s national election, defeating president Abdulla Yameen who had sought a delay in publication of the final results. Election Commission Secretary General Salah Rasheed said Solih’s Maldivian Democratic Party had won by a 16.8 percentage margin, with an 89.2% voter turnout. Election chief Ahmed Shareef said the commission had received 423 complaints about the election by Thursday, of which 194 were outstanding. “The Complaints Bureau and the Commission have decided that none of the complaints filed with the commission will affect the outcome of the election,” Shareef told reporters in the capital Male. He said all five election commissioners had received threatening telephone calls after Sunday’s election. “We also received several phone calls in which we (the commissioners) were threatened with physical harm. We did not respond to it because the state’s security services were providing security arrangements for all the commissioners.” ( Reuters)

Outgoing Maldivian strongman Abdulla Yameen is delaying freeing high-profile political prisoners despite calls by his successor for their release, the opposition said Wednesday. Shortly after his shock defeat in the presidential election on Sunday, Yameen freed five prisoners. But scores of others -- including Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, his estranged half-brother and former president -- remain incarcerated. "We expected president Gayoom to be freed on Monday. Courts brought up administrative issues and put off his release for Tuesday and yet nothing happened," a spokesman for his DRP party said. "We understand reliably that he (Yameen) is mounting pressure on the Correctional Services not to release the political prisoners," the spokesman added.  There was no immediate comment from the government. The DRP spokesman said Yameen was unwilling to give up power without a fight and appeared determined to hold political prisoners till his presidential term ends on November 17. Yameen, who jailed or exiled most of his rivals during a turbulent five-year term, was unexpectedly beaten by opposition candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. Solih, who struggled to gain coverage from a media cowed by Yameen, immediately urged the ousted president to free all dissidents. Opposition lawmaker and former police chief Abdulla Riyaz and four others were released by the Criminal Court in the capital Male on Monday.  They had been held indefinitely following an alleged plot to impeach Yameen in February that saw dozens detained. Gayoom, the country's longest-serving leader, was among several political prisoners brought to Male from their prison on the dreaded Maafushi island to lodge appeals against their sentences. But they were turned back. Gayoom, who ruled the Maldives for 30 years before its transition to democracy in 2008, was among those arrested during the February crackdown in the Indian Ocean nation. He was sentenced to 19 months in prison for obstructing an investigation into an alleged plot to oust Yameen. Yameen, suspecting a plot to impeach him, in February declared a state of emergency, arresting top judges and a host of others. The UN called the purge an "all-out assault on democracy". Gayoom also faces a separate charge of terrorism, along with Chief Justice Abdulla Saeed and Supreme Court Justice Ali Hameed. That case is still pending. Solih had the backing of a unified opposition, including Gayoom's DRP. The president-elect garnered more than 58 percent of the popular vote in the archipelago nation of 340,000 Sunni Muslims, a popular tourist haven known for its white-sand beaches and pristine waters. Yameen's rule dented its image as a honeymooners paradise and attracted alarm abroad. The US and EU had threatened financial sanctions unless the presidential poll was free and fair.

Police armed with pickaxes and power tools have destroyed a modern artwork by a celebrated British sculptor in the Maldives, after the outgoing president in the tourist haven declared the installation offensive to Islam. Abdulla Yameen in July ordered the sculptures demolished but his ruling was not acted upon until Friday, on the eve of a presidential election which he lost to a liberal candidate. A series of statues by Jason deCaires Taylor were placed inside a semi-submerged metal cube in July at a resort in the Maldives, an archipelago of 340,000 Sunni Muslims popular with tourists. Islam, the official religion in the Maldives, bans the depiction of idols, and the work provoked some criticism from clerics even though the statues have no religious symbols or meaning. Yameen said in July that “significant public sentiment” against the artwork known as ‘Coralarium’ had guided his decision to destroy it. It is unclear why the sculptures were not raised from the waters until Friday, just two days before Yameen was turfed out of office. Police were photographed chipping away at the works with pickaxes and using power tools to remove them from the large and  ornate cage housing them.  A video posted by state media showed several men tearing a statue off a plinth.  “I was extremely shocked and heartbroken to learn that my sculptures have been destroyed by the Maldivian authorities at the Coralarium, despite continued consultations and dialogue,” deCaires Taylor said in a statement. “The Coralarium was conceived to connect humans to the environment and a nurturing space for marine life to thrive. Nothing else! “The Maldives is still beautiful, with a warm and friendly population, but it was a sad day for art and sad day for the environment.” The import of statues is prohibited in the Maldives. Even depictions of the Buddha are banned despite a long legacy of Buddhism in the islands before Islam came to dominate the archipelago. Despite the edict, huge cutouts of Yameen towered over the capital Male in the lead-up to Sunday’s poll, which he lost after five years of strongman rule marked by a regression from democracy. Many of these cardboard posters depicting the ousted leader were torn down after he suffered a shock defeat to opposition candidate Mohamed Solih, an act of defiance unthinkable under his iron-fisted leadership.

Maldives President Abdulla Yameen Monday conceded defeat in elections and said he would arrange a smooth transition for president-elect Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. "I have accepted the results from yesterday," Yameen said in a televised address to the nation after Sunday's election gave the joint opposition candidate 58.3 percent of the vote. "I accept the defeat," Yameen said. "I will enable a smooth transition." There had been concerns that Yameen, who has borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from China for an infrastructure blitz, might not accept the outcome. At the last election in 2013, the Supreme Court annulled the result after Yameen trailed former president Mohamed Nasheed, giving Yameen time to forge alliances and win a second round of voting that was postponed twice. "The Maldivian people have decided what they want. I have accepted the results from yesterday. Earlier today, I met with Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, who the Maldivian electorate has chosen to be their next president. I have congratulated him," Yameen said Monday. He said he would remain in office till November 17 when his five-year term ends, but would allow a smooth transition.